By Jean Helms
jeanlhelms@yahoo.com
 

TITLE: The Only Truth I Know
AUTHOR: Jean Helms (jeanlhelms@yahoo.com)
SUMMARY: Post-ep for "The Truth." My first post-ep ever, as a
matter of fact.
RATING: Oh, maybe PG.
CLASSIFICATION: MSR, V, A
SPOILERS: The entire damn series, especially "The Truth."
DISCLAIMER: These characters are not mine, nor are some of the
words herein, words taken from "The Truth." Like the Britons of
long ago, I merely add to the stories of the great quest; I do
not originate them.
FEEDBACK: Yes, please; I love it.
ARCHIVE: Anywhere you like. I appreciate being told where so I
can visit.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: Jenna Tooms' marvelous "There But For the
Grace of You" already exists, and thank heaven it does; it is
one of the great gems of XF fic. I, like Jenna, find Paul
Simon's "Kathy's Song" to be a perfect description of Mulder's
feelings about Scully, and if she hadn't already used that
title, I would have.  But this isn't songfic, and neither is
Jenna's story ... the lyrics are included only to let you know
where the title of this fic comes from. That's my story and I'm
sticking to it.

*****

It is mid-morning when they reach Albuquerque. He leaves the
interstate highway, driving slowly, taking his time, searching
for just the right place, the kind of place where a man could
drive in from out of town and make a cash deal for a car without
getting a lot of irritating questions thrown into the deal.

Not too far from the interstate, he sees it: Southwest Motors.
The cars aren't too old to be reliable for desert driving and
the sign says they do their own financing. Perfect.

He pulls into the lot and stops, pressing gently on the brake
so she won't be jolted, but it's no good. Inertia presses her
forward against the thick straps of the seat belt and she
awakens, yawning, confused, but not terribly alarmed.

"Where are we?" she says, stretching as best she can in the
small space, and he watches her, almost entranced by the simple
grace of her movements, of the softness in her eyes and the
unbearable trust she has in him ... he watches, making memories
of this moment that he will keep, because he is still aching
inside from the long months of seeing her only in his mind.

"We're in Albuquerque," he says at last. "I didn't mean to wake
you."

"You should have waked me earlier," she says, as she unbuckles
the belt. "You shouldn't have tried to drive all that way in the
dark."

"You were tired," he says. "Anyway, it gave me time to think."

"Think about what?" she says, but the salesman is approaching
with bright, false cheer, and he never answers her. His eyes
promise they'll talk about it later, but his eyes have made
promises they can't keep many, many times before. It's when he
hides his eyes, pressing his face against her body in
desperation, that he can hide nothing from her. In his secrecy is
his truth.

*****

Ninety minutes later, they are back on the road, this time in a
two-year-old Toyota, which the salesman assured them would get
much better gas mileage on the desert roads than the gargantuan
Ford Expedition they'd been driving.

"It's a great trade for you," the salesman said, and his
practiced smile told her nothing, but she could hardly have cared
less. She searched the faces of those she questioned when she
wanted their answers, and she searched Mulder's face almost
constantly for ... for so many things ... but she couldn't
trouble herself to tease out the strands of thought reflected on
the face of a middle-aged used car salesman in the middle of the
desert. She just signed the papers with a name that wasn't hers
and pocketed the cash he gave them -- the Toyota was worth
several thousand dollars less than the Expedition -- and went
about methodically transferring their pitifully few belongings
into the car while Mulder got directions to a fast-food
restaurant.

And then they were on the road again, and the car's interior
began to smell strongly of raw onions and hot french fries as
they ate their meal in silence, as the sun began to rise toward
noon, as dreams of home and gentle baby skin beneath her lips
continued to fade, bleached out by the merciless heat of the sky
and the crueler oxygenation wrought by time and memory ...
William had scarcely existed in this world, the world she shared
with his father, the world of long drives, of investigations,
questions, theories, conspiracies, cheap hotel rooms and fast
food. To be with Mulder like this was to inhabit a world in which
William had never existed, could not exist.

