Collisions In Infinite Night
by Mischa
mischablue@crosswinds.net

Rating: PG-13
Keyword thingummies: VA, DSR? with an unfortunate smidgen of
MSR, too. Angst a-plenty. Scully POV.
Spoilers: To be safe, entire eighth season up to and including 

'Existence'. Significantly, 'Within/Without', and the DeadAlive arc.
Summary: Post-'Existence' -- When seconds step out of the clutches 

of time, consequences rise and meteors fall.

(I hate writing summaries. Did that work for you?)


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You were always a puzzle to me from the very beginning,
Agent Doggett. This mysterious man who had looked down from
the ladder reaching into the stars, staring down a truth you
would never comprehend. You arrived at a time when I was
cast out of my own orbit, lost in the night, not knowing
what there was left to believe. Time was no longer time
anymore, the seconds had sped and it was another person who
met you in that cold foyer, another Dana Scully who listened
to your theories and threw water in your face. I carried in
my shadow memory, the weight of knowledge, and when you drew
near radiating arrogance and blind assumption, it was that
darkness that took over and refused to release me from its
grasp. I was falling from the realm of the stars and I
resented how you bore witness to that.


Those very first moments I thought I'd worked you out, knew
who you were, what you were, by your profile and your
attitude and your deception. I looked at you and saw you to
be simple, straightforward, and an enemy in what most see as
a game but what I call my life. Practical and solid, but
there was something else there I never afforded myself the
opportunity to investigate. An intensity that lined your
face and hardened your jaw. Threads of pain and
determination weaved into the fibres that made up who you
were.

In the first few tentative months I looked at you, believing
I was looking a man worthy of comparison to Mulder.
Unexpectedly, I found myself thinking that maybe you were
better, noble in your own way, a depth of unexplored
territory that would never be right for me to uncover. It
seemed right to me, somehow, that you were another Earth, a
planet with ocean and land, sea blue and grey around sand
and rock and strength. Mulder wasn't earth or sea but the
trees and the skies above them. That cliche, never see the
forest for the trees? Mulder was the trees. I never knew the
whole, as much as I wanted to, as much as I tried. Mulder
was a green planet, giving away little clue to the lifeblood
that sustained him long after the mystery of a missing
satellite was solved. So much life in you both, only the
ecosystem which kept you alive was far more clear to me.

I wanted to be merely a passing meteor to you, only
temporary, never forever. You pulled at me, and I pulled
back, equal and opposite forces sending us into a tentative
back-and-forth dance. You repelled me and then drew me in, I
forced you away and watched you come back. We drew lines and
stayed respectfully behind them, knowing our places. I've
called you 'Agent Doggett' so many times for so long now
that it became second nature to me, and I'm sure that to you
it was the same. That boundary has been so carefully
respected it's almost as if it's been set in stone, raised
on a pedestal.

I don't know when it started, the moment you first willingly
drew close. Maybe that card was the first sign. A moment
that didn't seem to belong in the usual progression of time.
You were meant to leave, to never look back, to meander up
your ladder to where greater expectations lay... and yet
there you were, slipping a useless piece of delicatly
coloured card into my hand carefully, tentatively, pushing
at physical resistance. I remember the awkwardness in your
manner when you told me you would be falling into step with
my solar system, my tiny corner of the universe... you were
knocked out of a galaxy of rising stars and established
planetary networks to be shoved into the fringe, the
anomalous, peculiar occurrence tucked away at the very edges
of the fray.

I can be fair. At the very least, you tried to be
open-minded, cautiously expanding your horizons, resisting
the bizarre but attempting to understand. What was it you
asked me, in those first few days? Don't turn your back on
me, I'm asking you a legitimate question. I hear those words
in my head spoken in your voice and now they carry a
melancholy ring to it. It's frightening, how watching you
dissolve into memory the way you did has that sort of effect
on my thoughts of you.

