Chapter 9: Amicus Usque Ad Aras
Mulder’s Apartment
Scully kept her eyes closed for a moment longer knowing that she should move but enjoying the feel of Mulder’s wet, naked skin under her hands. She knew the moment that the situation changed from mutual protection to desire. She remembered the taste of his kisses, the feel of his naked body on hers, his declaration of love which had thrilled her but upset the Elizabeth part of the demon. She remembered it all. She raised her head and looked into Mulder’s eyes.
Mulder stared into his partner’s eyes. He thought of the things he’d done to her tonight and felt an amazing guilt. He wanted to apologise for his actions and to stop things between them changing from the easy friendship they had shared for so long. He wouldn’t be able to stand it if she left him because of this. He couldn’t look into her eyes anymore. He disentangled himself from her, missing the look of regret in her eyes as he moved away.
Scully felt devastated as he stood up and walked to the centre of the room. The scratches on his back stood out vividly and she wanted to go to him and stop all his pain. He hung his head and contemplated his feet. <He’s feeling guilty> She thought, her instinctual understanding of his emotions surprising her as it always did. How could she stop him from feeling guilty? Would an admission of love work? No, that would complicate things too much. The time wasn’t right yet. They had too much to do before they reached that point. It would happen on it’s own and for now she had her memories, even if they were tainted by events. She couldn’t let this destroy their friendship. She knew what she needed to do.
Mulder had to tell her that he loved her. He had to say it. Even if it changed everything. Things were already a mess. Tonight had ruined their friendship. He couldn’t let her leave him because of this.
“Scully, I..” He began, his feet still of the utmost interest to him, but she interrupted before he could finish.
“What am I doing here Mulder? What happened?” She asked looking around the destroyed room in confusion. He stared down at her. She was sat as he’d left her; on the floor in a wet bathrobe that hid nothing from his eyes. Her wide eyes stared back up at him. “I can’t remember anything.” She whispered.
Scully hated lying to him.
“What *do* you remember?” Mulder asked curiously and Scully thought on her feet.
“I remember, um,” She couldn’t lie about everything. “Seeing Elizabeth in the bathroom mirror, but after that..” She threw her hands up and shook her head, tailing off. She could *see* the cogs in his mind turning as he thought that one over. Scully was cringing inside but repeated to herself that this was the best way of insuring their friendship remained intact.
“So you don’t remember..” Mulder began but cut off the sentence abruptly. Scully surprised herself by wanting to smile at his confused expression but the thought died quickly. “..um..about the demon.”
“Demon?” It was easy to say the single word in a sceptical tone. Mulder looked away for a moment and appeared to come to a decision. He walked over in her direction.
“Scully, there’s something you need to know..” He began seriously, crouching down next to her and looking into her eyes. Scully couldn’t look into his eyes and lie to him, so she was forced to look away. Mulder mistook the action and gently took her chin in his hand and turned her to face him.
“Mulder, don’t..” Scully began.
“I just wanted to tell you how much you mean to me.” He drawled softly.
“You mean a lot to me too.” Scully replied honestly. “You’re my friend.”
“Your friend.” He repeated in an ambiguous tone that could have meant anything.
“You’re my best friend.” She said, aware that she was echoing his words from earlier. Aware that the words weren’t really enough but not ready to move their relationship on beyond that. Mulder placed his hand over hers and looked deeply into her eyes. Scully was shocked by the depth of feeling she saw in his eyes.
“Dana, I..” He began. There was a loud knock at the door. They both turned to look in that direction.
“You’d better answer that.” Scully said, taking the opportunity to move away from him. Her naked thigh brushed against his bare shoulder as she moved past him. Scully tried to ignore the sensation which shot through her at the contact. “I’ll get dressed.” She added nervously. Mulder’s hand reached out and grasped her ankle lightly. Scully looked down at him in shock. His fingers rested on her anklebone causing delicious feelings to snake up her leg. Mulder looked up at her seriously, then smiled. Scully couldn’t help smiling back at him. Suddenly everything seemed okay with the world. Another knock sounded at the door breaking the moment. Scully moved away in the direction of the bedroom.
Mulder found a T-shirt resting on a lampshade on the floor and put it on before he opened the door.
“Alex?” Mulder exclaimed as he saw the person standing in the hallway.
“Mulder.” Alex acknowledged with a smile extending his hand for a handshake. Mulder shook his head incredulously and grasped the hand, then changed his mind and pulled his old friend into a loose hug.
“How on earth d’you get here so fast?” Mulder said as they stepped apart again. “We only spoke an hour ago.” Alex looked at him with a stunned expression.
“What?” He asked with a frown. “Mulder, we spoke last night. I caught a plane from London this morning.” Alex checked his watch. “We spoke about 18 hours ago.”
“That’s..” Mulder began incredulously. He was going to say ‘impossible’ but decided that, after what he’d just seen, it wasn’t really.
“..Spooky?” Scully’s voice suggested sardonically from behind him when he didn’t finish. She walked over to them – shared a knowing smile with Mulder – and extended her hand to Alex. “Hi, I’m Dana Scully.”
“Alex Szabo.” Alex told her as he shook her hand. “You’re Mulder’s partner at the FBI?” He took in the dark blue silk pyjamas she was wearing and raised an inquiring eyebrow at Mulder. Scully cut straight to the chase.
“We’re just friends.” She clarified. Alex nodded but didn’t believe them, which was okay because it wasn’t true anyway and everyone in the room knew it. “You’re Elizabeth’s brother?” Scully asked, although she already knew. Alex nodded.
