TITLE: All the Places
AUTHOR: Ambress
EMAIL: ambress27@home.com
RATING: I'm not sure. I think somewhere between PG-13
and R. I think it depends on how perverted you are.
CATEGORY: MSR, A, S
SPOILERS: Biogenesis post-ep
SUMMARY: Scully comes to get Mulder out of the funny
farm.
THANKS: to bugs and Meghan for holistic beta, to my
husband, David, for discussion of looney bins, and to
Jeff B. for discussion of drugs, (Here's a box of Edy's
Lime Fruit Bars for you, honey. With these babies, you
don't need friends ;)). You guys are the experts.
Thanks also to Alelou for telling me where I made a
boo-boo.
FEEDBACK: I accept both constructive criticism and
overblown flattery with gratitude.
DISCLAIMER: Everybody has their own Mulder and Scully
doll; this is what I did with mine. Oh, but the
characters themselves all belong to Chris Carter, Ten
Thirteen, and Fox.
ARCHIVE: Gossamer okay, anywhere else, please ask.

In this house of make believe
Divided in two like Adam and Eve
You put out and I receive
Down by the railway siding
In our secret world we were colliding
In all the places we were hiding love
What was it we were thinking of?
--Peter Gabriel, "Secret World"

He could hear her as she entered the building three
stories below. He was slumped against the wall, but
when he heard her, he sat up straight and was suddenly
attentive. It was as though a distant flashlight had
started bobbing in the darkness, with the promise of
imminent illumination.

It wasn't as easy to read minds as Gibson Praise made
it look. Sometimes Mulder thought about that cartoon
mouse, Pinky, and his "Narfs!" If only they knew;
everyone was like that. Few people thought in a linear
movement: one thought clearly articulated following
another, like ants carrying seeds to their hill.

Most people were easily distracted. They read signs in
the middle of their thoughts. They registered their
stomachs growling. They didn't finish one thought
before they moved on to the next. They cataloged their
own movements . . .

swish, swish, swish, goes the mop against the floor--
the patient--what a gorgeous hunk of flesh--is
delusional--spaghetti for dinner maybe--don't forget to
pick up dog food on the way home--I can't let go of it-
-hope I'm not pregnant--this pen isn't working--Dr.
Hart: asshole--home--floral wallpaper--put it in this
little cup here--you will do it--like to fuck--look at
this mess--no not more paperwork--oh their eyes, their
eyes!--Fat, disgusting slob--He tried to kill me
first!--Maybe I should get my haircut--that's it--
Enough--Let it pass--hot--I grieve, I grieve, I grieve-
-Don't think about it--Three times a day--I can't
believe how much he is jerking off--Daddy thin and
smoking--hole in the floor--vacation--Am I drinking too
much? no.

Even putting it into words falsified the experience.
Mind-reading was a misnomer. How could anyone read
anything so essentially illegible? The contents of the
human consciousness are not only words, but color,
sound, taste, emotion, association, memory, imagination
. . . It was difficult, sometimes, for him even to tell
individual minds apart. Every mind produced its own
cacophony, together they were unbearably discordant.

But now, through the chaos he had been trying
desperately to assimilate for the last few days, he
felt something so familiar he wanted to weep. Her mind
sounded like Bach. Sounded wasn't the right word, but
it gave him the same feeling as Bach's Concertos. Each
note of her thoughts was clear and discrete, yet it
cascaded into the next with an inevitability that
belied its complexity.

Her thoughts wove in and out of one another dextrously,
with cool surefootedness. She made leaps she didn't
even know she was capable of. She judged distances, and
followed her reason over chasms. She was a mountain
goat of thinking.

The smell of cleaning fluid and fear that permeated the
hospital, the disjointed anger and panic of the other
patients, the mixture of hostility and compassion from
the staff, all faded as he focused on her--walking down
the hall, getting in the elevator, pressing the button
for the third floor--

He could feel her coming closer.

Then she was just down the hall and he could hear the
music of her mind change. It was no longer Bach; it was
Wagner. Scully was arguing with the doctor, whose
intellect sounded like a tinny harpsichord compared to
her symphony. Mulder had learned that he preferred to
listen to the cleaning lady, a little androgynous
gnome-like creature with a blonde blunt haircut, and
tight Capri pants under her smock, whose mind had a
ragtime-like beat. She, at least, unlike the doctor,
thought something funny once in a while.

She was not only Mr. Mulder's physician, Scully was
telling the doctor, but she had durable power of
attorney for him. She would report him (the doctor) to
the AMA for his irresponsible over medicating of Mr.
Mulder. He could hear the phrase "barbiturate coma" in
her head as clear as a bell, but with heat around it.
She would have the doctor's license revoked, and his
head on a plate. She would see Mr. Mulder right now.

She was coming to get him. She was almost here.

Then the door to his cell was opening and she was
standing there.

