From: Shannon Date: Tue, 22 May 2001 23:21:58 -0700 Subject: Changed by Shannon Kizzia Source: direct Changed by Shannon Kizzia (lmelao@earthlink.net) Rating: PG (freaky, huh?) Spoilers: Existence Category: V Keywords: Reyes/Scully UST, MSR Summary: She stopped on a Cowboy Junkies song, "'Cause Cheap is How I Feel". She turned it low, a soundtrack to her thoughts. Which kept coming back to Dana. Author's Notes: I felt a bit of a vibration in this episode and I had to briefly explore it. Don't worry, it's a very shipper safe story. I loved that last scene as much as anybody. That thud your heard was me falling out of my chair into a puddle of happy, grateful tears on the floor. Disclaimer: Scully, Reyes, and Mulder belong to Chris Carter, (my new best friend), 1013, and FOX. I just can't help but play with them. Try not to sue me. I paraphrased something Gillian once said about paradoxes. To her I say thanks and you da bomb. Changed by Shannon Kizzia (lmelao@earthlink.net) She lay across the hood of her sedan, listening to the helicopter fade into night silence. She counted the seconds until she couldn't hear it anymore, marveling at the inadequacy of the human ear, how such a loud, disruptive sound could disappear into nothing so quickly. In its wake were frogs, gently conversing under the country sky. A soft wind picked up some dead leaves and circled them around each other before settling them in new locations, spent. Reyes felt spent. She had just delivered a child, Scully's child. The inhuman collective had not even tried to take him. She had been terrified, the incredible burden of responsibility collapsing her chest as she bent over her work, in toward Scully's spread legs, protecting. She had chanted two mantras. One out loud to Scully: It's okay. Push. Keep breathing. One to herself: no, no, no, no, no. No to Scully. Don't cry. Don't be scared. No to them. No fucking way you're taking her child! No to herself. No, this can't be happening to me. I can't be expected to keep this woman and her baby safe. No, I will not let her down, even if I have to die in the process. Yes. I will prevail. And she had. The baby was born, a beautiful boy, wailing in futility. The creatures had done nothing more than turn and leave. No expression crossed their faces. No surprise that this was not their savior. No disappointment even. No compassion. Nothing. They were gone. And in their place, Mulder. Reyes felt the vibration of his fear, his adrenaline, his focus, SCULLY!, even before she heard the helicopter, before the artificial light of its hulking form filled the sky between the black trees. He filled the air for miles. His love for her reaching, two long arms of need. Reyes felt his touch as he reached past her to Scully and their child. It gave her some peace. Then he was really there, fully physically there, and really reaching past her for his love. She watched from the doorway as he fell to his knees before them, witnessed their quick embrace, understood that it was merely a precursor to a later homecoming. She knelt by Scully's side, Mulder by the other, and both of them helped her to the chopper, Scully clutching her baby to her chest. They settled in under the wind and noise and before the door could close, Scully's hand reached for hers. Her grip was strong, bruising and wonderful. Scully yelled, "Thank you!" into the wind and it was whipped away, but Reyes nodded and smiled, knowing. They were picking up and leaving in the next second, leaving her to her exhaustion and the long drive back away from this strange place. She passed her hand over her eyes, yawned, stretched her legs across the slope of the hood. She got up on unsteady legs, fumbled for the keys in her pocket, got in the car, started the ignition. She laughed at the sound. It was so normal. The car was the same as she'd left it when they'd first arrived, Scully's abandoned pink lemonade bottle one-fourth full in the cup holder. The engine spun and warmed to the idea of driving again. It was a machine and unchanged. Reyes drove home without the radio on and with the window down. **** Two hours more. She'd pulled over at a truck stop about 15 miles back and had a bacon cheeseburger and a large, black coffee. Doggett had rung her cell phone and asked if she was all right. "Just tired. And pretty sore. Nothing too bad." He said that Scully and Mulder and the baby had made it to the hospital and all were fine. She sighed heavily as she clicked the phone off. She drove 75 miles per hour, smoking and flicking her ashes into the distended ashtray under the stereo console. She flipped the radio on and turned the knob, surfing through static, Pat Boone, AC/DC, and NPR. She stopped on a Cowboy Junkies song, "'Cause Cheap is How I Feel". She turned it low, a soundtrack to her thoughts. Which kept coming back to Dana. "I have to say, with everything I know you must be feeling, you look amazingly beautiful, Dana." They'd been nested together in this odd place, feeling uneasy, and they'd talked about inanities to help each other through the night. Scully had looked grateful when Reyes had recounted her childhood stories, one after the other, silly stories about eight year old scrapes and high school dates, apropos of nothing. And likewise, Reyes had felt comforted by Scully's listening and her little comments here and there. "And what about what you're feeling? Any vibrations...Agent Reyes?" Yes. Quite a few. They had been sitting together, sometimes preparing, sometimes quietly waiting. The air was humming, the light soft, and Reyes took the time to look at Dana, at how her hair fell around her face and caught fire in the candlelight, how the baby rounded her abdomen perfectly, how her breasts strained in her white shirt and how the white enhanced the rose of her complexion. She found herself envious of Mulder, that he got to touch her. She understood how soft she would be. She was truly beautiful. But it wasn't in the stars. She could feel that it wasn't supposed to be anything but a passing infatuation. She was being gifted with this night. Gifted and cursed. Someone had once said to her that the really good things were often also paradoxes. Yes, she would get to know this remarkable woman a little better, would get to be a part of her child's birth, would always hold that place in Scully's life, the one who brought her baby into this world. But the cost could have been high. Could have been their lives. Still, it wasn't. The cost was paid in their fear, in sweat, in exhaustion. The cost was affordable. And now as Reyes stubbed out her cigarette and rolled the window up against the cool wind, she sighed in contentment. Scully was with the one she loved and was destined to love. Reyes had helped in that destiny. She turned the radio up as she crossed into Virginia. She felt the vibration of her own life, her own journey, and she smiled in the dashboard light. End Feedback kissed and hugged at lmelao@earthlink.net