Title: The Furious Winter
Category: S, ladlings of A, MSR, post-col
Rating: R? You all know I can never figure out the system.
Spoilers: Try the whole abduction/cancer-arc thing...plus
teeny ones for TRATB and Detour.
Summary: "A cry of Absence, Absence in the heart,/ and in
the wood the furious winter blowing."
Archive: Yes to Gossamer. Anywhere else: I won't say no, but *please* ask
for permission first, because I like to know where this stuff's going :).
Disclaimer: Mulder and Scully belong to CC, 1013 and Fox, even though
sometimes I like to put on surfer gear and a blond wig and pretend they're
mine. No copyright infringement intended, and I'm not making a penny off
this.
Feedback: Always worshipped at CazQ@tesco.net
Author's Notes: Sometimes a girl just needs to have an angst-out. I must
pay tribute to Analise and 'A Thin Veneer' for reminding me that the
razor-clawed alien babies don't like the cold. And no, I don't know what it
is with all these snowy stories in the height of summer. Thanks to Alicia,
Kristy, Shawne and EPur for tip-top betas: love yez, kids. 
Dedicated to Windle, my skiffy pal, as a thank you for skits, wavs., and
shared...uh, obsessions <veg>, and to jerry, for many months loyal and
exceptional beta service.
****** 
The Furious Winter (1/2) by CazQ
(CazQ@tesco.net) 
"Two evils, monstrous either one apart,
Possessed me, and were long and loath at going;
A cry of Absence, Absence, in the heart,
And in the wood the furious winter blowing." 
'Winter Remembered', John Crowe Ransom. 
****** 
The world is uncreated, a sheet of blank paper: purely, coldly white and
sterile. Silence presses in on him from every side, a stifling feather
blanket weighing heavily on his skin. So much silence; he feels as if the
weight of it will cause his skull to crack and cave inwards. 
Something in him would welcome that. He can feel it within him, a dark,
whispering void hidden deep beneath skin, blood and muscle, nestled
in the cage of his bones. 
No, no, must not think like that, he reminds himself. He knows that he's got
to keep going, just that little bit further. He's got to get to her. Almost
there. 
This is high country, the air thin and searing in his lungs. He's been
on the move for days, sleeping by day, walking by night, going under cover
of darkness. He's being a little careless, almost, breaking cover before
nightfall. She would probably scold him for his recklessness if she were
travelling with him. Still, he's high enough above the snowline now to avoid
pursuit, hopefully, and in this snow-blind world there's little need for the
cloak of night. 
Hot now. So hot. He can feel the sweat soaking through his layers of
clothes, under the shell of his parka, as if there's a fire rising deep
under his skin. It's tempting to stop, to halt for a moment and try to take
a little more oxygen from this burning, empty air, but that would be the
worst mistake. This heat is an illusion; his core temperature would drop
quickly in the open, even in all these winter clothes. 
He can bear it a little while longer, because he's almost there. He
recognises the shape of a huge boulder looming out of the whiteness, a
silent stone sentinel. He swings left, turning to follow the way around the
shoulder of the mountain now instead of climbing upwards. 
The going is no easier, though; he's trail-breaking, feet growing heavier,
number, slower with each step as he slogs through the deep snow, muscles
screaming out in protest. He walks in boots of iron, intimately aware of the
seductive downward pull of gravity. His pack weighs heavy as guilt on his
back. 
So tempting to give in, to let gravity draw him down, through the crisp burn
of the snow, through the face of the earth, letting the dark oblivion of
rock close around him. A bone-dry voice spirals up from the void within and
whispers that the dead are lucky, luckier than they could ever know, cradled
in their silent chambers of earth. Nothing can touch them there. 
Enough. He doesn't know what that voice means, doesn't want to know. He
does not need to know. After all, she's waiting for him, isn't she? And he's
nearly there, isn't he? 
