Incomplete Thought by JHJ Armstrong Content: Angst, bits of story Rating: PG-13 Summary: Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison. Distribution: Anywhere's fine, but please link to my site: http://copygirl.softballjunkies.com/incomplete.html Notes: Thanks to Alanna for being online, and to Virginia for just always being there. ======================================== Mid-April, and assorted Hoover's boys were talking about ERAs but not the Constitution. Scully arrived just in time to hear Mulder tell Kittridge, a rabid White Sox fan, that David Wells was a fat fuck who didn't know a fastball from fast food. She towed him out into the day before blood was shed. Lunch was sandwiches in a nearby public park, hers tuna (light mayo), his BLT (double B), with communal chips (baked not fried), eaten while sitting on the same side of a sun-warmed granite table. They watched twentysomethings play Ultimate Frisbee; idly, Scully wondered when the gene for hips had disappeared from the human population. A dog, a scruffy mutt type, raced by on the walking path, and Scully laughed softly, sympathizing with the girl being towed along behind it. "Did you ever have a dog, Mulder?" "Yeah. Chocolate lab named Cookie." He cocked his head, remembering. "Samantha named him; she was two, and the first word out of her mouth when Dad brought him home was 'cookie'. He died my senior year of high school. Old age." "Mmm," she said, chewing and swallowing. "Nothing since?" "No, I seem to be a one-dog man. But there were, oh, six turtles, a Chia Pet and a frightening number of fish." He squinted at her. "How about you? Ever thought of getting another dog?" "I miss Queequeg sometimes," she said. "Not because he was especially lovable, or even obedient, but because he was there when I got home." Mulder gave her one of those looks where she thought he might be able to see her heart flutter inside her chest. But he just looked, he didn't speak, and another moment when something could have been said passed by in silence. ------------------- If the world was just and right, no child would ever be hurt, and those who were would have safe places to go with no questions asked and love freely given. But the world was full of wrong, and in the afternoon Scully carved into a battered 15-year-old boy, gangly all over in the way boys are when their bodies grow faster than their coordination. Still, he was probably a basketball player, wingspan and big hands helping when spider legs and bigger feet got in the way. She imagined Mulder at 15, and then herself, and wondered what the star athlete and the shining pupil would have thought of each other. Probably not much. "Got a cause yet?" The grown-up Mulder's tie was askew, and if her hands hadn't been covered in latex and blood she would've reached up to straighten it. So she looked at it, and he did it himself. "Basal skull fracture with associated brain trauma, most likely caused by repeated shoves into a wall at high velocity. Just because the body stops moving doesn't mean the stuff inside does." He nodded. "Call me when you're done and we'll get dinner." She nodded back, and they gave each other a half-smile, a promise with nothing said. After he was gone, she returned her attention to the dead boy, twice the hurt at less than half her age. She catalogued a crooked rib, noting not for the first time that, when broken, humans will heal and be stronger than they were before the break. No kidding, she thought. Mulder and I ought to be made of fucking titanium by now. ------------------- Scully wanted chocolate, but she was grumpy and there were people in the break room laughing hard enough to expel dentures. She didn't want to ruin the mood. She sat on a chair in the hallway and dialed Mulder, wanting him, his voice, but getting voice mail. "Mulder, it's me," she said. "I'm done." She slipped the phone back into her pocket and rubbed her temples, the boy's face with its peach fuzz and acne scars large in her mind. Every so often this happened, this inability to put death back in cold storage. She supposed she should be thankful for the proof she was still a person before she was a doctor or an FBI agent, but it always made her feel weak and that wasn't something she ever wanted. Did profiling make Mulder feel this way? Did the motley faces of suspects, of victims, ever surge up from the depths of his psyche and threaten to drown him? "Scully, you okay?" Her partner's baritone dared her to tell him a fine lie as he crouched beside her chair. The hyenas tromped past them, oblivious. She looked at him, eye level for once, and decided it was time somebody said something. "No, I'm not." --------------------------- Back in her apartment, he heated soup while she selected music. She pushed play, and chamber singers filled the air with words it seemed like she'd known since birth. Her brain translated the Greek into English out of habit. "Kyrie eleison (Lord have mercy)...Christe eleison (Christ have mercy)..." Mulder brought soup, crackers and juice on a tray. "That's pretty." He handed her a napkin and a bowl. The soup was soothing, but as its steamy warmth seeped into her flesh she wished heartache could just evaporate, too. "I loved to listen to the choir sing this at Mass. First and last time I ever sang along in church," she said, not trying to be funny. Just trying. He settled on the couch next to her, slurping for a few minutes, and she thought maybe she was trying too hard until he put his bowl back on the tray and sat sideways, facing her, with his head leaning on his left hand. "When I was little," he said, tracing a blue stripe on the couch with eyes and fingers, "I would listen to the cantor and even though I didn't understand everything he said, the purity and conviction in his voice was something special, something holy. Something...higher." He picked up his glass of juice, wiping the condensation on wool trousers before it dripped on the couch. "My cynicism grew with me, but I never was quite able to shake that sense of awe I felt as a boy in temple. To this day, I still feel it whenever I see or hear beauty." She would not cry. "Hard to find beauty when you have to look at beaten and dead children." He sipped his juice and nodded. "Yes, it is." Then he put down his glass, took her soup away and held both her hands in his. "But I am in awe of you every day." She smiled at him, accepting his kindness, and he squeezed her hands before handing her back the bowl of chicken and stars. -- 30 -- ============================ thanks for playing in the sandlot with me N.B.: I find it interesting that the happier our heroes are on the show, the more angst I want for them in fic, and vice versa. Argue/agree at fullback48@zdnetonebox.com.