Interlude: Lazarus' Voice
by Elizabeth Gerber

Rating: PG-13
Category: VRA
Keywords: SLASH M/SK
Spoilers: SR-819, Redux, Gethsemene, One Breath
Summary: Skinner ruminates over recent events.  Directly follows
Voices III: Losing My Voice.

Archive: Ephemeral, Gossamer, Archive/X, WalterTorture,
MulderTorture--yes, please. Others, just ask first. Also found with a
bookcover image at my page:
http://www.geocities.com/WestHollywood/Chelsea/1334. The other three
"Voice" stories can be found there as well.
Feedback: Yes, please, to elixia@mindspring.com

Disclaimer: The characters depicted within belong to 1013, Fox and
Chris Carter.  The poem quoted is "Lady Lazarus" by Sylvia Plath,
which I suppose belongs to her children now.
Thanks: To m. butterfly for the betaing and, er, to that girl Laura
for handing me the Plath book when I was 16. <eg>

WARNING!! This story contains romance between two men.  Not too much
physically in this one.

^^^^^^^^^

When I was in college after the war, I had to take a literature course
to fulfill my requirements.  I wasn't interested in literature at the
time.  I was a young man; I just wanted to finish classes so I could
do something useful.  In the end, I took the course that best fit my
schedule, and it was Contemporary Poetry.  I didn't really like most
of it--didn't care to take the time to understand it.  I think I was
afraid to look too deeply within myself, afraid of what I might find.

This one poem, though, stuck with me.  I don't have it in a book
because I wouldn't care to read it, but oneline in particular has
always stayed with me:  "And like the cat, I have nine times to die.
This is number three."  I wasn't terribly interested in the author,
who died ten years before I read her poem.  The line caught me
because, though I was barely 23, I had already died once, and I felt
at times like a ghost among the living.

Now, I can truly say, this is number three.  I died on that terrible
day in the jungle.  I died on a table in the hospital last month.  I
died in my lover's bed on Saturday morning.  This is number three.  I
don't remember what came after that in the poem.  Maybe Mulder knows;
it seems more like his kind of thing.  Moody.  Depressing.  Then
again, I'm the one sitting here in bed thinking about death.

^^^

I thought I had my life all worked out.  I would work quietly within
the context of the Bureau to give what support I safely could to the
X-Files.  I would bail Mulder and Scully out of trouble when I had to.
I would eschew personal involvement.  I would go home to a drink and a
book and an empty apartment.  After what Mulder tried to pull on me, I
knew I had to get out in order to ensure my own survival.  If there's
one thing I know how to do, it's survive.

But then I got sick, and there he was.  Kind and pushy and beautiful.
Grade A Mulder.  But the amazing thing is that he's changed.  He's
grown up a little, gotten a little breathing room from his obsessions.
I would be glad for the change, if it hadn't taken the world breaking
his heart for it to happen.

Scully nearly died, blaming him.  He killed that man and lied to me.
He doesn't think I know, but I heard about that meeting with his
"sister."  His mother wouldn't speak to him.  I turned cold.  After
the horrible tragedy with her daughter, Scully was pretty far away for
a while.

I don't blame myself for pulling away from him, but I can see now what
it did to him.  the burning of his files, I think, broke him up into
little pieces.  What we have now is a new Mulder, reassembled in
private, still a little raw.  Until I got sick, he'd been resisting
getting in deep with anything.  He was running around, trying to find
weird little cases to distract himself.  Knowing Mulder, it wasn't
working too well.

After I survived that second death, I thought I could go back to my
well-planned life.  I convinced myself that I could keep Krycek happy,
that he would keep me alive.  I convinced myself that I could live
without Mulder, no matter that I dreamt of him each night.  But then
he showed up drunk at my door and challenged me to love him again.

What could I do but take him up on it?

^^^

I never would have expected it, but a heart attack hurts much worse
than being shot.  When I was shot in 'Nam, I hardly even felt it
before I was out of my body, watching the whole gruesome spectacle.
When I was shot a few years ago, it wasn't bad.  It knocked me out,
and when I came to they had me on the good drugs.  Even when I was
sick last month, I hardly thought of the pain.  I had things to do; I
had to find the answers and save myself.  Pain was not a
consideration.

But on Saturday morning I fell asleep in spent bliss with Fox Mulder
in my arms.  I woke up to my chest being crushed by a vise.  My lungs
were burning, my head was exploding, and there was nothing I could do.
I was frozen, locked into my failing body, every cell seizing,
contracting and screaming for oxygen.  My brain refused to grant me
unconsciousness.  I was awake in agony for every second until my heart
stopped.

And Mulder restarted it.  It seems terribly--dare I say it?--poetic.
The man who, mere hours before, had reeled me in from a life of
loneliness had to physically breath life into me, convince my failing
heart to continue.  Scully told me that he Mulder saved me, that I
might well have died were it not for his memory and his quickness.  So
now my life belongs to him; it's inevitable.

Of course it's held in loan from Alex Krycek.  If I had died, by freak
accident it would seem, wouldn't he have just spit?  His brand new
tool lost so fast, before I could even do him any favors.  What a
strange triangle we have.  It's worthy of an X-File.

^^^

I expect Mulder will be coming back soon.  He's been attached to my
bedside like a limpet since I woke up.  My first lucid thought, upon
seeing his haggard face, was to make sure Scully would take care of
him.  I'm sure she did; she's good at that.  The nurse just chased him
off now, so I hope he's getting some dinner.

Tomorrow, we'll go home to my apartment.  It's a blessing, in a way,
that we can't do anything--sexually that is--for two weeks.  We need
some space to figure each other out again.  I need some time to
convince Mulder that he doesn't need to spend the rest of his life
making his mistakes up to me.  Maybe I need some time to learn how to
feel immortal again.

I'm going to try to get him to go home tonight, but I have a feeling
it's a losing battle.  Seeing me die broke something in him, and being
near me, watching me breathe is healing that rupture.  Who am I to
deny him that when he's been denied so many other comforts in his
life?

So, he can sleep next to me in his chair.  When I wake in the
semi-darkness, I can run my fingers through his soft brown hair.  I
can watch his face smooth in sleep.  Mulder, the eternal foolish
child, is growing into middle age, but when he sleeps I can see the
twelve-year-old who lost everything.  I've also seen one or two grey
strands in that thick hair of his.

I have a feeling I'll see more.  That he'll see me lose the rest of
what hair I have left.  I have a feeling, if both of us can manage to
survive our enemies, that we'll be old men together, with our annoying
habits and a lot of books.  With his fish and maybe a dog.  I'd like a
dog.  And a cabin in the mountains after we retire.  A fireplace and a
big bed and a dog and Fox Mulder.

Jesus, it must be the drugs they're giving me because I'm turning into
a sap.

^^^

I hear Mulder now, out in the hallway, telling the nurse that he'll be
staying tonight.  She's not too pleased, but he usually gets his way.
I think he'll be staying.  After all, I have six more lives left.

^^^^^^^^^

THE END

Thanks for reading!  Feedback is welcome at elixia@mindspring.com