From: ephemeral@ephemeralfic.org Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2010 16:58:42 -0500 (CDT) Subject: Alabaster Stones by Aloysia Virgata Source: direct Reply To: aloysia.virgata@yahoo.com TITLE: Alabaster Stones AUTHOR: Aloysia Virgata DISTRIBUTION/FEEDBACK: Just let me know first on distribution. Feedback always welcomed and appreciated at aloysia.virgata@yahoo.com RATING: PG-13 for disturbing content CLASSIFICATION: Vignette SPOILERS: Emily SUMMARY: She has concluded that a soul capable of leaving a three year old girl to such a fate is not a soul worth worrying about. DISCLAIMER: Breaking seal constitutes acceptance of agreement. Proceed at your own risk. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. For recreational purposes only. Driver does not carry cash. And, as always, thank you for choosing Aloysia Airlines for your direct flight from 1013 to fanfic. AUTHOR'S NOTES: The title is from the sirens' song in O Brother, Where Art Thou? The lyrics are frequently written down wrong ("Daddy's gonna stay" instead of the correct "Daddy's gone to stay," for example) which is annoying when trying to find a link to share so I won't bother, but I do recommend listening to it if you're not familiar. It's got a wonderfully creepy quality that I just love. Thank you to Dashakay and icedteainthebag for beta reading, to so_vieh for helping me to patch things up with as much accuracy as possible, to RivkaT for advice on characterization, and to paigehunt for encouraging me to get back in the saddle. *** Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle; she died young. - John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi *** "Emily," she whispers, crawling into the bed next to the warm little body. There is no answer, though the girl would have a hard time responding even if she were conscious. A feeding tube was inserted two days ago and, against Scully's protests, the guardian appointed by the court had a ventilator wheeled in this morning. Gray fuzz clings to the remnants of adhesive on Emily's arms, and the crooks of her elbows are shadowed with the bruises of clumsy needles. Her skin is ashen and sour smelling, hair matted with sweat. Beneath her thin chest a fierce heart beats, pumping toxins through her failing organs. Scully has been coming in for three nights now, curling up beside her dying child, watching her slip away by inches. She has seen the men come, eyeing Emily as they sit on the molded plastic chairs in the hallway, downing muddy coffee from Styrofoam cups. They maintain a veneer of interest in tired old magazines, never saying a word to her, never directly threatening, but she knows. It's siege warfare and they have all the time in the world. She hates the men for Emily, for long-lost Samantha Mulder, for her sister, and - most of all - for igniting this cold, consuming fire inside her. She feels a pang for the self- assured girl who went to Oregon, for her bad suits and worse hair. For all of the things she did not have to believe. Scully smoothes her hand over the tangled blond bangs and swallows hard against the stinging in her sinuses, the throbbing in her stiff arm. The silence in the room brings her a measure of dark comfort. She doesn't have to feel awkward for lacking Mulder's easy ways with children. She'd given Emily her necklace and told herself it was a talisman because she felt cheap admitting it was a bribe. She assumed what she felt for her daughter was love - assumed it had to be love - because...because what else was she meant to feel? What did it make her if it were anything else? She'd begged Mulder to plead her case at the hearing because Christ, he'd sold her on chasing down his fantasies for five years and assumed he could talk anyone into anything. There were wounds in his come-hither eyes that bled sincerity and she, by virtue of empirical study, had faith in their abilities. She noted that he referred to her as Miss Scully - not Doctor, not Special Agent - but made her into a feminine abstraction as he dropped his bombshell about how she had been violated. And she knew in that awful moment that on the most basic level, she wanted Emily because she was hers. Because she was owed. Because it wasn't fair for anyone else to take the reins of the girl's small and terrible life. Scully's fingers slip under the loose fabric of her left sleeve, skirting the pilfered stopcock and tubing taped down to her wrist. The skin is tender and bruised, irritated by the catheter it took her forty