From: msebasky@yahoo.com Date: 10 Jan 2000 22:42:32 -0000 Subject: xfc: Neptune's Ocean (1 of 1) Source: xfc From: msebasky@yahoo.com Neptune's Ocean By M. Sebasky Archive permissions: Spookys, Ephemeral, all of the above yes. All others, drop me a line, if you think of it. Category: Scully, POV Angst. PG, adult subject matter. Spoilers: Orison. Feedback welcomed at msebasky@yahoo.com Notes: I try to stay away from post-eps, but apparently I had something to say on this particular story. Thanks: For Jodi. Because she said yes. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ In what were once silent places in my mind, I now hear the ocean. I have stayed in bed all morning and as the day turns into afternoon, I find I have no intention of getting up and being productive in any way. Normally, to sleep late on such a glorious morning would be a sin, a "waste of God's daylight", my mother would say. I don't care. Here in my bedroom, now so carefully mended and put back together, I am invisibly shackled to my bed, forced to listen to the ocean that beats up again the rough crags of my mind hour after hour after hour. An ocean full of shipwrecks and tales of woe, an underground world covered with water and mystery, shrouded in wetness and blessed darkness keeps me pinned under my sheets, thinking of unfathomable depths and sailors lost at sea. Except for a tiny succession of catnaps, I have not slept since returning here. Since crossing the threshold of my paradise lost, I find I am too easily distracted by the sound of my inner surf to slip into much-needed oblivion. The noise has kept me awake ever since I returned from the two-day sojourn at Mulder's apartment followed by the weekend at my mother's home. I close my eyes, only to hear its steady roar pounding into my subconscious, wearing the rocks to slivers and my nerves to pieces. I also find it hard to keep food down. The motion of the waves in my head has kept me seasick, my pants grow baggy as I refuse anything but saltines and broth for more than a week. My partner looks at me with concern, as if I were a ship that was foundering on a nearby shore, out of reach from his lighthouse of love and concern, out of reach of everything but rocks and death. My mother cries salty tears and I watch them slide down her face and even as I assure her that I will be fine, that she should not worry, inwardly I reflect that those must be what the ocean in my head must taste of, tears and brine and sorrow for those who sailed away and never came back. I don't know if I'm coming back yet. I'm going to leave that up to this ocean. And God. This be the verse you 'grave for me: Here he lies where he long'd to be Home is the sailor, home from the sea, And the hunter home from the hill. I learned that in middle school, in a time where life was simpler and I could just be a skinny little girl named Dana. Now, as a grown woman, with bills to pay and responsibilities to tend to, I find solace in saying it in time to the rhythm of the internal waves ravaging my psyche. The waves beat and I lie here and stare at the ceiling. Home from the hill. It is not like me to quit. I didn't quit as I crawled across the floor, littered with glass and furniture. I didn't quit as I contorted my body, wincing as my shoulder cracked from the odd angle I imposed on it and the ties dug into my wrists. I didn't quit as I clawed and strained for my gun, working to turn the balance, working to save my life, earning my right at the top of the food chain, proving Darwin's theory that the strong survive to send the weaker or the purely malevolent straight back to hell where, it is said, they belong. If I had quit, I would not be here to stare at my ceiling and picture green algae-laced water instead of its white plaster. If I had quit, I would not still crave the nourishment that as of late, when put in front of me, makes me recoil and gag as if I were asked to eat filth instead of food. I haven't quit. And neither has this noise. I would like to be able to talk to this inner ocean as if it were my friend. I would like to reason with it to give me back the silence I last possessed when I raised my gun and sent a bullet careening through my assailant's internal organs. To beg of it, "Dear, dear Ocean, won't you grant me a minute of blessed quiet in which to pray and hear my own voice sound as if it were a solo trumpet, ringing to the heavens all alone, crying to God to find out what I have done? Be a dear and recede for one moment. I would like to remember what I think like without the backdrop of water and sorrow and swish, swish, swish of your great mammals swimming by in my head, creatures that look at me with round flat eyes filled with my hidden truths. Please, dear Ocean, be silent and grant me one shining moment so I can stand in a dry land-locked quiet and try to talk find my God?" Here he lies where he long'd to be. Oh why won't this Ocean listen to me? I would like to be able to drive myself away from the water and the death and the darkness that floods my soul as I lie here, pinned under the weight of the sodden blankets saturated with my decision to end another person's life, to be judge and jury to the already fatally broken. Only this inner Ocean winks at me over the moment of pure joy I had when I saw him crash to the floor, like a redwood toppled by a little child. My new friend sings a Siren song to me, asks me to come into the water and walk until it touches my chin, my cheeks, my eyes and then the Ocean would be kind to me, like the dear friend it has become in the time since I pulled the trigger, and like me it would pull its own trigger, it would pull the ground out and I would sink down with my arms by my sides and my face turned up until we would become one in restful buoyant silence, forever evening out the score. A life for a life. Even a bad one. Instead, here I am and morning turns to afternoon turns to early evening and the light is fading from my room and still I lie here, trying to find a way to drive back these waves before I return to work on Monday and start the government processes of justifying the stain on my soul. Home is the sailor, home from the sea. I must remember I am not a quitter. I must find a way. When Monday comes, I will get up. I will get dressed, put on my suit and shoes. I will get in my car and go to the office and do all the things I am supposed to. At the end of the day, I will ask Fox Mulder to drive with me to Baltimore. When we get there, we will change our clothes and walk on the beach and I will listen to the sound of the real ocean in all its majesty and I will silently beg of it that it will teach this noise in my head some manners. I hope that the real ocean will sing a new song to me, a song filled with perspective. That it will assure me that some things are for the best and that bad things do indeed happen sometimes to all people and that it is all right that I did my best to survive to see another day. We will walk on the beach and, under the protective eye of my partner, I will listen to the ocean's true voice. And I will try to stay as far away from the surf as I can.