Screams from the Bluebells (1/1) by Dom Parker (Domino F16@aol.com) Catagory: S/A, M/S UST (come on guys, put them in the same room, instant UST) Rated: PG-13, maybe even PG, whatever. Summery: Oh, wait...a real one? Sigh. Mulder is trapped in a place where past and future collide, where the lies are the only truths; a place he can never hope to escape. Sometimes hell can exist in only one room... Spoilers: Vague movie reference, Tunguska...all really vague people. Disclaimer: Yadda yadda yadda, blah blah blah, they're not mine, they belong to CC, Fox, DD, GA and the gads of lawyers these guys employ. Speaking of lawyers, suing me would be an exercise in futility; I have no money. If you saw my paycheck you would be forced to concur with my assessment. Author's Note: This story is not something I wanted to write, in fact, I fought diligently to *not* write it. Unfortunately, my muse pushed the issue and this is the result. Also, in case anyone cares, the small part of me that was still captaining the ship, so to speak, was planning on there being a bit more to the story. However, at what is the end, a small voice in my head laughed and said "That's it! It's finished!!" Let it also be known that I mostly deplore the present tense of writing, as well as the premise for this story...further proof someone swapped my muse for an evil clone Feedback: Yes. Please. As my good pal Darkstryder (who's web page is one of the best on the net) says, "Feedback is not an option. Resist or Serve". This is only my second attempt, so I'm still in the "please tell me if I suck or not" phase :-) I'm not sensitive to criticism guys, if you can think of ways that would improve my writing (please note that "Die you sucky author" is not one of them) *tell* me. Now I will leave you alone :-) * * * * * * * * * Hell is not as exotic as most people think. There's no lake of fire, no ever-raining brimstone, and it doesn't reverberate with the screams of the damned. Hell is a room, and the only screams are the ones in your head. No. Such a simple word. It rolls off the tongue easily, it's meaning is uncomplicated, simple in the extreme. It is a word of resistance, a word of denial, a word of refusal; it is usually the first word people learn to speak. "No." He says if flatly, disbelief and utter denial uttered confidently in the single syllable. He is tied to the chair, about his wrists and feet, binding him in place, not really in any position to argue with anyone. The slender woman in front of him shakes her head impatiently, unwilling to wait for him to accept. Familiar hazel eyes set in her mother's delicate face darken to gold-flecked brown; her father's wide mouth tightens in irritation. She takes a step forward until she stands directly in front of him, plants her hands on her hips, and leans over at the waist in a gesture that mimics one he has used countless times. "Yes." She tells him, her voice strong and certain, utterly unlike the unsure, demure tones he has heard her use before. Suddenly she leans back, rocks back on her heels, and a smile curves her mobile mouth into a elfin grin. "Fox." She says with a fond contempt. "Fox, when are you going to stop believing only what you want to believe. I thought the truth was important to you." "It is," his tells her, hating her for destroying his illusions, "I've devoted my life to it." The room is hatefully white. White ceiling, white walls, white floors. It is bright and sterile and hellish. She is not wearing white, she is wearing blue jeans and a soft pink angora sweater. He is not wearing anything because they took his clothes away. She looks at his nakedness, as if noticing it for the first time, and then she looks into his eyes, dark green with anger and pain. "Actually," she tells him thoughtfully, "Actually you've devoted your life to half truths. Not all lies Fox, you needn't worry about that. But there's not really a *whole* truth in your life either." "Yes there is." He says stubbornly, knowing that she is referring to the Greatest Most Hideous Lie he has heard since he was taken. Was that a month ago? Two? Maybe more? "You should know better, Fox. Trust No One, remember?" "That is not a whole truth," he tells her harshly, "I trust only one." "Yes, I know." She fiddles with a button on her sweater absently, bored. "You trust only *her*." "Yes." His voice is softer, for the first time in days it looses it's gravel-over-glass rasp. His eyes are softer too, the green lightening and gold swimming up like little fish in a dark pool. "As it turns out," says the woman who looks much like the young girl in dark braids frozen in time on a swingset with a wide smile who has sat on his end-table forever, "As it turns out, she's here." For the first time since he first came here, he stiffens with adrenaline, strains against his bonds. His eyes are almost black with rage, and his hair is falling into his eyes. "Stop being such a child Fox," she looks at him with disapproval, scowling much like the young girl with dark braids who always lost ‘Stratigo’ and didn't want to watch the Magician. "If you hurt her I will kill you." He snarls, "I will fucking put you down, and I don't care if you're my sister." Still he strains against the wires that hold him in place, and they cut into him. He bleeds, but he does not notice. "Such language Fox," she chides him teasingly, looking very much like the young girl who learned all the words to 'The Sound of Music' so she could aggravate him by singing that stupid 'Good-night' song. "Let her go," his voice goes from fury to pleading, "Please Samantha, you don't