Taming The Unicorn 5: The Healing

Mulder was having a nightmare. She could hear him, through the paper-thin motel walls. Another nightmare; the third in a single night. If this was representative of how he'd spent his evenings since their breakup, it made his chronic fatigue comprehensible.

She'd expected something like this, of course, but the reality was quite a bit worse than the expectation had been.

Her first impulse, her overwhelming instinct, was to go to him -- but they had barely begun to repair the damage to their rapport; they had only just gotten back to the point where he'd dropped the prefix "Agent" from her surname, and she thought that forcing the issue might only make things worse.

On the other hand, he was hurting, and it was terrible for her to witness his pain and be helpless to stop it.

The only thing that had made any of it at all bearable was her absolute certainty that he still wanted her. The request-for-transfer form that had lain in his desk, completed but as-yet-unsubmitted, since his return to the office. The fact that he'd grudgingly accepted her offer of rides to and from work, instead of renting or leasing another car to replace his old one. The myriad ways in which he could have shut her out, yet hadn't... he still wanted her, she was sure of it; but his pride or his pain or some combination of both was keeping him from reaching out to her.

So it was up to her to repair the damage she'd done, because Mulder wasn't going to do it. Left to his own devices, Mulder would remain withdrawn, a turtle hiding in his shell indefinitely. She owed him more than that: she owed him a way out, a helping hand back to daylight, especially since she'd been the one to drive him into the darkness.

I fucked up, she thought bluntly, not flinching from the harshness of the epithet, or her own responsibility for the state of affairs that made it the only applicable term. I thought I was doing the right thing, and instead I fucked up. Oh, Mulder. I'm sorry. She hadn't realized -- how had she failed to realize? How could she have not known how deeply her words would hurt him?

Because she hadn't realized what she was saying. She'd wanted some breathing room, a bit more space to reflect on what was happening, a chance for them to both really consider what they were doing and why. She'd wanted a return to the safe contentment of friendship, of partnership, while she pondered the strange new feelings that were assailing her, and how she might assimilate them into her worldview. She'd wanted to take a step back, take a deep breath, and come to terms with her newfound knowledge that he was the one... to put everything into perspective, so that she could deal with it properly.

Instead, she'd broken his heart.

In retrospect, it was all so clear... I told him it was a mistake, she thought dismally. Why did I say that? But maybe I was right after all... look at us now, as the faint sounds of his night terror filtered through the plaster, bringing tears to her eyes. There was less distance between us on the first day we met.

And then she heard him cry out her name, almost a scream, and that galvanized her; she was up on her feet and moving before she was even aware of it.

His body was huddled into a fetal position, blankets and sheets tangled around him; he was clutching his pillow and sobbing in his sleep, and the sight of him hurt as if someone had shoved a knife into her stomach. She recalled his comment about having been knifed in the gut, and empathized... and without thinking twice, she climbed into bed and curled herself around him, holding him as tightly as she could. "Mulder," she whispered into his ear, kissed his cheek, hoping that he would feel her presence through the nightmare, that she could draw him out of it.

She realized, suddenly, that to Mulder, the truth might well be as bad as the nightmare...

"Wake up," she murmured, "wake up, Mulder," and kissed him again, smoothing sweaty hair away from his face, and all at once he awoke; startled eyes assimilated the reality around himself, ascertaining what was fact and what had been the fiction created by his troubled mind.

It hurt that his first waking action was to move away from her, to put as much physical distance between them as possible.

"What're you doing here?" he growled, sitting on the edge of the bed furthest from her, rubbing at tired eyes with one fist.

"You called my name," she said steadily, determined not to let her own anguish rise to the surface.

"Well, I'm fine. Leave me alone," was his next statement, delivered in a curt tone; unsteadily, he rose and stumbled off to the bathroom.

She thought about it, while he was in there, whether to stay or go... but this was the first opening of any kind, the first small break in the wall of tension between them, and she couldn't let the opportunity pass. Who knew when there might be another? and whether it might be too late?

So she was still there when he emerged; and she braced herself against his narrowed gaze. "Thought I told you to leave," he said, with as much open hostility as she'd ever heard in his voice.

It almost caused her to react, but she held firm against her own impulse to run from the confrontation. "I didn't think that would be wise."

"You've been wrong before." He glanced at her, then quickly looked away, and she remembered what she was wearing -- lace and satin, a totally impractical nightgown that she would never have packed for a field assignment, had it not been for her distant hope that she could use it as a visual aid, to lure Mulder back to his senses.

