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 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 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.