From: Brighid Date: Sat, 7 Aug 1999 01:42:43 -0700 Subject: New: "Clay" (post-ep) 1/1 R Title: Clay (1/1) Author: Brighid Spoilers: Spoilers for "Gender Bender " Rating: R Category: V Keywords: Post-episode Summary: Scully and the Last Temptation Warning: Hmmm. Sexual themes, continuing from the ep. Archive: Gossamer, yes; otherwise keep my name & let me know. Constructive feedback greatly appreciated. Disclaimer: All things X-files belong to Chris Carter, 1013, and Fox. This is not for profit, but for love. Author's Notes: 1.) This is for Kelley 2.) Shamshiel is one of the angels who were purported to have fallen halfway to Earth in the days before the Flood. Some of the angels dallied with the daughters of man, and thus were born the Nephilim. These angels are generally thought to have fallen and joined the ranks of Hell, or at the very least been consigned to the lesser levels of Heaven. Some, however, kept their love of women 'pure' and so stayed behind as "Watchers", to instruct mankind. Shamshiel was one of the Watchers. Clay by Brighid "And so it was that Shamshiel told me of the first Creation: 'And carefully didst God take a handful of clay, and shaped it in the Divine Image. When it was well-formed and true, God didst breathe the breath of life, the soul itself, into the nostrils, and so didst God create mankind, man and woman both, in the Image of the Divine. And God blessed them, and set them in the Garden, and gave them dominion over all, with only the stricture that they eat not of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, for the fruit was too bitter for mankind to bear. But mankind ate from the tree, and didst fall from the Grace of the Divine. Mankind was cast out from Eden to a wretched world, a barren, desolate place, as punishment for disobedience. But God is merciful, and hath sent me to thee, to take thee back to that blessed moment, to return thee to the clay of thy beginning, to remake thee in the Image of the Divine, man and woman both, and then shalt thou be the true children of God, thou shalt be the chosen, and when the dark days come, when the Judgement draws nigh, thou shalt be lifted bodily to heaven, the perfect children of clay.'" From the Kindred "Book of Beginnings" We fled England, like so many others, under the banner of religious persecution. Our plain clothes and plain ways marked us, set us apart, and made us unwelcome in unsteady times. We set out for the new world, to live the life God had called us to, to live as brothers and sisters to one another, to live without the taints and corruptions of the outside world. We were amongst the earliest settlers of Massachusetts, carving a living out of the wilderness, far from the rest of the world. We were free to make our peace with God. Then came Shamshiel in a flash of light, an Angel of God, one of the Watchers who did not fall, one of those who bided with mankind before the Flood. He brought to us a new revelation, a new covenant with God, and we were awed by it, humbled by it. He breathed the spirit of God into us, and changed us, stripped away the knowing that had damned Adam and Eve. And like Adam and Eve, before the fall, we were made immortal. We had only to return to the clay, the cradle of our creation, to be remade in the image of the Divine -- man and woman, both. Time passed for us, and we kept to ourselves, set apart by our covenant, set apart by our sameness, set apart by our differences. We had never truly been of the world, and each passing year and decade pulled us further away still. We saw the treachery, the shadow that hovered over the outside, and it was sad and appalling, and we prayed for it, but we did not become a part of it. Sometimes, Shamshiel would come to us, talk with us, instruct us. He reminded us how blessed we were, how honoured, and how the outside world was heavy with the fruit of knowledge, and so we shunned it. Marty and I, we were the youngest. We were children, really, when we came over, children when Shamshiel came to us. We grew to adulthood within the covenant, and never knew anything else. For a long time, we weren't even truly aware there was anything else. We lived in the Garden of Eden, we had no need of anything else. I think the first time I really noticed the difference, really felt it, was sixty years ago, a heartbeat ago. Marty and I had been allowed to ride in with Brother Oakley and Brother Abe. We were waiting in the carriage while they traded fresh vegetables for dry goods, and Marty had poked me, poked me in the ribs, and hissed "Andy" at me until I turned and saw what she was seeing. The woman was - aflame is the only word for it. Bright crimson dress, red hair, red mouth. She was autumn leafs and red apples and the colour of the iron just before Brother Oakley hammered it into something useful, something plain. Looking at her, watching her walk down the street on the arm of a man, I felt chilled to the bone in my plain black dress and white bonnet. For