She'd underestimated his resolve, it seemed; he seated himself in the chair at the opposite side of the room, the message clear: stay back, no closer -- and she sighed.

"Don't you think this has gone on long enough?" she asked.

"Thought this was what you wanted," and there was a faint note of triumph in his voice: what you wanted, Scully; what's the matter, don't you like it?

"I didn't know what I wanted!" she cried, frustrated with his refusal to listen, with her own inability to make him understand.

"Oh, and now you do?"

His statement stopped her cold; she had no reply ready, and after a moment of her silence, he laughed -- a bitter sound, acid, the very antithesis of laughter. "That's what I thought."

"I miss you," she said plaintively, not knowing what else to say.

"Yeah, I'll bet; me, or my tongue. Do us all a favor, Scully; buy yourself a vibrator before someone else gets caught in the crossfire."

In the first instant, she was stunned; in the second, a bright spark of fury ignited inside her -- she grabbed the first thing that brushed against her outstretched hand and threw it at him, as hard as she could.

It turned out to be an ashtray, sharp-cornered and heavy; he didn't even try to dodge as the missile connected with his shoulder forcefully. A small gasp of pain, at the moment of impact -- his hand reached up to the gashed spot, came away stained with blood. "How much more do I have to bleed for you?" he wondered aloud. "And my gun arm, too; and us out on a case. Nice work, partner."

She stared at him, not liking what she was seeing, but with the dismal feeling that she deserved exactly what she was getting. "You're doing this on purpose," she accused him, "you're going out of your way to hurt me, aren't you?"

He shrugged -- one-sided, the shoulder she hadn't damaged. "Yeah," he said mildly, and the admission caught her completely off-guard.

"Why?" His pain, she could understand; his paranoia, his desperate terror of betrayal, all of that made sense to her. What she couldn't comprehend was his viciousness, his intent insistence on vengeance. "Do you really want to break me? Is that what you need?"

Her words seemed to strike a chord; his face softened marginally. "Maybe that's all I've got left," he murmured.

Taking advantage of the lull, she got up and went to him -- "Leave me alone," he muttered, as she tried to examine the wound she'd inflicted.

"Let me see..."

"Back off, Scully!" His voice rose almost to a shout, anger growing...

"Shut up!" she shouted back, right in his face, and sullenly, he allowed her to check the gash.

Nothing too major, a small laceration, and probably a bruise by morning -- enough to restrict the movement of his arm, though, enough to make drawing his weapon difficult and painful, possibly endangering them both. She damned herself silently for her lapse of control: she should have known better, should have been more professional, no matter what he'd said to provoke her. She'd faced down leering requests for blowjobs with more restraint... but this was Mulder; this was the person who could hurt her more deeply than anyone else ever could. "I'm sorry," she said, reaching for a Kleenex to wipe away some of the blood.

Another sound that might have been a laugh but wasn't. "It doesn't matter," said Mulder.

She abandoned the conversation for a moment, long enough to duck into her own room and retrieve first-aid essentials. When she returned, she saw that he hadn't moved, that he was still sitting there staring at the far wall as if it held some great secret.

"It matters," she said conversationally, pouring antiseptic solution over his wounded shoulder. "Of course it matters."

His teeth set against the inevitable sting of alcohol against raw flesh. "Not anymore."

"It matters," she repeated, gentle fingers cleaning the area, bandaging it. "You can't pretend it doesn't."

"Why not?" It was a challenge, but there was less anger in his tone, now, than defeat; she took that as an encouraging sign.

"Because it hurts more that way," she informed him.

"Right. Like you would know." His casual disdain infuriated her; she struggled to keep a rein on her temper.

"Do you really think you're the only person in the world who knows anything about pain?" she countered. "Do you truly believe that this isn't hurting me, too?"

He sighed. "Scully, you have no idea what you did to me," and his voice was so forlorn, so miserable, that she couldn't stop herself from embracing him.

His body stiffened in her arms, resistant, as if her touch was more than he could bear, but she held on, feeling that if she let go of him now, they'd drift so far apart that she'd never reach him again... and after awhile, very gradually, she felt him relax.

She settled her hip on the arm of the chair, felt him rest his head against her chest, and only when the first warm droplet splashed against her skin did she realize that he was crying.

