Category: Story/Gen Fic Rating: R for adult themes Disclaimer: Don't own 'em. CC does Archive: COLB okay. Nowhere else, please. Feedback: Gratefully devoured at cicilean@ahoo.com ======== THE NEXT BREATH by CiCi Lean, 1999 cicilean@yahoo.com ======= "Oh! breathe not his name, let it sleep in the shade Where cold and unhonour'd his relics are laid..." ======= I had the chocolate. I knew that's what he'd want when he finally woke up. Yes, I knew him and his sweet tooth well enough after all those years. He sucked on candy when distressed, the baby boy and his popsicle -- an unconscious leftover from an ordinary childhood. A childhood he'd barely left behind. I knew he hadn't been taken into the emergency room for a knee scrape. I knew it was a bullet; that much they'd told me. But I brought the chocolate anyway, as a small reminder of the myriad pleasures that would wait upon his recovery. You need those reminders in dark times, I chanted to myself. Those little reminders of why life was worth fighting for. Why survival was a noble endeavor. Why you should fight like hell to take that next terrible breath. I brushed past them all, the field jockeys, the suits, the other labrats -- my countenance steel confident and cold. Fearless. They were all so oddly pale and supple-limbed, parting like the sea for a chocolate bearing Moses. But, then again, I was his Partner. That was the secret code, the sacred bond, between us. No one would dare stand in my way as I went to his hospital bedside after he'd been shot. No, no one would dare. I noted with satisfaction that he'd been given his own room. I appreciated that immediately, since it meant less head breaking to bother with later on during his recovery. Yes, I was ready for the long haul to assist in his recovery. Ready for whatever pain or frustrations lie ahead. I was ready for anything. Except for what I saw when I opened that door. A still body covered with a white sheet. A sheet that was tucked in tightly over his head cutting off any possibility of easy breathing. It was a ... confusing sight. Oh, for Christ's sake. Now how the hell was he supposed to breathe like that? I yanked it off with annoyance. "Daniel. Wake up," I said, more than a little pissed off. What sort of game was this that they were playing now? What sort of idiots were working here? How the goddamn hell was he supposed to breathe like that? "Daniel?" He didn't reply. He did nothing but stare at me with a singular pair of milky, lifeless, sky-blue eyes. The chocolates fell from my hand and I heard a long shrill scream that sounded vaguely like my own. The room suddenly churned to life with pressing bodies on each side of me, murmuring meaningless things, hands pulling the sheet back over Daniel's face, hands grasping at my elbows and cradling my spine. Arms snaked around my waist, squeezing, with hands pulling my head down onto broad shoulders, carrying its impossible weight. The bodies, the murmurs, the hands and arms -- they were everywhere and I couldn't esccape them if it'd meant my life. Yes, *they* were everywhere. With no escape in sight. "He's sleeping now," I whispered to them, right before the floor rushed up to meet me in a vortex of swirling light, rushing air and a pinpoint of blackness that seems to go on for eternity. ======== "Grace? Grace Moore?" Why the hell did they still take attendance in college? I was paying a zillion dollars to be there, didn't the morons figure that out? "Present." "Thank you. Daniel? Daniel Benbell?" "Uh, Pendrell, sir." "Pendole?" "Pen-DRell, sir." "Barbell. Yes, that's fine." "Yes, sir." There was a twelve-year old sitting next to me in college that day. How the hell a kid got into MIT was far beyond me. But he was such a fastidious looking twelve-year old, with his neatly trimmed red hair and buttoned-right-up-to-here collar. Grinned at me, turned bright red, then pretended to be studying the rings of his note binder very, very carefully. I wasn't impressed. It might have been because I'd heard his nickname on campus already. "Two-Can" Pendrell. And they sure weren't kidding. Two cans of beer at a frat party and he was Leaving Las Vegas. It embarrassed him, he didn't understand it until I explained to him one evening over the crackling din of bad, deafening eighties music that weighing barely over one hundred pounds might have something to do with it. The scientist in him brightened at the revelation and he cheerfully ordered his third beer. "So," he slurred. "What are you doing after we get the hell out of this hole? I myself am thinking about joining the F... F... F.B.I. Yep. The B.F.I." I stared at him for a long minute before taking the beer out of his hand and dumping onto the dirty sawdust floor. ===== We joined the Bureau straight out of college and ran the track at Quantico side by side every morning at dawn. Failed the same self-defense course and shot blindly at targets that moved too fast for us to see. Were assigned to the Sci- Crime laboratory on the same day and everyone, including our supervisor, expected us to fail at approximately the same time, maybe even on the same case. We proved them all wrong. A triple child-murder in Boise was all that we'd needed to show our stuff and we went from Goats to Heroes in six hours flat. Those were giddy days and our jobs were on