Posted January 2002
DISCLAIMER: It all belongs to Chris and Co. I just use and
abuse them out of love.
SUMMARY: "There are some things that change you and there is no
going back."
TITLE: Things That Darken You
AUTHOR: Rowan Darkstar rowandarkstar@gmail.com
RATING: (R)
CLASSIFICATIONS: Vignette, Angst
KEYWORDS: M/S UST
SPOILERS: General references through Season 4 US
TIMELINE: Probably early to middle US Season 4. Somewhere near
to "Never Again", but preferably pre-cancer.
ARCHIVE: Just let me know.


Things That Darken You
by
Rowan Darkstar rowandarkstar@gmail.com
Copyright (c) 2002



She watches late night news programs on women who have been
raped. She stares and listens and absorbs. About how every one
of them feels responsible. About how the little things stick
with them and mess up the most menial tasks of their days. And
she feels guilty, because she has not been raped, not
technically. Yet she is achingly drawn toward women who have.
She has not been raped. Or maybe, in a way, she has. Maybe in a
hundred jigsaw ways that add up to a picture far worse than one
single unwelcomed penetration. Maybe. But she has no documented
proof of this, no statement in her file--so she goes on feeling
guilty, but watching the news programs just the same.

She knows she is no longer the woman she was ten years ago
("There's no way out, Girly-Girl"), and she never quite will be
no matter how much therapy she allows herself to suffer. Because
there are some things that change you and there is no going back.
There are some things that darken you.

She wears more make-up some days, and she is not sure why. She
paints herself up to the image she wants to see in the mirror.
She watches every bite that goes into her mouth to keep her body
sleek and slender, because at least she can handle that again,
handle being sexy. At least she took that back.

Some days it hurts to look at him. Because he sees the shadows
around her. And they transpose onto him in the charcoal beneath
his eyes and the furrows in his brow. Because he doesn't know
what to do or how to reach out for the glimmer of light inside
her through the encompassing cloud. He's not even sure it's his
place. He grants her her dignity, her space. She knows all of
this. Believes this and doesn't believe it. Wants him...to ask.

On darkest nights, she curls tight beneath the covers, feeling
the familiar tension and vulnerability in her stomach, like
anyone could smack her or rip out the core of her and she is
devoid of all armors to stop it. (Little girl on the sidewalk in
a dress like Missy's and suddenly she is trying to remember a
time when the taste of blood in her mouth brought only memories
of the tooth fairy.) And she aches for him, listens with silent
breaths for a sound of movement in the hotel room next door,
imagining that he might somehow know she was hurting, and come to
her.

But these are blind imaginings. Because in the end, in the cold
light of day, she doesn't want to go through it. If he comes to
her, he will come again and again, and she will be forced to face
herself. To watch herself mirrored in his thickly lined face,
and slowly and excruciatingly enumerate what has really happened
to her. She would have to explain why she watches the news
programs. And for now...she isn't even sure she watches them.

The colder she gets, the further he moves away. She knows it's a
masochistic pattern, knows self-destruction when she sees it.
It's nothing new, she's just gotten better at it. But she simply
cannot let him come near. He reaches for her and she walks away.
And on the rare occasion that she can't turn an equally cold
shoulder on herself, she cries.


*****


She lost it one cold afternoon at a blood-soaked crime scene. He
knew she was quietly, silently turning inside out beside him--for
once in his whole fucking life of self-involved blindness, he
*knew*. And he reached out, not looking, and closed an arm
around her shoulders. She wanted to melt and she wanted to
throw-up. And she stood there for longer than she should have,
because he could feel her shaking and the local deputy was
watching. Then she turned and left and kept walking and walking
and got lost in the trees and leaned against the moss eaten side
of a blackened oak and cried. Not for the death she left behind,
but for the living dead inside.

She reappeared at the crime scene half an hour later with moss
stains on her coat back. He didn't ask where she had been.

He didn't fucking ask.


*****


She sits on the iron bench outside their junky motel rooms,
thinking about the price of the Armani suit that she shouldn't
have paid (is still paying), but there was something about the
way it touched her skin that she couldn't let go. She can hardly
remember what case they are here for. She has started to drift a
little that way. It is Mulder's case, really (are they all?),
she is just here to hover over the dead body in the icicle
basement and try to back-up his theories.

But she can't focus, can't follow the notes she is reading ("loud
sounds...my ears were pounding"), and he is bitching at her about
it at every meeting and she is even further away.

He is on the other side of town, checking out a witness report.

So she's half-terrified when his hand hits her shoulder and her
notes go scattering across the concrete walk, but no one moves to
pick them up. He half-smiles an apology, and he sits down beside
her, and she starts to ask about the witness report but for some
reason she doesn't speak. His grey eyes are so like the sky,
they're watching her and watching with the same threat at their
edges as the sky holds of rain. But somewhere in them, somewhere
in them they are asking...they're asking....

...*what hurts?*...

The wind blows against her cheek and he touches the edge of her
hair.

She's trembling, exposed, wanting to run, and determined not to
cry.

She's wearing too much make-up today.

A moment ago she was Hard-Field-Scully and a second later she is
open, soft, Dana.

And for the first time in the whole fucking mess she has lately
called her life, a moment happens--a moment.

"Scully? I don't know what to do. Just please...talk to me?"

The spider web of issues and double-edged swords and
machinations seems to melt under his touch and the reasons she
can't just cry are as messed up in her head as the jumble of
useless case notes. Only the tightness in the most intimate
center of her stomach remains--but she stays there on the bench
with him anyway, and his grey-sky-eyes keep looking at her. And
she's not quite sure how the words slip out of her mouth--

"I want to breathe..."

--or how her face gets against his palm or his arms across her
back, but all she can feel is the pain and the wind and her own
cold tears against his warm skin, and the vague gnawing that she
will pay for this later.

Or maybe she is paying for it now--in how much it still hurts to
let him hold her.

She has never been raped. Or maybe she has.

But she thinks maybe she watches the news programs.

*****

rowandarkstar@gmail.com
Feedback makes the world go round.


H O M E
Copyright (c) 2003 Rowan Darkstar