In retrospect, it was easy to see how badly she'd misjudged him, how severely she'd underestimated his capacity for fear and pain. She'd let the atmosphere of easy affection lull her into a false sense of complacency; she'd mistaken arrogance for confidence, determination for strength. She'd assumed that he had as much faith in her as she'd had in him -- she'd forgotten that this was, after all, Mulder, for whom nothing had ever been a certainty. Mulder, who was on intimate terms with loneliness, who was gradually learning the concept of unity with her assistance, but who had only the vaguest comprehension of any possible shade of grey between the two. Mulder, one of the most intelligent men she'd ever known, who somehow couldn't quite emotionally grasp the difference between a mistake and a betrayal...

Nor had she realized how completely she held his soul in her hands.

It came to her in that moment: you're going to spend the rest of your life doing this, Dana, if you stay with him it'll always be like this; there's a fracture running the length of his psyche that's maybe too deep to ever be healed. You'll be his support, holding him together: is that really what you want, to spend your life tending to his wounds? Is it worth it?

She rested her palm against the side of his face, meaning to brush the stray droplets from his cheek, and his hand came up to rest lightly on her wrist, holding it there -- he was fighting the tears, struggling and losing. For a moment, she wanted to tell him to stop fighting, to let it all out... but this was Mulder: if he did, would he ever be able to stop crying? or was there too much pain in him to ever be released?

Not to mention, she was afraid that if she called attention to his tears, he'd become self-conscious and walk away -- too much of a chance to take -- and in the end, she simply held him, and let herself cry with him.

Her own sadness had been so close to the surface, ever since the night it had happened; it seemed that she was constantly struggling to hold her pain at bay. There'd been times at work, listening to his too-formal phrasing of her name, when she'd been sure she was about to burst into tears, and the only thing that had stopped her was her conviction that it would push him right over the edge and out of her life for good. That, and her fear that he would simply sit there and watch her crying and do nothing; that her misery would be meaningless to him. She didn't think she could bear that.

But now he was too absorbed in his own anguish to notice, and she cried for him, and for herself; for what she'd done to him inadvertently, and for the soul that had been scarred so badly that even the lightest blow could constitute a mortal wound.

Then she felt him shift position -- fear surged up within her, and she was certain that he was going to push her away -- but instead his arm snaked around her waist and latched on tightly, and she started crying all over again from sheer relief. If he could still reach out to her, they hadn't lost everything; it wasn't all gone. They could recapture lost ground. They could rebuild what had been destroyed. It didn't have to be over.

"I love you," she told him, striving to keep her voice comprehensible despite the sobs that shook her. "I love you so much, and I'm so sorry." The Truth, as simple and pure as she could make it. She could only hope that they'd reached the point where he could accept it.

He didn't reply, but it seemed to her -- it might have been wishful thinking, but it felt as if his grip tightened, just a little.

She held him, long past the point when her own tears had stopped, when her rear end had gone numb from her ridiculous balancing act on the arm of the chair; she held him until he stopped shuddering, until his tears slowed and dried, stroked his hair as he rested against her relearning how to breathe -- and felt something in her shatter when resolutely, he disentangled himself from her embrace and stood up, albeit unsteadily. "Um, I gotta get some sleep," he said, not looking at her.

Oh, no, you don't. I'm not letting go of you now! "I'll help," she said, rising and following him.

"I don't think that would be a good idea," and he turned away from her, doing his best to block her out.

"You'd prefer to be alone?" she asked him.

"It's better that way," was his reply, delivered in a tone of finality.

"No. It's not." She took his hand, felt his fingers curl around hers -- an involuntary response, perhaps, but one that heartened her.

"Scully... go to bed, will you?" There was more than a hint of tenderness in his voice along with the weariness, reinforcing her conviction that this time, she was doing the right thing.

"Sure," she said, pulling him toward his bed. "That's what I had in mind."

"I meant your bed." But he didn't resist, sat down on the edge of the bed beside her.

"We can sleep in my bed, if you prefer," she told him.

"Scully..." A long, heavy sigh. "I'm not going to get rid of you, am I?"

"Is that really what you want?" She didn't wait for him to answer; she had the feeling that he didn't know what he wanted.

Instead, she moved so that she was sitting cross-legged behind him, and began to rub his shoulders, being careful of the one she'd injured. A nice, non-threatening massage: something he could accept without having to give too much of himself away. Her fingers dug into tense muscles, trying to loosen the knots... she wasn't surprised that her efforts were largely unsuccessful.

Apparently, though, something was working; she felt him leaning into her hands, felt him swaying slightly in time with her caresses in slow surrender.

