Title: I Dreamt I Was A Butterfly...1/1      3/4/99
Author: becca
Archive: Of course. All except Gossamer let me know, please.
Category: umm...SA. Maybe MSR, depending on which way you look at it.
Summary: "I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man."
                                               -Chang-tzu
Rating:PG
Spoilers/timeline: None, although knowing about Emily would help (this is not Emilyfic!). Set late S5 ish.
Feedback: Yes please! nightgarden@hotmail.com
Disclaimer: Yeah, like Chris would ever do *this*. They belong to CC, 1013 and Fox.
Note: A *big* inspiration for this was one of the chapters from Julian Barnes' 'A History Of The World In Ten and a Half Chapters'. If you haven't read this not-quite-a-novel of life, death, love and survival, run, don't walk, to your nearest bookstore. It'll be worth the jog. I took a break from my WIP, because I wanted to write something less 'straight'. Chapter 3 and needing a break already? I can't help it if I have a short attention span:) This story may not be what it first appears to be...
Visit me at https://members.tripod.com/night_garden
~~~
I Dreamt I Was A Butterfly..., by becca.
~~~~~
It's dark here, Scully.

But then, you know that, because you're three feet away from me, curled up and asleep; your breath making whispering sounds against the tarpaulin. The train is making those creaking noises again, like knuckles cracking and breaking, joints popping. It smells of crescote in here, a little heady and sour. You stir in sleep, an arm thrown protectively across your belly, a few strands of hair tickling over your face.

Peaceful.

We can be peaceful, now, Scully.

When he came to me, I didn't want to trust. You know how hard I find that. But then he told me, Scully. All these terrible and crazy things that were truths far worse than we imagined. Than *I* imagined. Shattered me into a billion tiny fragments, a thousand pieces blowing on the wind.

God, I did it, Scully.

Why do you continue to follow me? I'd say it was love, but the part of my psyche that hates myself will not let me indulge in that for more than a second or two. Faith? Perhaps. Not in me, but rather in my actions. It's not the same thing. And I think now, I am the blind man leading the blind, rendered unseeing by faith in those shadow men that we can't trust.

I trusted him, Scully.

What have I done to you?

Your eyelids flicker open, paper thin and fringed by thready lashes. The veins in them stand out in sharp relief, a filigree of red, pulsing life through your body. They are delicate, so delicate it makes me think of you as fragile for the briefest of seconds, until you sit up, a little disorientated, but all Scully again.

The tiniest of smiles. A permission.

Go to sleep, Mulder.

~~~
I was coming out of a dream, Mulder. Maybe I was still there, but I heard my mother's voice all mixed in with the clacking of the train and the smell of you. And then I was awake again, and there was only the chocolate of the night, and your face caught in a snapshot by the moonlight that slices through a gap in the wooden slats.

You sleep now, restlessly, but I hope, restfully. The swaying of the car has lulled you as it would a child in his crib, and indeed, you are child-like in your sleep. The demons crawl away from your face, worry lines smoothed and soothed by sleep's healing balm.

I didn't agonise over this. I want you to know that. I wanted to go.

Even if there are no featureless men chasing us, even if there is no danger of death.

I can't be there anymore, can't live with the fear, with the thing in my neck, with children I never knew living and dying outside of my life.

Yes, Mulder, I was afraid. You don't expect that from me, do you? Not afraid of aliens or mutants. I'm afraid of myself. I'm afraid I lost that control.

That's why I came. I followed for myself and you. The only thing keeping me there was you. So it makes sense to follow. To start again.

I want to sleep again. To crawl in beside you under that heavy black tarpaulin, and just be close. We don't do that though, do we? Why don't we do that? These bonds that bind us are intangible and strong, but we can't even touch.

You snuffle slightly from somewhere inside your sleep, and I bite back the urge to chuckle at the sound. Not here, not now, not with the anaemic moon filtering onto your face and the rain beginning to softly fall on the roof.

I sleep now, three feet and half a world away from you.

~~~~~~
Still heading west.

I think.

I'm a little feverish. Probably just a chill from the draughts and the cold and not eating properly. If you weren't  still sleeping you'd laugh and tell me that you can't get sick from the cold on its own- not unless it's pneumonia.

We've got enough food. Though there's no point dividing it up into forty equal potions or anything so Boy Scout as that. We may be here a day. We may be here a week.

I don't know where we're going.

I woke in my fever, realising this. Hell, Scully, I don't even know where I'm taking you. You think I do, don't  you? Why didn't you ask me, Scully?

The man in my dream asked me. That's how I know.

"You don't know what you're doing, Mr. Mulder." The words came dry from his lips. He had a mouth like a raisin, puckered and shrivelled.

Oh, you're awake.

I think.

Your eyes are open, anyhow, and you're orientating yourself. I ask if you're OK.

"I was dreaming," you say as if it explains everything. I guess it does. "You're sweating," you say and move across to feel my forehead. I tell you I'm fine. You don't believe me. There's no reason why you should; I never believe you. I drink some water, and we sit, shoulder to shoulder in a silent contemplation.

~~~~~

Dreams.

Carrying heavy over into the day, muffling my head in thick comforters of sleep, smelling of disinfectant and starch.

Nightmares.

When does a dream slip from being a dream into a nightmare, Mulder? When does it cross that boundary, where it fails to be a fantasy and instead becomes a danger, wrapping us in sheets of sweat and a squeezed-tight heart, fighting for a sip of breath?

I figure you're the best one to ask. You know all about the terror.

I heard my mother in this one, again, telling me to come back. I heard a man, too, calling me 'Dana'. It wasn't my brothers. It wasn't my father. Nobody else calls me Dana.

Crazy.

That was crazy.

