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 

is really dead.  Nobody tells you what happens afterwards.



*



It hurts now, a burning, excoriating pain.  Every cell in the universe 

of her body is shifting, tearing away.  She understands what it feels 

like to the land to be invaded, to be hollowed out and bathed in blood 

that's not your own.



This is a dream.  This must be a dream.  I want to wake up.  Over and 

over, she repeats this fervent litany. 



Time spins out and back in, like the arms of a galaxy, all whirl and

chaos.  This is how forever feels.



Mulder, I want to wake up.



*



Something dull, like the memory of pain, stings her and she is back in 

his hallway, back in his arms and on the floor.  The world is roiling 

and retreating and she can't breathe.   Blink.



Cold, she thinks.  I'm cold.  And when he answers her, she realises the 

words came out of her mouth.  This tumult is real.  Mulder.



Everything is shaking, or maybe it's just her.  And he is lifting, 

pulling, carrying when all she wants to do is go to sleep.  Her voice 

rough, forgotten, "I can't."  And his, a low tether, "Yeah, you can."



*



"Breathe!"  He's shouting at her.  His mouth is on hers, his breath in 

her lungs.  He leaves her no choice.  And she awakens this time, really 

awakens, into a world alive with pain and the bea

uty of his face above 

her.  Mulder.  Her one clear thought.





***









notes:



[1] thanks to those who were gracious enough to send encouragement for

my first effort.  i really cannot express my astonishment or my

gratitude.  



[2] this piece was sparked by two separate bunnies.  the first came from 

reading post-eps for FTF on gossamer and running across Sleeping Beauty 

by Scheherezade.  i shamelessly stole the idea.  the second came from 

Emily, who wanted Scully's viewpoint while she's in the tube.  this is 

most likely *not* what she was after, but perhaps she'll like it anyway.





[3] back in the day, i did some research for my undergrad thesis on 

modern retellings of fairy-tales.  if you're interested in that sort of 

thing, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeping_Beauty is a good place to 

start.  jane yolen's novel is very good.



[4] the title is the name of a song by Dead Can Dance from their album 

Aion.  it, too, is very good.  and i couldn't think of anything else.



[5] Ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae: pray for 

us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.  the catholic mass is just 

so much prettier in latin.

 



http://absentia.org/snake/x/



the attention just encourages her

-- the dresden dolls