From: theidiosyncraticstanwyck@yahoo.com   
      
   Title: Spectrum   
   Author: the idiosyncratic stanwyck   
   Email: theidiosyncraticstanwyck@yahoo.com   
   Category/Keywords: AU, MSR, A (not too much)   
   Rating: R   
   Summary: A woman meets a man who opens her eyes to a vast,   
   unexpected spectrum of beautiful, terrifying possibilities.   
      
   Mini-notes: I'm posting this part early because it's brief,   
   and as a reward for those of you who have been so supportive.   
   I'm especially grateful to Angie, Siggy, and Kristy. Oh -   
   and I'm perfectly aware that Scully appears to behave very   
   oddly in Chapter 10; she will explain in her own time.   
      
   Chapter 9: Crimson   
      
   "Beauty's ensign yet is crimson in thy lips and in they   
   cheeks, and death's pale flag is not advanced." - Shakespeare   
      
   **   
      
   Scully's sleep-fogged brain sluggishly worked to process   
   the ear-piercing, inhuman screech that had yanked her from   
   slumber. For a moment she thought it was the warning cry of   
   the smoke alarm, but the apartment was silent, peaceful.   
      
   As her hammering heart slowed and sweat cooled on her body,   
   leaving her skin irritated and scratchy, she realized the   
   sound had come from within the cave of her own tortured   
   nightmares, a wail of jagged, choking despair. Panicked,   
   she groped for the bedside lamp. A pale yellow glow   
   suffused the room and she sat up, the cool, smooth   
   headboard wonderfully solid at her back.   
      
   If her dream had ever been coherent, now it was slipping   
   from her grasp, details fading as surely as shadows faded   
   in the light. She was left with a picture of herself   
   studying her own x-rays, her eyes riveted on the pale,   
   solid mass rooted at the center of her forehead, with the   
   sensation of cold hospital tile beneath her shuffling bare   
   feet, with blinding pain and Mulder's anguished eyes and   
   her life slipping away with each drop of rich crimson blood   
   trickling down her upper lip. One hand rose to her throat,   
   as if her fingers could touch the origin of her silent   
   scream. Her other hand drifted to her forehead, drawing   
   rings around the source of her phantom pain.   
      
   Scully folded her knees to her chest and drew the covers   
   over them. She couldn't stop shaking, trembling so   
   violently that she felt as if her entire body were   
   vibrating.   
      
   Remission was both the most beautiful and the most   
   treacherous word in the English lexicon. Six years ago Dana   
   had realized the fragility not only of human life but of   
   *her* life in the most brutal, personal manner possible.   
   Death had encroached too deeply upon Scully's life for her   
   ever to forget its indelible imprint; as if in retaliation,   
   she had lived the last several years as if she were   
   immortal. When you cheated fate once, it became easy to   
   imagine that you were stronger, smarter, more *permanent*   
   than death's reach.   
      
   This dream brought reality crashing down upon Dana. Death   
   was inevitable. In her mind Scully saw her blood spatter   
   across the pristine whiteness of a blank page and felt her   
   horizon shrink. Confronted with the immediacy of her own   
   mortality, Scully felt the sickeningly familiar internal   
   rot of a slow death.   
      
   Instinctively she cradled her lower abdomen, her muscles   
   quivering as they protected the place where her disease had   
   lived, had perhaps been reborn.   
      
   "It's not real," she whimpered, hoping frantically that the   
   sound of her voice would ground her in reality. Praying   
   that health and life *were* reality.   
      
   She forced herself to lie down but couldn't turn off the   
   light. The thought of darkness was unbearable. When she   
   closed her eyes she saw the flow of her blood widening from   
   a trickle to a crimson cascade, filling her lungs and   
   choking her.   
      
   Gasping for breath, she jerked upright and grabbed the   
   cordless phone. Her stiff fingers had pounded out the first   
   half of Mulder's number before she realized that he was in   
   San Francisco.   
      
   "Shit," she swore, dropping the receiver onto the   
   comforter. Her eyes roamed the room. He always stayed at   
   the same hotel on Nob Hill; if she called information and   
   got the number, she could be talking to him in minutes -   
   seconds, even. He might question her late-night phone call,   
   but he would not force her to explain. His sleepy monotone   
   would sooth her, wash over her like a healing balm.   
      
   In fact, the thought of Mulder had calmed Dana almost   
   enough to allow her to breathe normally. Replacing the   
   phone, she stood and smoothed the covers. There was no need   
   to call Mulder and worry him - and if she behaved in a   
   fashion so out of character, he would certainly worry. She   
   ambled into the kitchen for a glass of water, then looked   
   in on Chloe.   
      
   It was ridiculous to be so shaken. She'd had no symptoms to   
   suggest that her illness had returned, and her bout with   
   ovarian cancer in no way predisposed Scully to some sort of   
   bizarre brain tumor. This nightmare, she assured herself,   
   was merely a product of her imagination, just as all her   
   other dreams were.   
      
   Bathed in the light of day, figments from the dim reaches   
   of nightmares were supposed to vanish as suddenly as they   
   descended. Instead, as Dana sat at her desk at 9 a.m.,   
   surrounded by a cheerful pool of sunlight, she still felt   
   invaded, haunted. Scared.   
      
   With a sigh, she dropped her pencil and pressed her palm to   
   her forehead. Her movements endowed with a force that was   
   almost vicious, she flipped through her rolodex to the card   
   she was looking for. Dialing the number, she felt unsteady,   
   a little crazy.   
      
   The woman's voice was cheerful and businesslike when she   
   answered. "Good morning, you've reached the Women's Medical   
   Center of Georgetown. How may I direct your call?"   
      
   "I need to make an appointment with Dr. Maglione, please."   
      
   "One moment, ma'am. Let me transfer you."   
      
   The second voice was even more relentlessly peppy; perhaps,   
   Scully considered, she cloaked her voice in such positivism   
   because her job surrounded her with such a degree of   
   suffering and death.   
      
   "Oncology, this is Mary."   
      
   "Mary, my name is Dana Scully. I'd like to make an   
   appointment with Dr. Maglione."   
      
   Scully listened to the reassuring clicking of computer   
   keys. "Ms. Scully, I'm showing that you're scheduled for a   
   continuing care visit with Dr. Maglione in June."   
      
   Scully kept her voice low so that John couldn't overhear.   
   "Yes, but I'd like to come sooner, please, as soon as   
   possible."   
      
   "Have you developed any symptoms the doctor should know   
   about?"   
      
   "Ah, no. No. This is just for my own peace of mind."   
      
   Scully closed her eyes tightly, and when she opened them   
   the world danced and wavered. Wherever she looked, crimson   
   starbursts exploded in the center of her field of vision,   
   each explosion endowed with the destroying, life-taking   
   power of a drop of human blood.   
      
   **   
      
   Chapter 10: A Patch of Blue   
      
   "Send a long letter way back home, says, 'All that I know,   
   all that I know is the blue sky' - The farther I come, the   
   farther I fall - Whatever I knew is nothing at all..."   
   - Patty Griffin   
      
   **   
      
   Hypnotized by hours of staring at the busy gold and red   
   print of the airplane's upholstery, Mulder let the drab   
   beiges and browns of the hallway connecting the plane to   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)