“Yeah..so, where is she?” Alex asked. Mulder and Scully exchanged a look.
“She’s..not here.” Mulder began. This would take some explaining. “You’d better sit down..”
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Fox Mulder’s Personal Journal
February 1997
The insurance company wouldn’t pay for the damage incurred to my apartment last month. I didn’t really expect them to, after all attempted possession of my partners body by a demon from a dimension where reality doesn’t exist is not easily proven on an insurance claim form. I had to dip into some of the money dad left me to pay for the repairs, which was something that I hadn’t wanted to do. I can’t shake the feeling that the money is tainted by evil because of the circumstances in which he obtained it but that money paid for so many things in my life that, if it is evil, then I’m already so touched by it that maybe I’m evil too. It was certainly evil the things I allowed myself to do to Scully that night. I’m only glad that she doesn’t remember what happened. I would hate her to hate me for it.
It’s been great seeing Alex again, even if the circumstances are rather unusual. I stayed at the same hotel as him for a few days while my apartment was being cleaned and we spent most of the time in the bar drinking away our mutual sorrows. Apart from that time in Comity, which I’d rather not recall, I haven’t been drunk in years. The last time was probably with Alex as well come to think of it. We raked hell in fine Oxford tradition during our time there and I did learn a lot in those years. I particularly remember that the Thames is very cold all year so it’s not a good idea to go swimming in November. Also, if you’re sick into a top hat after too much champagne *never* put it back on your head, especially not in public at the Henley Regatta. I’m almost embarrassed to remember the good times we had getting drunk and chatting up the girls, or trying to. Alex was better at it than I was and I gave up after I met Phoebe. Funny, Alex tried to talk me out of a relationship with Phoebe just as hard as he tried to talk me into telling Scully how I feel about her. It seemed so easy to talk to Alex, almost as if we’d never been out of touch. Ten years just disappeared. Those three years in England are an unreal time in my mind despite the memories being as clear as if they’d happened yesterday. I’ve decided to try and remember Elizabeth only as she was then; an adorable child with so much warmth that the room lit up when she smiled. I’m not good at keeping touch with people but I’m gonna try with Alex. He always was a good friend and a flight to England isn’t much different to flying around the States, it’s probably safer on an international flight. It might be a good time to think about taking a vacation. I wonder what Scully would say if I told her I was thinking about taking some time off, she’d never believe it. She’d ask me if I was going on a UFO chase. Come to think of it there have been a lot of sightings lately, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to check them out.
Scully wanted me to stay at her place while my apartment was being fixed up and I used Alex as an excuse not to. I know she was hurt but I couldn’t have stayed there with her feeling the way that I do. Our friendship has been uneasy since but I feel that we are reaching a comfortable medium which, if not wonderful, is well above the depths we reached this last year. I wish I could talk to her as I used to but she continues to shut me out of her emotions and I don’t know how to deal with that. It’s not helped by the fact that, every time I see her face, I am reminded of the touch of her lips on mine.
Elizabeth Szabo was officially declared dead by the Hampshire Constabulary five months ago, despite the fact no body has ever been recovered. Elizabeth’s friends are all still recovering in psychiatric care from their ordeal but only Danielle Rickard remembers anything of the night that Elizabeth ‘died’. In her psychiatrist’s recording of their interview Danielle describes looking out from under the velvet cover and seeing a vision that could have “come from hell itself. Bethy [Elizabeth] was wrapped in a curtain of red liquid that must have been blood and the demon was in the blood and it was inside her and they rose into the air on a whirlwind of light and mist and blood and then light exploded and all the blood was sucked back into Bethy’s body and then there was a noise like the sky opening. Bethy was just lying there on the ground, all twisted and broken but she stood up and walked away, but I could still see her. She was in the mirror but it was broken. She was in each piece.”
The Hampshire Constabulary decided that Danielle Rickard murdered Elizabeth Szabo and disposed of her body – as well as mentally and physically traumatising Paul Green, David Wells, Lynda Bell and Andrew Carr – whilst suffering from delusions of demonic possession. She has since been admitted to Broadmoor hospital for the criminally insane, having been deemed unfit to stand trial. The case file on the Warren Wood incident has been closed. To my mind, this is an X-File – although it cannot officially be described as such – which remains open and unexplained. US Immigration has a record of an Elizabeth Maria Szabo entering the country on January 8th 1997 but no record of her leaving. When her three month permit expires in April a search will be mounted to discover her location and I will be very interested to find out the result.
Scully now claims that she remembers none of the events I describe as occurring that night. Since any in-depth examination of these events would result in the OPC asking questions regarding Scully’s presence in my apartment that night and regarding her mental state during this time, I have decided to leave these events unexamined through official procedures and to this date I have been successful in concealing the evidence from the requisite authorities. I sincerely doubt that the powers that be are unaware of these occurrences and I can only hope that they are not storing this information as ammunition to be used against us at a later date.
Alex, Elizabeth, Phoebe; all of them ghosts from a different reality in my life that has nothing to do with conspiracies, aliens, my parents or my sister but which are linked into patterns of events that the majority of people would describe as strange or simply write off without examination. These events have only served to strengthen my beliefs that the occurrences which we describe as paranormal are not anomalous phenomena at all but are the normal constructions of our universe. The fundamental structure of a reality which is only ever revealed to us piece by piece for if we saw the entirety of our universe then we would surely be scared by our own insignificance within the whole. Until we are ready to accept that our arrogance is misplaced we shall have to content ourselves with the glimpses we are given of the beauty – and the horror – of the whole and keep watching out for tell tale ghost writing that reveals to us the truth.
THE END