want her. If you ever loved me, let her go." "For Christ's sake!" she is irritated now, and pulls a hand through her brown curls, pinning the locks behind her head, "How dense can you be? Do I have to spell it out for you Fox?" She says the next words slowly, spelling them out the way she would have to for a small, not-very-bright child. "She. Is. Not. Being. Held. Here. Against. Her. Will." He knows what she is saying, because she has said it before, but he also knows that it is a lie. The Greatest, Most Hideous Lie. He glares at her weakly to let her know that he has not been sucked in by her poisonous accusation. "You're not going to take my word for this, are you Brother?" Samantha asks petulantly, looking much like the little girl who used to pout because he got to stay up a whole half hour later then she did. Then she smiled at him, a saccharine lifting of her lips, "But since you trust her so much, maybe you'll listen to her. Would you like to speak to her Fox?" He whimpers deep in the back of his throat, because he does want to speak to her, he does so badly. But they will try to use her against him, she isn't safe in this cold white room where he sits naked, tied up by wire that has bitten into his wrists and ankles drawing blood to mar the prestine whiteness of the floor. He nods, then shakes his head almost in the same movement, and finally settles for glaring at the woman who looks alot like the person he has spent his whole life looking for, except that she is not nice. It seems that Samantha has made up her mind already, because she turns to the white door that is exactly the same bright color as the walls and ceiling and floor. "Bring her in," she says in a voice that is used to being obeyed because bad things happen when it is not. It is the voice of their father who would drink vodka and orange juice and hit little boys who made too much noise, or not enough, or whatever. He looks at her, at the face with the sharp chin that is his mother's, and the nose that is also her mother's, which is good because to inherit his father's nose like he had would have sucked for a girl, and the moody hazel eyes from her mother, and her father's mouth and voice, and he thinks that family reunions are a bitch, especially when they take place in the form of one person you have given everything to see again and who turns out to be an emissary for aliens who want to take over the world and colonize it. And then the white door is opening and he is straining to see out of it, for a glimpse of a color that is not harsh, sterile white. It has been so long since he has seen any colors other then the ones that Samantha wears, and he misses it. The white door is opening, and it seems that the hall or whatever is behind it is also that awful color of white, lit with the same horrid florescent bulbs the seem like they're 1 million watt or something. He feels a moments twinge of disappointment, but it passes immediately; it is after all, a very small disappointment when compared with what his life has become. And now, suddenly, there is a flash of color, real, vibrant color so alive and beautiful. It is his favorite color red, silky and soft and tucked behind one perfect ear. She walks into the room with her quick, precise stride, the one that he knows she must have acquired as a little girl, practicing her father's military walk. She looks perfect, beautiful, strong and unbeaten. Her chin is high, and blue, blue, electric blue, ice blue, sea green eyes lock on his muddied hazel ones, and there is that spark he has almost forgotten in his misery. A ragged sigh pushes it's way past his throat, and for almost a whole second he is so happy to see her that he doesn't care that she has been sucked into this bright white hell with him. She sort of gasps when she sees him, a short, sudden sound in the back of her throat. Then the blue eyes begin to burn and she turns to glare at Samantha. "What the hell is this?!" She hisses, moving to him and pressing a lock of brown hair off of his forehead and out of his eyes. He stares up at her adoringly, a tired but content smile spreading gently over his face as he relaxes into her caress. For a moment, he is safe, and the most important part of his world is touching his face with a gentle, warm hand. That moment is over far too soon for his weary brain, but his content is cut short never-the-less, and a hiss escapes him when he sees who has followed her in. She mistakes his sound for one of pain, because she is bending over, examining his wrists with furious eyes and a stone cold face. It is the face she reserves for the most disgusting of circumstances, the most animalistic and unworthy of humans, she turns it back to Samantha, an accusation, and a demand for information. "Relax Dr. Scully," Samantha's is the calm, almost musically indifferent tone of a man who stands in the shadows wreathed in tendrils of smoke and a dark power that eats his soul, like Prometheus' vulture, who would eat his liver, only to have it grow back again for the torment to start anew, "Fox is looking for the Truth, and it seems he would like it delivered by you." She looks confused, but still angry, and she straightens to square off with a woman who used to wear the expression of a hopeful and sometimes scolded puppy dog, but now doesn't. "Why is this man stripped, and tied to a chair with *wire*, for Christ's sake, and showing evidence of *torture*?" Her voice is pitched with incredulous wrath, and she takes an aggressive step forward. "Torture? That's such a melodramatic word," Samantha complains, "Closer to the truth