"Lie down, will you?" she said softly, and he obeyed, stretching out on his back with his eyes closed; he still couldn't quite meet her gaze without evident discomfort, but he was letting her touch him, and that was a helluva good place to start, in her estimation.

She let her hands wander over his chest, applying enough pressure that he could justify it as a continuation of the backrub if he needed to, making sure to nudge all the sensitive spots she'd discovered on previous reconnaissance missions. Her fingertips strayed across his nipples, and she felt him shiver, and knew that she'd won this round. Tomorrow might be another story, but he wouldn't be struggling against her any more tonight...

Small soft strokes, little wet kisses, starting at his collarbone and working down slowly: it was imperative that she proceed with the utmost care. His arousal was a delightful side effect, but not the main purpose of the exercise -- what he needed most was comfort, and company, to counter the weight of his self-imposed exile. The wrong move, the wrong word, any mistake right now could be disastrous; he was so vulnerable...

But that vulnerability also added an extraordinary sensitivity, so that even the mildest caress sent a tremor through him; she could sense in him the desperate need for contact, and for the first time realized that it had very little to do with passion. Strange, that a man with a drawerful of porn-on-video should invest the act of sex with such deep emotional significance, but that was Mulder: one contradiction after another, infuriating and wonderful.

Contact. Her hands gliding over him, every part of him, leaving not an inch of skin untouched. Sliding the sweatpants over his hips, his knees, his ankles, and off: shedding her nightgown in the space of a heartbeat and pressing the length of her body against his. More kisses, more and more and more, moving slowly downward; taking him into her mouth, hearing his soft plaintive cry and feeling his sudden urgency, knowing that he couldn't wait -- she held off long enough to make it intense, not long enough for it to hurt, brought him over the edge and down the other side.

Before he'd had time to recover, while his resistance was still at its lowest, she snuggled into his side, wrapping herself around him... and nearly burst into tears all over again when he rolled over and slid his arms around her in return.

"This isn't gonna work." His voice was sleep-slurred, and held little conviction -- in this, he didn't want to believe; but he needed convincing that any other outcome was possible.

That was all right -- she would convince him.

He was asleep before she could dispute his claim, and she held him and listened to his snores for awhile. How irritatingly typical, that the man who believed a dozen impossible things before breakfast every day would no doubt wake up in the morning fully confident that their relationship was doomed to fail. How ironic, that she was fated to find herself in the position of demonstrating what couldn't be scientifically proven: that the bond they shared was stronger than any detracting influence, even that of their own fears.

So I'll keep the faith for both of us, she decided, and spent her last few minutes of wakefulness trying to figure out what the morning might bring. The exercise proved more soporific than counting sheep; before she could even come close to an answer, she was fast asleep.

She awoke to find herself alone in his bed, to the sound of the shower running, and she was willing to bet anything that he'd locked the door-- testing her hypothesis, she found it correct. About what I expected, she thought to herself philosophically, as she trudged wearily through the connecting door to her own room and bathroom.

She didn't see him again until after she'd showered and dressed and headed to the motel office for a cup of the ubiquitous sludge that masqueraded as complimentary coffee; he'd already found his way there, was sitting on the shabby sofa reading a newspaper through dark sunglasses -- or was pretending to; from what she could see of his face, she had the feeling that he was barely keeping his eyes open, let alone managing to focus on the words.

"I'll drive today," she said conversationally, settling in beside him.

His head turned fractionally toward her, a sidelong glance. "Good idea," he conceded, and that in itself was a sign of his fatigue.

She picked up another of the daily newspapers strewn over the coffee table, sipped at her own coffee, carefully not making conversation. Best to let things settle for a while. He was still hurting too badly to think clearly, let alone dare to believe in happy endings. But she had demonstrated that she loved him, that she was there for him, and he had quite inadvertently shown her that there was still hope for them... now, the only treatment left to be administered was the same one used for the common cold: rest, and time.

After a few moments, she felt the tension in him dissipate; the couch shifted as he tossed the newspaper aside and leaned back, closing his eyes briefly. "I feel like hell," he murmured -- then shot her another small sideways look. "No offense."

"None taken," she replied, smiling because his last two words had said far more than he'd meant them to.

"So, what's first; we question the last of the witnesses from the QuickieMart?"

"Think you can stay awake long enough?"

"I'll manage." With a sigh, he levered himself upright -- and his hand brushed ever so lightly against her arm, too gently to be construed as an actual caress, but too deliberate to be anything but intentional. "Might as well get started."

"Might as well," she agreed, still smiling, and followed him out into the too-bright sunlight.

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