For the first time, it felt normal to be without her baby.

One day, she knows, it will seem normal almost all the time, and
William will be someone she remembers only sometimes.

She wonders if she can bear to live in that world, knowing as
she does that if she'd waited a few more weeks, Mulder would
have been with them and the two of them together might have kept
their son from harm.

They have spoken of William only once, in a prison cell. They
have not spoken of him again, and she wonders now if they ever
will. She wants to know that she has hurt Mulder by doing this,
that the loss of his son is as unbearable to him as it is to
her, but she will not speak of the baby, will not insist that
Mulder suffer with her. He has suffered already far more than
her imagination can comprehend.

"We won't try for the border tonight," he says, wiping his lips
with a bright yellow napkin which he balls up in his fist and
tosses in the general direction of the paper bag. It misses, and
she scoops it up without a thought and drops it precisely in the
center of the opening. Nothing new there.

"Where do you want to stop?" she says, taking a sip of her Diet
Coke.

"Roswell," he says, and he smiles.

"Mulder, you can't be serious," she says, the words coming
easily to her lips. "If there's another city in the United
States where they'd be more likely to expect you to go, I can't
think what it might be."

"That's why we're going there," he says. "They'll expect me to
avoid it just because it's so obvious."

She starts to reply with the expected objections, but suddenly
she is too tired. She cannot play this role, not now. The raw and
bleeding wound in her heart has put a stop to intellectual
exercise for now.

"Never mind," she says, shaking her head. "I won't argue with
you. Just drive."

"Just drive?" he says, disbelievingly. "That's the end of the
argument? Who are you and what have you done with Dana Scully?"

"I said drive, Mulder," she says. "I can't stand those long, 'He
thinks that I think that he thinks that but I know that he
doesn't know that I don't think that' routines."

She turns her head toward the window, sure that it's better to
risk a splitting headache by looking out the side window than to
let him see her face right now, or to see his. Her refusal to
lock horns with him mentally will have shaken him as badly as
anything that has happened lately, but she does not have the
strength right now to heal the wound she has dealt him.

The old days are gone, and she will not prolong the argument in
memory of them. Better to let it go. Loss has been part of her
daily life for the past nine years, and great as this loss is,
she has already begun to accept it.

He, despite his long exile, does not know just how far from
them their old lives have gone, and how irrecoverable their
losses are. But he will ... he will. She will look out the side
window, watching the desert places appear and disappear, unable
to retreat from them, unwilling for him to watch as the desert
places in her soul come to life and consume her.

*****

He drives them to a mall in Roswell and they buy jeans and T-
shirts, socks and running shoes, a nightgown and bathrobe for her
and pajama bottoms for him, shampoo, razors, a hairdryer for her,
a Sports Illustrated for him, a six-pack of Shiner Bock for them
both and a small bag of sunflower seeds -- his one indulgence in
his true self.

She gives him her watch, telling him the battery is wearing down,
and he dutifully goes in search of a jeweler. While he is gone,
she makes another purchase, a small one, a purchase required in
equal parts by her hope that she needs it and her hope that he
will not want it.

He returns with the watch, and they go to the parking lot, and
spend 15 minutes searching for a car they haven't owned long
enough to recognize easily. They find it, and he drives them to a
small, rundown motel and checks them in. The room is small, the
bedspread thin and worn, the furniture old and unattractive and
damaged, but it is safety for the moment, it is familiar.

She wants him to shower first -- he is tired from driving and he
hasn't had a decent bath since he was arrested, although she
tries not to think of that, of him standing naked and humiliated
while the guards with their truncheons watch, while icy water
drenches him but never long enough to get him clean ... no, she
won't think of that. Better to think of the desert heat, of the
sweat that poured down his back as he stood before his father in
the pueblo, of the endless dust of the endless desert highway.