He had a recording of Mercedes Sosa's first concert in
her home country, Chile, after returning from the exile
necessitated by General Pinochet's reign of terror.
When she starts to sing, there is perfect silence in
the spaces between her notes. It isn't until she begins
the second verse of "Gracias a la vida," that the crowd
begins to cheer, and you realize that she is singing to
a stadium full of forty thousand silent, grateful,
expectant people, whose joy has suddenly overflowed
into a roar of sound. The silence as Scully stood in
the doorway was like the moment before the cheering
starts. It was full of potential, of harnessed energy.
The space between them was taut with power.

"Mulder," she said calmly. But as she spoke he felt a
rush like champagne bubbles, or stars, a tingly
sensation that drenched him, flowing from her to him.
It was a sensation similar to the one you have when
your foot falls asleep, only intensely pleasurable.
There was a burst of Beethoven from her. It swept over
him like a wave, making him gasp for breath. Every
muscle and sinew in his body was overcome by it. He
thought he could hear bells ringing, and wondered if
Clarence was getting his wings.

"Are you okay?" she asked. He looked up at her, but
couldn't speak. She crossed the padded cell and
squatted on her haunches next to him. She touched his
hair. In the time it took for her to cross the room the
Beethoven faded back into Bach. Her thoughts were like
a school of fish, glinting as they darted away into the
dark waters. "It's Scully," she said. "Do you know me?"

'Always,' he said to himself. He hadn't spoken aloud
since he stopped screaming. Stunned by her presence, he
wasn't sure he could speak now. He tried to smile at
her.

"I have a lot to tell you," she said.

She didn't know that she already was. Each leaping,
sliding, playful note in her mind teased him like the
touch of her hand. They were like a flock of birds that
swooped around him and turned in unison, fanning out in
the room.

He could feel her fear for him, sharp and pungent as
Gruyere, her anger, hot and caustic as napalm, her
guilt at leaving him like sour milk. He could feel her
faith, like an heirloom china teacup, beloved even with
its cracks. She was determined, anxious, cautious,
glad, tender, calm. She was planning her moves like
Attila the Hun playing chess. She would sweep the
fucking board or she would die trying.

He admired her so much for her guts. She was much
braver than he could ever hope to be.

He nodded. "Scully," he said finally.

"I'm going to get you out of here, Mulder," she said.
She was checking his eyes. "What have they been giving
you? Ativan?"

Her thoughts played over him like tickling fingers--the
small oval pads of her fingertips touching him
everywhere. Like bodies in space, including the earth,
he was marked wherever the meteors of her thoughts
touched him. He could listen to them--feel them--
forever, trying to find a way to describe their
gorgeous complexity and their individuality--their
reassuring Scullyness. A line of poetry came back to
him--it was Roethke, wasn't it?: "The shapes a bright
container can contain!"

She checked his wrists and ankles. "Did they restrain
you?" she asked. There was another burst of Wagner from
her when she saw the chafing on his wrists.

She leaned forward to check his pulse, searching for
his carotid artery with her cool fingers. Her face was
inches from his. He could see the freckles on her nose,
thought he might fall into the greenish blue of her
eyes, and he closed his own eyes in fear of a sensory
overload. But as he did, something else in him opened,
and she slid into him completely, as easily as her gun
into its holster.

He gasped as the feeling went through him, his body
galvanized. His back arched away from the padded wall:
Pure unadulterated Scully penetrating him to his
farthest reaches. Jesus Christ.

He was pierced through and through by her. There was no
part of him that wasn't touched by her, reshaping him
to accommodate her. Oh, she was huge inside him. He was
a canyon filled with sunset. It took all his control
not to cry out with the agonizing pleasure of it. She
touched him in all his most sensitive places, rubbing
him raw, and then soothing him like aloe.

She worked her way deeper inside him, until he no
longer knew where he left off and she began. He was
trembling all over, like a dog at the vet's. She
thought he was in shock. When her consciousness moved
within him, he bit his lip and stifled a moan.

He could feel her intense desire for him to open his
eyes, look at her, and be coherent. He didn't want to
open his eyes, though. He was afraid that this
connection would be broken, that she would slip away
from him, and he would never again feel this incredible
feeling--Scully's whole interior self, like fingers
wiggling their way into a glove, inside him, stretching
him in ways he didn't know were possible.

He could feel her heart beating, a throbbing throughout
his body, pounding at his nerve endings, licking at his
veins.

"Scully, please--" he groaned.

Something liquid, dark, and sweet as wine bubbled up
from within her, and into him, at the sound of his
voice. He whimpered at the delicious sensation.

He was lost, lost, lost. There was nothing left of him
but Scully, filling him, the pressure of her presence
in his head intolerably good. He cried out.

. . . .

He could float forever in lush verdant landscape of
Scully. He was weightless in the palm of her psyche,
limp and helpless as a newborn kitten.

His name punctuated her thoughts. He realized that the
silent, insistent, "Mulder, Mulder," in her head was an
unconscious attempt to call him back to her. She didn't
know how close he was to her. Some part of her,
however, believed that she could call him back from
whatever wilderness he was lost in with the force of
her will. That belief touched and amazed him. He knew
that she would kick open the Gates of either Heaven or
Hell with her size seven pumps if she thought he were
inside.