easy street. Life was easy, life was good and we were quite the pair. Until *she* came into our office. With her flame haired beauty, her brilliance and a tiny mystery that somehow had gotten itself lodged into the back of her perfect pearl-white neck. How quickly she became his obsession. He'd had a few of them before her, the ones who'd passed him by, and I wondered at the dizzy, sickly look that would follow them out the door and down the grey hallways. If he'd had a selfish bone in his body, he would have made a great stalker. But Dana Scully, she was a doozy. A real knockout with red hair, ice cold eyes and one hell of a demanding mind. She was the shit, she knew it and Daniel loved it. Thought he loved her, even though she scared him nearly to death. Even though she turned him into someone I really didn't like. Daniel never gave a crap. He loved it. Loved everything she did to him. Maybe that's why she bothered me so much. It was after her second visit, one that left him licking his suddenly dry lips and wiping his hands compulsively on his labcoat when I confronted him about her. "Why do you act like such a fool around her? Are you a fool? You say she makes you nervous. Does every woman make you this nervous? Why don't I make you nervous?" I remember asking. It was a question so loaded he should have ducked. Got a shrug and a dismissive gesture in reply. He kept wiping his sweat-covered palms on his labcoat, then on his trousers. I suddenly got sick at the sight of his hands scraping the linen. I hated the sounds, the faces he was making. I hated him. "Why?" I insisted, through gritted teeth. "Why aren't you nervous around me?" Another shrug. "Oh, I know that -you- love me," he replied, still wiping and not looking up. He laughed and tripped back to his desk, humming as I stared after him. Yes, in his own way, Daniel certainly was an arrogant, egotistical little asshole. But, of course, he was right. ======= Surprisingly, I was the first one who got shot in the line of duty. Not surprisingly, I was working for one Fox "Spooky" Mulder at the time, the Crazed Wunderkind of the VCU. He was one hell of a field jockey in those days, simply the best. Of course, this was hearsay, for field jockeys and labrats never speak to one another unless absolutely necessary. It keeps the natural order in line. Yes. Field jockeys and lab rats. Natural enemies, like rodents and birds of prey. I followed procedure accordingly. Didn't say a word to him, stayed out of his way, worked on his case from dawn till midnight and got a gut full of lead for all of my trouble. Everyone was surprised. It was supposed to have been Mulder who got shot that evening. See, field jockeys are always being banged up, broken down and made bloody. On a good day, you could see the canes lining the walls of the VCU, on a bad day, you'd see an empty desk covered with flowers. That was business as usual. The only injury I'd sustained up to that point in my Bureau career was one hell of a paper cut I'd gotten on my tongue while licking an inter-office envelope. I didn't even realize I'd done it until Daniel started wadding the towels into my mouth, cursing beneath his breath. "Moron," he'd said, grabbing another roll. "Mmmmphlge," I'd replied, watching the corners of the towels run bright red. No purple hearts for that one. That all came to an end a few weeks later one humid Monday evening. I don't remember that day at all. Not the case, the circumstances, the time it happened -- nothing. I was told later that the first field jockeys arriving on the scene had looked at me and cried. Lab rats aren't supposed to get shot, they are supposed to live to a ripe old age, cradling baby rats and playing Mr. Wizard in the garage when their spouses weren't looking. No such luck for this lab rat. They said that Mulder took a look, shook his head, and went straight back to his case, asking around for another forensic, preferably one who knew enough to stay the hell out of a gunman's way. Like I said ... he was one hell of a field jockey. As for myself, I'd taken the first bullet right in the esophagus, missing the jugular by one quarter of an inch. The second bullet went through my left shoulder, winging its way off of a socket joint and exiting out my back, ripping open a nice chunky exit wound. But those were the bullshit wounds. The -real- wound was the one I took in the abdomen. The field jockeys call that one the Blow Hole. Yep, the Blow Hole. It's the one where the blood bubbles out from the torn skin. Yellow fat and pink muscle hang out, quivering with the shock. The secret, hidden parts of your humanity are exposed and you can often see hearts beating or stomachs churning beneath. It's not a pretty sight. What makes it even worse is that the Blow Hole is a death wound. As sure as sin. The field jockeys had given up on me even as the paramedics pumped and stuffed and sucked and screamed over me, stabbing the huge adrenaline needle straight into my heart. The suits were already getting busy, cordoning off the murder scene, so they sent the only person they could spare, some dumb rookie, to the phone. He called Daniel and told him that I was dead. Daniel never spoke to me about that day. I never asked him either, but I'm curious about it now. As a purely comparative study, of course. You