Isn't he? Of course he is. There is no voice within, crackling like dead
leaves underfoot. There never was. Just a little further. 
He comes across the ridge right on schedule and pauses for a second
before the final descent into the hollow, gazing at the haven, the blessed
sanctuary. Below him, the mass of the cabin is just visible through the
snow-flurries, eaves showing dark beneath the thick blanket of snow on the
roof. No smoke rises from the bent tin chimney; the fire's gone out.
That was careless of her. He'll have to help her get it going again when he
gets inside. 
A sharp crack reverberates suddenly around the mountainside, deadened
only a little by the falling snow. He still jumps out of his skin - at
least, he would, if he wasn't so bone-weary. Instead he instinctively drops
to the ground, hand going to the cool, solid weight of the Sig he still
wears at his hip, casting about for the direction of the threat. Identify
the threat, evaluate it, neutralise it, his trained instincts scream. 
Then he realises. There is no one firing at him. The real menaces these
days don't carry guns, of course. A branch, breaking under the weight of
accumulated snow, nothing more. Nothing more. 
Still, it's enough to galvanise him into action for the last leg of his
journey, sending him leaping and tumbling down the valley side like a clumsy
mountain goat. He wonders if she hears him coming, down there in the hollow.
He hopes not. He doesn't want her to come outside and see him just yet. He'd
like to surprise her. 
He loses his footing near the bottom on a rock slick with ice, and plunges
headlong into the drift on the valley floor. For a moment, he's tempted to
stay where he is, snug in the snow...then instinct kicks in again, screaming
at him to pull himself out of there before he suffocates. 
He emerges with cheeks and eyes burning, spitting snow, gasping for air,
arms flailing. For the sake of his dignity, he's glad she didn't see *that*
particular tumble. Digging himself out, he hefts his pack onto his back
again and stumbles towards the cabin. The shutters are closed, no light
spilling out from within, which is only sensible of her, if a little
disappointing. 
The last few steps are more like a sustained fall as he flounders and
battles through the drift up against the door. Looks as if she hasn't gone
outside for days - probably conserving heat. That explains the fire being
out; she must've got snowed in before she could make another trip to the
woodpile. 
The last vestiges of his strength go on wrestling the door open, and then
slamming it behind him to keep the biting, piercing wind out. Home, such as
it is. He's home. 
He blinks the snowflakes out of his eyes and peers into the cabin, which
looks dusty and dim through the haze of melting flakes of ice. Then he
blinks again, and the tiny building is suddenly warm, safe, filled with a
blaze of light. There she is, stepping forward with a smile on her face and
all the lights of heaven shining in her eyes. He sighs and falls forward,
unable to stay upright a moment longer, even to greet her. As his eyes slip
shut and darkness takes him, he feels warm arms go around him and her
voice, whispering one word. 
"Mulder."
******
When he wakes, he's lying stretched out on a bedroll in front of the fire,
which, he's glad to see, has been lit and is now blazing away again.
Somewhere along the line his layers of clothing have disappeared. A motley
assortment of blankets, furs and even spare items of clothing are piled on
top of him, stuffed around his body, creating a cosy nest. 
The warmest thing in this nest, though, is her. Like him, she's naked as the
day she was born, snuggled up alongside him, legs entwined with his, hair
brushing lightly against his shoulder, one hand lying over his heart. This
probably doesn't qualify as a sleeping bag, he guesses, but who really gives
a damn? Not him, not with her exchanging body heat with him in this
makeshift cocoon. 
He turns his head, tearing his gaze away from the leaping flames, and meets
her gaze. She's not sleeping, as he'd assumed - eyes as blue and shadowed as
twilight by the ocean meet his, anxiety swimming in their cool depths. Her
eyes, he thinks distractedly, oh, her eyes. A bluebell wood in early spring,
a rippling haze of pure blue smoke, secret, shifting and quietly luminous. 
"Hey, Scully," he whispers. 
