From: anonymousaurus@yahoo.com.au   
      
   Title: The Arrival and the Reunion   
    Author: tree   
    E-mail address: nullipara@gmail.com   
    Distribution: direct to gossamer; anywhere else would be joyous,   
    please let me know so i can visit   
    Spoiler: The X-Files: Fight the Future   
    Rating: PG-13   
    Category: VA   
    Keywords: M/S UST, Scully Angst   
    Summary: a fever-dream fairy-tale   
      
    special thanks to xangel who kindly offered her beta services,   
    even when i had no idea what that entailed, and declared this fit   
    for human consumption.   
      
      
      
    ***   
      
      
    "Please don't do this to me."   
      
      
    Her voice is low because the words are too heavy, weighted with   
    grief.  There is a trembling ache inside her and she knows that   
    if she doesn't leave now, she might never; she might just do   
    something unforgivable.  So she turns, straightens her spine for   
    one last retreat.  By all that's holy, she hopes he will follow.   
    By all that's holy, she hopes he will not.   
      
    Then his voice bursts through her and they are standing in his   
    hallway, talking about work, talking about something else. She's   
    tired and worn thin.  Her heart beats and beats its lonely way   
    in her chest.  If she speaks now she will cry.  If she cries now   
    she might never stop.  All she can do is press her lips to his   
    forehead and feel the way his hands are so large and warm.  The   
    way he's so close she can feel his breath.  Her eyes fall shut and   
    something in her is reaching outwards from a dark, sleeping place.   
    And if she didn't want this so badly she'd be embarrassed that   
    she's already wet from nothing more than anticipation.   
      
    And then a sharp, bright pain.  Once upon a time.   
      
    Something is wrong.  She knows it the moment it happens.  And   
    years of training come unbidden to her lips as she finds her voice   
    cataloguing symptoms while Mulder sets her gently on the floor.   
    His panic face, then the ceiling swimming in and out of her vision   
    and she is falling, falling though perfectly still.   
      
    It's like the moment before waking, spellbound and fluid.  Her eyes   
    have closed but she hears voices, muffled but distinct.  The inside   
    of her head feels thick and sluggish, like the drone of bees in   
    lavender on an afternoon in late summer.  Bees, she thinks.   
    Because spinning wheels are so last century.   
      
    "Can you hear me?  Can you say your name?"   
      
    Dana Scully.  My name is Dana Scully.  The words are there but they   
    don't come out.  She thinks them, hard, sending them through her   
    body.  Synapses firing, neurons speeding their tiny electrical   
    charges on and on.  None of her muscles respond to the stimulus.   
    She should be afraid, but she can't find the focus to be frightened.   
      
    She is floating on a cold sweep of air, one small balloon rising,   
    and rising.  Then nothing.   
      
    *   
      
    Her eyes are open but she cannot blink.  Like a word just on the tip   
    of her tongue, she is aware of her limbs but cannot attain flexion.   
    Am I breathing, she wonders.  Am I dead?  Words float through:   
    lancinating pain, funny taste, constriction in the throat and larynx.   
    Then something loud and short.  A gunshot.  Mulder?  God, it's so   
    hard to think.   
      
    The air is filled with a constant droning hum.  It's metallic, like   
    air-condensers, like engines.  An airplane?  Where are they going?   
    She wants to turn to Mulder and ask him but she can't move.  He must   
    have fallen asleep on her shoulder again.   
      
    Charlie used to do that, when they were little.  She would hold the   
    big Hans Christian Anderson or Grimm Brothers' book in her lap and   
    his little body would nestle into her side.  She would read and read   
    aloud until his weight slumped against her and then she'd keep   
    reading until her own eyes were heavy and the book slipped from her   
    grasp.  There was one about a woman who cried until her eyes bled   
    and they fell into the water like pearls.  That had been one of her   
    favorites, filling her with the idea that something beautiful could   
    come from grief.  Maybe she could cry pearls, too.   
      
    Once upon a time there was a girl named Dana who had red hair and   
    freckles.  She was not a princess, but she was gifted with the   
    virtues of intelligence and grace and courage.  No one wondered about   
    the wicked fairy at the time.   
      
    God, she's so thirsty.  Where's the flight attendant?  Where's Mulder?   
    He was about to kiss her, wasn't he?   
      
    They had lived through so much sadness, already, enough for a whole   
    string of pearls.  And he had been going to kiss her.  Because she was   
    leaving; because he wanted her to stay.  But didn't he know how it   
    would break her heart?  Didn't he know that she would wither and die   
    in some field office in Utah without the work, without him?  She would   
    rather have nothing than some parody of life in his absence, a life in   
    stasis.   
      
    How could her mother stand all those months over all those years   
    saying goodbye again and again?  Better to be alone altogether.   
    Better to stay intact rather than giving away bits and pieces of   
    yourself until there's nothing left and one day he never comes home   
    again.   
      
    Ahab bought her roses, she remembers.  On her sixteenth birthday.   
    She'd never gotten flowers before and it was embarrassing and   
    beautiful.  Red long-stemmed roses, with leaves and thorns, a whole   
    dozen.  Like the bushes out the back of Mrs Trainor's house that grew   
    and grew because nobody bothered to cut them back.  Sleeping beauty   
    slept for a hundred years behind her walls of roses.  The entire   
    castle was asleep.   
      
    Mulder, where are we going?  Mulder?   
      
    *   
      
    Yes, something is very wrong inside her.  She can feel it.  There is   
    a tenseness, a fullness that shouldn't be.  An itching, brittle   
    thrumming that makes her want to gouge her skin and scream but there's   
    nowhere to go, nowhere to go and she's trapped in this body that's no   
    longer hers.   
      
    The world is waxy and green and there is something so wrong she wants   
    to weep.  Like a cranky child, she wants to curl up in someone's arms   
    and let them make it better.   
      
    She hasn't told him that she loves him.  Not with words.  But she   
    tries, oh she tries.  If he could just promise her that nothing would   
    change, that they would be together and it would be the same, then   
    that would be enough.  She will make it be enough.   
      
    When did the noises stop?  She can't even hear her own heartbeat.   
    Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name.  Ora pro nobis   
    peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae.   
      
    All the stories are different.  Sometimes the prince has to fight   
    his way through, and sometimes he just walks straight in as the   
    brambles part before him.  But it always ends the same way - it's   
    his destiny to save the princess, to kiss her from her slumber and   
    bring her back into the bright world.  Most of the tales stop there,   
    as if that can be all there is to it; as if the princess doesn't   
    struggle and ache in the hard light she's almost forgotten; as if the   
    prince is happy just to sit by her side while the castle wakes and   
    wonders; as if the brambles just untangle on their own and the dragon   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)