Date sent:        Sat, 14 Jun 1997 21:45:54 -0400 (EDT)
From:             Wagacca@aol.com


Title - "A Grain of Golden Sand"
Author - Rachel Lewis ( wagacca@aol.com )

Rating - G

Classification - VA - Vignette/Angst  (Scullyangst)

Keywords - Post-Gethsemane Vignette

Summary - Scully returns to Mulder's apartment and finds something she's
missed.
*There is no romance, however I am a 'shipper.  I just felt that it wasn't
needed here.*

Spoilers - Anasazi, Paper Clip, Gethsemane, and a really obscure Little Green
Men spoiler that you won't notice unless you've seen it.  

Disclaimer:  The characters of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully belong to Chris
Carter, Ten-Thirteen Productions, and Twentieth Century Fox.  I am using them
without permission, but am not making any money off of this. No infringement
intended.

The poem is by Edgar Allen Poe.  It's called "A Dream Within A Dream."  


Feel free to ARCHIVE and send to ATXC.  


********************************
    A Grain of Golden Sand
    Rachel Lewis
    Wagacca@aol.com
********************************


The old wooden door with the numbers 42 barely hanging on creaked slowly open
behind the small pale hand of a visitor.  A visitor uneasy in her current
locale, but finding no other place deserved enough as this in which to ponder
a loss so overwhelming.  

Overwhelmed.

That was how she felt.   

Crushed.  Defeated.  Drowned.  

Beaten.  Conquered.  Belittled.   

Horrified.  Offended.  Outraged.  

But perhaps the one emotion, the emotion that terrified her the most, was the
feeling of being overpowered.  Her control taken away.  Left stripped bare,
everyone around left to see her real emotions.  

She entered quietly, closing the door securely behind her.  The woman made
her way over to the living room, memories leaping out at her.  Fragments of
past conversations assaulting her senses.  

<I came home. Must be running a fever. Maybe it's the threat of being burned
at the stake.>  

<I was a dead man. Now I'm back.>

"But now you're really dead, aren't you Mulder?  You aren't coming back this
time, are you?"  

At the truth in that statement, and the act of being finally forced to admit
it, the woman leaned her entire weight against the doorway and then the wall,
making her way towards the couch, where she sat down heavily.  

She hadn't really faced it yet.  But, she now supposed, she had the rest of
her life to torture herself with it.  

<*they* gave me this disease....make you believe....>

A balled up fist hit the surface of the black leather couch in anger.  Just
as she was about to leave, the corner of a piece of paper caught her eye.  

A letter written once, but not sent.  Forgotten, or chosen to be.  

She suddenly found herself nervous and hopeful for perhaps he was alive, if
only....

She read, it was in his handwriting, she knew it well.  



      Scully,

    Sitting here now, decisions already made, I come upon the question of how
to explain to you how I came to this.  Even though I fear you may never truly
comprehend what it was I was thinking.  But then again, you might.  Sometimes
it scares me how well you know me.  Even better than I know myself.  
    
    From somewhere in my stored memories from a long forgotten past, I
recalled something I had read that I never truly understood until tonight.  I
hope you will as well.  


          "Take this kiss upon the brow!
          And, in parting from you now,
          Thus much let me avow-
          You are not wrong, who deem
          That my days have been a dream;
          Yet if hope has flown away
          In a night, or in a day,
          In a vision, or in none,
          Is it therefore the less gone?
          All that we see or seem
          Is but a dream within a dream.

          I stand amid the roar
          Of a surf-tormented shore,
          And I hold within my hand
          Grains of the golden sand-
          How few! yet how they creep
          Through my fingers to the deep,
          While I weep- while I weep!
          O God! can I not grasp
          Them with a tighter clasp?
          O God! can I not save
          One from the pitiless wave?
          Is all that we see or seem
          But a dream within a dream?"

    But you see Scully, I can save one.  

    You.  

          -Mulder


He signed with Mulder not Fox, realized the woman.  

She carefully placed the paper back down on the couch, a teardrop marring its
smooth surface, blurring the words, the meaning.  

Just like the man who wrote it.  Guilt and sadness destroying perfection,
making unclear the exact nature of the goal that began the journey in the
first place.  

Special Agent Dana Katherine Scully fed the fish one last time before she
left.

After all, she had promised him she'd feed them whenever he was away.


End

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