ANGELS CAN BE JEALOUS, TOO (1/1) By Sue Esty (AKA Windsinger@aol.com) 2/1/99 Synopsis: MSR, Mulderangst, Scullyangst. A hostage situation, blood, snow, - and sixteen point three miles. Definitely takes place between the movie and Season Six. Disclaimer: Yes, it's not mine. Yes, Mulder and Scully belong to Ten Fifteen productions. (Rats!) ANGELS CAN BE JEALOUS, TOO (1/1) By Windsinger I look behind me as I run. Are they following or are they merely laughing back there. Silent as the woods are with its blanket of snow, I believe I can still hear their rough voices with their mixture of accents: Irish, Indian, Rumanian, Italian, Bronx, Texan. All rough, all cruel. They didn't think when they let me retreat behind that miserable screen of bushes for privacy that I would flee. They thought that I'd have more sense, that I would know what my chances were of dying out here alone and unprotected. I know, and I don't care. My life is not worth living if it has to be as their prisoner. Even one day would be too long because they watch me too closely so I can't get to them to wrap my hands around their necks and squeeze the life out of them. Far more importantly, my life is out here. How far? Unlike the majority of humanity, I know exactly. Sixteen point three miles. I know because I checked the odometer after they pushed me back into the truck and it had started forward with a lurch and a grinding of gears. Squashed between two of the terrorist's stinking bodies, I sat stunned, unable to comprehend at first that they were leaving my heart behind, just a dark, silent blur of black and red in all that white. Odd that at that moment I should notice the mileage. I should have been screaming. I should have been tearing my hair out by the roots and ripping the veins out of my wrists with my nails. That would not have been my way though, to go mad for no useful purpose. If I go mad, I'll do so walking back along this rutted ditch, this so-called road, in the dead of winter for sixteen point three miles. If I'm lucky, maybe it's as few as fifteen now. His body lies there beside the road, warm blood melting into the snow. The flow won't be warm for long, though. Even if I could fly it would be a cold, thin trickle by the time I got there now. Still, I will run when I can and walk when the cold sears my lungs to the point where I can't breathe because despite the fact that I wear only completely inadequate canvas shoes and his sweater over the fatigue shirt they gave me, I will beat the odds. I will find him because not finding him is not even an option. My cold arms will embrace his cold flesh and my cold eyes will look once more upon that beautiful, dead face before the wolves and the foxes and bears, or whatever there are in this place, come to add his essence to the local ecology. Then they can take mine as well. But first I have to get there. Thirteen miles now? Twelve? It's getting hard to count already. I just keep walking. * * * * * * * Ten Miles The Champions of God took twenty hostages: women and children mostly. They're demands were... Do you know I can't remember? Just another crazy, radical group whose ideas of right and wrong are a bit skewed. Only this time someone in power didn't take them seriously enough. Someone failed to do their homework and, thus, didn't realize how violent they could really be. Mulder and I were just two of twenty agents in the assault force. As we waited behind the warehouse, hands in pockets and stamping our feet against the cold asphalt, Mulder joked that at least there wasn't a soda machine in sight. It was a pretty lame little joke, but not bad considering that Mulder was smarting over the fact that we had been sent here at all. Like our initial assignment to Houston, we were viewed as just another couple of parasites on the taxpayer's chit... and couldn't somebody find us something to do? Could we help it that reinstating the X-Files and restoring our office were both snarled in red tape leaving us rather at loose ends for these few months? At least we were still together. Mulder felt as strongly about that as I did. I can still see those hazel eyes glowing at me mischievously from under that black watch cap as we waited with the rest of the team. At first, all went as planned. The main force came in >from the east while the smaller group came in through some very nasty steam tunnels from the west. The latter included yours truly. Mulder must ask specifically for these messy assignments. When he was young his mother must not have let him get dirty very often. Then I remembered that by all accounts Mulder hadn't had much of a childhood - but that's another story. Our job was to get the hostages out while the main group provided the diversion. That was fine with me and all in all the attack was well timed. We waited until all the guards but one were outside indulging in a smoke or a little sip from their hip flasks before radioing for the main