"Hey." 
That apparently contents her for a minute. While he thinks over his next
words, he reaches out and idly runs the pad of his thumb back and forth
along her lower lip, feeling the flesh warm and giving as a summer's day
under his touch. 
"I made it." 
He realises as the words leave his mouth that that wasn't the right thing to
say. She dips her head, breaking eye contact, pulling away from his
touch. 
"Just," she says, gazing intently at a constellation of freckles on his
shoulder. 
"I'm here now, though. That's what matters, right?" 
"I kept thinking..." she says, biting her lip, still refusing to look at
him. "It got later and later, Mulder, and I kept thinking, dear God, I don't
want to go out in the morning and dig his body out of a snowbank." 
"Scully..." he starts, reaching out again to cup her cheek. She shies away
from his touch like a nervous colt, and keeps talking. 
"And then, then I started thinking, what if I don't have to? What if he just
never shows up at all? Then what would I do?" Her teeth, white as lilies,
dig into her lip, until the blood drains from it, flesh turning the palest
of pinks under the pressure. "I can't do this again, Mulder, I just can't.
I'm going with you next time..." 
"You know you can't," he whispers, voice strained and rasping. "You can't
go down to the lowlands, not with that, that *thing* in your neck. You have
to avoid close proximity to Them. Ruskin Dam was close enough. It was *too* 
goddamn close. I won't let Them take you now, Scully, not if I can
prevent it. This is a safe place for you, you *have* to stay." 
She makes a small, frustrated sound, half-sigh, half-sob, and presses her
face against the skin of his shoulder, hair falling down over her eyes. "I
feel so *useless*, Mulder, hiding away up here while you're down there,
fighting back. I *need* to do something..." 
"I'm sorry," he mumbles, as if it might help, as if that could give her back
her freedom, give her back the lost world. 
"I know," she sighs, breath hot against his skin. He feels a small,
open-mouthed kiss being planted on his neck as she raises her head, and
then her mouth is on his, crushing, hungry, needful. Weeks of desperate
loneliness are communicated through lips joining, tongues meeting, breath
merging. The kiss tastes bitter-sweet with intimations of mortality. 
They touch each other in a fury of love. It's hot, demanding, burning,
driving away all coherent thought. They fall asleep tangled up in each
other, exhausted not merely by lovemaking. Their weariness stems from a
month's separation, from the pent-up fear of never seeing, touching, holding
one another again, from the strain of imagining the worst every day. 
Later, as the storm continues to beat and roar at the windows of the cabin,
wind whistling round the valley, they wake and hold each other for a long
time, close enough to feel each other's hearts beating steady and strong.
Then they make love slowly, lazily, with a quiet, miraculous tenderness
that makes him bury his face in her neck as he climaxes to hide his tears. 
"I love you, you know," he murmurs afterwards, watching the glow from the
banked fire turn her creamy skin to rose-gold as she lies on top of him,
head pillowed on his chest. 
"I know," she replies, turning her face from the fire to place a soft kiss
at the base of his throat. One small white hand creeps up to thread through
his hair, and he wonders if she's noticed the spreading grey at the temples. 
He's only forty - old before his time, and little wonder. They both are, he
thinks, but with her, at least in his eyes, it's all on the inside; she's
still as glorious as ever to him. He can no longer remember a time when
he didn't think her as beautiful and essential as the sun. 
"You're going a little grey," she says gently, as if reading his mind. She
strokes the hair back off his forehead, and concludes, "I like it. Makes you
look distinguished." 
Amazingly, wonderfully, he finds he still has some laughter left in him.
Such are the gifts she bestows on him in these interludes of mercy. 
He reaches up to grab the hand twining through his hair, and presses a kiss
to the palm. When he takes his mouth away from the delicate crease of her
lifeline, she curls her hand closed, as if that way she could trap his kiss
and hold on to it. 
