Starve.Org White Noise Usenet Archive: "New: (2/2) 'Arm's Length'"

Dear folks,
Well this is part 2. Once again please direct all comments to the
author and not me. Thanks to everyone out there. It's been fun, but now I
am off into the "real world" and I'll lose the best way to get internet
access, through universities. I may be back, if my new internet service
provider has news access that doesn't cost too much money. If any one out
there reading this lives in Colorado Springs, I'd love to hear about your
ISP and if you like it.
Once again, thanks to all you wonderful writers out there. You
added alot of pleasure to my life and saved me lots of money in book
stores. Thanks.
Farewell,

Kristen Templet
Always with Honor
Starfox
Kat

From jcochran@brynmawr.edu Mon Dec 16 18:43:05 1996
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Date: Mon, 16 Dec 1996 19:43:34 -0500
To: templet@umr.edu
From: jcochran@brynmawr.edu (The Fire and the Rose)
Subject: New: (2/2) "Arm's Length"
Status: O

"Arm's Length" (2/2)
by The Fire and the Rose (gjfritz@artsci.wustl.edu)
Rated PG

*****
Scully leaned against Mulder's solid warmth for a long moment, then
drew back. "Where are we? Where's Burke?"

Mulder looked around. The landscape had changed subtly; it was
rockier, hillier. "We're still in the office, I bet. Also in somebody's
mind." He called out challengingly: "Burke? You hear us, Burke? We made
it! We passed your test! Let us help you!
YOU ONLY FACED YOUR DEMONS. NOT MINE. The voice welled up from
the earth, fell from the sky. The ground shook, dropping Mulder and Scully
to their knees. AND THERE ARE SO MANY. The clouds thickened, darkened,
until there was no light at all except for the pearly glow that was Scully.
Mulder reached for her but the congealing darkness had formed waves which
broke over them both, waves which were images, sounds, emotions, concepts,
ripping away all individual thought.
<<This is a rapist's lust. This is the secret deathwish of a man I
passed on the street. This is the sound of a child starving. This is
somebody's mother's dead face. This is the taste of bile in the mouth of a
fourteen-year-old bulemic girl. In every room I walk into, every face I
look into, I see it. This is the coursing of heroin in a vein. This is a
monster from my childhood nightmare. This is what drives someone to carve
their own flesh.>>
Burke raged, cataloging his torture, all the psychic taint he had
unwillingly absorbed. Inside himself the cringing, whispering man was a
suffering Christ, eternally redeeming nothing.
(This is the reaching out across void.)
<<This is unrequited love. This is a father whose child is dead.
This is the enjoyment of the suffering of animals.>>
(This is my hand in yours.)
<<This is an old man's longing for life. This is the cold of
sleeping in the street. This is pulling the trigger of a gun; and this is
feeling the bullet strike your flesh.>>
(This is your voice calling me.)
<<It is everywhere, it taints everyone. Even the best-intentioned
cannot resist it. So this is the knowledge of betrayal.>>
(Then this is the impossible. This is trust.)
They were beating back a little space. The waves of pain struck
the breaker-wall that was Mulder and Scully's awareness of each other, and
rolled across them without sweeping them away. They gripped tight and
fought against the storm around them.
<<this is...this is...>>
(Don't listen. Hold on.)
Around them Burke unleashed all the torment of his existence. They
could see shapes in the surges of sensation that passed over them:
strangely distorted images of specters with claws. They did not pause over
Mulder and Scully, but swept over them, circling, drawn toward the center
of the storm.
(Burke's demons. It's getting worse.)
(Don't listen. Don't look.)
(If we're still in the office we could escape this.)
It was hard to tell where the thoughts came from, hard to
distinguish self from other. But the desire to be free of Burke's mind was
the same in both of them. They tossed it back and forth, amplifying it
between themselves, reminding each other what the real room was like, how
the light was, the temperature, the smell of the leather chairs... Their
grip on each other loosened as each began to remember separately; fingers
slid apart, but the lightest of touches remained between them...
Scully opened her eyes. Her cheek lay against the stiff carpet.
She pushed herself up and saw Burke collapsed an arm's length from her.
Mulder stirred in his chair and lifted his head. Scully was
crawling toward Burke, feeling for a pulse. Mulder reached for his
cellphone and dialed for an ambulance.

