Believer, V By Chana Summary: "Trust is the foundation of the therapeutic alliance". Rated NC17 for slash Archive: Yes Crosspost: No, please. Thanks: to Tess, and to Maire McDermod for her endless patience and the shameless use of her accent. Elisabeth could not ask for a better cultural liaison, speech coach or cliche-proofer. Disclaimer: I own Elisabeth Shaugnessy. As for Scully, Mulder, and the events of US4/5, they are owned by 1013 Productions. Feedback and Comments: Will Drool For Feedback. Send to janegrey18@hotmail.com Cave Website Canem: If you are under your country's legal age of majority, use your better judgement. If slash offends you... you took a wrong turn at Pismo Beach. ********** Sleet mixed with hail coated the windowpane, making it impossible to gain a sense of time. Maybe she had slept through the night, maybe it was twilight all over again. She was warm. She was comfortable. Mulder was not on the other end of the telephone. Except for a vague, distant headache, there was nothing that should have woken her. A light hand was meandering along the curve of her breast, sending slow, decadent little wisps of sensation out along the edges of sleep. She reached up and seized the hand, and her smile widened. A deep and definite flush was rising in Elisabeth's cheeks. No artist in the world could have named the color that suffused her ears. And the heat surrounding her had nothing to do with her thick sweater. She's breathtaking, Scully thought. This should have happened last night, last week, the moment we met... "Hi." "Hello," Elisabeth said faintly. Scully sat up, still clasping Elisabeth's hand. "Are you okay?" "I am." She blushed again, certain Dana could hear the mad rush of her heartbeat. Seconds before she could lose her resolve, she found herself tangled in a kiss. *So this is Dana,* she thought, a strange happiness swirling through her as her head hit the couch cushions, stirring a breath of familiar scent. *This isn't Dr. Scully; this isn't the Agent; it's my Dana.* Soft, almost timid kisses trailed down her throat, stopping at the barrier of her sweater. "Off," she gasped, her own fingers tugging and tangling in the weave. "Take it off me -- please --" She struggled upward, writhing free of the heavy thing, and then lay still. "Elisabeth," Scully murmured. She traced one fingertip from clavicle to clavicle, mapping the freckles, and then eased lower. Elisabeth's eyes were half-closed and dreamy, her lips softly swollen from their kiss. She seemed at peace where she was. Scully dared to unclasp the front of a very plain cotton bra. "Don't look." Elisabeth gave a quiet, self-conscious laugh. "Gravity's so unkind." "No," Scully silenced her. "You're beautiful." She'd never actually said it to a woman before. But here, now, it was the only thing to say... She lowered her head and gently drew Elisabeth's nipple into her mouth. The pale luminous skin warmed to pink beneath the freckles, and Elisabeth moaned. "Dana..." "Shhh." Scully went on, with lazy flicks of her tongue. *Since you don't believe me, let me show you how beautiful you are.* "Dana, wait, ow." Elisabeth reached beneath her, fumbled in the heavy cushions and drew out a -- A steadily vibrating pager. "You're on call?" Scully said, her expression twisting. "No. It's you." Scully didn't need to look at the display digits. She tossed it onto the coffee table in disgust. When the telephone rang a few seconds later, Elisabeth had to wonder if she wasn't very, very practiced at ignoring these sort of things. "Pick up the phone, Scully. It's an emergency." Elisabeth wrapped her sweater around her shoulders and listened to Scully's side of the conversation. She was perilously close to tears. Frustration had set her teeth on edge, and her fingernails tapped a muffled staccato on the arm of the couch. But as the look on Scully's face slowly darkened, concern for her blotted out everything else. "Mulder no. Mulder, absolutely not. I can't, I -- no, I -- no." She hung up the phone slowly, her tongue firmly tucked against her cheek. "Elisabeth, you're not going to believe this." "If Mr. Mulder's involved, I'd believe anything short of a fairy ring on the White House lawn." She paused, lowering her eyes. "I'm sorry, Dana, I didn't mean that." Scully kissed her."I know, sweetheart." It surprised her for a moment. The endearment wasn't adequate, but it had come to her so easily. A faint, charming color came back into Elisabeth's cheeks. "So. Off to save the world, are you?" "I'm sorry." "Right," Elisabeth said shakily. "Of course. Brilliant." *Sure. Fine. Whatever.