"I don't think I can afford to look distinguished," he muses, as casually as
possible, fighting the constriction in his throat. "I have a reputation to
maintain, you know." 
"Really? You've always been distinguished to *me*, Mulder," she
murmurs, idly tracing circles along his jawline with one slender finger. 
"Yeah?" 
"Oh yeah. Just because *you* always saw yourself as the Monster Boy in the
basement didn't mean I saw you that way, Mulder." 
"So, uh, what did you see me as?" he inquires, carefully fixing his gaze on
the top of her head, on the sparkles of light reflecting like fireworks off
her hair. Tiny blossoms of light, so beautiful. 
"Heroic," she whispers sleepily, with a tiny smile, leaning down and
planting a kiss over his heart. Her tongue flicks out to touch the bare
skin of his chest, and he feels the minute contact all over his body, as if
she were somehow kissing him in a thousand places at once. He would like to
dip her kisses in glass, in gold, thread them on a chain and wear them round
his neck, render them eternal. 
Nothing is eternal, of course. He knows that. Nothing of this earth is
outside time. For tonight, though, as he slips back into sleep with the warm
weight of her resting atop him, he imagines them into eternity.
******
The lights of heaven have faded when he wakes a second time. He's lying
stretched out on the floor, cheek pressed against the rough, splintered
boards. Inhaling, he smells the dry, dusty, dead pine. He licks his dry,
chapped lips, and tastes the tang of blood caking the cut on his lip where
his face met the floor. 
There is no fire. There are no warm, glowing lamps. There is no strong,
loving hand over his heart. There is only the mouse skittering across the
floorboards in the corner, the spiders crouched in the eaves, and the man
lying cold and desolate on the floor. The lights of heaven have all gone
out. 
Joints cracking in the still air, he rises unsteadily, slowly to his feet,
and automatically goes about the business of building a fire, making a bed,
changing his clothes. He does these things with great economy of movement,
as if there is no energy left in his body for any superfluous gesture. 
When he is finished with the mechanics of survival, he sits before the fire,
wrapped in animal skins and blankets. He does not look at the flames.
Instead he rests his head in his cradled hands, unable to bear the weight of
memory. He does not cry; that would require energy he cannot summon
up any longer. 
Tears would be self-indulgent, anyway, and that would not honour her,
because she was never self-indulgent, not even at the end. So he sits, and
as the weak, watery sunlight fades somewhere above the massed snowclouds,
he sits and remembers. 
What was it he had said once? "The future is here, and all bets are off"?
Something grand and nonsensical like that. As it had turned out, he had been
so, so wrong. The real future had arrived not so very long after he said
that, one freezing, grey day in January, more than a year ago now. The
day the first ships arrived. 
He numbly recounts the events of the past year to himself, carefully using
them to pry apart his previous delusions of warmth and happiness, trying to
force himself to look at the world and see it for what it is once more. The
events etched into his memory seem at once clear and curiously distant, like
images flashed up on a movie screen. He sits, remembering, and strives to
eliminate that distance, to maintain his tenuous grip on the here and now. 
Many, so many, had died in the first few days, killed off as they sat
shell-shocked in their homes, wiped out as they wandered the streets in a
stunned daze. They hadn't even been the targets, that was what made it so
insufferable. They'd been caught in the crossfire as the war in the heavens
descended to an earthly battlefield. 
The Colonists had entrenched themselves, descending on the face of the
earth like a biblical plague. Then the other side, the dogs of war.
Creatures without faces, wolves in the skins of men, coming to stalk the
streets and fields of Earth. Burning, cleansing, purifying. Laying waste. A
season of death. 
Some humans had fought back against both sides, turning on these new
aggressors with the same tooth-and-nail ferocity that primitive man must
have shown to the carnivores that prowled round the mouth of his cave. It
was no longer a matter or resist or serve. Kill or be killed became the law. 
Kill to survive. Kill to reclaim what is yours by right. Kill to live. 