force to open fire. The drinking and smoking guards were taken down while one of our best sharpshooters took out the one inside by firing down from a skylight. Then it was pandemonium as we fanned out in that dark place, trying to get the women and children to move. Again, the firepower covered their shrieks and cries, but also made communication nearly impossible. The FBI has got to come up with more user-friendly attire. If nothing else, white hats for such special occasions. We finally had them all out and dashing for safety when one mother with a child in arms, screamed that another child was missing. You guessed it, Mulder was the first to run back though I was close behind, my service revolver endlessly scanning to cover his heroic ass. By then the escape had been detected. Up one fire escape we went, Mulder clutching the child of three and breathing like a blacksmith's bellows by the time he got to the top. With the sound of irate pursuing feet slapping behind us, he leaned over the edge of the building and actually dropped the child down to two anxious agents below. We turned to return fire when it happened. A concussion bomb exploded only a few yards from Mulder's feet. I was further away but that made very little difference at the time. Eight Miles The land has changed. There was only woods before which gave me a place to hide in case the terrorists decided to double back and pick me up again. I guess they decided that they didn't need even one hostage any more. They got what they could out of this: Out of town, out of the state, out of the damn country. I'm in Canada now, I'm certain. Don't ask me how. Maybe because of the desolate cold. Maybe because the stream I passed - at least the trickle that wasn't frozen - was the color of beer. Maybe because I haven't seen a pair of golden arches for almost a day. I can't feel my feet any longer. My cheap, black athletic shoes are caked with snow. My hands are frozen. My body is frozen. My face would crack if I tried to smile. No risk of that. Crying isn't even on the agenda. I am numb through and through, but I will keep going. I need to see you one last time. Just once. We were never given time to say good-bye. I need to put my lips on yours for the second time in my life - only this time it will be forever. Cliche as it may sound, there is nothing I want more right now than to die with you in your arms. In life we were allowed so little. Too much pain, too many knives in the dark, too much old history. Now in death we're not even allowed this one small thing. Except for a short time when we were hidden under blankets in the back and sat on - that's when we probably crossed the border - I've been allowed the 'privilege' of riding up front in the cab most of the time. It's warm there when the Italian can kick the heater into working, but I also had to contend with the drifting hands of the men who amused themselves by seeing how far they could get before I tried to punch their lights out. Of course, they gave as good as they got, but they didn't have the room to put any real power behind their blows. With Mulder it was different. He was kept in the back with the remaining six members of this sorry ratpack. At least they didn't seem to go in for sodomy - too cold back there for anyone to get it up probably. From the look of the scratches and bruises on Mulder's poor face the few times I was allowed to see him, however, that was about the only commandment they didn't believe in breaking. I know he suffered terribly from the cold. I know how sensitive he is to it because I remember that night on that rock in the lake and later in the woods in Florida. We won't even talk about his submarine-watching activities in Alaska or his recent rescue mission to Antarctica. To make matters worse, the Champions of God kept him so closely tied that I know he was getting precious little circulation. At first when we stopped for nature breaks, we weren't allowed close to each other, though I did notice that Mulder was shaking his head a lot, like a man with water in his ears. My hearing rang for hours after I woke, too, but that cleared. It was a full twelve hours after we had regained consciousness before we were able to exchange a few words. That was when I found out that he still couldn't hear. Maybe it was the continual cold. Maybe it was because he had been closer to the bomb when it went off. Maybe it was a result of some game of theirs in the truck. I know he didn't want me to tell them, didn't want to give them the satisfaction. So you preferred for them to think that you were just being obstinate when you didn't answer their questions? You poor, stubborn fool. Five miles out The five miles is just an approximation. I have no idea. I don't even know if I'm still headed in the right direction. There are periods of time now when I think of nothing. My thoughts are that frozen. The ground is uneven and most of its roughness is hidden