'From: FirstJohn5six@aol.com Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 00:32:51 EDT Subject: fanfic Source: direct TITLE: "Darkness Equals Death, So I Walk In The Light" AUTHOR: Joy E-MAIL ADDRESS: firstjohn5six@aol.com RATING: PG (Language) SPOILERS: "One Breath" (sort of), The Whole Cancer Arc (especially "Memento Mori"), "Orison", "This Is Not Happening"/"Dead Alive" KEYWORDS: ScullyAngst and...I think that's it. SUMMARY: This story is a "what if" story, being, what if Mulder really had died in TINH (and stayed dead)?...It's written almost like a letter from Scully to Mulder after he died. ARCHIVE: Anything is fine by me, but please let me know where you're putting it. FEEDBACK: Yeah, that sounds good. Whether it's good or bad, I'd like to hear it. AUTHOR'S NOTES: I've never written a piece of fan fic before, really. This was so new to me, so I hope it doesn't sound too bad. I didn't even intend this story to come out. Well, not as fan fic anyways, but it just turned out that way. I hope I'll be writing more in the future, because it was really fun! And I think all you guys that write fan fic are so awesome, you all do such a great job and thank you for entertaining me (and inspiring me). DISCLAIMER: Okay, you know the drill. Mulder, Scully and the X-Files do not belong to me, they all belong to Chris Carter, 1013 Productions blah blah blah... "DARKNESS EQUALS DEATH, SO I WALK IN THE LIGHT" A nightmare like a roller coaster, up, then down, then up again. That's what this reminds me of. A ride intent on killing me, every last, breathless inch of me. Sometimes, I can actually feel myself raising my arms against the wind being forced back into me and I can breath fully and clean and I can enjoy the ride while it lasts. But other times, like when I'm alone, late at night...I have no choice but to hunch over in the seat and sit there frail and paled against the mocking sun. Those times...are times that I have no choice but to think, no choice but to feel saddened at the non-direction of my wasted life that you...you were a part of for so long. * * * I got tired of pretending to care so much. I guess I got selfish. I don't care at all anymore, and that scares me more than any X-File ever could. Sometimes, I have to make myself care. I have to force myself to remember that I am living. I am breathing. I am human, and that is what makes me vincible. That single fact that is me is what makes me feel pain, be engrossed in it. I try to sleep forever. I don't want to wake up, I try my hardest not to, and every time I open my eyes, I have to subdue my disappointment. I don't dream. There are times I almost dream, it comes in as a foggy purplish haze and I almost see your face, then it's gone. You were here. I can't deny it. Sometimes, I get so sad that I physically ache and I don't understand why. So I hit myself and tear out strands of my hair, I cut myself with razors, because those are pains I can define. I think I said, "I love you," but it feels so far away, like a very distant but very real nightmare. I remember lying on that bed, and a warmth next to mine that I finally recognized as only you. Your arm would sometimes limply drape over me and hug me near as in some desperate attempt to become even less than two bodies. You felt it too. Like a warmth in your heart, but deeper. "Hey...I love you," I'd whisper in a scratchy voice that an untrained ear probably couldn't have comprehended, but you knew exactly what I'd said, just the same. I only did this once or twice, because the rest of the time I felt that you just knew, and saying, "I don't know what I'd do without you," just seemed too cliche, too used up as a way to decribe love and the fear of losing someone. There are times I just go numb. Thoughtless, feeless, emotionless. But on that day I felt you. The day you just seemed to slip away, so so far away. But you were in my arms, still. Already drained of life, your soul just hovered and I imagine that you were watching me, watching you. I cradled you as the illness I saw destroy you drained you of everything you meant to me. I saw it take you away from me, and all of a sudden, I felt like Alice in Wonderland when she began to cry and ended up swimming in her own tears. * * * When I was little, my mother would cradle me if I fell and I'd cry, you know, those thick watery drops that feel like they weigh a ton when they hit your skin and sluggishly slip off your flesh onto the floor. They would slide into my mouth, and mix with saliva on my taste buds, filling my mouth with this sticky salt that fills the entire crevice before it falls to the back of my throat, into my stomach making it growl at the strange liquid. My mother would call them alligator tears, she'd whisper it into my ear, which I pretended was corny, but secretly it made me smile. I think if I could, I would have whispered that same thing to you. Instead, I felt dumb. Too dumb to speak. I feel that way here. There are times when I know that I am reaching out for something, but I don't know what. I reach out my hand, my fingers, and all I touch is nothingness. Not an empty nothingness, however, it's thick and almost jelly-like. It slows me down. It's the same thing in my head. My mind. My mind is made primarily of steel. Imagination intact in all it's righteousness, but even righteousness has a tendency to fall, to falter from reality. When I knew you were here, to feel my pain with me, in a sick way that made me the happiest. When you shared my pain, it aleviated some of the burden off me. Now I must carry that all on my own, swearing it's for no other reason than God's own amusement. Funny, I was thinking about all those times that you thought you had lost me. "I'm not going to let this thing beat me," I'd said, cringing now at how positive I sounded back then. After that, I knew that I owed God. He got me off the hook, and I owed Him for saving me. I remember walking on egg shells for weeks thinking, I had lived, so the bottom just had to fall out eventually. There was retaliation with my name on it because I didn't fucking die when I was supposed to. This was it...What I had been waiting for. The bottom didn't fall out. Instead, He stole you away, in my place instead of your own. I think I recall all the times you held my hand, stroked my knuckles, just to make sure I knew that someone was there, you were there for me. Thank you. God, I don't sound like me anymore. Remember when you told me a dream is an answer to a question we haven't yet learned how to ask? Maybe I've asked it, maybe I did learn how to ask it, but