He and Scully had been among those who survived the first few weeks, who had
determined to stand to the last. "Together," he had said to her one dark,
bloody morning, squeezing her hand as they watched a rose of fire rise from
the charges they'd set around a Colonist compound. 
"Together," she'd replied, nodding, hand tightening around his until her
nails broke the skin of his palm. He'd carried the marks like thin crescent
moons on his right hand for days, scars of honour. They'd become lovers that
night, the old excuses and pretences finally stripped away. He can still
feel her nails raking down his back as she cried out beneath him, just once,
in the night. 
He opens his clenched fist now and looks down at the palm in the firelight.
Beyond the lines cobwebbing the skin, it is blameless, unmarked. If he
concentrates, though, he can still feel the imprints of nails. He tightens
his grip around phantom marks and looks away. 
He turns the lens of memory on the time that followed. In the end, they'd
stood for nearly three months, learning how to harry the enemy, how to duck
and run, how to make shadows and night their allies in battle. A little at a
time, they'd shed the trappings of their old lives, becoming fighters, pure
and simple. 
Three months, he thinks, squeezing his eyes shut against the horror of it.
Three months is not enough time to save the world. He's not even sure if
it's enough time to save a soul, not any more. 
That was when the Callings had begun again. She'd begged him to help her
remove the chip in her neck. She'd been terrified that one day she'd find
herself close to the source of a Call, unable to resist when the traitorous,
life-saving metal in her neck pulled her to come and be consumed. 
He remembers refusing, hating himself for being unable to help her, even
hating her for asking him, for being so afraid when his own fear was so
great. He'd needed so desperately for her to be unafraid, in order for the
world to continue turning, and she'd been so, so terrified. 
And so she'd done it herself, taking a scalpel to her own skin in the
bathroom of an abandoned Holiday Inn somewhere near Boulder. The incision
had been small, but oh God, the blood...blood everywhere, it seemed, when he
discovered her sobbing on the bathroom floor. Blood spattering the sink,
smeared over the tiles, dappling the towels like roses scattered on a field
of snow. 
All that blood...he'd been so terrified she'd tried to hurt herself, that
she was dying. Then he'd found the cut on the nape of her neck where the
blood welled up, bright and shocking, and he'd understood. 
Now, crouched before the fire without feeling its warmth, he bows his head
with shame as he sees the next part unfold in his mind, the images
horrifyingly immediate. Even understanding her reasons, he'd snapped,
had started frantically searching the bathroom for the chip, yelling at her
that it wasn't too late, that she had to tell him where it was so they could
put it back in. 
"Scully, goddammit, what did you do with it? What did you *do* with it?" 
His voice had risen to a harsh, panicked shriek, until she'd pointed with
one shaking hand at the open window, and then he'd known that the world
had truly come to its end. 
He'd sat down then, joining her on the bloodied tiles, gathering her into
his numbed embrace, and rocked her while she sobbed. He remembers it all
with hideous clarity, remembers thinking that now they might all sit down
and weep, and never get up again. 
Now he sees again the day when the nosebleeds began, only four weeks later.
He remembers now how he'd been stunned, stunned that such a small person
could lose so much blood as she seemed to and continue living. 
Of course, she could not, did not continue living indefinitely. She was not
eternal, as he'd always wanted to believe. The cancer had metastasised even
faster than before, and, constantly on the run from the wolves in the fold,
they'd been unable to treat her. She'd been their only doctor in their small
band of rag-tag resistance fighters, and it had been almost beyond them even
to provide her with palliative care as she weakened. 
So he'd brought her here to die, to a cabin he'd heard about, above the
snowline, where it was too cold for Them to venture and too remote for Them
to care. At his insistence, finally, they'd said their farewells to their
small group of fellow survivors and made their way up into the mountains. 
