CATEGORY: S, A, M/S UST
RATING: PG
ARCHIVAL: You're welcome to link to the story on my site.
SPOILERS: Orison, En Ami

SUMMARY: "Mulder, what do you think made my cancer go into
remission?"

Feedback is like a park on a springtime Sunday --
wisteria@smyrnacable.net

My deepest thanks go to Alicia, Rachel, and Holly.


CLEOPATRA'S NEEDLE
by alanna


+++++

Northeast Georgetown Medical Center
February 2, 2000
4:32 A.M.

"I'm fine, thank you," she says in a hollow voice.

She is far too stubborn for her own good sometimes, he thinks.
She won't accept help when she needs it. She dearly needs help
right now. She needs to lay back on the bed and let trained
professionals, or even just him, tend to her hurts, but when
Nurse Delbichev came around a few minutes ago and asked if she
wanted to be moved to a more private area for rest and
observation, Scully simply stared straight ahead and said that
she was fine, thank you.

He needs to go to the men's room. The pain in his bladder is
becoming too much to ignore, but he shifts in his seat and tries
not to think about it. Mind over matter.

When he left her side to fill out some forms a half-hour ago, he
returned to find her clutching the nape of her neck and glowering
at an orderly. The woman held a scalpel in a white-knuckled hand
and wore confusion on her face as Scully repeated, "No" over and
over in a low rasp. Mulder stroked her back for almost ten
minutes before she finally lowered her hand and leaned into him.

He knew what had happened even before Scully told him.

"She was trying to take it out," Scully finally whispered.

She is calmer now, the shock of Pfaster's assault slowly passing,
but her body is still tense and cool, and his hand still strokes
her back. The cotton of her gown is soft now from so many
washings. His finger catches on one of the ties as he moves his
hand up and down. She flinches, feeling the tug, and he pulls
his hand away, not wanting to undo her hospital gown.

When he first brought her into the emergency room after she'd
refused an ambulance to take her from her ruined apartment,
another orderly had led her away to an examining room while he
took her insurance information out of her wallet. The admitting
nurse leaned over to him and asked, "Has she been sexually
assaulted?"

Mulder had flinched at the words. "No," he replied. "She was
assaulted, but not sexually." He knew that the admitting nurse
had probably seen it all, but Mulder couldn't imagine that this
other man would understand that what Pfaster had done to Scully
had been worse than sexual assault. He had tried to rape her
soul. It would affect her just as strongly as if Pfaster had
lain hands on her. Mulder couldn't possibly explain that in a
way to make the man understand, so he did not.

He moves his hand higher on this stroke, and it comes away with
too-red blood on his fingertips. A two-inch gash cuts into the
skin millimeters below where a chip rests in the nape of her
neck.

His eyes focus on a small shard of glass jutting out from the
cut. The orderly had been trying to remove it when Scully
panicked, he concludes. The bright red blood taunts him.

"Scully?" he says, softly.

"Mmm?" Her voice is barely audible. She does not look at him.

He bites his lip, then says, "You have some glass in your neck.
Can I take it out?"

Her eyes close and her back stills under his hand. After a long
pause, she says, "Yes. You can."

You, Mulder. Only you. He hears it in her voice.

Having been trained in first aid during multiple Bureau refresher
courses, he knows the proper method. He must wear gloves and use
sterilized instruments. Emergency rooms have procedures. Such
first aid must be administered by official personnel. But he
knows that Scully is too shaken to let someone do that, so he
throws all rules to the wind and takes on the job himself.
Drawing the privacy curtain closed, he walks over to the counter
and gets some gauze and hydrogen peroxide, taking care not to
make noise. Wrapping the gauze around his fingertips, he places
his other hand on her shoulder and whispers, "It's okay, Scully.
I'm here."

She nods, and he gently pulls the glass out of the cut. She does
not wince.

Closing his eyes, he breathes deeply then opens them again and
folds the shard of glass in the gauze. He tosses it into a waste
bin and begins to wipe away the blood. The cut is soon cleaned,
but an angry red welt rises below the skin, as if it is
emphasizing the shiny, smooth scar just above it.