see, I wonder. Was it just as bad finding me alive in my ICU room that night as it was the day I found him dead in his? Yeah, I wonder. The only thing I know is that when I woke up, one week, three operations and two difilibrations later, he was sitting at my bedside. Nearly unrecognizable beneath a face full of stubble, dark rings circling his eyes and a cast on his right hand. Seems he'd broken it on that poor rookie's jaw. "You should shave," were my first words to him when I returned to life. "You look like total shit." He stared at me. His eyelids were trembling. "Oh, for fucks sake," he rasped and left my room, slamming the door behind him. For a long time I could hear his sobs through the sterile metal and plaster walls, grating at my nerves until I gathered up enough strength to put my fingers in my ears. Eventually, I fell back asleep and my dreams that night were as ordinary, as dull, as anyone could ever wish for. ====== I'll readily admit it. Daniel and I weren't sexually compatible. Not in the slightest. I'd say that lima beans and goldfish had a better chance of mating for life than we did. The chemistry, the passion, the desire... it just wasn't there. And this is the point where I'm supposed to say that we'd never even considered having sex. The truth was that we'd slept together exactly three times in twelve years. We used to joke that it must be some lab rat mating cycle, like Vulcans but without the cheesy special effects. And like Vulcans, these times were always more cerebral than passionate. A sort of sexual science experiment. The last time was two weeks before he died. That one had been my fault. We'd been running two to zero on the responsibility scale, the first two times being his bright idea. The first time was born of drunken exuberance on some graduation day, the second time was after I'd came home from the hospital after my shooting. They'd sent me home before I could actually take care of myself and since the insurance didn't cover a night nurse, Daniel had moved in. He slept on the couch on the good nights, in bed beside me on the bad ones. It was all perfectly innocent until the one good night he'd asked to sleep beside me anyway. With a shrug, I'd let him. Sex was a great painkiller after all. And that had been it. Until my twenty-eighth birthday. That night, for whatever reason, I'd really wanted him. Not forever or even for another time, but for just once, completely, without regrets. He acquiesced and no, I can't say that I had any regrets. I think. I hope. Two weeks later I was striding down a hospital corridor with chocolates in my hand, fearless, ignorant and unprepared for the darkness that was waiting for me behind door number 931. Unprepared for the choking years of suffocation that lie ahead of me. ====== Daniel's been gone exactly two years today. I've been standing over his grave for about ten minutes now, digging a foothold in the now solid grass, trying to get back some of that fresh grave look that I remember so well. Some dark, wet dirt to make the place look a little less permanent... A little easier to rise from. I can see that someone's already been visiting here today. They left a batch of yellow roses, a miniature bottle of scotch and a note. I pick up the note in one hand and the bottle of scotch in the other. "Thank you for the birthday drink," the note reads. It's signed, "Dana Scully." Oh. That's nice, though I have to say that I'm a little bit surprised she didn't leave behind a few evidence slides for him to look at while she was here. But, then again, why should she have? She brings them all to me now. I must say that she's gotten so much better at the field jockey/lab rat game. I'm actually quite impressed with her. Why, she even knows my first name. I'm so very glad she trusts me the way she does. Because it's been through this little partnership of ours, this corporate, scientific kinship born of Daniel's death, that will facilitate the day I've been waiting for. The day that Daniel's killer is handed over to me, body and soul. I rest assured of this eventuality because every piece of evidence Dana Scully gives to me is reported directly to him. Him. The man who's promised me the identity and location of Daniel's killer in return for my betrayal. I don't know his name, and I really don't care, because it been his sweet promise that's kept me taking gasp after gasp of the foul air that's surrounded me for the past two years. Him. The man with that infernal cigarette eternally hanging from his dry and decrepit lips. I open the miniature scotch and swallow most of it in one hot mouthful. Fumble through my pockets for my own cigarette and light it with a trembling hand. I stare at the note and, impulsively, light that as well. Watch the ashes fly up and then flutter into the hole I've made atop Daniel's grave, as a long black car slowly comes to a stop not a hundred yards from where I stand. Watch as two men exit from the back. The one with the cigarette and the other one I've been waiting for, praying for. And I can't remember any time when my gun has felt better, lighter, more comfortable in my hands than at this moment. The moment when I aim its sights and force myself to take that next, terrible breath. ======== fini Comments? 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