Grace Effect - Echoes By Michaela Michaela@stny.rr.com Rating: PG Category: V Keyword: Character dead. Summary: Another vignette in the Grace Realized universe. No videos for Mulder this time. Disclaimer: They aren't mine. God help them if they were. Be advised. This piece is dark. You have been warned. Do not flame me. ************************ On the road was the worst time. On the road, it was hard to run away. Fox Mulder had been remarkably surprised to learn that being away from Washington D.C., from the office they had shared, from the familiar places and faces of their lives, did not lessen the memory of Dana Scully. Absence had not made the heart grow hardened, and distance did nothing to ease the pain of losing her. Because it was in those cheap hotel rooms in godforsaken towns playing host to some extraordinary phenomenon or another that Fox Mulder was forced to face down the demons. Especially at night. Most *especially* at night, when there was nothing to distract him from his own torture. It had not taken Mulder long to realize that nights in hotel rooms were the hardest because in another time, in a future lost, they had been something that he and Scully shared, and shared alone. In D.C., even their office had received the occasional visit from Skinner, or a rookie who'd lost his way and ended up, bewildered and more than a little intimidated, at their door. In the Hoover building, he had to *share* her time, with other people and other agendas. Even visits to her apartment, or to his, were not extraordinarily special, because other guests might have been there, too. But that endless string of hotels?that had been their private domain. Mulder sat on the bed in a hotel room just like all the others, having loosened his tie but simply too bone-weary and soul-tired to finish the job. Head bowed. Staring sightlessly at his expensive black shoes and the contrast they made on the drab institutional carpet. Same furniture. Same depressingly awful decor. Same old drill. But nothing was the same anymore. Because *she* wasn't there. And when he was in these hotel rooms, on cases like these, he ventured dangerously close to that shadow world where he could pretend?just for a moment?that she was still there. Just in the next room. That's when the demons came dancing through the door. Mulder lay back on the unforgiving, hard mattress, eyes closed against the harsh hotel lighting that might dispel his illusion, arms spread in a crucifixion of his own making. And he let himself imagine. For one dangerous, quicksand moment, imagine that her absence in his life was not permanent, but merely a mundane and temporary lapse. There. The sound of her in the room beside him, separated only by the thin wood of a connecting door instead of something so much more vast. The muted traces of canned sitcom laughter from the television set floated through. She didn't usually have the television on while she worked, so Mulder reasoned that she'd turned it on for background noise only, something to shake off the vestiges of a too-quiet morgue where she'd diligently laid claim to the mysteries of the dead. He could picture her sitting on her bed, legs akimbo, red hair piled haphazardly on top of her head, glasses perched on the end of her nose in a manner that was just scholarly enough to be sexy. On her, anyway. The light of her laptop computer washing faintly blue over creamy skin, lips pursed as she doggedly typed her oh-so-scientific analysis of yet another can of worms he had opened. He heard another sound. The sound of dresser drawers opening and closing now. Scully was getting ready for bed. Sensible pajamas, probably blue. Her white bathrobe, the fuzzy terry cloth one that seemed to swallow her up and just left her toes peeking out. Beautiful toes. Odd that he would find Scully's feet sexy?he'd never been ruled by that particular fetish. He would kid her about her little feet. But there was just something about the sight of those tiny, pink and perfect toes peeping out from underneath the robe? The echoes of her grew fainter as she moved to the bathroom, and if he strained, he could just make out the sound of running water. He allowed himself the simple, voyeuristic pleasure of picturing her there, wiping the last vestiges of soap from her face, soothing the skin with careful swipes of some moisturizer or another, some scent he could identify at twenty paces, blindfolded, had it ever been necessary. The water stopped. Now she was shaking her hair free of its tenuous hold at the top of her head, raking her fingers through it to tame it back into some semblance of order. Because Scully had a certain precision about how she did things, even preparing for sleep. Turning off the light. It was quieter now, and Mulder realized that she might think he was asleep. Might not come to him. Without opening his eyes, trying to move as little as possible, he fumbled for the remote that he knew was lying on the mattress nearby and thumbed the television on. Turned the volume just high enough for her to hear, just low enough for him to still hear *her.