I know now that I could never turn my back on you if I
tried. I am well aware that it is far too late to make up
for lost time.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When we found Mulder, he had simply faded into dead light. A
collapsed entity. The rich, lush growth of his mind
withered. All that brilliance vanished into anti-matter. His
gravity was greater than yours, greater than mine, and I
knew that you understood this. Even now, I am amazed that
his sheer power and didn't cause him to fall completely into
himself and stay that way, to become a black hole, a
permanent marker in space, where nothing and no-one could
escape and all concept of time and space and principle would
simply cease to exist. Or maybe it did, but somehow, some
way... my control over my own gravity was enough to keep me
from sinking. Knowing I was responsible for not only myself,
but another, was somehow enough.

I know you watched over me, then. Fearing the same thing as
I, wondering if my light would twist and be swallowed into
the vortex. I came close, I know, which is why it still
astonishes me how you always remained nearby. Allowing me
the comfort of washing my tears in the familiar sea. Letting
me rest on the earth if I wandered up lost and confused and
needing a place to cry. The gentle tug of your gravity just
enough to keep me from toppling over the edge, taking the
risk to remain with me even though the all-encompassing
nature of the X-Files threatened to send you spinning down
with me. We reached a balance then. Cautiously tilting on
our axis, reaching an awkward equilibrium as respective
memory hung like a cloud over our heads.

But then... everything seemed to reverse. What had once
imploded was exploding again. Dimensions seemed to alter.
Parallel universes spun and twisted and beyond all
scientific principle, beyond all religious notion, time
somehow erased the permanent stain of death from Mulder's
flesh. The sky turned blue again. Trees breathed life. I had
allowed the land to support me, the ocean to comfort me, but
in those trees I could reach new heights, in that sky I
could fly.

But *time* didn't reverse, didn't erase the past months of
searching and fear and shattered hopes. You didn't exit the
way you came, leaving no memory of your existence behind.
You stayed even as I told you to leave, watched as Mulder
came closer and old souls reconnected, and although you
remained close by, reminding me that you were there, you
were never as near to me as you had been in Mulder's
absence. There were undercurrents that I sensed but could
never quite identify. And somewhere along the line I
realised that I had stopped holding you up in comparison to
Mulder. His initial indifference, his coldness, stung me
even as I understood, and one day I found myself looking up
from my desk and comparing him to you.

Maybe that was the result of gravity, plain and simple.
Maybe not.

You always looked at me as though I was the only light in
the darkness. And I *was*... trapped within glass
boundaries, the looking clearly into a world without, a
globe shining subtly in a dark room. The intensity of the
light gently muted by too much time, too much knowledge, too
much truth. No flames, no fire -- nothing that could leap
out and burn you unexpected -- only quiet light held inside
reserve. I could see it reflected in your eyes, from when we
began, all the way up until we ended. So many times I saw
you looking at me as though you wanted to remember me, were
trying to remember me, and not once did I ever feel the need
to ask why. I should have asked. I should have tried to
remember you too, not left it until those last timeless
moments.

The minute he returned and the universe was off-kilter
again, any expectations I had for our friendship suddenly
seemed illusory. Phantasmal. Your physicality remained, I
thought you'd be another friend for life, another partner to
watch my back in the field... not once, did I ever expect
you to fade from my life and extinguish in a moment that
should never have existed in time.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My child is a tiny entity of light. Radiant, and powerful. A
pulsar, a quasar, intense, happy light throbbing in time to
the beating of my heart. That night, the night when stars
fell and too many forces crashed into on another, I had held
this amazing satellite protectively, close to my heart, and
felt him sparkle at me.

I had fallen back into Mulder and he fell into me, following
all the laws and principles of force and yet breaking them
all at the same time. Orbits spun and accelerated and yet
the resultant felt far stronger, far deeper. The light
seemed so intense, so pure. We stood wrapped within our own
equilibrium, returning to our comfort zone, William held
gently between us, forces on our part alternately
strengthening and relenting with each gentle collision. This
felt right. This felt like home.

I admit that I truly believed in those seconds that we could
be a happy family, as the fragile moment carved itself into
memory.