under the ever-present snow so I also step into holes pretty often. It's either that or I unexpectedly find the ground higher than my feet expects and that's nearly as jarring. In other words, the walking was never easy and now my legs are so leaden that the smallest turf of weeds is like a major hazard on the Quantico obstacle course. I fell a lot even at the beginning. Now I'm down more than I'm up. This means that what clothes I have are constantly wet and the wind is blowing easily enough to suck the last trickle of warmth from my bones. It was my fault, your dying. I begged them to untie you, to let you walk around to get a little circulation in your hands and feet. Amazingly, they agreed. It was a desolate place they choose to pull over. Nothing there at all except for the snow that blew lonely like ghost breath across the empty, rubbled fields. How dangerous did they think you could be? How far did they think you would run? You could barely walk and your hands were blue and swollen. You were just trying to warm up and had walked too far from the truck for their liking, your hands under your arm pits, when the dark one with the scar - the one from some Slavic country - shouted for you to come back. Of course, you didn't hear him. They didn't need much of an excuse. They had lost all their sympathetic hostages - the women and little children - the ones the media would pick up on and spread across hundreds of miles of newsprint. They had been forced to abandon their headquarters in just this one lousy truck that rumbled and stank and whose heat didn't work most of the time and that was only for the lucky three who could sit in front. They were cold, they were hungry, they were angry. Worse, the FBI would only go so far negotiating for us. I knew that, Mulder knew that, and over the past few hours the leaders were just coming around to digesting that little truth themselves. Even I could see that the Slav was edgy. That's why he didn't fire a warning shot. That, I think, even you could have heard. He kept looking over his shoulder, down the road. I think his palms even sweated on the rifle butt, but then they would have begun to freeze. He didn't want to be out here in the freezing wind watching a Fed stumble around in the snow. So when you didn't answer, he just shouted some more in a language I didn't understand though the meaning was clear enough for any one who could hear. When he started to advance, still shouting, I tried to go to you, tried to explain, but my guard only grabbed me before I could get out more than two words or take more than a single step. I heard him chuckle in a feral sort of way as he fastened an arm of steel around by throat. Did you ever knew what hit you? He came from behind. A rifle makes a good club. You went down in a spray of blood. Then you tried, as even an injured animal will, to defend yourself >from the jabs of the rifle and the man's hard boots. Not a good idea. By now all the others had heard and only my guard and the Slav knew the truth of how it all started, not that it would have mattered. They were like a pack of starving wolves that smell first blood. Feet and fists, gun stocks and sticks and all the while my guard was whooping and hollering in my ear so if you made any sound I could not have heard it. At least my guard kept me facing forward so I could watch. I could have shut my eyes, but I didn't. I wanted to watch, I wanted to witness, I wanted to hate. Only the last part was easy. Mile Four I have gone as far as I can. I am just one frail human after all. I am dying. I've been dying since I left the truck; I just refused to admit that there wouldn't be time or that I wouldn't have the strength to reach my final goal. I will lay myself down here because if I fall one more time that will be the last time. I'll fashion from these mounds your body, of this steadfast stone your heart, of these dead flowers your face and I'll curl around all of this and dream of you. For you see, I have given up hoping, just as my body has given up on me. Too much time has passed and it is too cold. My only question is whether you waited for me. Are you there in the light beyond the snow blindness with your hand stretched out to mine? Did you know I would be coming so swiftly upon your passing? How I wish I could sing. I'd attempt that over-played but still haunting love song from... Do you know I can't remember the name of the movie any more than I can the song's tune or the words? My brain is filled with ice. Appropriate, I guess. I remember only that hand reaching out through the watery depths. What a cheery farewell to remember all the heroine's long life. Now that's faith; that love is eternal, that love will endure. I don't have that kind of faith. I wouldn't want to live year after year after year with that doubt. Will he remember me? Will he be waiting? Has some other heavenly spirit supplanted me in his heart? Or have I been