From: Megan Kennedy Date: Sat, 10 Jul 1999 18:20:00 -0700 (PDT) Title: "Burnt Offering" Author: Megan E. Kennedy Email: mekamorph@yahoo.com Rating: G Catergory: VA Keywords: Spoilers: "One Son" "Biogenesis" Summary: Scully before she leaves for Africa, as seen through someone else's eyes. Disclaimer: Scully, Mulder, Spender, et cetera ad absudium, are copyrighted to Chris Carter. I don't have his permission to use them but I won't tell if you don't. "Burnt Offering" by Megan E. Kennedy She lights a candle in memory quite often. Sometimes it's pretty obvious who she lights it for, as at Christmastime. More often it seems she's simply lighting it out of habit, as if in that burnt offering her memories would rekindle. I don't think she ever knew how religious I was. How could she, really? My one disclosure was a desperate appeal to some force of sense in my world suddenly skidding wild. She never found out about that other side of me, the facet that was still eight- year-old Jeffy who couldn't stand his mommy's madness anymore, or the chanting of her UFO circle, and fled out the house into St. George's church (even though I was technically Lutheran). I'm no saint, but a center that will hold appealed to me even as a child. I took and do take comfort in the idea that there's a purpose and a plan, even when my life collapses. Still, there were a few times we attended the same Mass. She never saw me, of course, and I kept myself discreet. Now I don't need to even try; the silent apse and darkened pews didn't betray me as I approached. I heard her muttered under he breath as she lit fresh candles from the first row. All the older burning candles were towards the back, guttering wildly. "For Missy. For Ahab. For Emily. For Cassandra..." One by one, the proud straight flames go up. Her litany of names is long, and I won't begrudge her another buck for a candle of my own. She left only the last candle in the row unlit, and went to kneel at the alter. She didn't see me watching. "It's time like this," she starts, voice quavering, "that I wonder if You're even paying attention. I don't know who I can turn to anymore. Mulder..." she choked on that name and I winced in spite of myself. "I need the strength of his beliefs. But I don't know if he's even there anymore to hear me. He once said I complete him...but he's lost all there is for me to work with, I think. I'm going to Africa tomorrow morning on his word and I can't even tell if he cares." I'd never seen Scully cry before that night; she let the waterworks go without trying to stay them. "Have I let my work subsume my life? What will I do if he doesn't come back from..." She couldn't think of a name for the place her partner had gone, but I could. The valley of the shadow of Death. "Will everything my life's become have been...I don't know...an exercise in futility?" She started to say a decade of the rosary as the clock chimed midnight and I slipped away. I knew it was hitting the time I had to leave but I didn't think it'd be was so soon. I looked at the last lonely candle and smiled sadly. Twenty minutes later, Dana Scully got up to leave. It was only her Bureau trained eye that noticed the lit candle. She had stopped short of completing the row, hadn't she? Scully approached the last candle and noticed something leaning against it. A small card, inscribed- "For Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. For Diana Fowley and Walter Skinner. For C.G.B. Spender and his victims. For Alex Krycek and his ambitions. For me. For the world. Dear God, why does it break our bones to dance?" She flipped the card over, and realized it was a holy card. A man in Roman dress holding a spear and a T-square was pictured with a saint's nimbus. The banners at his head and feet read "St. Thomas the Apostle - Patron Against Doubt." Scully smiled. "Amen," she whispered, and tucked the card in her ID, behind her badge. That was where Mulder kept a tiny photo of Samantha, and, more recently, of herself. //Why does it break our bones to dance?// She left the church to try and get what sleep she could before the flight, and she never noticed the way the smoke from the candles curled up into a shade--just a suggestion of limbs, a torso, and a face with a curly brown hair and a wide mouth that grinned.