He'd carried her most of the last leg of the journey, staggering uphill,
pitching her into the snow on several occasions. Each time she'd smiled
a little when he dug her out, kissed him gently and told him it didn't
matter, as the tears froze on his cheeks. 
Eventually they'd reached their haven of rest, and barred the door against
the cold bite of winter. He'd thought that for that short time they had left
together they'd be able to forget, to just close the door and forget the
world, forget the endless, wearying struggle, forget everything but
themselves. 
She'd had other ideas. As she'd lain nestled by the fire, she'd held his
hand, gripping his fingers with a strength born of desperate love, and made
him listen. She'd spoken in a quiet, relentless voice of continuing the war,
of the things he must do, of the duty he had to the future. She'd wiped away
his tears as he'd cried, lifting her voice to be heard over his harsh,
hoarse sobs, but she'd refused to stop speaking until she was satisfied he
would do the things he had to do. 
She had always been the stronger one of them, though, hadn't she? He'd loved
her and hated her for that strength, needed it even as he despised the way
it cut away his weakness, like a steel blade. When she'd exacted his promise
to continue on, she'd kissed his hand with her pale, pale lips, and
whispered "I can't sanctify you, Mulder. Don't ask that of me." Then,
finally, she'd broken, her sobs noiseless, shaking her body and his as he
gathered her against his chest and waited. 
The spiders and the mice look on as he sits by the fire, shaking violently
despite the furnace-blast of heat pouring out of the hearth. He does not
make a sound, though. He will not make a sound. It isn't really weeping, as
long as he stays silent.
******
Some days later, the clouds break for the first time, tearing up into loose,
scattered fragments as a strong wind carries them west. Spring is not far
off, he realises, with a dull kind of surprise. He ventures outside for the
first time in a week, fills his lungs with crisp, clean air, this time using
the snowshoes stored in the cabin to move over the thin crust of hardened
snow. 
Time to move on. If the weather holds, he may make it west over the
mountains without being caught out in the open. He must make it west, or no
one there will know how the Eastern resistance passed away. He knows there
are people in the west, living, breathing people. He's heard rumours of an
organised command structure, of a safe place in the desert somewhere. He
hopes in some kind of future, as all men must in order to hold onto life and
sanity in an insane existence. 
He retreats inside, fills his pack with survival rations, adds extra layers
of clothes, slowly, methodically. He puts out the fire, closes the shutters,
stores away the bedding against moths and mice. 
Finally, he steps outside, shuts the door and latches it against the wind.
He climbs out of the hollow carefully, trying to sense the ice under the
snow before his foot lands on it. Wouldn't do to slip now, fall back down
and spend the rest of the winter hobbling round the cabin on a broken leg. 
At the top of the slope, he pauses, struggles with himself. Lot's wife, he
reminds himself dryly. He won't look back. There's no one, nothing at his
back. 
He looks back. He sees the quiet hollow, dormant under its blanket of snow,
waiting for the spring that never comes this far up. He sees the rough wood
of the cabin, the bent tin chimney, the woodpile sheltered from the
elements. He sees his own tracks from the door to where he stands now. In a
few days they will be covered with snow, leaving no sign that he was ever
here. There is nothing else to see. 
There is nothing else to see, and yet he still sees a woman standing by the
door, one hand raised, wisps of copper escaping from the hood of her parka,
cheeks and the tip of her nose rosy from the cold. All the many lights of
heaven shining in her eyes. 
A single eagle drifts high in the sky beneath the tattered veils of cloud.
Its cry reaches him, harsh and distant, as he turns his face west, drops to
his knees in the snow, and rocks back and forth. No other sound breaches
the stillness. It is not really weeping, as long as he does not make a
sound.
FINIS 
******
I apologise to anyone upset by my decision not to label this story as
containing a character death: I felt that to do so would be to ruin the
story, which I truly hope you will understand if you made it this far :). 
Feedback warms my heart more than a roaring fire. CazQ@tesco.net