Seeking Grace II: Radiance 

CATEGORY: MSR (noromos amongst you may wish to head for the exits
in a calm and orderly fashion).
RATED: R
SPOILERS: Nope: I'm only just getting sixth season eps, for goodness
sake ;)
SUMMARY: Will Scully stand by her decision in the light of day? Emerging
from the night into wisdom and a new beginning.
ARCHIVE: Yes to Gossamer. Anywhere else: sure, I'd be soooo flattered, just
let me know first.
DISCLAIMER: OK, repeat after me...they're not mine, never were or will be.
Mulder, Scully and everyone/thing else connected with the X Files
belongs to 10-13, 20th Century Fox, and of course The Boss, Chris Carter 
and all his partners in crime. Hey, I'd let them have a lot more fun. No 
copyright infringement or insult intended. No money will be made out of 
this and I have none so suing me would do no one but the lawyers any good.
AUTHOR'S NOTES:  This one's for Katrina, who begged <g>, and also for
the *darling* Man from Del Monte, aka, Requiem, who's building me a page
all of my very own. This is the sequel to the recently posted "Seeking Grace",
which you can find on Ephemeral or at the Haven New Additions page, the
URL for which is below. I'm not sure how much sense this will make if you
haven't read that (hint hint...<g>).
Tiny quote from the Song of Songs in here: everything else is attributed.
I'd really appreciate feedback at the above addy: its the gift that
keeps on giving.

Huge thanks as ever to the Kickass Beta Trio, jerry, Kristy and EPur, for
beta-services above and beyond the call of duty <g>. Any remaining errors
are entirely the fault of Outlook Express ;).

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"Seeking Grace II: Radiance" (1/1) by CazQ

"See how in their veins all becomes spirit:
Into each other they mature and grow.
Like axles, their forms tremblingly orbit,
Round which it whirls, bewitching and aglow."

from 'The Lovers' by Rainer Maria Rilke

-----------------------------------

I wake slowly, spiralling up from the depths of sleep, like a swimmer
rising towards the surface. I feel...rested. I have not felt this way on 
waking for such a long time now. I seem to have gone to sleep with all 
my clothes on...why...?

The soft susurrations of someone else's breath. The long, solid, warm
weight of another body lying against my own. A tiny kiss, featherlight, 
planted at my hairline. Ah yes. Mulder.

The rhythm of his breathing tells me he is awake. I wonder how long he has
been lying there waiting for me to wake up. I am not ready to face
him...not just yet. For now it's easier to remain like this, still, cradled 
against him, staring at the window across the room.

The soft swish of cars passing Mulder's building on rain-slickened streets.
The showers that started last night when I came over here are still
falling: the room is filled with watery light, shifting and rippling. We are
enclosed by the small, secret sounds of rain. My mind drifts...

I remember how, when I was just a child, I learned about the medieval
law of sanctuary at school. In England, long ago, Sister Mary Bernadette 
told us, fugitives from arrest or violence could claim sanctuary within a
church. As long as you remained inside, no one and nothing could touch you 
or harm you: you placed yourself in the hands of God. I remember how much it
appealed to me back then...I would wonder whether it still worked like
that; whether, say, a girl who punched her big brother for teasing her could
claim sanctuary from an irate father.

It still appeals to me today, that notion of a safe house, an inviolable
refuge. For years, I assumed that the only place I could build my
sanctuary was inside myself. I never dreamt that I might find it in
another. I remember...the first time I really agonized over a man,
my sister told me that sometimes in life our greatest strength can lie in
vulnerability. At the time I dismissed it as a trite, useless sentiment...I
lived for much of my life by a maxim that was the complete antithesis of
Missy's advice.

From where I lie now, those years seem like a drought, a long, arid summer,
when the land is so parched that not even the memory of rain remains, and
the dryness, the barrenness, seems to be all that there is.

Last night, I claimed sanctuary with Mulder. I came to him, opened my hands
to him and showed him all the darkness, all the balled-up ugliness, fear
and weakness that I've been keeping hidden there for so long. Here is my
miracle: he did not turn away. He embraced those terrible things, took my
flawed, bruised soul in his hands, and let me see myself through his
eyes...at my most beautiful.

I know that Mulder cannot make the hurt go away. He cannot make me forget
the crosses I bear, any more than I could turn back the years and heal
the scars he carries, give him back his lost innocence, his childhood,
his lost possibilities. I am not a child anymore, and the monsters in my
life cannot be vanquished by shining a flashlight under the bed.