the answer is beyond my comprehension. People come up to me, and ask me how I'm doing like it's their job, no, their obligation to comfort me, and that it is my job to burst into tears so dutifully like I'm supposed to. There were actually times when I pretended to cry instead just to appease them. They'd come up, give me a hug, or the head tilt like I'm going to break down any damn minute, and every once in a while, I'd let a tear slip down my cheek because that's what they were expecting. But deep inside, I didn't feel a thing. I felt dead. I still do. It's funny, but I like to think of it as...it's like a part of me died right along with you. The good part. Don't you see? You were the good part of me, Mulder. I think in a way, I have relied on my sadness, because, if I'm not sad, then what am I? I'm absolutely nothing if I'm not sad. Do you suppose that one day, the sadness will eat me whole? I'll just be this black hole consumed with grief. It's hard for me to say, "I love you," to people. Why? Even when I feel it, it's so hard to form the words in my mouth. It's hard for me to feel that emotion so closely. I guess I never really could, could I? I was cold, uncaring, all those years. Rarely cried, never said I love you. I love you, Mulder. I love you. * * * There was this time when I was little, about nine or ten. I was walking home from school, and I saw it there, on the sidewalk. This tiny butterfly with wings the color of gold and teal, twitching and fighting to survive. It looked damaged, and I stopped, I guess as a natural curiosity and gazed at the insect. I remember thinking, "What's one less?" and I carefully stamped out the bug with the tip of my sandal. When I took my foot away, I was partially surprised to find it still in tact, but there was nothing I could do to save it's small, meaningless life. I didn't cry, not like I did with the snake. There was this burning in my chest unlike any I had ever felt. I couldn't save it. I'd killed it, and now it was gone forever. I bent down and touched it softly with my fingertips. It swayed pitifully and felt stiff, with it's beautiful wings still expanded. I picked it up carefully, very carefully, because I knew how delicate butterflies are, and I carried it home, cupped in my tiny hands the whole way. I buried that butterfly in my backyard, behind the swings, so it could not be disturbed. When my obligation was finished, I knelt on my hands and knees in the dirt and asked God for forgiveness, because I had taken something that He'd made, and it was destroyed. Forever. I had stolen something precious from Him, something made of beauty, and it was gone, forever. I think I knew then that when something dies, it goes away forever. You can't bring it back, no matter how you might wish to. I knew that things are supposed to die, and they aren't supposed to come back. I don't feel that way now. I believe that you weren't meant to go, and whatever is not meant to go, does not, and can not. It's funny, though, how the people that don't want to die the most, the ones that fear death and the violence it brings, the ones that plead for their lives on last hope, on a whim, are the ones who get cancer, the ones shot at point blank range...But for others, who want to die with dignity and can't stand this life any more than the next one, or the past for that matter, are the ones who suffer most because they seem to live forever. I don't want to live forever, Mulder. * * * I sat awake tonight, cold, thinking about when I was diagnosed with cancer. About the cold gray walls and the distinct stench of loneliness seeping under the doorways of the hospital. I thought about that one day, when I decided I was going to fight all the way, the day Penny died. When I held her hand as she slipped away, she said something to me that I never told you about. Maybe because I didn't understand as much as I was afraid. But I think I understand them now, their meaning and why I was not meant to actually feel them until now. She said, "Dana, you are not meant to go. Not now. Your fear to believe extraordinary things is just as real as his fear to NOT believe them. Walk in the light Dana. Walk in the light while you have the chance, and don't fear the unknown but face it head on." I believe more now than I did then, though there are times I have to sleep with the light on in my hall, and I quiver under my skin, deep in my soul at things only you would face head on. I walk not with confidence so much, but with a blind faith deeply guarded by my mind and soul, so as not to hurt myself. It's like the time with Donnie Pfaster...How did it happen to me? How did I become the X-File? Was it simple fate? God's plan? Something more sinister...? Would I have made it through if you weren't there to lean on? I doubt it. You sat next to me on my bed, once I became the killer instead of the victim. You didn't say a word. You never said a word, and I never told you how grateful I was for that. What might I have said? I suppose it doesn't matter now. But I remember sitting in the soft blue light of my desk lamp reflecting from my sheets, thinking, "I am here, he is here, and I'm fine, just fine." * * * It doesn't begin where it ends so much as, it ends where it begins. There's a light headed air as I stumble into the dark hallway, a ghost. Feeling little but my feet scraping the carpet and the hollow in my stomach, and the walls seem to scream my name. Too many times I've walked down this dark hall, always half expecting it to swallow me whole, and if you are asking, THAT is what makes my arms and legs tingle and my spine shiver, that is what quakes my fear into existence. Tile floor, unusually shiny, I see my relflection, surrounding me, starting at my toes and expanding upward, an even dimmer light than the one I'm used to. The dark circles and hollows of my eyes beckoning for me to take my fall, face pressed tightly to the ceramic tiles. Fingers grasp the sink to pull me through. A minute later, just one minute longer, I follow my cat away from the bathroom. Never intended to have one, mom said it would be good therapy. She stops in the slit of the afternoon sun, pauses in her shadow. I wonder if stepping into the sun and pausing in my own shadow will stop time right in it's tracks. Everything frozen, nothing coming, nothing going. But me and the sun. One second later, back down the hallway. I face my shaky upturned palms once again. "Please go away," whispered in surreal silence. Shutting the door behind me, ignored whispers and all. Feeling bitter, say, "It doesn't matter anyways."