"Thank you," she whispers, then turns around and puts her arms
around him, pulling him close.

He doesn't want to think about what might have happened if the
orderly had tried to remove the chip. The blood is the brownish-
red of three-years-ago nosebleeds.

+++++

New York City
April 8, 2000
8:41 P.M.

When he was fourteen, he and his mother began bi-monthly trips
down to New York City to visit his father. "Dad has to stay in
the city because of his work," Mom said, as if Fox were still a
small boy without logic or world-awareness. They stayed in a
hotel room and he didn't see his father's apartment until the
fourth visit, having begged out of shopping with his mother.

"You can sit in here and watch TV," Dad had said, then left. Fox
sat on the uncomfortable leather sofa for seven hours, wondering
if his father had forgotten him. Next time he resolved to bring
a friend with him for company, then realized he had no
explanation for his father's life to give his friends. Vineyard
fathers came home most weekends.

Dad took him to dinner that night, and told him of his decision
to get a divorce. His father spoke to him like he was an adult
instead of fifteen, but Fox wanted to be a son, not a colleague.
He watched his father smile at a woman at the bar, who came over
and introduced herself as Esther Javitz. His fifteen-year-old
eyes saw Esther's hand linger a bit too long on his father's
shoulder. Fox wasn't surprised or betrayed; the New York
apartment was infidelity enough. He smiled and shook her hand,
and clenched his teeth as she ruffled his hair like the way she
would pet a dog.

The years have been kinder to New York than they have been to his
memories of his father. He is Mulder now, sole heir of the name
and the all-or-nothing it entails. The apartment on East 52nd
Street was part of his inheritance, and the first thing he sold
upon his father's death. The investment dividends paid for the
airfare to Antarctica.

He and Scully drove past it on the taxi ride from LaGuardia to
their hotel. The cab slowed slightly, as if making him
acknowledge the apartment, but instead he turned and looked at
his partner.

They now sit in an Indian restaurant on Curry Row in the East
Village, discussing immigration policy over naan and malai kofta.
A man is perched on pillows next to the front windows, playing a
sitar but watching the way the tip jar slowly fills. Everyone's
voice is low, secretive, unaware that the strangers sitting
nearly hip-to-hip with them don't care about their conversations.
He listens to Scully recount the history of her father's family's
arrival at Ellis Island in 1879, and is surprised to learn that
her mother's family dates back to before the Revolutionary War.
She tells him that one day she'll show him the Civil War medals
on her mother's mantel.

Ellis Island has brought them to New York. When the new
visitor's center was built, a wall was constructed to commemorate
the immigrants who had passed through the center, and their
descendants could donate money to have their names engraved in
copper. Those names are slowly vanishing, and their families are
receiving letters in the mail written in the script of their
forefathers, with no fingerprints or other evidence tying them to
anyone currently working at Ellis Island's historical society.
While she spoke with the curator this afternoon, Mulder examined
the wall, ostensibly looking at the disappeared names. But after
nearly a half-hour, he found "William and Moira Scully, 1879,
lovingly donated by Margaret Scully." He took out a sheet of
copy paper and a pencil, making a rubbing of the engraved names.
As she walked back to him, he folded the paper and put it in his
pocket, to give to her later.

Their conversation and bodies exhausted, they quietly finish
their dinner, each taking more food from the shared dishes
instead of serving one another like the lovers at the next table
do. While the tables are cleared, she watches the sitar player
and the legs of the people who walk past the restaurant. He
drinks masala chai and watches her.

"The doctor said the chemo is going to make me pretty sick. Do
you think we should call Mom and have her come stay with us to
watch the kids?"

Some words have the power to stop Mulder in his tracks. A couple
about his and Scully's age sits at the table next to theirs. He
does not turn to look at them, but his body tenses at the word
"chemo." He watches Scully, her jaw clenched, but still watching
the sitar player. Mulder doesn't want to listen to more talk of
cancer, but the voices are too close as the other couple
discusses whether Mom should come for a visit. When their waiter
brings the check, he welcomes the distraction of shifting in his
seat to find his wallet.

He pays the check and follows Scully out of the restaurant.
"Chemo" still echoes in his mind.