to say that there was an interrogation and some vigorous medical treatments. You know what we're working with, Scully. I'm sure you can understand why he's tied up." "Infected?" Scully suddenly seems much less outraged on his behalf, "So he's one of my new subjects?" "The most important one you're going to get," Samantha informs her cheerfully, "After all, he does have the earliest form of the vaccine in his bloodstream." "What?! I'll need to get him in my lab as soon as possible," she has suddenly lost interest in his bonds, and she takes his head in her strong, nimble surgeons hands, forcing his face up so she can peer into his eyes with detached, s cientific curiosity. "First you need to answer a question for Fox," Samantha chides gently, "That's what I called you in for today, the rest has to wait until I'm finished with him." "Go ahead and ask her, Fox." She turns expectantly, looking an awful lot like a smug little sister who got her parents to make him take her on his exploring trip when they went camping when he was 11, except that back then he didn't want to kill her. "Scully?" he whispers the word, a plea for her to look into his eyes and to send a warm message back to him that let him know that everything would be all right and she loved him. She lookes into his eyes, and it was there, that link. Messages flowed between them. And hers say, *What?* He turnes away, noticing for the first time that she is wearing a white lab coat over that blue pant suit she has that manages to draw out the green in her eyes so well. He feels sick, and wishes he could throw up. Too bad they don't really feed him anymore. "Dr. Scully's lab is in this facility, so you won't have to travel too far for the tests she's going to do on you, Fox," says Samantha, who makes it sound like a fortunate thing even though she is really saying 'See? I told you she works for us now.' There is a high electrical beeping sound in the white room with the harsh lights and the naked man tied to a chair by wire that has twisted into his flesh and made his wrists and ankles bleed. His heart is bleeding too, but nobody can see that, so it doesn't count. "Scully," she says into the cellular phone she pulls out of her pocket, in the voice she has used countless times and he knows better then his own. She listens for a few minutes and nods and says some things back in the language of medical technobabble that he vaguely grasps from his time with her but still doesn't understand. "I have to go," she turns to the man who followed her in, a young handsome man dressed in a black leather jacket, with green eyes and slicked back, black hair, "Alex?" "I have some business to wrap up here with Sam, Dana," he uses his one arm to draw her to him and plants a soft kiss on her lips, "I'll see you at home tonight." She accepts the kiss, and she accepts the words and she walks away without ever looking back at the naked man in the chair who is starting to understand what is happening and still wants to die, but not before he gets to wrap his hands around that rat-bastard Krycek's throat and can drag him to hell with him, for touching her without her knowing that it is wrong. "Now you know Fox," Samantha looks at him with his mother's eyes and face, and his father's voice and his hands-on-hips posture, "Now you know. It's all have truths and half lies. I didn't lie to you. She does work for us now." "You made her," he rasps, hating her as much as he once loved her memory, now he wishes she had never been born, or maybe that the aliens had killed her instead of using her against her own race, "You took away pieces of her, you filled her with *lies*! You made her think...what? You made her think she's a part of this plan from the beginning? That she's one of you?" "Actually," Samantha giggles, a self-satisfied sound that makes him wish he wasn't tied up and weak, "Actually we took her memories, like we did you at Ellen’s. Then we gave her new ones,Fox. You are not in her new ones. She thinks that she is Dana Scully, a doctor who works for the government on finding a cure the Russian's developed for biological warfare. She thinks she is saving her country, she thinks she stays here because her work is Top Secret." "She also thinks she's my wife," Krycek says with a horrible boyish smile, "She *loves* me, Mulder. She sleeps in my bed and she makes me breakfast and she *likes* my haircut." "I will kill you," he promises them both, but mostly Krycek for taking what should be his and flaunting it, "Before I die, I'll find a way to kill you, you fucking *RAT!*" The last word is a roar, full of his hate. It bounces off of white walls and floors and ceilings. "I don't think so," Samantha says cheerfully, "But believe what you want, because as I've been telling you Fox, there isn't really any such thing as Truth, so it doesn't matter. "Now let's say I ask you a few questions about that vaccine our English friend gave you for our dear Dr. Scully, hmmm? And then maybe we'll go see how your body reacts to another dose of the new, mutated virus. If you're a very, very good boy, perhaps we'll send you over to Dr. Scully for a few tests; I'm sure you'd appreciate the chance to spend more time with her." Hell is a white room where you find that the truth you looked for since you were twelve years old is a half truth, where the screams of the damned reverberating through your ears, are your own, and you can't make them go away. * * * * * * * * * Comments: Can you see why I wanted more to the story? I *wanted* resolution. I got this. Humph! Oh well. Feedback groveled for (Domino F16@aol.com)