He realized that he knew her better than anyone in the
world, and that he didn't know her at all.

He could rummage around in here and discover Scully in
all her permutations: a toddler in a green silk kimono
her father brought back from Japan, a fourteen-year-
old--elbows and knees and braces--smoking her first
cigarette, losing her virginity at seventeen, cutting
into her first cadaver, shaking his hand, saying,
"Actually, I'm looking forward to working with you,"
standing in front of the mirror this morning, checking
her breasts for lumps before she dressed, one elbow
back and behind her head, and an intent, serious look
on her face as she pressed her fingers into her own
flesh.

How could he ever forego the pure intimacy of this?
Looking at her face in the mirror of her memory as
though he were she, seeing her the way she saw herself,
remembering through her the soft feel of her breast
under her fingers, even the dizzying sense of anxiety
she felt as she conscientiously performed the necessary
ritual, gave him a sense of euphoria he had never known
before.

Nuh-uh. He was staying in Scullyland. He wasn't going
to go back to Auntie Em and Uncle Henry and their drab,
colorless Kansas. This was the place.

She was talking to him. "Listen to me, Mulder. You have
to listen. There is a court date scheduled for you
tomorrow. A competency hearing. I am going to testify
that the drawing of the artifact had some kind of
neurological effect on you that needs to be treated
somatically, but it would help if you could speak on
your own behalf. Can you do that?"

Could he do that? She sounded so tender and urgent.

"Yes," he said softly. He could do anything she wanted
him to.

He opened his eyes and there she was in front of him--
once more always just out of his reach. The tears
welled up from within him, slipping out over the
barrier of his eyelids, as if they wanted to go after
her.

Four weeks later

Mulder was depressed. Well, really just more depressed
than usual. He kept forgetting to eat. He slept less
than usual, but he didn't care to get up in the morning
either. He felt like his body was floating in space.
When he walked down the hall of the F. B. I. Building
he couldn't feel the floor. His own face looked strange
to him. He looked in the mirror to shave in the morning
and wondered who it was that was looking back at him.
Every pore in his face was magnified a hundred times.
He thought he could see each individual cell making up
his eyelashes.

Sometimes he would still get flashes from Scully,
whether of emotion or thought. But they came and went
as quickly as the smiles she suppressed at his jokes.

It wasn't nearly enough to feed his hunger. He was like
an addict. He wanted that feeling back. He wanted more
Scully within him, expanding like a starry night. Now
he knew how junkies felt. One hit and he was a slave.
He was jonesing uncontrollably for the narcotic--
Scullycet, Scullyvan--whatever you wanted to call it.
The shit was chronic. He needed it like he needed salt
in his food. Without it, everything was tasteless.

Now, sitting in the basement office weeks later, he
watched her reaching up to grab a file from the top
shelf. She could barely reach, even with the step, and
her blouse pulled away from her skirt, exposing an inch
of her midriff. She glanced at him quickly, to see if
he'd seen, and if he was going to make some smart
remark.

When her eyes met his, he felt a tremor, a little
aftershock, of that tingly, dunked in champagne feeling
he'd had at the hospital. Suddenly, everything seemed
clear to him. He could feel his chair under his ass,
and the desk under his elbows. It was all clear, solid,
tactile.

What had been illegible and inscrutable was suddenly
resolving itself into something comprehensible, like
that drawing that looks like an old woman's head when
you look at it one way, and when you look at it another
you see a young girl. The eye's camera clicks one more
time, refocuses, and you can see what you've never seen
before, but wonder how you could have missed it. He had
the key--the Rosetta stone--which cracked the code of
what he had read in that padded cell.

"What are you grinning about?" she asked him.

"You love me," he said, astonished, and unable to edit
himself before he spoke.

"Are you okay, Mulder?" She looked genuinely concerned
for the state of his sanity, a familiar look on her
face, but one that no longer had any bite in it for
him.

"You love me," he repeated, ignoring her question.

She blinked at him, first her right eyelid lowering,
and then the left following it, so that she looked like
a fluffy russet owl. "Of course I love you, Mulder,"
she said, a studied coolness in her tone. "You're my
friend, and we've been through a lot together." She
brushed nonexistent lint off of her skirt.

"That's not what I mean. You're in love with me,
Scully." He was astonished, but certain. He had no
doubt, no fear.

"Don't be ridiculous," she sniffed.

He just kept grinning.

The End.

I can imagine the moment
Breaking out through the silence
All the things that we both might say
And the heart it will not be denied
'Til we're both on the same damn side
All the barriers blown away
--Peter Gabriel, "Talk to Me"

Notes: The Mercedes Sosa recording is on the CD,
"Transplanet." The line from Theodore Roethke is from
his poem, "I Knew a Woman."

Feedback to: ambress27@home.com