They begin to walk in a thoughtful, meandering pace through the
East Village. He'd noticed as he paid the check that he didn't
have enough cash for cab fare, and wonders which bus might take
them to the hotel. The idea of walking has a certain romance;
the reality of thirty blocks does not.

At an intersection, the lights turn against them and they stand
at the corner, watching the canary yellow cars go past. There
are other couples their age out and about this Saturday night,
but all he perceives is youth. Kids barely old enough to buy
cigarettes, much less alcohol, the bridge-and-tunnel crowd
preened and dazzled by itself. Mulder wonders when he began to
look upon youth with a parent's disregard, when he became this
old. He sees a small group of people standing outside an
apartment building, their faces slack and at home, and he wonders
if he would view this scene any differently if he lived here like
they do. But though he doesn't look down upon it with
condescension, he is too old for this environment. He has seen
too much to have the necessary blithe attitude of youth. He has
seen too much death.

Scully is quiet as they begin to walk again, crossing the street.
Her heels make a beat on the pavement, and it mixes with the
beats of strangers' shoes to create a unique rhythm section which
seems to be tapping out that word in morse code: "chemo".

He wants that word gone from his mind tonight, but it will not go
away.

He is concentrating so hard that he has passed Scully by five
paces before he realizes she is not by his side. "Mulder?" she
calls to him as he turns around, and he sees her standing next to
an opened taxi door. Following her inside, he shifts in his
seat, struggling to keep his knees from crashing against the
partition with every sudden stop and start. The taxi drives
faster than he would have expected on a busy Saturday night, but
they still have a dozen blocks to go.

"Mulder?" she murmurs, her voice soft but not swallowed by the
noisy cab.

"Hmm?" he replies to the back of her head, which still stares out
the window.

"What do you think made my cancer go into remission?"

The driver slows for a light, punctuating her question.

He tenses. His toes curl and the skin of his back is now aware
of every thread of his dress shirt. Mulder knows what she wants
to hear; more importantly, he knows what she does not want to
hear.

Three years ago he had asked her whether she'd ever believed that
his sister had been abducted by aliens. "No," he'd answered for
her, not wanting to hear the same word spoken by her voice.

As easy as it would be to say comforting words, their
relationship is built on honesty -- at least, most of the time.

So he chooses his words carefully: "I don't think we'll ever
truly know, Scully." The words seem as false now as they had
when he spoke them to Skinner over two years ago.

"You don't believe that, do you Mulder?" The sentence is a
question, but the inflection of her voice does not rise at the
end.

He shakes his head. No.

The taxi stops at their hotel, and he gets out while she pays the
driver. Their bubble of quiet is broken, and the city swells
around them again. Her voice is too soft for him to hear, or
maybe she is not speaking.

He wants to sit in the hotel bar with her and talk about this,
but she hands him his card key and says, "I'm going to head up to
bed, Mulder. I'll see you here at 9, okay?" She turns in the
direction of the elevators, but continues to look at him, as if
awaiting his assent.

Her face is lined now. Dark smudges under her eyes were a daily
reminder of her cancer three years ago. Now they are a
combination of makeup, fatigue, and age. He doesn't ask her to
stay in the hotel bar and talk to him, but instead puts his hand
between her shoulderblades as they walk to the elevators. She
rides up to the fourth floor, while he continues on to the
twelfth. Space expands between them, but as he walks to his room
he can still hear her heels tapping out the word, "Chemo".


+++++


The city has put itself to sleep. He stands at the window,
watching it breathe. The bed was too big, too empty for him to
be comfortable. The same thought enters his mind that does every
night: what if I ask her to join me? And like every other
night, he is alone.


+++++


At 8:45 he is in the hotel lobby, though they'd agreed to meet at
nine. Sitting in a soft chair, he watches the few other early
Sunday morning risers walk by. He wonders whether she looked out
her window this morning and saw snow falling, steady and heavy.
Yesterday was warm; they'd left their overcoats at the hotel and
he even took off his suit jacket when they got off the Ellis
Island ferry after their questioning. But nature -- or God --
has decided that early April was too warm, and decided to throw a
stick in the spokes of the city and let snow fall this Sunday
morning.