a brief moment our eyes met, and she looked at me with pity, as though she could sense the chill within me, the hollow place. Something inside me, something within the hollowness, twisted and turned and it felt like hunger, only it gnawed deeper, lower, and I didn't understand it at all. I turned to Marty, only to find him still watching her, only to find her flame captured in her eyes. That, too, pulled at the hungry feeling, but I didn't understand that either, and so I just nudged her back, nodded to the store where Oakley and Abe were boxing up the dry goods. It would not be seemly to be found watching. We would not be allowed back if they caught us at it. Late that night, I lay in my bed, and remembered the flame in Marty's eyes, and touched myself low on my belly, and the hollowness was there again, filled with echoes. )0( She stands under the spray of her shower until the blistering water slides into chill, and still she cannot clear the smell from her, cannot erase his touch from her body. She can remember the hot, sleek wetness of his mouth, the warm glide of his hand over her breasts, but they are like dream-memories, fogged and fragmented. Even then, even so, they cause a bright, hot flare of longing low in her belly, in the cradle of her hips and thighs. Almost without willing it, she raises her hand to her face, licks at the skin he had touched, and the flare becomes a flash of brilliance that pulses behind her eyes, makes the water steam along her scalding body. She sinks down to her knees, shuddering violently. She doesn't understand this, she doesn't want this, she knows it to be wrong with a certainty that leaves her sobbing, but she can't stop it, can't push it away. Can't control it. Can't control it. She hates that part most of all. )0( When we found the magazines on the edge of the road, I saw that same flame again, saw it flicker and bloom in Marty's eye. I admit that I liked some of the things I saw, the colours and textures, but most of it was just wrong, Godless. I understood that the fruit was meant to look tempting on the outside, but at the heart of it, it was bitter; it was poison. Marty, however, seemed to like the taste. I watched as he thumbed the glossy paper, as he stroked and played with it. It was all beautiful to him, even the bite and sting of it. He traced the pretty red mouths of the women in the pictures, the red-apple smiles, and looked up at me. His eyes were bright and hot, like Sunday candles, like Shamshiel in the night. "There's so much out there," he said, and there was something in his voice, something that echoed in the hollow place I'd cradled inside for over sixty years. "There's nothing out there," I denied, taking the echo, pushing it out so that it was the world outside that was empty, not me. "There's nothing out there at all." I reached out to him, touched his hand, his thumb as it stroked the page. He glanced down at our hands, then back up at me, and he smiled softly, slowly, sweetly at me, my best friend, my only friend. "So they say," he replied. "But if that's true, Andy, why are we always out walking on the edge of nothing?" His words were soft, like he was questioning himself as much as me, and his hand was very warm under mine. We walked back to the compound, not speaking anymore, and he hid the bright magazines under his plain coat I knew he kept them, knew he read them, but I told no one at all. Sometimes, at dinner, he'd look at me, and his eyes would be bright and far away and I loved the feel of it, as much as it scared me. I've always been taught the only true beauty is God, but we are in the Divine Image, and surely it was not wrong to think Marty beautiful? )0( She lies on her bed, her arms and legs and head heavy and weighted, anchored to the mattress with lethargy, but her body, her breasts and belly and pelvis ache and throb in half-memory of his caress, the way he had fit himself to her, fit himself into her. His eyes - she remembers his eyes, the slow, almost sad deeps of them, the quiet loneliness that was there, the emptiness that had resonated inside her. Her rational mind knows that he had been using her, taking care of her as a problem, a threat - and yet the memory of his eyes belies that understanding, that version of the truth. There had been that same yearning when she'd seen him in the town, that same reaching-out, and it had drawn her even then. When he'd spoken of Marty, there'd been hope and fear in his voice, and something very like longing. And at the end, at the very end, when he'd begged her - she doesn't know what it was, but it was more than just biochemistry, it was more than just manipulation. She needs to believe it was something more - and she wonders what is more shameful, her weakness under his touch, or the strange empathy she feels for the sadness in his eyes. Slowly, her fingers twist in the sheets, and she arches up off the bed, the hollowness in her belly pulling her towards something - something