~~~~

Fever dreams.

I'm starting to think this is madness. They hang onto me over into the daytime, sticking like a hangover, stopping the rest of life from going on. We sleep, Scully. It's all we do. When we changed into another, equally rickety, railway car yesterday, this time to travel north, I thought we could claw back some lucidity, some clarity. Instead, I grew weaker, and you're tired from caring for me. We can't run forever. He told me we could stop running, Scully. That all we needed was distance and new names.

Stop.

We've got to stop running.
~~~~

On my back.

White and cold.

Needle in my hand.

It smells that hospital smell, Mulder.

But then you know that, because you're lying in the bed next to me, watching the men come and go, and stick needles into us, and ask us questions. They tell us to write our dreams down.

That's screwed up.

Write down your dreams while you're dreaming? I think you appreciate the absurdity of this, because you tell them they don't understand.

They don't understand.

~~~~
I don't understand.

These grey dream men are telling me that I don't understand, and it's all to do with governments and wars, and you. And Sam.

See, they slipped up there. That's how I know that they're dreams. Nobody knows what happened to Sam, except Cancer Man. And he's not here.

So it can't be real, can it?

~~~~

I'm glad we're off that train, Mulder. I don't have to tell you that, sitting watching TV in this flea-pit motel. I'm *glad* it's a rough motel, though. If it had been too good, it wouldn't be real. This is so perfectly us.

I smile.

You look at me, a question on your lips.

Suddenly, I meet those lips with my own, nipping and tangling, hard then soft again. Hands everywhere, everywhere they're supposed to be. You pull back a little, the question having moved to your eyes.

Yes.

And that is all we need, the only permission, before we make love.

Perfect. So Perfect.

I would have thought it would make the nightmares stop.

~~~~
I fell asleep inside of you tonight and woke up in a separate bed. A bed separated by five meters of shiny tiled floor and weighty air.

The men are here again. I'll answer them, now. I'm a psychologist, I know my Freud. Good old Sigmund always recommended facing your fears.

"How are you feeling today, Mr. Mulder?"

"Okay."

"Are you really?" I think about this. Trick question?

"Why do you ask?"

"You were rather *noisy* last night. You required rather a lot of sedatives."

"I'm not surprised," they look at me. That threw them. "I was making love to my partner." I resist the temptation to look smug.

"No, Mr. Mulder, I'm afraid you weren't. Miss Scully  is just over there." Gotcha. I think I'd remember making love to you, don't you, Scully? He calls a nurse.

I wake up with a shit-eating grin on my face, next to you.

~~~~
The smell of you is comforting, Mulder,the scent of your shampoo and toothpaste. Let me tell you about my dream.

It was cold and white, again. Those men were there, again. I knew they would be.

"Would you like to talk about your daughter, now?"

"Emily? What's it got to do with Emily?"

"I think this may have something to do with your present...problems." I put on my best steely glare.

"The only problem here is that we've gone away. They were going to kill us this time. For good. It has nothing to do with Emily, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't mention it again, thank you."

"Ok. Perhaps we need to find another approach. When did you notice your feelings for your partner begin to change?"

I'd had enough.

"My name is Dana Katherine Scully. I am a medical doctor and an FBI agent, and I'd also like to think that my private life is none of your business. But, for your information, I will tell you that my partner, Fox Mulder, and I had to leave DC. There were men trying to kill us, and we were warned. They told us no more chances. So we went. Not so complicated, is it? Think you can handle that?"

"Yes."

"What do you mean, *yes*?"

" Psychosomatic symptoms can be very...*convincing*"

"Did you not hear me the first time? We've escaped." I said it slowly for him, Mulder, so he'd understand. He didn't appear to be bright. They looked at each other, then back at me.

"Ok," I sighed. "You may as well tell me your version. I've a feeling you want to."

"Well, your partnership with Mr. Mulder, is a strong one. An *intense* one. There was a certain amount of paranoia in your working life, and that, coupled with the repression of your feelings for one another, and the losses of your daughter and his sister...well, that just was enough, it seems. For both of you. It hasn't been easy for you both lately."

"No more than usual. And according to *you*-" (I stressed this) "-where were we found?"

"In a train yard, just outside of Washington. You didn't get far, Miss Scully."

"Well," I said. "You certainly have spun an admirable tale. Really quite clever. Why don't you go and leave me in peace?"

"I am glad we're making progress," and he turned and left.

I feel tired after that, Mulder. But like I won some prize. There's something Freudian about facing down your nightmares, isn't there? He gave himself away, though. Patronised me. As if I'd patronise myself. Clever, though. Took a few facts and spun them into a believable tale. Haven't we been doing that for years?

~~~~
I think this is my body's fear of its death, Scully. A nightmare scenario. It's quite interesting, how I try to convince myself it's real.

Yeah, we're crazy, Scully, or so they tell us.

That mirror is so obviously two-way it's sickening. I've even conjured up your mother and Skinner in my head.

My mind trying to cope with the newness of the situation, threading a story together through some facts.

You're having some dreams, too, aren't you? I know, because you were talking in your sleep, answering the same questions my dream-shrinks ask me.

My dream-shrinks.

My dream-shrinks?

~~~~
The next day, Fox Mulder woke up in a flea-pit motel in British Colombia, with the TV still on. His partner was curled naked around him, tousled red hair fanning out on his chest. Outside, the neon sign flickered erratically in the chilly dawn.

He smiled.

So it was all right, then.

So they'd run away. But he had her. And in that moment he felt such happiness, such hope, he thought his chest would explode and send shards of illuminating light into the semi-dark outside.

Such hope.....

~~~~
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