Maybe he's seen her pity in her eyes, because he refuses, gently,
telling her that he's going out for some ice, and so she takes
the blue plastic bag full of cheap cosmetics and store-brand bath
salts with her into the tiny bathroom.

Twenty minutes later, she emerges, scrubbed clean, wearing the
new robe, feeling as though she is playing the part of the woman
she used to be. This once was familiar and now it is not, and
because of that, her life at this moment is more frightening and
unfamiliar than any new life could ever be.

One thing already is different, though, and that gives her the
strength to ground herself in this new world: He is there, in her
room, in their room, sitting on the floor, his back leaning
against the bed, his head fallen back against the chenille spread
in defeat. Two of the beers are gone already. It's dark, but she
can see the weariness in every line of his body as he watches the
rain, possibly the only rain Roswell will see this month.

Rain and dark and a motel room ... oh, yes, she remembers this;
for a moment, she can almost feel the irritating itch of
mosquito bites on her back, the chilled air on her arms as she
impulsively dropped her robe before him all those years ago. The
itch stopped right away, but her skin is marked forever by the
feel of his arms around her as he comforted her. Those are the
marks that matter, she thinks. Those are the marks that last.

"You must be thirsty," she says, and he smiles.

"It's not going to stay cold for long, Scully," he says.
"The ice is melting fast. Better drink up now."

"Give me one," she says, and he does, opening it before he
gives it to her.

"Thanks," she says, and she sits on the edge of the bed and
drinks, more deeply than she'd planned, but they have been in the
desert. Even with all the water they've drunk in the past few
days, she's still dehydrated, so she drinks it down but she
refuses his offer of another.

She lies on the bed, resting her head on her hand, and she
watches him, watches the way the bluish-white light from the
street lamps traces shadows across his face, watches the smooth
line of his throat and the beating pulse at his temple. She wants
to press her lips against that pulse, but she knows the time is
not yet.

She is a healer, and she will heal him.

She has lost so many things, but this, she can never lose, not as
long as he lives; his need of her and his longing for her are a
linear pattern that presses straight through his whole existence.
He let her into his heart and he cannot let her back out.

It has been years since that knowledge made her afraid.

"What are you thinking?" she says, but he doesn't answer her
right away, so she speaks again. "Mulder?"

"I'm thinking," he says, slowly, "I'm a guilty man. I've failed
in every respect. I deserve the harshest punishment for my
crimes."

For a moment, then, she is afraid; fear like a silver icepick
stabs into her heart and her brain immediately responds, reeling
off the medical and psychological effects of brainwashing as
best it can ... but then she remembers his Hannibal Lecter
imitation, and his laugh, and his warm, sweet kiss, and she
sends the fear away.

"You don't believe that," she says, gently chiding him, and he
sighs in acknowledgement ... or surrender.

"I believe," he says, slowly, "that I sat in a motel room like
this with you when we first met, and I tried to convince you of
the truth. And in that respect, I succeeded, but in every other
way ... I failed."

"You don't believe that either," she says, and each word is
weighted with certainty.

"I've been chasing after monsters with a butterfly net," he
says, looking at her. "You heard the man -- the date's set, I
can't change that."

She understands now. It isn't brainwashing or alien torture that
is driving him to this despair, it's that he is seeing himself
through his own eyes, and those are to him the eyes of judgment.
But she can turn his vision around ... she can show him what she
sees in him, and as always, whether he believes her or not, he
will trust her.

"You wouldn't tell me," she says, slowly, willing him to
believe her, "not because you were afraid, or broken, but
because you didn't want to accept defeat."

"No," he says, thoughtfully.  "I was afraid of ... what it would
do to you. I was afraid that it would crush ... your spirit."

"Why would I accept defeat?" she says. "Why would I accept it
if you won't?"

He struggles for a moment to find an answer but, finding none, he
only sighs again.

"You say that you've failed," she says. "But you only fail if
you give up. And I know you -- you can't give up. It's what I
saw in you when we first met; it's what made me follow you, and
why I'd do it all over again."