He is tempted to take off his sweater, but decides otherwise.
The local news had proclaimed the temperature to be 28 degrees
this morning, an ironic smile on their faces as they said Mother
Nature was a week too late to play an April Fool's joke. He
wears layers -- blue dress shirt under his sweater, with his
overcoat draped over the back of the chair. They have no
investigation to do today, the Ellis Island officials telling
them they'd see the agents again on Monday, and Mulder wants to
show Scully the city. He remembers a bagel place not too far
from his father's old apartment, and even though it's quite a
ways from the hotel, he wants to introduce Scully to real cream
cheese, not the lite Philly she spreads on her bagels.

She steps off the elevator and walks through the lobby, catching
sight of him immediately. Her eyes light up and a small smile
curves her lips; he loves how she can make him feel so wanted, so
cherished, with only that small smile. In her hotel room, her
lightweight shirts and skirts have been put away; she appears
above him in jeans, boots, and a long-sleeved t-shirt, her hands
burrowing into her overcoat pockets. Their positions are changed
as he stands, looking down at her.

"You're going to be cold, Scully," he teases.

She pulls one hand out of her pocket and tucks her hair behind
her ear. "I'll live."

Yes, yes she will.

They walk out of the hotel and nearly collide with a woman
hurrying past, her head wrapped in a scarf already dotted with
huge flakes of snow. The full weight of the cold hits him as
they stand, shifting on their feet to get warm, while the doorman
flags a cab. Mulder is glad he'd remembered to use the ATM in
the lobby to get enough cash for the cab, bagels, and anything
else they might need while they're out. Maybe they'll see a shop
where he can buy a bright red scarf for her hair.

As they drive to the bagel shop, he watches the city pass by, the
streets and sidewalks clear but the parked cars covered by two
inches of snow. He has never seen New York so empty in the
morning, though the weather and the Sunday might be keeping
people inside. They reach the shop surprisingly quickly, and he
pays the driver while she steps out onto the sidewalk. Even
though she isn't facing him, he watches her stand up tall, her
shoulders back and head turning side to side. When he gets out
of the cab, she turns to look at him, wonder on her face. She is
a city girl -- she has to have experienced mornings like this
before. But this is New York and they are here together on this
lazy, snowy Sunday morning, and he too can feel the magic and
romance of this new experience. Her being here with him creates
that magic.

The shop is as busy as the streets had been empty. The two of
them look up at the board as he advises her what to get. He
knows she eats bagels every morning and has her own preferences,
but she listens intently as he describes ideal bagel and cream
cheese combinations, and she says that yes, he is correct and no,
she wouldn't dream of the shop's strange offering of sundried
tomato tofu spread. She orders what he suggests, and he loves
this about her.

Somewhere along the line, he must have found a soul mate.

He carries her bagels in his bag like a boy carrying his
sweetheart's schoolbooks. The large paper cup of coffee scorches
his hand, but the warmth is welcome in the cold air outside.
They begin to walk the four long blocks to Central Park, their
steps leisurely as snow peppers their overcoats.

The park is empty at 10 A.M. on Sunday morning, as if it has been
reserved for their private party of two. They are a block away
from the Met, and he asks her if she'd like to go visit it today.
"Maybe later," she says. He follows her around the building to
Cleopatra's Needle, the Egyptian obelisk given to the U.S. in
1879. It reaches for the sky on a blanket of white. They stand
and look up at it for a few moments, then he walks over to a
bench and brushes the thick coating of snow away, resisting the
temptation to make a snowball.

Quiet as the park around them, they eat the bagels without
speaking, the silence broken by teeth biting into toasted bread.
He waits for her to speak, wanting to let her set the mood for
their morning with her words. He predicts the white morning
will put her into good spirits.

She surprises him by saying, "I'm sorry for asking you that
question about my cancer last night. It was unfair of me."

He lets the coffee warm away his surprise as he forms his reply.
"No, you had every right to ask me that. You were right -- I do
believe we know what made your cancer go into remission."

"You think it was the chip, don't you."

He wants to give his assent by silence, but owes her more than
that. "Yes, I do, Scully."

