DISCLAIMER:  Mulder and Scully and the search for the truth all 
belong to Chris Carter and Co.  I'm just borrowing them.  I 
promise to return them in no worse condition than Chris would.
TITLE: Shards
RATING: R
KEYWORDS: Mulder/Scully UST, Post-Episode
CATEGORIES: SA
SUMMARY: The aftermath of shooting a necrotizing fetishist in 
one's own livingroom.



Beta thanks to the always wonderful HelenHighwater and the lovely 
Talia

SHARDS
by
Elizabeth Rowandale
Copyright (c) 2011



"Tell me if I'm wrong  
Tell me if I'm right 
Tell me if you need a loving hand 
To help you fall asleep tonight"
--"Cold Coffee " by Ed Sheeran


The actual effect doesn't set in until night three.  The first 
days she's too busy having an existential crisis about angels and 
devils and whether the greater battle of the universe has been 
lost or won by her hand.  It's not until the second time she tries 
for sleep that the part about violation and horror sets in.

**

It's all about mirrors and glass and she's pretty sure there's 
some sick twisted symbolism tangled up in those shards.

She's had her head cracked open on mirrors before, and the crash 
always hurts her ears as much as the glass tears her flesh.

She crossed an unspoken line in her own safe living room.

She and Mulder have been crossing a fair amount of those lines, 
lately.  Maybe she has gotten in a slippery habit.

He pushed right through her closed bedroom door without a knock.  
Just like Pfaster, except he didn't turn her inside out.  She 
wasn't surprised by his boldness, even with all the cops watching.  
She wasn't surprised, and maybe that is a red flag right there.  
She could have been changing, of course.   But things like that 
don't matter so much, anymore.  Maybe they haven't for a while.

**

People die in her homes.  Guns make sporadic appearances.  People 
around her are drawn into violence.  She once pulled a gun on 
Mulder in her mother's front parlor, near the Peruvian china and 
the carousel horses her father sent Missy from Germany.

She didn't fire, that time.

Dana Katherine just wanted to distinguish herself, do something 
for her country, jump in amongst the movers and shakers who were 
leaving a mark on their generation.  She never wanted greedy hands 
on her skin and a gag in her mouth.

She loves her job.  She tells herself it's all part of what she 
does.  The necessary evil for all the good.  She told herself the 
same thing when she sat hollow and scorched at Melissa's deathbed.  
And next to that she tells herself one nasty encounter with a bad 
guy means nothing.  She is still alive.

But maybe dragging herself through broken glass, grinding blood 
into her bedroom floor as she fights for her last slim chance at 
life... maybe it matters more than she's giving credit.

**

She did not lie to Mulder.  She was fine with the case.  Five 
years since Donnie Pfaster fucked with her head, and she has been 
through hell and back again in the time away.  She is older and 
stronger and has hold of her place.  She really was okay with the 
investigation.  She was working step by step and rung by rung.  
Right up until the blood on her warmest pair of pajamas.

**

Dana Scully is second to no man in the agency.  She is no one's 
pawn.  She is never a blind believer.  She is not a victim.  She 
is not a bitch.  She has spent so much time trying to prove who 
she is not, maybe she has forgotten to assert who she is.

She needs to stop trying so hard to be practical and grow her hair 
out a bit.  She likes it when Mulder plays with her hair.

**

Dana always loved vanity dressers with the pretty curved mirrors.  
Missy got one first, and their parents said the girls could share, 
but it never worked out that way.  Missy always took so long Dana 
didn't get a chance before they had to leave for school or turn 
out the lights for bedtime.

Dana spent hours and hours arranging the books and trinkets on her 
bedroom bookcase.

The china horse from her Aunt Kathy is missing a leg, now.

Dana Scully got the crap beaten out of her and her insides shaken 
and her safe haven shattered and torn, and the little china horse 
just can't be fixed.

**

It's after 1:00am when she knocks on his door, but he is awake and 
munching a microwaved burrito and she's not surprised and neither 
is he.

He doesn't ask.  She just asks if she can come in, and he motions 
her forward with his half-eaten burrito like she dropped by to 
borrow a cup of sugar.
 
She is standing in the middle of his living room in the 
comfortable hum and glow of the fish tank in this place that is 
maybe almost as much her home as the one from which she just ran, 
and Mulder asks if he can get her something.
 
She clears her throat and says, "No, thank you.  I'm...," she 
meets his gaze and hooks her hair sloppily behind her ear, 
"...fine."  The double meaning crackles on the current from grey 
to blue.  She wonders where he put his burrito.

"Okay."  The fish tank hums and she registers Al Pacino on the 
television.  Mulder steps closer.  Too close.  Always.  Careful 
fingers draw down an aberrant red curl (*she'll keep it red, he 
won't win, she'll keep it red*) and Mulder whispers, "Okay."  It's 
his words, now, with the double meaning, and her knees quiver.
 
"It's also okay if he scared you," Mulder says over the fish tank 
and Al Pacino.

Scully closes her eyes.  She has on her high-heeled boots, but she 
is too tired for heels.

"You handled yourself like a professional, Scully.  You never lost 
your rational assessment of the situation.  You performed like the 
utterly detached and capable agent I know you to be."

"I killed him," she whispers, because it needs to be said.  Out 
loud.

"You defended yourself," he says.

And she lets that stand.  Because she knows he knows what 
happened.  And maybe this is what he needs to call it.  To make 
his world make sense.  Her fingers are playing with her cross.

She wishes she could hate herself for what she's done.  But right 
now she just wants to be the girl who got smashed into the mirror 
of the vanity she always loved and had to pick up the pieces of 
that china horse from her Aunt Kathy before the broken bits got 
ground into the carpet and cut her toes.

She's been quiet too long, and Mulder has to fill spaces with 
words.  They're here so fast, in the thick of this conversation 
and she thinks maybe they started long ago.  "Scully...you've 
proven you can handle yourself.  You've proven you could take down 
even your worst nightmare before he took you down.  You've proven 
your professionalism and your strength."  His restless fingers 
tangle up with hers where her hand hangs limp at her hip, and his 
voice lowers to that register that wiggles and shimmers through 
her skin, along sinew and marrow and bone.  "But in this room, 
Scully...there's nothing to prove.  Except maybe that you trust 
me."

She winces.  She closes her eyes again and breathes him in.  "You 
know I trust you, Mulder.  You *know* that."

"With your life, yes.  With your secrets, mostly.  But with your 
fear?  Your pain?"

The fish tank bubbles.  Shattered glass and a gunshot ring in her 
ears like a distant parade.

Crying is not so bad when it's Mulder all around her.  It never 
has been, she found that out round about five years ago, and the 
simplicity of it confuses and scares the hell out of her.  She 
expects to feel like shit after it all falls apart, but it's so 
damned palatable when it's Mulder collecting the pieces.
 
She's not sure how much later, she's sitting on the couch and she 
knows her eyes are red and her voice is scratchy, but she says 
with a hint of Dana back in her tone, "Can we just watch a really 
bad movie?"

The smile at her shoulder lights the shadowy room.  "Woman, you 
have come to the right place."

The sparkle reflects on her skin like a mirror.

***