fooling myself all along? Did he even think of me at the end? Or ever? Does he think of me now? I have to know. Lucky for me, the waiting won't be long. Just a little sleep under my blanket of soft, new snow. How should I best spend my time while I wait for the numbness to creep deeper and deeper into my soul? Should I think about Mom and Charley and Bill and say my good-byes? Should I think about how I might see Melissa again? No, they know all these things and the distraction might hold off the inevitable. That's really it, isn't it? I'm anxious to be gone. Ready to find out where he's ditched me for this time. A better place than this, I pray. For the first time I wonder if we've been wicked enough to be sent to 'the other place'? I find I don't even care. At least it would be warm and any place where we can be together would, indeed, be better than this. * * * * * * * * Three Point Nine Miles Not dead yet. Not even close. I got tired of waiting and pain wouldn't let me rest so I left my little hollow and crawled on for a while. I didn't see any reason why not - I wasn't dead yet, wasn't even close. Freezing to death is supposed to be easy, that's how I knew it wasn't my time. I even walked a bit when the agony in my hands became too much to bear. I looped the long sleeves of your sweater over those frostbitten appendages but that doesn't seem to be doing much good any longer. I didn't get far, but far enough to have imprinted deep in my numb brain and dying body that standing upright is definitely worse than lying down. So I think I'll lie down again. Actually, I already am down. There's no deciding about it. The pain is so bad when I try to move my legs that I decide not to move at all. Guess what? It doesn't hurt any more. I concentrate on the wind for a while. It's moaning is like that song I can't remember. It's snowing harder now, or at least it's darker and, yes, I believe I am feeling warmer as well as being nearly pain free. Must be time for snow dreams. I'll make them pleasant ones. I've constructed another 'Mulder' in what will be my dying place. That stone under my hip, that's your knee. The frost-crisp blades of grass that tickle my nose; those are wisps of your hair. The roundness under my arm, that is my arm around you. Comfy? Well, no, not for me either but it will have to do. The wind blows the snow so that it mounds here and there. It will cloak us completely before long. At the moment it's whispering in my ear. How cold your breath is. - So are your feet, he whispers. - At least I don't snore, I protest. - Come on, Scully. How can I possibly snore? Even if I weren't dead, I'm still miles away. - Don't say things like that. - What do you want me to say? - Nothing. Just shut up and kiss me. We've talked far too much these last years. You kiss my eyes like you've always wanted to, like I imagined you dreaming of doing but you were too afraid to try. Now it's my turn. I'll kiss your forehead, the tip of your nose if only to make you laugh. I'll hold your face between my hands so you can't get away and I'll kiss your lips. You're so beautiful, Mulder. Still the most beautiful man I have ever known. Did I ever tell you that? Six years. That's an awfully long time to keep that kind of a secret. Now you'll always be beautiful. You did know you were a beautiful man, didn't you? You shouldn't have needed anyone to tell you, but you never knew. What a pity. When you looked into the mirror what did you see? The sadness? The loss? The failures? The scorn of your colleagues? The loneliness? Think back, love, into what you saw reflected when you looked into my eyes. That is what I have been blessed to look upon all these years. I don't know how they determined that they'd punished their token government scapegoat enough. When the ground for ten feet around was tracked in blood? Guess they thought that was a little obvious and decided they should get the hell out of there. It's not fair. After all Mulder suffered and all the good he has done, for it to have ended this way. What more could You possibly have asked of him? Angel of Death, I'm speaking to you now. If by some miracle he's still alive, then take me and let him live. What kind of bargain is that? you ask. How long would such a situation last? Fox Mulder without his Scully. I understand your skepticism, but I can promise that Mulder will 'go on' for quite a while. In Antarctica, we had to crawl to his snow cat to radio for help. (What is this about us and perilously cold places?) As we sat huddled in the cab, waiting for the Navy fliers and trying not to freeze, we talked about death. We talked about anything and everything to keep from falling asleep, but we talked about death most of all, especially towards the end. Even though Mulder kept giving me more and more pieces of his clothing and we were about as close as two people can be and not be 'doing it', I was still in pretty awful shape and we both knew it. There was shock and then my lungs in all that cold - I don't want to even talk about my lungs. So here I was in danger of imminent respiratory failure and Mulder tells me straight out that if I died I wasn't to go far, that he would be along in a heartbeat - or lack thereof. 