Yet I felt you, nearby. Your subtle power, slowly gaining
momentum in the back of my mind. Solid earth with no-one to
walk the lonely shores. A far-flung sea with more
undercurrents than I dared to imagine. I felt light in my
heart and happiness but somehow... the shadow of sadness
that remained forever constant took on a form in my mind,
and it was of your face. I walked over to the window to
close the blinds, to conceal the brilliant light within from
prying eyes, and glimpsed your truck parked on the side of
the road, your now-familiar form stepping out. A
coincidence, I told myself, and a coincidence only -- I
couldn't be sensing another presence around me, not with
Mulder standing by me, not with William gently pulling me
in. But then you glanced up at the window and somehow,
across all that distance, I still felt the shock of
colliding with you...

Mulder agreed to hold the baby while I went downstairs to
greet you, gently leaning into my space again, leaving me
with a final reminder of his presence. Both he and I knew
that it wasn't William you wanted to see --you hadn't
allowed us to entrust you with him when you came to visit us
in the hospital. You had gazed at us all with a sort of
pride mixed with concern, afraid for William, afraid for me,
and it had been too easy for me to lean over into your space
and offer you my child to hold. But your unexpected
rebuffal, the swift rebuilding of defences... I chose at
that moment to give you time, and although I even though I
had stepped out of it to meet you at the doorstep I was
still standing by that choice.

We stood outside in the night simply staring each other
down. The weight of your latent emotion could have knocked
me over. The look in your eyes could have drowned me. I felt
too conflicted, too anchored between their gravity and yours
to want to take that chance.

I came to see how you and William were going, you had said.
Your eyes were open, unguarded, sad, maybe even a little
proud. Memories of Luke exuded from you, a muted cloud. You
looked past my shoulder to the door. Where --?

He's inside, I replied. Your eyes had shadowed, but not out
of concern. You knew. You wanted to flow away from me then,
cool water slipping out through whatever cracks or crevasses
you could immediately find. I wouldn't have been able to
catch you if you tried, you would have left with an
evaporating reminder of your existence. Oh, you had
answered, and shifted uncomfortably. You looked down at your
feet and nodded.

Thank you for being there, I wanted to say. Thank you for
watching our backs, thank you for the flowers, thank you for
ducking out of the hospital room to give us some privacy,
even if you did never return. I couldn't say those words, I
could only look at you in silence.

You were gazing at me. Searching my face as though some kind
of repressed memory were hidden within. I know you didn't
find it. I know you saw the light in my face. You saw the
light from a miracle, a nebula, fresh and new starlight
imprinted in my skin. You saw... I don't know how else you
could have seen in me that night, but the way you stared at
me... you were shining sadly in the darkness. I reached out
for you, wanting to thank you, for protecting me, for being
there above and beyond the call, and I think maybe after a
while you understood, the mysterious reserve of resistance
you had built around you beginning to dissolve. I heard your
voice in my head, telling me it was never an option, filling
in for me the blanks in the wordless expanse of your eyes. I
think... I think it was me that touched you first, taking
your hand in mine. Tracing the lines on your hand, wondering
about the accuracy of palmistry, hoping that somewhere in
those tangled hieroglyphics there would be a passing mention
that I would still have a place in your future...

Even now I have difficulty recalling exactly how the next
moments came about. Maybe a breath of wind or the incoming
tide knocked me into you and you caught me, steadied me.
Maybe it was accidental or deliberate or somewhere in the
distance two atoms collided and set off a chain reaction and
threw us off balance, sent us spinning into one another.
Maybe as the universe continued to spin into chaos, we
searched for constants. Maybe it was the Pandora's Box of
infinity being unlocked, sending a rush of repressed emotion
into the cosmos. Maybe the downward force beginning at our
respective centres propelled us, breaking past the barriers
of magnetic resistance only to fall into a powerful magnetic
attraction, we were that close. So much light... it was
*you* that was luminescent, not me. Mulder had a light of
his own, but it was shadowed with too much truth.

Your face was in my hands, your arm around my waist, your
hand grasping through my hair. I tasted finality and
bitterness and desperation and unexpected, beautiful
sweetness and I felt tainted, knowing where I had been less
than ten minutes before. I felt as though I was a meteor
falling from the sky where dead light had resided, soaring
down to solid earth, to existence, to the irresistible pull
of gravity. Willingly I dived from my plane of residence
into yours, escaping the emptiness of the universe, reaching
downwards past the magnetic pull that threatened to send me
forever circling. I felt life and heat and warmth and
passion and strength and I knew it was *you*... and then my
eyes snapped open and harsh light flooded into peripheral
vision and I was forced into orbit between planes again,
hovering between the stratosphere and the rest of forever. I
didn't want to let you go, I *couldn't*... I tried to stare
past closed eyelids, needing to brave the storm within,
feeling your heavy breathing, sensing the faint ripples
along your spine. In every eternal day after I would ask why
this had to happen, but in that moment, at that time... the
question never once entered my thoughts. There were no
consequences. No repercussions here. All of time vanished
into extinction except for this one stolen second.