* Scully winced. "I just have to examine some samples for Mulder and -- wait for me, Elisabeth. Please." ***** December 3, 1996 8 PM ***** Elisabeth half jogged to keep up with Mulder's strides, pinning her ID haphazardly to her collar as she ran down the ward. "What do you mean, somebody pushed her down the stairs? Somebody assaults a woman in the public stair of a public building in the middle of your nation's capitol," she gasped, "And nobody sees or hears a thing that's strange? We've got to have the police on this, we --" Mulder looked at the young oncologist. She was white as her coat with fury, and energy seemed to snap in the air around her. "These men are not responsible to any police." "Right. Of course." Elisabeth's mouth tightened at the corners. "Why was she triaged through the ER? Why did nobody call me? None of this makes sense to me, Mr. Mulder, but then I'm finding that's fairly common where you're concerned.". She kept her voice at a steady, unobtrusive volume, but he had the distinct feeling of being outshouted. *Mr. Mulder.* He disliked the way her voice curled around his name, hung on to the consonants and spat them vengefully out. He disliked the haughty set of her chin , the impassive mask of her features. He disliked the fact that she'd answered Scully's phone. "Oh!" When she stopped short, Mulder nearly crashed into her. She rounded a sudden corner, and Mulder found himself on the closed side of the door to Scully's room. "Oh, love, look at you." The back of Elisabeth's throat tightened. Her first instinct -- to pull Dana into her arms and never, ever let go again -- was overwhelmed by an older one: *Do the work, Lissie.* She checked Dana's charts, noted the painkillers being fed into her veins at a steady push. And -- "They sent you to radiology? Why?" Scully watched Elisabeth as she moved. Graceful but nervous as a cornered bird. *This scares her too much. She shouldn't be here, confused and hurt and hurting with me. She should be --* "Dana? Can you hear me all right?" She blinked."I kept -- losing consciousness. They were thinking depressed fracture." *Instead of immediate MRI they check for a skull fracture.* Elisabeth bit her lip. "All right. Can you tell me how it's been since then? Any headache? Nosebleed? Seeing spots or seeing stars?" "No." "Any pain at all -- any part of you numb?" She leaned closer, half perching on the edge of the bed, to examine the dark, shiny contours of a bruise along Dana's cheekbone. This hadn't come from the fall. Someone had punched her in the face. For a moment, her fingers tightened possessively on Scully's cheek. "No." "Do this." Elisabeth touched the fingers of one hand rapidly to her thumb. Scully mirrored her perfectly: no loss of coordination. Gingerly Elisabeth traced her known outline of the tumor, forming a skewed circle along the bridge of Scully's nose and the top of her brow. "I want to get a better print of that x-ray," she said finally, "but you don't appear to have any local hematoma. That's good. The little fucker's vascularized in a very delicate space, and the last thing we need is any problems there." "In other words I'm fine." "No, but you're not bleeding into your brain." She paused. "I would say the loss of consciousness was caused by repeated brief pressure on the nerves within the ethmoid, probably from the motion and impact of that lovely fall you took." "Ethmoid," Scully echoed. "Is that the bird or the butterfly?" "The bird," Elisabeth replied, vaguely uneasy. *You should know that. I know you know that.* She sounded too uncertain, too cloudy, for Elisabeth to be comfortable. Maybe it meant nothing more than that young Dr. Scully had taken a bad mark in skeletal anatomy. Maybe it meant that Dana's higher cognitives were being insidiously impaired. Dana Scully bereft of the power of her mind... "Dana." Tension raised a sudden sharpness in her voice. "Tell me the bone that makes the butterfly." "Sphenoid." Scully paused. "Elisabeth, I --" "Yes?" "I'm fine." To Be Continued In... Chapter 6 End Believer V