minutes to insert. The whole assemblage is bound tightly to her forearm with a piece of plywood and a few strips of duct tape from her brother's garage. The brick in her trunk will send it all to the bottom of the San Diego Bay on her drive home. It's not too late to leave. Not too late to change her mind and wait, as she usually does, for death to steal in so she can inspect the aftermath. But it has already come, she reminds herself, and these humming machines are just stalling tactics. And when it comes for her she'll go to Hell if she has to, but she won't offer Emily up for her own salvation. God will deal with her as He must. She pulls her fingers from her sleeve and runs one over Emily's round cheek. Scully imagines her in a room with white walls like the one she won't let herself remember. Going through puberty, having her ova harvested, and remaining all the while in this ghastly condition. She has concluded that a soul capable of leaving a three-year-old girl to such a fate is not a soul worth worrying about. //I have a chance to stop that. You were right. This child... was not meant to be.// Scully has been taught that to love is to sacrifice. She sits up and turns her back to the window, disliking the vulnerability of her position but needing the cover. She leans over until her chest is nearly against Emily's. Quickly, carefully, she works her hand under the loose collar of Emily's shapeless hospital gown to disconnect the snaking wire of an EKG lead. She slides it under her loose sweater and attaches it to an electrode on her own chest, repeating the process twice more. Both Emily and the monitor remain unperturbed by the interference. Sitting back up, Scully pushes her sleeve to her elbow and rests Emily's forearm against her trousers. Willing her fingers not to shake, she detaches the tubing from the transducer leading to Emily's monitor. The machine beeps once, making sweat gather on Scully's forehead. Her underarms prickle and her nimble hands are suddenly leaden. Footsteps echo in the hallway and she goes rigid until they pass. She takes a deep breath, attaches her own cannula to the transducer, releases the stopcock, and the screen on the monitor wavers in confusion. But then it seems to shake off the disorientation and a comforting parade of peaks and valleys goes marching by, her frightened heart a reasonable facsimile of Emily's struggling one. Scully sighs in something akin to relief and turns back to face the window, switching the pulse oximeter from the clammy little forefinger to her own. Left leg extended, she inches forward on the cheap cotton sheets until her foot is close enough to the wall to kick the heavy beige cord from the outlet. As she had disconnected the external battery upon her arrival, the ventilator shudders to silence. Utter stillness in the room. At least until she reattaches everything once Emily is safely dead. Then the cavalry will ride in and she, escorted from the room as protocol demands, can slip away in the ensuing chaos. For now though, she and death preside in peace. //But if you could treat her...// "Breathe," Scully hisses, knowing she doesn't mean it. "Emily *breathe,* dammit." //I wouldn't. I wouldn't do it to her.// Emily remains placid and serene. Her chest doesn't rise. Cerebral anoxia is beginning, massive rerouting efforts taking place as the blood oxygen level plummets. Her heart begins to race, a bluish cast tingeing her rosebud mouth. Minutes tick by on Scully's Omega. There is a terrible ache in her, borne of longing more than sorrow. She wants to believe that somewhere a splintered- off universe exists where she and Emily are whole. But the details of it are indistinct and while a laughing Emily runs through a sprinkler in her mind's eye, she herself remains pale and tailored at the periphery, unchanging across all dimensions. She can't decide if this is revelatory or whether her imagination is merely stunted from over-pruning Emily jerks once as her blood becomes more acidotic. Scully flinches, watching for ghosts in the ether. The man in the hallway rises and goes to the vending machine to buy himself a bag of chips. Scully presses two fingers to Emily's wrist and gazes at the visitor's reflection in the glass, feeling the tide go out beneath her trembling hand. *** The End *** Thanks for reading! Feedback always appreciated at aloysia.virgata@yahoo.com Check out my site at http://undertherug.insatiable- mind.net/Aloysia.htm Or my LiveJournal at http://aloysiavirgata.livejournal.com