Terms of Bereavement
by MystPhile (mystphile@aol.com)

Summary:  A quickie to rid myself of the taste of TOE.  Scully has insomnia
after digging up dead babies.

Archive:  Anywhere, just tell me

Spoilers:  TOE, Emily

Rating:  PG

Classification:  V, SA, MSR

Disclaimer:  They're not mine, damn it.



Toss, turn, tug on the blanket.  I know why I can't sleep.  It's been over a
year, but she's still on my mind.  Like those poor little babies, she was a
defective child, someone who wasn't allowed to live.  

Well, she lived for a little while.  I don't know if that's good or bad with
all the suffering she went through.  But at least someone loved her.  No, I
don't mean me.  I wasn't really her mother.  By the time she died, she was
already an orphan.  I can't kid myself that she was mine just because she
carried some of my biological material.  What she was to me was the death of
hope, of possibility.  She was the only biological child I'll ever have, and
she wasn't even mine.

How can people hurt children, *any* children?  I know Mulder really believes
those people were demons.  Hell, I believe in the devil too, but I'd like to
see him show a little more grandeur.  This guy seemed more like a schmuck than
a demon.

Toss, turn.  Oh, now my stomach's growling.  I don't remember eating much for
dinner.  Poor woman.  The wife, I mean.  The first one.  She was like me, not
just losing her baby but having it taken forceably from her. Well, *all* my
potential babies were forceably removed.  Shit.

I guess both she and I were being used, in a sense, to provide genetic
material for someone who wanted a certain kind of child.  That is, if you
accept Mulder's contention.  I'm not sure I do.  But I shouldn't have blamed
the mother immediately--it was just as likely the father who didn't want an
imperfect kid.

Ha.  What other kind of kid exists?  Everybody wants perfection, which is
unattainable.  

I know what made me suspect abortion so fast.  Well, aside from the mandrake
in the bloodstream.  The ER rotation long ago.  It shocked this little
Catholic girl to see how many "lost" babies were murdered. I remember the dead
babies brought in--how often they were found to have been smothered.  Maybe
that's one reason I decided on pathology. I thought I might be able to stop
people from doing stuff like that, discover the murderers before they have a
chance to try it again.

Let's try lying on the belly. *Something* has got to work.   All those dead
babies. Tonight, I mean.  Some perfectly formed, others slightly deformed.
And nobody has a right to decide they shouldn't live.  But it happens all the
time.  That's the problem.  It's horrendous but it happens so damned often.

Girls who have babies at their proms, smother them, stuff them in a
wastebasket, and head out for the next dance.  That's what these people in
Virginia reminded me of. It's like the book.  The Banality of Evil.

Let's try lying on the side.  The stomach position isn't working.  Grab the
blanket. Tuck it in.  Why do I feel so cold?

We grow up expecting evil to be significant, large scale.  Then, when we ARE
grown up, we find out it's petty, ordinary.  It's just a bunch of little
people who want something and don't care about the consequences to others.

You want to make a lot of money.  Your company is making a product that kills
other people.  Or maybe it's polluting the water supply.  But you don't care
about any of that.  You just want your money.  Or your perfect baby.  Or your
lifetime supply of ova to do god knows what with.  You just don't give a fuck.
You are evil.  And you are small.

Oh, poor Mulder.  It's all too easy for him to leap to the most glamourously
supernatural answer.  It can't be so banal as a parent's wish to get rid of an
unwanted child.  Too simple.  He has to come up with stuff like demon fetal
harvest.  He made it sound like an everyday term, like wash and wear.  Of
course, the old demon fetal harvest.  *That's* it. What else could it be.  

Damn it, will I never get to sleep.  It must be 3 a.m.

Suddenly, a warm hand touches my back.  It trails up to my shoulder, down my
arm, and skips down to my hip, skimming down my thigh.  I feel a little less
tense.

Warm breath touches my neck and a nose I regard as a prime erotic object
nuzzles behind my ear.  The arm settles over my stomach, warming it, as a
long, lean, hairy leg drapes itself over my shorter, curled up legs.  I feel
enveloped, cocooned, cradled.

A hoarse whisper:  "What's wrong?"

I don't answer.  I just lay my arm across the one now warming my stomach,
which has stopped growling.  I grope for the fingers at the end of the arm and
squeeze.

"The dead babies," he says.

I nod slightly and press back into his body.  Its warmth surrounds me.  I feel
as if I've gone back to the womb, so safe and comforting.  Maybe I will be one
of the lucky ones, allowed to be born and to live well.  I also feel as if I'm
losing my mind, entertaining such thoughts.

"I'd fix it if I could, you know that," he says, breathing into my ear and
nuzzling at my lobe.  "I'd give up the X-Files for you."

"They're not yours to give up," I point out, coming out of my infantile phase.

He pushes his other arm beneath my waist so that he can wrap both arms around
me.  His leg covers my lower body completely. "I'd stop trying to get them
back," he says.  "I'd stop sneaking off to investigate weird happenings.  I'd
even stop stealing Spender's shreddings."

"Wow," I say.  "You'd do just about anything for me."  There's a sarcastic
edge in my voice that both of us know is phony.

He raises his head slightly to kiss my jaw, my cheek, my temple.  "You know I
would."

Evil may be banal. Good, when you're lucky enough to encounter it, is
unmistakable. 

I thought earlier that perfection is unattainable.  I was wrong.  It is
possible to have *moments* of perfection.  This is one.


END