* He waited, with a desperate breathlessness that made his chest ache, waited to hear the tap at the connecting door. The television in the other room clicked off with a suddenness that made a gasp catch in his throat. Silence. Nothing. No hesitant tap. No familiar voice calling his name, cool and soothing as spring water, quenching a scorched soul. She wasn't coming. Maybe she didn't hear the television. He pushed the volume button slightly higher, eyes squeezed tightly shut now. He wrenched himself upward, swaying dizzily on his feet, barely stifling a hoarse cry of outrage, furious with himself for destroying the illusion, even as he was thankful for it. Because to venture too close to that thin line between reality and fantasy was dangerous?he might never return. She's gone. It's not her. He threw the remote and it slammed against the opposite wall with a crash loud enough to wake the dead. he thought bitterly, even as he held his breath, afraid that the noise would bring unwanted guests with alarmed inquiries. Particularly from one person. The *last* person he wanted. His new partner. Dammit, this is why he specifically avoided connecting rooms. The results were inevitable and too risky. He would hear her puttering around next door and, like an addict, he couldn't seem to help himself. He would sink down in that dark whirlpool of painful fantasy. One of these days, he was going to drown in it. Each time, it was harder to pull himself free. Silence continued to reign in the next room, even if it suddenly seemed to have an alert, watchful quality to it. She'd, of course, heard the noise - not just this time, but times before - and she had learned early on not to investigate. She had seen, as Scully had before her, how ugly Mulder could be when gripped by the cruelties of life. Unlike Scully, though, she was unwilling - and entirely unwelcome - to stick around and weather the worst of the storm. She seemed nice enough, the new partner. Patricia. He had no problem thinking of her by her first name. Usually did refer to her by first name, in fact, and preferred it that way. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why. But it wasn't her fault, after all, that she'd been saddled with a deserted husk of a man who hunted the unspeakable during the day and who was chased by his own monsters at night. It wasn't her fault that there was nothing left for her beyond what was purely professional and expected. He treated her courteously and with genteel amiability, like an old-fashioned gallant squiring her to the obligatory waltz because she was the only one not dancing. He mimed the steps, making small talk, while staring off at the shadows on the far side of the ballroom. He didn't know if she noticed his inattentiveness or not. He really didn't care. Like the woman before her, she had a background in hard science. She had consummate skill and a proficiency that rivaled her predecessor. She seemed loyal enough, but he'd never been tempted to test it. That was the nature of their partnership?no tests. No real challenge. She was open-minded to Mulder's theories, without seeming to put any effort into it. And there was the problem: Where was the fun in that? Scully had been open-minded, too, but not without making it clear that she was chafing at it. Searching for the opportunity to prove him wrong. God, he'd loved that. He'd loved her. And he missed her. With a ferocity that even now brought him to his knees in this cold hotel room that was so similar and so cruelly different, making him bury his face in the bedspread to muffle sharp and bilious sobs. He missed her more now than eight months ago when she died, now when the pain was supposed to be easing, not swelling. Missed her even as his brain argued that it was pointless to keep yearning for something he couldn't have, and his heart begged him to stop before it destroyed them all. He couldn't stop, didn't know how. It was as if his soul had grown senses of its own, listening for any echo, straining to catch some faint vibration of her. He would have been outraged by the cruelty of this, had he not realized that this phenomenon had been with him long before she died. He'd been attuned to her, palm to palm and soul to soul, long before the end had come. His soul had reached out for her long before he had known it. Now part of him was missing. That extension of his soul had been amputated, but no one had cauterized the wound, and no prosthesis could ever replicate what it had once been. And, like an amputee, he would feel the echo of that phantom limb for the rest of his life. **************************** The End ****This piece is dedicated to those who have lost a piece of themselves, and to the courage it takes to keep going.****