'The hell you will!' I yelled or the closest approximation I could manage at the time. I agreed that if I passed on first that I'd make a place ready for him, for us both, but that he was to stay and fight on or I would be really pissed and wouldn't talk to him for an eternity or two. He wasn't happy about agreeing but I made him promise and Mulder takes his promises seriously. It wasn't until later that I realized that he hadn't asked for a similar pledge from me. He should have. He wasn't in great shape either. I've never seen that particular shade of blue before on anyone still breathing. But did he ask for me to live on half-dead? That kind of cruelty just isn't in him. For that reason I rather expect to find him there ready to catch me when I stumble into that light. Do you understand now why I really can't linger here? I can't afford to make him wait too long. Mulder's the impatient sort. I have one other very odd concern about passing over. It's all tied up with Mom's great aunt. Aunt Beatrice was a cloistered nun and when we went to visit her in the convent she used to tell us about the angels. She told all us kids that the archangel Gabriel had always been special to our family and that he would be the one who would lead us into heaven at the end. What I'm afraid of is that if Mulder's waiting too... What I mean is that - without his burdens, free of pain - I might have trouble telling the two apart - Mulder and Gabriel, I mean. Mulder is that beautiful sometimes. That's all I'd need, Mulder starting a fistfight in front of the gates of Heaven. * * * * * * * * Mile Three Point Nine (still) Yes, still here and going mad but not mad enough. I thought by now that I'd be delusional and that I'd be seeing Mulder here with me, clear as crystal. Only it's not working. My mind knows that these clods of earth and stones are not Mulder's bones, that these mounds of snow and bundles of grasses are not his flesh. Maybe I could have found some comfort if I had a little bit more personal experience to fuel my imagination. We really touched so few time, Mulder and I. I mostly have only my dreams. Did he ever dream of me? I think he did. I could see it in his eyes some mornings. A soft, sad yearning. Why did we do that to ourselves? What fools, yea mortals be. As the gale winds of the Navy helicopter's blades shook the snow cat's cab so that it rocked like a boat in a storm at sea, we both roused from our Antarctic dreams and stared blearily at each other in a kind of witless joy. Mulder then did an amazing thing; he somehow found the strength to raise my hand and he kissed it. The fact that the skin of my hand was as past feeling at that point as his lips probably were, made no different. I saw the kiss. What an odd, knightly gesture, but then that has always been Mulder, my knight in his battered armor. My Don Quixote. Was that a pledge? We got so busy after that - surviving pneumonia and the hospitals and the FBI's clumsy investigation of what had happened to us - that we never found the time or took the time to explore that undiscovered country. Now here we are again. At the end of all things and nothing said and nothing done. If I live, if we live, I will correct that omission. I will if I have to tie him down and... Do what? Whatever comes naturally, I guess. But that's not going to happen, is it? Not in this life and I don't know if you're allowed to do that sort of thing in heaven. Of course, I could be wrong. It's been known to happen. Are you still out there, Mulder? Are you thinking of me or has your broken body taken you past all that? I wish you only peace, my love. An end to all pain and toil, your spirit away from the cold, red snow and the lonely wind's wailing. I could not make it to your side. I never held your flesh within my flesh - but then that has never kept us apart, has it? You are, and will be, with me always. There is no anger in me any longer, nor desire, nor words, nor imaginings of the place and the time to come. The cold has sucked out my life just as Mulder's was poured out upon the frozen ground. All that is left if for me to place my soul in God's hands. As for my body, I think that I can finally sleep. Sleep and dream of you until long past the time when stars themselves have burned low and faded into the everlasting night. * * * * * * * * Somewhere on the Road Dana was flying and yet for a road to heaven it seemed awfully rough. Noisy, too, compared to the infinite silence of the snow-barren landscape. Her face and her hands burned like they were on fire. Her feet, she still couldn't feel. Her stomach dropped as her world took a swing and a dip, throwing her body