lost. )0( I knew when he left, I knew and I said nothing, so any sins committed are mine as well, I know this. I am shamed by it, and yet I cannot bring myself to repent it. He came to me in the night, long after last prayers, and he touched my mouth with his fingers, brushed his hand over my face, along my throat, and I could smell him and taste him, and the emptiness was back, and so was the fire. I didn't say a word, just let him touch me, let his hand skim my body through my nightshirt, and I liked it, I liked it so very much. "I'm going out there, Andy," he said softly, close to my ear. I wanted to protest, to tell him not to go, to beg him not to leave me, but I could barely even breathe, let alone speak. "Come with me," he begged, bending his face over mine, touching his mouth to mine, kissing me. It wasn't a gentle kiss, it wasn't a sweet kiss, it wasn't a gesture between brothers and it was as red as apples and I could barely even taste the sting. But I could still taste it, all the same. I pulled away, shook my head at him, turned my eyes away from the question in his gaze. He sighed, softly, kissed me again, and left the room. My body burned all night long, from the flame he'd left behind. )0( Midnight passes into the dark hours of morning, and still she cannot sleep, she cannot rest. His smell, against all reason, permeates the sheets, the room, and she is dizzy with it, aching with it, starving for it. Her bed looks storm-tossed, the sheets askew and soaking. Her body is wet with sweat and her hair is dark and sleek against her skull. She is like a madwoman, or a woman possessed. It should be a simple thing, to strain and strive and find release, but his eyes won't let her go. )0( I saw her in the town, and it was sixty years just gone, slipped away -- her hair and mouth were as red as I remembered, but when her eyes met mine there was no pity, just a question that I had no answer to. At dinner, when she tried to save Brother Oakley, I saw the flame in her was tempered, was gentler than what burned in Marty. There was a kindness to her, a longing to do right, even if she did not understand what that was. I liked her. I found her - beautiful. When I found her, I should have reported her right away, I should have told my brothers and sisters. But the night was cold, and she was fire, she was aflame, and I so desperately wanted to taste again what Marty had tempted me with before he left. She tasted good, she tasted sweet and warm and I liked the feel of her, I liked the noises she made and the way her eyes grew darker and deeper and the smell of wet that she gave off, a smell like the clay that made us all. She was burning inside of me, and I knew that somewhere deep inside of her was the way to quell the fire, the quenching, as when Brother Oakley drove the cherry-red metal into the bucket in the smithy. I had no idea what I was doing, not really, but I was doing it. For the first time in sixty years, the emptiness was full. And then her partner broke in, and took her away, and I had to come before my brothers and sisters to make penance, to ask forgiveness. There was pity in their gazes, and not a bit of understanding. )0( She lets her hands slide up her throat, touch the places he kissed, lets her fingers curl up into her hair, and she is too tired to move and too hot to sleep. She closes her eyes, and he is there before her, painted on her eyelids, and it's not the image of his mouth descending, or the first, tentative glance in the town. Instead, it is the beseeching gaze at the end, the look that had stopped her, held her, dizzied her with a sudden recognition, and kept her from giving chase. She tries to push it aside, to move away from it, but it won't leave her alone, and so she follows it, tumbles into it, like Alice down the rabbit hole. And suddenly, in the backwards world, she understands the look, the longing of it, the empathy for it. It was the same look Mulder had, when he first told her of his sister. It was the same look Mulder had, when Phoebe had finished using him, yet again. It was the same look Mulder had, when he brought her the coffee in the car, and asked what had happened. Mulder, always reaching for something beyond his grasp. Andrew, still reaching for something beyond his grasp. Two faces merge together behind her closed eyes, overlap, and her hands move and her body twists and she cries out, soundlessly, and then everything is white. Sleep comes. )0( Shamshiel has come for us, for the dark days are nearing and God would have us close. And yet, there will be a reckoning, a payment for our sins, and Marty, Marty who has broken the covenant, must stand in God's light and face the judgment coming. There is no repentance in his eyes, just fire, and sometimes, when he looks at me, I can feel the burn of it, feel the judgement of it deep inside me, an ache that won't go away. I can still taste her mouth, red as apples, but - I've yet to taste the sting. )0( An End