And then you had simply opened your eyes and looked at me.
You could never hide anything with those clear blue eyes,
never conceal the secrets that lay within. Though your
emotions were so clear, so obviously laid out for me to
analyse, I knew I didn't have the answers I needed to unlock
the cryptic message you were giving me. You could have
pulled me back into yourself and trapped me there forever,
so easily, with those mesmerizing eyes, allowed the tide to
rise and fall and pull me downwards with the undertow,
chained me to the earth with sheer force. But that wasn't
your intention here, that wasn't your aim, and I've never
known what was -- and when it came down to the choice of
remaining in your arms or drawing away, I knew regretfully
which was easier, which was safer. I felt recoil like a
fired gun tug at my heart when I pulled myself away from
you, something snapping deep within, pulling away from the
force that radiated from you. I closed my eyes, felt myself
revolving back into the rest of the universe again with
barely any effort at all.

I remember thinking bitterly, so this is how comets fly.

So much confusion. Too much confusion in your eyes... I will
never forget how you looked at me that last time. You leaned
forward, brushed against my mouth, whispered something I've
never had the courage to try and decipher. Oh, I remember
how it feels, every imprint of your lips grazing against
mine sinking deep into my flesh. A moving physical memory
that still flutters across my skin on the darkest of nights.
I know that what you said could be one of only two things.

I love you.

I'm sorry.

Since that day, I've never once had the courage to know what
you said with any certainty.

I watched you walk away to your truck, knowing that maybe my
hold on you was lessening, that your tide was washing away
from me, and it could never give me a guarantee to return. I
never realised until then I only barely had the strength to
watch you walk away from me. It had been so easy for me to
do the same, and I never knew, it never occurred to me... it
was always me walking, running, flying away from you, and
for the first time I was truly tasting the bitter truth of a
role reversed. I *wanted* to summon you back to me. Not
once had I imagined it would be you who would be the
transient one. I knew the codeword, the name, that would
make you stop in your tracks, that would make you turn
around, and it lingered on my tongue, taunting me with the
knowledge that I had never felt familiar enough with you to
use it. It was left unsaid, and you continued on your way,
so unexpectedly ephemeral. Not you. I saw the struggle in
your eyes and I know why you left, but... I never seriously
believed you ever would.

When you walked away I found myself yearning for the sea.
For the welcoming shores that lay beyond. For the feeling of
anchoring myself into earth and strength and stone, not
getting lost in shadow and the steady rain of falling
leaves. I wanted to know more than this, I wanted to erase
this forever from memory. I could live with anticipation,
with latent tension, with forever wondering... I couldn't
live with this.

And yet the swift inevitability of reality was pulling me
away, consequences rising from deep waters with empty eyes
and fearsome hunger. I found myself desperately memorizing
you as you drove away, every passing moment, every fragile
second, and as time spun away from me I felt a different
kind of gravity sinking onto my shoulders. Another orbit,
another man, and I knew I was too weak to resist this time,
too lost to try and exert my own control. I felt myself
spinning, turning towards another planet, staring into
confused, hurt eyes. Hazel eyes. The colour of redwood and
leaves and unfathomable forests. Of dizzying heights and
farther falls. I stared at him and tasted two truths on my
tongue.

That was when I remembered that incandescence still had the
potential to burn those daring enough to want to reach out
and touch it. Weight bore down on me, and I suddenly felt
lost, not knowing if the force you still held on me was of
my own imagination or that I could be foolish enough to hope
you would linger, after this night. And even as I stared
into Mulder's eyes and saw in them the expanse of infinity,
I wondered if I would ever be afforded the chance to wander
across your path again.

~End~