The two agents stood, grim-faced and weary, as Burke was carried
away unconscious on a stretcher.
"A heart attack?" said Mulder finally.
"I think so," Scully replied. She cast a last glance back at the
office, which on her directive was being searched for traces of chemical
agents. Drugs could have caused that effect, she told herself. Drugs and
powerful suggestion. He was a chemist.
But the specific scenarios had been the gift of her own
unconscious. Those voices...her back tightened.
Mulder touched her arm. She started out of her recollection, her
wide eyes finding his. His face was lined and tired. She thought she knew
how he was feeling.
"Let's get back to D.C.," he said.

The highway lights sliding by and the soft hum of the car's engine
were soothing to Scully. Anything but darkness and gargoyle voices.
"Do you think we have a case?" Mulder asked after a long silence.
"Circumstantial evidence, and his confession on tape," Scully
answered softly, still looking out the window. "We'll have a better one if
they do find traces of a drug. But he may never recover."
"You know, if they hadn't all been psychiatrists, we never would
have noticed him. He could have killed any number of people. The deaths
would all have appeared natural."
Scully was too weary to be rattled by the grim thought. Some other
notion was worrying the back of her mind. They were turning off at an exit
before she found words for it. "But we made it. Just us? Why?"
"We were prepared."
"How can you be prepared for something like that?"
It was Mulder's turn to draw out the silence. "It was not so
unfamiliar to me," he said finally.

They drew up in front of Scully's house. She leaned back against
her seat, making no move to unbuckle and leave the car. Mulder stared into
a space beyond the windshield, in no hurry. The barren rain-slicked street
led only to an empty house and a long sleepless night.
Scully spoke tiredly. "Want to come in and have hot chocolate or
something?"
"Don't you want to get some sleep?" Mulder asked her.
"Too wound up," she said. She was exhausted, but her spine was
still stiff with tension; and she didn't want the dreams that would come to
her if she slept right now.
"Okay," said Mulder, and turned off the car. "Sure."

"Thanks," he mumbled as she put a hot mug into his hands. He
didn't particularly like cocoa but he sipped at it. They sat at Scully's
kitchen table, the light bright and reassuring. She kicked off her shoes
and rolled down the knee-high hose she wore under her pantsuit. Mulder
loosened his tie. They drifted off down their own separate thoughts, the
company making those thoughts easier to pursue.
Halfway through her mug of hot chocolate, she commented, "You know,
on some level, even through the drug or whatever it was, I knew you were
there."
He gave her an unamused stare. So she was already looking for a
way out, for an explanation besides telepathy. When her mind had been
side-by-side with his. "Rationalize in the morning, Scully," he said; but
there was no sting to his voice. She inclined her head in tacit
acquiesence.
The shared silence drifted across their thoughts like snow,
covering their worries with smooth, blank sleepiness. Little by little
Scully's shoulders unclenched, until she found herself staring into the
bottom of her mug and feeling ready to go to sleep. She raised her head;
Mulder was staring at the table. She thought he might sit there all night
if she didn't say anything. They were both still caught a little in
Burke's onslaught, still gripping each other in the storm of...of whatever
it had been. It felt dangerous to separate.
"Mulder, if you want to stay here...there's the couch," she offered.
He blinked out of his reverie. "No," he said after a moment. "No,
I should go home. I have my own couch." He pushed himself up, began
pulling on his coat. Facing the door, he felt a heavy, familiar,
reasonless sorrow settling on him.
There were personal areas between the two of them that had, after
all they'd faced, been fairly well-navigated; dependable paths had been
established. And then there was territory where they never ventured.
Usually Scully was constantly aware of the boundaries. Usually she was
carefully concerned with respecting them.
Tonight it seemed impossible to misstep. Burke had recklessly
broken all the borders, had pushed them both into regions where they'd
rather not have ever gone. They were still making the arduous journey
back. But somehow it felt like that meant that they couldn't misunderstand
each other.
Scully stepped up beside Mulder and laid an easy hand on his back,
as he had done so many times with her. "Stay. With me," she said. "We
can sleep back to back."
Her simple presence at his side was a comfort he was reluctant to
surrender. His thoughts were all dim. It was unorthodox but what the
hell. It wouldn't hurt anything to crash at Scully's. "Yeah," he said.
"Okay."
She mutely led him to the bedroom and then disappeared into the
bathroom. He pulled off his shirt and pants and crawled into her bed. The
sheets smelled freshly washed. She had a thick, fluffy comforter. And two
pillows. He was almost asleep when she crawled in too and snapped off the
lights. He reached for her hand as the darkness fell, twining his fingers
tightly in hers. Throughout the night their grips remained locked, as,
navigating their separate dreamscapes, they each pulled the other one arm's
length back from the worst of it.

*****

That's it. Remember feedback goes to (gjfritz@artsci.wustl.edu). Thanks
for reading!