TITLE: O My God SPOILER STATEMENT: Requiem. The cancer arc. Small Potatoes. Milagro. RATING: Let's call it PG-13. CONTENT STATEMENT: MSR. ScullyAngst. Sex, brief and not *too* explicit. CLASSIFICATION: VRA SUMMARY: Post-Requiem, done somewhat under duress. Scully seeks solace under the stars, and remembers another night when she was not alone. AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is not songfic, in the conventional sense. You will not find song lyrics broken out between the paragraphs. But it is inspired or informed or something like that by the song of the same title by The Police, and if you're familiar with that song, you'll probably hear echoes of it here and there. Is it a successful experiment? You tell me. More notes at the end. THANKS: To Brynna, Narida, Paulette, Sharon and Trixie. O My God by Brandon D. Ray She lies on her back in her mother's backyard, staring up at the sky. The stars are beautiful and brilliant tonight, but she takes no pleasure in them. She can't. Not when he's not here. Not when she's so alone. So alone. A man once accused her of being lonely, but she replied that loneliness was a choice. She believed that at the time, but that was last year. Was it really only last year? It seems like a lifetime. And now, things are different. Now, she's not so sure. What seemed at the time to be assertive self-confidence now trembles on the verge of defensiveness. She *is* lonely now, in a way she never has been before. Loneliness may be a choice -- she still thinks that might be true. But in order to banish her loneliness of last year, all she had to do was reach out and take that which was freely offered. Now, she would have to give up her soul. Everyone she knows is lonely, she thinks, looking once again up at the stars. Everyone is lonely, and God seems so far away. *He* seems so far away. She wishes she could pray. She stirs restlessly, and retreats from that uncomfortable thought. It is one of the more bitter ironies of her life that prayer no longer seems to be an option for her. It's something she gave up somwhere along the way. Somewhere between West Africa and Bellefleur. She has replaced it with ... what? With memories, she decides. And tonight in particular she will replace what she's lost with the memory of another time when she sought refuge in her mother's yard. Another time when things seemed difficult -- impossible. One perfect moment when she begged him to take the space between them and fill it up some way. # # # She was dying that summer -- dying on the outside, just as this summer she's dying on the inside. Her body was betraying her, gradually consuming her, and the chemotherapy filled her days with nausea and vomiting, without impeding the progress of the disease in the slightest. She railed against God that year. She shouted imprecations in her mind, and sometimes with her mouth, begging, imploring, demanding to know why He was treating her this way. Wanting to know how He could expect her to offer worship, how she could turn the other cheek, when day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, she was dying. Her body was black and bruised and torn, first by the disease and then once more by the pursuit of a cure, and she was dying. And so she fled to her mother's home, on those rare evenings when she was free, and retreated to the backyard and lay on the grass, looking up at the stars and hoping for answers. Answers she'd been waiting for, it seemed, since the day she was born. Answers that never came. Then one night, he came with her. She no longer recalls how it happened that he accompanied her that night; she remembers only that he did. It was a warm summer night when the sky was clear and the stars were bright and bountiful. She remembers the gentle breeze, and the sound of crickets, and she remembers also the brief look of surprise on her mother's face when she opened the door to see not just her daughter standing on the front step, but also her daughter's partner. Partner. She pauses briefly to consider the word as the memories continue to flood through her mind. That night he was her partner, and her friend, and nothing else. Yet even then, even that long ago, there was a hint of ... something. A suggestion of teetering on the brink. Even then, there was more. For a few minutes they stood in the living room and chatted with her mother, before the older woman retreated to the kitchen. This was part of the ritual, a way of bridging the space between herself and those around her, of briefly filling the gap that had opened between her and the rest of the world. That night, though, the emptiness seemed wider and deeper, and harder to fill. And she realized that it was because, for the first time, she was not alone on her side of the chasm. Soon they found themselves in the backyard, lying on the grass and gazing at the stars, not quite touching. The ground was cool beneath her back, the sky was dark and mysterious and inviting, the breeze was light and friendly as a lover's caress. Everything was perfect, perfect .... Except for the nausea, of course. The nausea that would not leave her alone. The nausea, a side effect of the chemotherapy, that was the real reason she'd come here. But now she wasn't sure how to proceed. Not with her partner lying next to her on the grass. "Go ahead," he said softly, at last. "It's okay." She turned her head in surprise and looked at him, then nodded. It didn't even occur to her to wonder how he knew. He knew her so well, he knew so much about her, and somehow it was comforting rather than confining to be so thoroughly understood by this man. She pulled the cigarette case from her jeans pocket and opened it, once again silently blessing Frohike as she did so; a moment later, she had one of the cigarettes lit and between her lips. It was actually just a stub, a leftover from the previous week; too much to finish at the time, but she hadn't been able to bring herself to throw the butt away, either. Roaches, she remembered with a smile. In college they'd been called roaches, not butts. A rose by any other name .... Time seemed to disappear that evening. The nausea quickly receded, and she felt herself relaxing, the tension draining out of her body with each hit she took. Without quite realizing how it had happened, she was lighting a fresh joint and sharing it with her partner, and they passed it back and forth with slow, languid movements. Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Inhale. Hold. Exhale .... They talked that night, as well -- really talked, in a way they hadn't done in ages. They traded gossip and opinions, and shared their hopes and dreams. It was such an intimate moment, and so very genuine, and she silently berated herself for ever believing in the cheap imitation that was Eddie van Blundht. Perhaps most important of all, they told stories. She told him of the time her friends in high school put Tiger Balm in her underwear, and how she went tearing down the hall to the bathroom, shrieking that her ass was on fire. He told her of the time he dressed up as a chicken for a fraternity initiation, and confessed his secret addiction to "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer". He kissed her, then, or she kissed him. It didn't matter which it was; what mattered was that it was their first kiss, and like everything else that night, it was perfect. As he drew back she saw doubt in his eyes, but she would not allow that; she would not permit anything to ruin the evening. And soon they were kissing again, and touching, and after a while they made love in the cool grass in her mother's backyard, underneath the stars, together in the darkness after midnight. # # # But that was three years ago. Three long years of pain and heartache and loss. She was cured of her cancer, of course, but somehow they did not continue what they'd started that night when she was dying. At the time, she did not know why they pulled back, and they never spoke of it. Sometimes she even wondered if it had all been a dream -- but then she would look into his eyes and see the memory lurking there, and be reassured. But now she thinks she understands. It was not a dream, but she *had* been sleeping, and that one perfect night was a brief moment of wakefulness before she sank once again into the darkness. Looking back, she sees that ever since her remission she's been struggling with this, trying to regain consciousness and self-awareness. This past spring she finally succeeded, and she was able to turn to him, taking him into her arms to fill the emptiness that surrounded her -- And now he's been taken from her. Vanished, without a trace. So she has come again to her mother's home, and once more she lies alone in the backyard, gazing up at the stars. He will not come to her tonight; he cannot. She knows that in her head, but she can't keep herself from wishing for it with her heart. She wants him so very badly. She wants to tell him of the miracle that has occurred, and the new life that they've created together. She wants to hold him in her arms and kiss him and take him into her body. She can see him in her mind, hovering over her, his face contorted in a grimace of passion and pleasure; she can feel him moving inside her, filling her and fulfilling her. His body is warm and heavy, the flavor of his skin salty and familiar, and she can feel the muscles in his back rippling and flexing beneath her hands as he makes love to her. Finally he collapses on top of her, spent and exhausted, and she cradles him in a four-limbed embrace and listens to him breathe. She chuffs soft amusement, then, as she imagines herself scooping him up in her arms and carrying him off to bed, like Rhett and Scarlett in "Gone with the Wind". She's gentle as she tucks him in, brushing a lock of hair from his forehead and putting a soft kiss in its place. Then she crawls in next to him, and holds him until dawn, still listening to him breathe and taking simple joy in the fact that he is alive and in her arms. Someday, she will do all of these things. Someday soon. Please, God, let it be soon. Fini DEDICATED to the memory of Peter McWilliams, author, AIDS patient and medical marijuana activist. McWilliams (http://www.mcwilliams.com/ ) died on June 14, 2000, when he choked on his own vomit. At the time of his death, he was awaiting sentencing for possession of marijuana, and the judge had ordered him not to use the drug, lest he be given a harsher sentence. Requiescat in pacem. AUTHOR'S NOTE: Okay, I confess. This was an improv fic. I don't belong to any list that does improvs, but some of my *dear* friends (who I *will* be getting even with) provided me with these elements: 1. Mulder dressed up in a chicken costume, feathers, beak, scrawny legs and all. 2. Scully running down a street, screaming, "My ass is on fire! My ass is on fire!" 3. Mulder fainting, and Scully having to carry him like Rhett did Scarlett O'Hara in GWTW. 4. Mulder and Scully voluntarily sharing marijuana that is in some way a thoughtful gift from the LGM. 5. Mulder & Scully having sex in a public place. 6. At some point in time, Mulder confesses to an addiction he never wanted Scully to know about. Something he lies awake at night, feeling ashamed of. He . . . he . . . oh, it's almost too painful to admit . . . He's a closet Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan. good luck.