"The cigarette man... Spender..." her eyes close briefly as she
says his name, "told me when I went with him last month that he
cured me, the same way he had that little boy in Virginia and
that old woman I told you about."

She turns her face away, and he can't see it as clearly now. He
wishes he could reach out and touch her face, reading it like a
blind man would, but keeps his hands to himself. He wants to
speak, to ask her once again why she went with that bastard,
knowing full well what he was capable of.. but he says nothing.
This is her rare time to be open and honest with him.

"Two years ago I didn't want to believe that my cancer went away
because of the chip, and I don't want to believe it now. But the
circumstances of this," her hand moves to the back of her neck,
"are making it harder and harder not to accept that it is the
reason I'm still alive today." She removes her hand from her
neck and raises her coffee cup to her lips, taking a long sip.

Snow is accumulating on her shoulders. He watches it float onto
her cheeks, melting on the warmth of her face. He has so much he
wants to say to her now, but he holds his tongue. Any words he
might say would spoil the moment, and he feels her need to speak
to him without debate.

She continues, "When I studied pathology in medical school, my
focus was on the way cancer affected the body and caused death,
not on the way a doctor would eradicate it. I do know for
certain that remission is seldom spontaneous, and certainly not
as spontaneous as mine was, no matter how experimental or
successful the chemo and drug therapies. Medicine just doesn't
work that way."

Her voice is close to a monotone, becoming quieter as she speaks.
Mulder murmurs, "I know."

"Yes," she replies. Scully wipes the wet snow from her face, and
he watches her chest rise and fall through her heavy coat. "I
remember you and I talking about the possible reasons for my
remission. They were the chemotherapy, the chip, and prayer. I
think we both know," faint amusement creeps into her voice, "that
simple prayer was the least plausible explanation."

He is surprised by her words, but he is also not. She is a
realist, after all, at times more able to doubt the power of
sheer religious will than him. "You didn't meet that family in
Virginia, Mulder, but I did. They were absolutely convinced that
their son's remission was an act of God, and that it had all been
a test of faith. Do you know that back when I had my cancer, I
even briefly considered the possibility that it was God's test
for me?"

She stops for a moment, then continues, "I knew that wasn't the
case, but for a little while it was the easiest explanation to
believe. Despite all the evidence that my abduction was the
reason for it, the idea that it was God's will was strangely
comforting, because it meant that I could overcome it by sheer
force of faith. Then one day I realized that my faith had
drifted too far away, and that I didn't have the spiritual
strength I needed to overcome it."

A woman and man walk by, laughing and pushing a baby in a
stroller. They break the weight of her confessions, and Mulder
thinks that this is his time to speak.

"I think that prayer helped you get well just as much as medicine
and that chip did, though yes, the chip was probably the
overriding factor. You realized how bleak your prospects were --
I know, Scully, that you called in your priest for last rites."
Even though he is the one speaking those words, he still shivers
at their meaning. "But if you hadn't had the strength of your
beliefs, you might not have had the strength to carry on as long
as you did. You truly believed that God would save you, even as
you acknowledged your own mortality. And medicine saved you too,
by keeping your body alive for as long as it did."

He reaches over and takes her cold hand. "Maybe the chip is the
reason for your remission, though short of taking it out, we'll
never truly know. But Scully," he pauses, feeling her hand begin
to warm in his own as she turns to look at him, "keep believing
that the remission was caused by the chip, medicine, and faith if
you want to. Just because Spender said that he cured you doesn't
mean that you have to take him at his word. Medicine and faith
are something *you* controlled, and he has no authority over
them. He may have provided a chip which may have caused your
remission, but you saved yourself."

She looks away from him, toward the obelisk reaching for the sky.
Snow is beginning to coat the base, as it continues to steadily
fall. Like rain, it seems to wash everything clean, making gray
into white and smoothing out the edges of life.

"I think you're right, Mulder," she says, then softly chuckles at
those rare words. "The chip might be keeping the cancer away, but
science and God are keeping me alive."

"Yes they are, Scully, and though mine might not match yours,
that gives me faith."

He pulls her into his arms and they sit together on the snow-
covered bench, sharing one another's warmth and life.

+++++

END (1/1)