Title: Two Shadows (1/1)
Author: RocketMan >lebontrager@iname.com<
Disclaimer: Mulder and Scully belong to CC, 1013, and Fox. No fringe is
inteneded.
SPOILER: Sixth Extinction, Amor Fati

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Two Shadows
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"We're two shadows chasing rainbows"
--celine dion, "if walls could talk"

"Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you
will never enter the kindgom of heaven."
--Jesus, Matthew 18:3

=-=-=-=

"It's over," she whispered and glanced back to him.

Mulder shook his head, disbelief radiating from his eyes.

"It can't be over Scully. There has to be something--"

"There's nothing, Mulder. It's over."

She turned her back on the destruction, shaking her head. The window was
still lit with that hellish glow of fire and radiation; Mulder's eyes
could not help but watch it all burn. He was lying on the bed, prone and
weak, unable to move.

"But Scully, I didn't know it would happen so soon."

"Mulder," she chided softly. "You're an old man. When else would it
happen?"

"Later," her replied feebly and his hand shook as he reached for her.

"No. You let me die."

"No, Scully. I didn't let you die. I. . .They said it would be okay. That
you would be better, and this was so much better for everyone. I got boys,
Scully. Did you see my boys?"

"Your boys are dead. You could have had daughters."

His face collapsed into tears and she moved away, back from his bed and
towards the door. She was disgusted, he could see it on her face.

"Scully, wait. I want daughters, please. Wait."

"Get up, mUlder. Don't just lie here. You have to get up."

"But you said it was over. There's nothing more to do--"

"Your daughters are waiting for you, Mulder. Get up."

Mulder closed his eyes and shook his head. Get up, get up, he had to just
push his body forward and it would all be okay, right? All be okay. It
wasn't over quite yet, not if he could still have his daughters.

He strained for her, envisioning his daughters, but then he thought about
his sons. He had those good sons, was it fair to leave them?

"They're not your sons," she whispered. "Her boys, not yours."

"Your baby girls are waiting for you, Mulder."

He cried again, the tears hot liked radiation and flame, his heart
confused.

"But I promised the little boy I would help him build his sand ship. I
promised him."

"Your little girls are waiting for you."

"But my two boys. My sand ship. . ."

She shook her head, disgusted again, and walked to the door.

"Fine. But I offered," she said and disappeared.

Mulder cried.
-------

He woke to tears and a wet pillow, his feet touching the floor before he
knew he was really awake. He stumbled to the bathroom and splashed water
on his face, rinsing the sleep from his eyes and the heat of dreams.

He blew out a long breath and tried to remember what exactly his dream had
been about. Little girls and little boys and him dying. Scully came in at
some point, encouraging him to get up. He couldn't remember the details.
Somehow the details were important.

"I offered," he whispered to himself, frowning. She offered what?

Mulder groaned and scrubbed his face raw with water, then headed back for
his bed. The clock said two, and he wondered if this was too late to call
her now. Maybe so.

Yes.

Mulder pushed out of his dream fatigue and settled the covers over
himself. He was hot still, so he kicked off the comforter and sheet and
lay spread eagle, staring at his reflection in the mirror.

Little girls. I offered. Sand ships. Little girls.

The dream was coming back to him. Mulder closed his eyes and tried to
empty his mind.
=======

"It's over," he said.

She watched breathless, then turned to see him.

He smiled at her and she smiled back and the warmth between them was like
a fire, but she wasn't burned. She glanced back to the doctors, but she
was not in the hospital having her baby, but at home and the bedroom door
knob was twisting slowly, slowly, and then it burst open.

Two little girls came tumbling into the room, shrieking and giggling and
smiling. Their footed pajamas slid over bare wooden floors and then they
were climbing into bed with her.

Mulder grabbed them up and tickled them until they cried for mercy and
Scully laughed, the scene making her eyes burn and sting with tears.

Her little girls wriggled down in the bed and pulled the covers up,
begging for a story, and pressing their cold toes to their parents longer
legs.

"Well, here's a story," Scully began, and she told them all about a fairy
princess who used magic and science to turn monsters into toads and
spiders and other ucky things. The girls laughed and asked Daddy for a
story, and then they weren't in bed any longer but outside, in the sand.

The beach was frightening and rushing and loud, like the ocean was beating
the shore to a pulp in a kind of frenxy known only to the mad. Scully was
gathering the girls up, trying to make them head home, but they wanted to
build in the sand. 

Mulder took their hands and they headed for a dune already piled up,
shovels and buckets clinking together. Scully watched them from a distance
with concern; a storm was raging, but they wanted to play.

"I promised," Mulder's explanation was.

They began to build, and soon the ship came from their tiny hands, tall
and taking up the entire side of the beach, almost silvery with the rain
falling and the ocean waves washing just below.

When she looked back after checking the storm's approach, there were two
little girls and one little boy, all alone and building furiously against
the coming storm. Panic seized her; the kids alone out there; how could
she have left them alone, so far away?