against something solid. And yet the something did give a little against her side. What...? There were blankets over her head and yet enough light streamed through so she could see a little. A head of dark hair wavered uncomprehendingly in front of her eyes. The car, a minivan of some sort because she was lying on the flat, carpeted space in the back, was going far too fast and found another pothole. Instinctively, she reached for something to hold onto. That solid, soft yielding again. Frost-bitten fingers could distinguish nothing clearly, only cold cloth with a body underneath. But that dark hair... Throwing off the blanket, she sat up ... or tired to. In reality she was only able to push the blankets from their faces and rise on one elbow far enough to look down on her unconscious companion. Split lip and swollen eyes, purple bruises and blood- splattered face - Mulder, as beautiful as ever. Fearful of broken ribs and internal injuries, she took the gentlest of care as she wrapped her free arm around his waist and huddled against him. That he was no warmer than she didn't matter at all. "Someone awake back there?" came a voice, rising through the superheated air of the car's interior. Dana cracked an eye. There were two people in the front. Someone heavy-set and tall plowed the van through the dark over the old, two-lane road with suicidal intensity, but it was the man in the passenger seat who drew her attention. The lights, from the dashboard from within and the reflection from the blue twilight on the snow from without, clearly etched his distinctive silhouette. "It's Scully, sir." Her voice was barely a croak but under the circumstances not half-bad. "Good, I was hoping for your expertise. My field medicine is rusty. When you're up to it, can you assess Agent Mulder's condition? Whatever did he do to induce them to beat him so badly? The EMTs in the chopper we're meeting want to be prepared." Skinner hadn't even looked back. His head was buried in a map and he had a cell phone to his ear. He quietly spoke to the driver and the car changed direction. Dana did what she could; inordinately pleased to have an excuse to touch and touch and touch to her heart's content even though her frostbitten hands were clumsy. "He's still unconscious," she reported. "He's breathing on his own but it's labored and uneven. He's still hypothermic but not dangerously so. Probably, it's just as well considering the blows he took to his head. I expect him to have broken ribs. He seems also to have a broken arm where he tired to protect himself. You did well stopping the obvious bleeding but it's the internal injuries I'm worried about. He may be losing his spleen this time." Skinner grunted in acknowledgement and spoke into the cellular. Dana looked down again at the poor battered face. Light glittered under the eye that was the least swollen. The side of his mouth where his lip wasn't split moved a fraction of an inch into an attempt at a smile. She smoothed the blood-matted hair and found a place on one cheek to kiss and what Skinner thought be damned. The half smile became a little more obvious, then his head moved just the slightest bit to rest more securely in the hallow of her shoulder. Little by little, the single eye closed as Dana offered up silent prayer, after silent prayer. "The pick up point is two miles from here," Skinner assured her a few minutes later. "Will he make it?" Dana looked down into the ravaged face, now peacefully asleep. "He'll make it." - We've made it this far, Mulder. We'll make it all the way this time. "How did you do it, sir? It was a miracle that you were able to find one of us, but both?" "The border guards got a bug on the truck, so we were following but traveling on a parallel road. That's why we missed both of you leaving. That's a mistake we won't make again. Anyway, that's why we were so close when the tip came in." Skinner's eyes were on the sky, straining for sight of the helicopter. "It was actually more than a tip. The man gave directions, down to the tenth of a mile. If he hadn't been so exact, we would have been too late." Dana's head was foggy. The only ones who knew where they'd been dumped were the Champions of God themselves. In her mind she scanned their hard, cruel faces. Which one? None of them had displayed an ounce of sympathy for their hostages. "Did he say why he called?" "Afraid that this might just be some cruel joke, I asked him that. 'Deus ex Machina,' he said. Then he added, 'Besides, _He_ prefers to choose his own champions and will call them home in his own time.'" Dana's heart required a dozen beats to take this in. A single thawed tear of wonder and gratitude rolled slowly down her cheek, but there were more behind that in the tightness of her throat. "Did this savior give a name?" "He said if you asked to tell you that people call him Gabriel and that, more's the pity, but he doesn't look a bit like Fox Mulder." THE END