Last night, though...last night, by his acceptance, by his kiss, Mulder
showed me that my wounds are an integral part of the woman I am
now, of the woman he loves, just as his fears and dark places are part
of all he is. By his simple act of telling me that he loves me, I came to
understand that I am wanted, needed as a whole person, weaknesses,
hurts and all.

I have wondered on occasion what it would be like to know the man Mulder
could have been,  were it not for his millstone of guilt: unburdened, free.
Now I realize the truth: that the Mulder I love is the man who is here,
beside me now, in all his shadowed, flawed beauty -- my angel of the
night.

There was something very important there...what was it now...the woman he
loves. My God, yes. Last night he said it. He said the words, and he kissed
me. His mouth on mine. My body and my heart opening to him like a flower,
unfolding...the dark heart of the rose.

I turn suddenly within the circle of his arms, surprising him. His face,
inches from mine. The tip of his tongue darts out to moisten his lips
slightly. His eyes flick across my face, searching...

"Hey, Scully," he says, his voice a low, gravelled murmur, still slightly
warmed and roughened by sleep.

Enlightenment comes to me in a heartbeat. I am not the only one afraid
of this moment. In the last few years Mulder and I have grown used to
inhabiting a set, strictly delineated territory, marked and confirmed by
habit and familiarity, by a mutual understanding of boundaries and rules.
That territory is far behind us...there are no maps for the country Mulder
and I have crossed into in the space of one night. We are like sailors
carried by a gale into the blank area at the edge of the chart, wondering
if we really will fall off the edge of the world.

What did he think would happen now? That I would turn to him and say hey
Mulder, thanks for everything, but I have to go live my life again now?
Dear God...how can I make him understand? How can I make him see the beauty
of the gift he has given me?

As gently as if he might shatter under my hands, I reach out and stroke his
face with the pads of my thumbs, running them over his skin, feeling the
rasp of his morning stubble beneath my touch. It's all I can do not to try
and touch every square inch of his skin at once. After so many years of
wanting and resisting, of yearning to reach out just to make contact for a
second, of treasuring up rare embraces and brief touches of the hand...
this freedom is intoxicating. My skin feels over-sensitized against his,
as if I can feel every tiny point of contact, every loop and whorl of my
fingerprints burning themselves into his face, marking him as mine.

I draw his face down to mine and slowly press kisses like rose petals on
each eyelid, in the center of his forehead, on the tip of his nose,
travelling down to his mouth. He tastes as good as I remember from
last night. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, I think, for they
are sweeter than wine. I explore him, slowly, tenderly, lovingly. I want to
drink him in, to feel him flowing through my veins, bringing the rains to
my thirsting flesh, awakening me.

Eventually I draw back, just a little. I am still so close to him that we
breathe the same air. I smile, lazily, warmly. I am wonderfully aware of
the physical sensations of smiling, really smiling, the movements of muscle,
skin and bone.

"Hey yourself."

After an eternal moment, he grins back at me, and I let out the breath I
have been unconsciously holding. He leans forward and nuzzles the top of my
head, burying his face in my hair and inhaling deeply. When he moves
away my hair falls forwards, hiding my face. He pushes it gently back, 
explaining simply, "I want to see you."

I nod at that, and then, while he lies there, apparently content simply to
watch me, I fall to wondering why we have never come this far before. I
suppose that if I had ever stopped to think about it, I would have said
that if Mulder and I were to come together in this way, it would be with blood
staining our hands, in the shadow of some great evil. If you had asked
me, I would probably have told you that it would take a cataclysm to throw us
together.

Perhaps something as simple as a heart beginning to break apart can be
cataclysmic. I guess it just depends on where you're standing.

We have had another of our long nights of agony, then, Mulder and I. In our
separate ways, as so many times before, we have watched and prayed, waiting
through the deepest, darkest watches of the night. Now we emerge, together
this time, meeting at the margins of the dawn. It is only natural that we
should both be a little blinded by the long-awaited yet unexpected light.

His eyes slip shut, and he exhales slowly, biting down on his bottom lip.
His lashes flutter like the wings of birds against his cheeks. I realize
that while my thoughts have been wandering, my hands have been wandering
too, slipping beneath his T-shirt to follow hidden paths over the planes of
his chest. I can feel the closeness of his ribs to his skin, the rise and
fall of them with each breath he takes.

I know what I want to happen next, and I tell him. No more secrets.

"I want to touch you, Mulder. All of you."