"And look what it's gotten you," he says, softly.

"And what has it gotten you?" she says. "Not your sister.
Nothing that you've set out for. But you won't give up, even
now. "

His eyes acknowledge the truth of what she says, and she takes
his hand.

"You've always said that you want to believe," she says. "But
believe in what, Mulder? If this is the truth that you've been
looking for, then what is left to believe in?"

Again, his answer comes slowly, and that pleases her. He will not
dismiss her with a flippant remark, not now; the tissues of his
heart are tender, vulnerable, easily torn, but there will be no
joke to shield them from hurt. His heart is open to hers now as
it has never been before.

"I want to believe that ... the dead are not lost to us," he
says, and she can hear the tears that are waiting to surface,
much as he fights them. Mulder will cry when he must, but it
shames and scalds him nevertheless, and she hopes for his sake
that he can say this without tears, as he wants to say it.

"That they speak to us," he continues, still struggling, "as part
of something greater than this, bigger than any enemy force. And
if you and I are powerless now, I want to believe that if we
listen to what's speaking, it can give us the power to save
ourselves."

"Then we believe the same thing," she says, gently.

His eyes are open to her now, as open as they have ever been, and
they speak their truth in their hope, in their hesitancy ... they
have both been afraid to believe, and they have found their
beliefs in each other, from across a chasm of defenses and hurts
and desperate losses they could never have imagined nine years
ago, nine long years of nights alone until that first lonely
night when she offered and he accepted and they became one in the
flesh as they had always longed to be.

She remembers that night as he reaches toward her, taking her
tiny gold cross between his long, careful fingers ... it was just
so that he reached for her, hesitant, longing, wanting to feed
his starving soul on her rich beauty ... just so, just as
reverently, had he touched her flesh, and when he places his
thumb on her lips for the kiss he needs, she smiles, because she
thinks that maybe he remembers it, too ...

He comes to her then, and she takes him in her arms, small as she
is, holding this tall, strong man gently in her embrace, nuzzling
at his face, waiting, remembering, moved almost to tears at how
easy and natural it is now to lie on a bed with him and hold him.
She waits, and in a moment, he speaks.

"Maybe there's hope," he says.

His hands are large and warm on her hip, and he pulls her to him
with his long leg, wrapping himself around her, drawing her
warmth into himself.

She listens as his breathing becomes slower, lying motionless in
his arms as he drifts away into sleep ... she holds him and
anchors him in this time and place, in this world where life is
unknowingly ticking down to oblivion, and she promises the unseen
world that he will be there for them ... if there is a way to
stop this unfathomable countdown, he will do it. He will do it,
and he will live to see his son again, and William will know one
day that he was loved and longed for and relinquished in agony so
that there might be a world in which to laugh and love and grow
tall and strong like his father ... he will know, and he will be
proud.

It will happen. She will make sure of it.

She lays her head on his shoulder and she sleeps. She sleeps,
watching over him, and in her arms he does not awaken until
morning comes.

*****

Kathy's Song
(P. Simon, 1965)

I hear the drizzle of the rain
Like a memory it falls
Soft and warm continuing
Tapping on my roof and walls.
 
And from the shelter of my mind
Through the window of my eyes
I gaze beyond the rain-drenched streets
To England where my heart lies.

My mind's distracted and diffused
My thoughts are many miles away
They lie with you when you're asleep
And kiss you when you start your day.

And as a song I was writing is left undone
I don't know why I spend my time
Writing songs I can't believe
With words that tear and strain to rhyme.

And so you see I have come to doubt
All that I once held as true
I stand alone without beliefs
The only truth I know is you.

And as I watch the drops of rain
Weave their weary paths and die
I know that I am like the rain
There but for the grace of you go I.

 *****
 END "The Only Truth I Know" by Jean Helms (1/1)
Feedback, etc., to jeanlhelms@yahoo.com