She began running for them, but the sand churned under her feet and kept
her in the same spot, twisting in the wind and running for them. The
little girls were digging and the little boy was adding buckets of sand to
the ship, but she could not reach them, and a storm was coming, it was
right over her shoulder, they would be carried out to sea.. .
-------

Scully woke gasping for breath, the feel of salt spray and storms still at
her back and across her face. She pushed off the sheets, sticky with her
sweat, and moved to the bathroom.

The water was cool and refreshing, but she remembered the girls and the
storm, and Mulder as a little boy, digging in the sand with his daughters.

She tried to laugh it off, but the very weight of immediate doom was
pressing her down. The bathroom seemed suddenly small, the walls sloping
inward, the running water metallic tasting.

Scully pushed back and out of the bathroom, running for her living room
and the artificial warmth of the lights. She flicked them all on, even the
hall lamp and the kitchen lights. It still seemed too dark, the kind of
dark of storms and drownings.

She closed her eyes and imagined herself catching up to the two little
girls, dragging them off with their. . .father?playmate?. . .and taking
them inside, warming them up with hot chocolate and stories.

But she couldn't finish the dream off. No matter how hard she tried to
imagine that she rescued the kids, she kept getting shoved back to the
sand, running for them but getting nowhere.

She felt physically sick. She glanced at the clock and saw it was two in
the morning. Too late to call Mulder? Maybe not.

Scully jumped up from the couch and grabbed her phone, debating for a
moment, but then her need to hear a comforting voice overrode her personal
inhibitions.

The phone rang once and was snatched up almost immediately. Scully
breathed out a sigh of relief at Mulder's hello.

"It's me," she said softly.

"You must be psychic."

"Why's that?" she said, almost forgetting the power of the dream.

"Because I just had the worst dream. I thought about acalling but I
figured you'd be asleep. Why'd you call?


"Because I had a bad dream too."

There was a moment of tense silence when she knew they were both wondering
if they'd had the same dream.

"Tell me yours first," she said quickly.

"If you promise to say yours next."

"I promise."

"Okay, then."

Mulder recited his dream to her, skipping tiny details that weren't
important, laughing when he repeated her words, "I offered," but still
feeling rather bereft.

She sucked in a whoosh of breath and shook her head.

"Well, I dreamed we had two little girls, and they were making a ship in
the sand. Imagine that."

Her words were light, but they couldn't mask the tension or the
undercurrent of something greater that jolted through them both.

She filled the silence with the rest of her dream, explaining about the
little boy and the storm and her inability to reach them.

"No matter how hard I try, I can't get to you," she said, "to them."

They breathed in silence for awhile, taking in their dreams and the
meanings, or trying not to think so much about their significance.

"Are we missing out on something, Scully?"

She paused, then bit her lip. "I can't have kids."

She heard Mulder's chuckle on the line and it reduced her wound up tension
just a bit.

"Ah well. There goes that idea," he replied, still smiling.

She laughed softly and sat back down on her couch.

"Do you want a family, Mulder? I know you said you had some dreams like
that when you were taken."

"I don't know. I guess some part of me does. Obviously, if I'm still
having dreams."

She felt oddly sad about that, but it wasn't like she could have given it
to him even if she did have that to give.

"Do you want a family, Scully? I mean, besides everything."

She smiled and sighed. "Yes, sometime. Somewhere. I guess so."

"Scully. . .if you offered, I'd accept."

She laughed a little, catching his hint of both humor and resignation.

"You'd be the first I'd ask, then, Mulder."

He smiled over the line and rubbed his finger on the phone cord, shaking
his head.

"Well good."

"Well, that clears up your dream. How about mine?"

"What if you stopped trying to save them and simply went and played with
them?" he said.

She sighed. "But the storm."

"It's more fun to the play in the rain. Besides, I promised."

Scully's breath caught and she blinked back tears. "I didn't tell you
that."

"What?"

"I didn't tell you that part."

"What part?"

About the promise. That's exactly what you said to me in the dream. I
promised."

"Well, see, there you go." It was all he could think to say, because, in
reality, it was something he had promised the the little boy of his
dreams, and he'd not told her that part.

She was silent, thinking maybe, and he wondered if she was even awake
anymore.

"Scully?"

"Mulder, do you want some company?"

He paused only for a moment. "Sure. But how about if I come over there,
though?"

She sighed. "No. I need to drive. Get out. I'll be there in a few
minutes."

"Okay," he said.

"'Night," she said.

"'Night, Scully. Drive carefully."

"All right."

The phone clicked off and Mulder was left with the distinct impression
that she had just offered.

Little girls. He had promised.

Mulder moved off his bed to make her hot chocolate and clean up his
apartment.
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end
adios
RM

======
Of making many books there is no end,
and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
--Ecclesiastes 12:12

For my webpage:
http://shannono.simplenet.com/basestation/
======