He looks down at me, into the depths of me, and nods, his face grave but
his eyes on fire. He has brought me rain, and now I am ready for him to set me
to burn. I think again of deserts, where fire, sweeping across seemingly
dead ground, awakens the land even as it appears to destroy, the catalyst
for new life. From the scorched earth, green shoots emerge, seeking the
sun.

He sits up and pulls his t-shirt off in one fluid motion, discarding it
carelessly, following it with his boxers a moment later. The gestures
reveal tawny, supple skin, the long clean lines of his body, the knotted
flesh of the scar at his shoulder where I wounded him in order to save him,
so many lifetimes ago. I want to kiss him all over, starting there. I reach
out for him, but he stops me, catching my hand in mid-air, turning it over
within his own, staring at it.

"Such tiny fingers," he murmurs, more to himself than to me. He looks up,
and in a very different tone, his voice catching slightly in his throat,
tells me, "Fair's fair, Scully. You're wearing too many clothes."

I have to smile at that. I slip out of bed for a minute, slipping out of my
now-crumpled shirt and jeans, conscious all the time of him watching me. I
pause for a second before stripping off my underwear, reminding myself
that this is Mulder, that he would never hurt me, that he wants me, all of
me, in every possible way. I sit back on the bed in front of him, suddenly
shy. I stare down at the covers, plucking at them restlessly with one hand,
fighting the urge to hide beneath them. Why isn't he touching me?

I look up and see why. He is devouring me with his eyes, and I swear
that as his gaze sweeps over me I can feel it like a caress. I can see his muscles
shift beneath his skin taut and straining as he holds himself away from me,
waiting. Every nerve in my body is singing, keening in anticipation.

"Ask me, Scully," he breathes, leaning closer but still not touching me,
"ask me."

"Mulder," I sigh, his name a prayer, a consecration, a plea.

And he is there, he is everywhere and everything, his mouth to my mouth,
his hands to my hands, his skin to my skin. His fingers write poetry all
over my body. We are bodies moving in perfect orbits around each other, held,
balanced by the pull of love.

I sigh as he leans into me, breathing into his mouth so that he shares my
air, so that I sustain him as he sustains me. He is taut and rangy, his
skin hot under my travelling fingers. He groans as I rake my nails lightly over
the long planes of his back, describing lazy circles. I sense that this
time it will be all-consuming, hungry, needing. Our bodies have been yearning
towards each other for so long...it is somehow inevitable that when they
first meet it will be in a blaze of light, sound and fury. Time later for
lazy lovemaking, for learning each other that way.

I arch up under his hands, wordlessly pleading with him. He opens
his eyes and looks down at me, and the sight almost takes my breath away.
They are black with desire, all the light in the room spiralling down into
those huge, dilated pupils, rimmed with stunning, shifting colours. Hunter,
I think, stalking through a forest dappled with gold. Hunter, and I am the
prey...I had wondered occasionally in the past what it would be like to be
the sole focus of Mulder's intensity, his consuming passions. Now I know:
it's terrifying and exhilarating and everything I never knew I always
wanted. He reaches up to me from the earth and I, in flight, reach down to
him, and where we meet everything -- earth and sky, fire and rain --
changes, merges into one.

He is in me, over me, surrounding me, infusing my blood, my every cell with
knowledge of him. We exist within a hallowed space, imperfect beings each
made sacred by the other. We are creatures of fire, burning yet not
consumed. Together, we are drawn down, spinning and spiralling into a brief
moment of blackness, angels falling. Then we ignite, in a firestorm. This,
I think hazily, this is how everything began. This is where we begin.

Later, after the storm subsides, leaving us lying trembling in each other's
arms, I close my eyes and imagine myself radiant, trails of light under my
skin everywhere he has touched me. I am shining like a fallen star.

Imagine it, Mulder, I whisper in the silence of my thoughts as he slips
into sleep beside me. Imagine the desert, arid, empty. Imagine rain falling like
a blessing. Can you see it, Mulder? Now imagine, in the quiet heart of that
desert, an awakening, seeds swelling, bursting, shoots rising up into the
air. Fragile leaves unfurling, the opening of a delicate blossom, scenting
the wind that moves across miles of barren sand. I'll meet you there,
Mulder, in that garden that grows green and fragrant in the desert,
and we'll stand in the rain together, laughing and lifting up our faces to
the sky.

This is what he has done to me. Out of our shared darkness is born a light,
and I believe that it will illuminate us both.
 

"The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the
works of darkness and let us put on the armour of light."
Romans 23:11

FINIS