From: anonymousaurus@yahoo.com.au   
      
   Title: Camera Lucida I: Latency   
     Author: tree   
     E-mail address: nullipara@gmail.com   
     Distribution: I'll take care of gossamer, ephemeral, AXF to ATXC;   
     anywhere else just let me know so I can visit.   
      
     Spoilers: Abduction arc, Red Museum   
     Rating: R for sexual situations and language   
     Category: VRA   
     Keywords: MSR   
     Summary: Companion piece to Camera Obscura I: Latency by A. Kelley   
     Nolan. You should read that first.  No, I mean it.  Go, now.  Go.   
      
     Author's Notes:   
      
     The opening owes a debt to CazQ's "Flight of the Bumblebee".  I   
     dabble in everyone's universes these days.   
      
     When Kelley asked me to beta something she was working on, I believe   
     my response was "not just yes, but hell yes."  When she suggested I   
     take up Scully's part of the story, I was both thrilled and   
     terrified.  I could not have done this without her brilliant beta,   
     support, and late night jetlag conversations.  Not to mention the   
     fluffernutters.  In bold, italic, and very large font: thank you.   
      
     *   
      
     Camera Lucida I: Latency   
      
     Everything happens for the first time.   
     --from Happiness, by Jorge Luis Borges / trans by Stephen Kessler   
      
     *   
      
     The week after she was released from the hospital, a gale blew   
     through the city.  Mulder had come to her apartment and taken her   
     outside to stand in the wind. The air burned its way through her, the   
     heat of ice in her lungs, the pulse of blood rushing for warmth.  And   
     that was the first time she felt it: the lack, the deadening.  There   
     was a hollowness to her now that echoed.  Her own mind, always   
     absolutely under her control, had betrayed her.  A part of her life   
     was gone and with it some of her surety in herself.   
      
     On their first case together she had told Mulder that time is a   
     universal  invariant, that it can't just disappear.  It was just one   
     truth in her world of  truths that no longer seemed to apply.  She   
     had almost gotten over being startled by the date on the calendar.   
     Missing time does not mean that  time is gone; merely that it is gone   
     from you.  The lack was a wound.   
      
     There was a three-month void inside her, a knot of nothingness that   
     had  mass, had gravity, like a black hole.  Her body felt dense and   
     heavy with this absence filling her up.  But her family treated her   
     like crystal,  something fine and delicate, something that could not   
     possibly bear weight.  In the hospital people whispered around her as   
     if she were too  brittle to withstand sound, as if any pitch would   
     shatter her.   
      
     It only made her want to shout and break things, split something open   
     to show that she was not fragile at all.  She healed, just like   
     everyone else.   
      
     When she returned to work, Mulder's eyes followed her everywhere.   
     There was something new in them she couldn't name.  Not as though he   
     thought that she was lessened, but as if he was holding her place in   
     the universe, tethering her.  She wanted to assure him of her   
     corporeality.  She wanted to tell him that she had missed him in   
     retrospect.  When she woke up and knew she had been without him, the   
     missing was a fierce burn inside her.  She wanted him to know that   
     she knew he had saved her, when no one else could, to make him   
     believe it.   
      
     Instead they worked cases, filed paperwork, flew to Wisconsin to   
     investigate possible teenage possession and eat ribs wearing   
     ridiculous plastic bibs.  It made her want to laugh at the absurdity   
     with a peculiar kind of joy.  This was her life and she had come back   
     to it.  She had come back to him, this man, her partner.   
      
     Her sister thought she was in love with him.  But she told herself it   
     was attraction, maybe something as simple and adolescent as a crush.   
     She admired him, she respected him.  She even liked him.  It was   
     chemistry, biology, physics.  It was an intellectual fascination.   
     But it was not love.  She could not allow it to be.   
      
     Now he sat across from her at Clay's BBQ, his eyes on her but not   
     seeing.  She knew the signs of his distraction.  She watched his   
     expression grow rigid and the slow motion stretch of his hand to her   
     face.  The touch was gentle, fleeting, a soft swipe next to her   
     mouth.  There was a momentary flutter of embarrassment, but   
     underneath it hummed a low current of arousal.  It was certainly not   
     the first time she'd felt it, though lately it seemed sharper,   
     keener, as if her skin was stretched so tightly over her flesh she   
     might pop.  Sometimes the feeling was akin to pain.   
      
     Later, all she would remember of the drive back to the motel was his   
     hands on the steering wheel: the movement of the tendons under the   
     skin, the elegance of his fingers, the short square nails.  She   
     wanted to know what it felt like to have those hands moving on her   
     just once.  The idea made her mouth dry, made every hair on her arms   
     stand on end.  She was a lightning rod waiting for the storm.   
      
     It seemed only natural that she should stand beside him as he   
     unlocked his door, that she should precede him into the room.  Her   
     body felt coiled with waiting, with the tense hush before a tempest   
     the earth knows is coming.  The when is almost always a mystery.   
     Lightning is nature's most unpredictable, inevitable force.   
      
     Caught between his body and the table, her arms trapped by her coat,   
     he kissed her.  It was a sudden immersion in heat, a plunge and a   
     gasp, and then her hands reached for his body.  Her fingers slid up   
     the warm cotton of his shirt and when his mouth parted hers she   
     thought of fire.  Suddenly, she was ravenous to touch him everywhere,   
     to feel how solid he was, how real.  Her hands would not be still.   
      
     When he pulled away she whispered his name.  The eyes that met her   
     own were hooded and as hot as his mouth.  She felt scalded by his   
     gaze.  "I don't want you to leave tonight, Scully."   
      
     The air was gathering, snapping with electrical charge.  Her face   
     was flushed.  She nodded and gave him a promise.  "Then I won't   
     leave."  There was no other answer to give.   
      
     His mouth was already against hers again and his breath seared her   
     lips when he whispered, "I don't have anything."  His voice shot   
     straight to her core.   
      
     "It's okay," she told him, arousal rising bright and terrible inside   
     her. "It's taken care of."   
      
     "I'm clean," he said then and in that moment it didn't matter at   
     all.  Nothing mattered but easing this ache, forgetting what she   
     could not remember.  He would ground her.  He would keep right on   
     saving her.   
      
     She arched her fingers against his spine, pressing herself into him.   
     He answered by pulling off her coat and his own and finally brought   
     the bright flame of his mouth back to hers.  Their hands stumbled   
     over buttons as she tried to consume and be consumed at once.  Then   
     he was naked before her, all velvet and steel, glowing.  He backed   
     her toward the bed and covered her like an eclipse, so that only his   
     dark heat could sear her.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)