TITLE: No Longer at Ease Here AUTHOR: Kel ckelll@hotmail.com http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Realm/9374/ CATEGORY: Vignette RATING: PG SUMMARY: Returning home from the oil rig in Vienen, Mulder and Doggett explore some common ground. THANKS: To Linda and to Tre, for the readings and the encouragement. DISCLAIMER: No! I am not Chris Carter, nor was meant to be. SPOILERS: The Gift, Vienen NOTE: I usually write humor. This isn't. "I was dead too," I said. Small talk isn't my strong point, or Mulder's. We had only exchanged a few words since we boarded the plane. I wanted to get our stories straight so I could figure out what to put in the report and where to go from here. Mulder told me to handle it any way I wanted, which was irritating, because I was trying to cover his ass without frying my own. If he was so damn indifferent, why'd he decide to fly out to that godforsaken oil rig at his own expense and contrary to a direct order? So I was sitting there, getting ready to ask him that very question, when that other sentence popped out of my mouth. He looked over at me, nodded, and turned back to look out the window. "If that's true, you have my deepest sympathy," he said. If that's true. Like I'm a liar. "Squamash, Pennsylvania. Sound familiar?" I asked him. That got his attention. "What do you know about that?" he asked. I know there's a town in Pennsylvania where they're ready to kill to hold on to their medicine man. This medicine man looks more like a monster, because the way he cures people is by eating their disease. "I was shot and killed, and that creature vomited me back to life," I said. He was quiet for so long that I thought he didn't want to talk about it. It wouldn't have surprised me. Skinner sure didn't, and he told me not to tell anyone else either. Even Monica got spooked when I phoned her one night. "Worse than dying, isn't it?" he said. He had that right. Dying feels like you're slipping away, but coming back is violent and terrifying. "Yeah. You think birth is like that?" I asked. That was my theory, and this was the first chance I'd had to check it out with someone who might know. "I think so," Mulder said. "I'm glad I don't remember." "Yeah. Like circumcision," I said. You know, I never thought much about it until my son. All that stuff about how babies don't feel it--it's bullshit. Then I was sorry I brought it up, because I didn't even know if the baby was a boy, or if it was his. I didn't even know if he knew. "It's no big deal," Mulder said. "I mean, I'm sure it's a big deal at the time, but.... Well, hell, Doggett, you know what I mean. You live your seventy or eighty years and you're gone. What does it matter, really?" That was the trouble, I did know what he meant. "You drink your beer and you watch the game and you try not to think about it," I said. Not circumcision, death. Death and all the things you used to think you could be sure of. "You drink your beer because you remember that you like beer, and you watch the game because you used to care," he said. "It'll get easier," I told him. "After a while you get over it." "I'm just going through the motions," he said. "I don't know what else to do." I figured that was the time to ask him. "So when you disobeyed Kersh and all, going out to the oil rig when he ordered you off the case, you were just going through the motions?" He laughed. "I think that's the only real feeling I have. I hate Kersh." I started to laugh too. "I guess that's something," I said. "Oh, yeah, I can build a life on that," Mulder said. "God, I hate that son of a bitch." We were both still laughing. "Hey, you'll be in big trouble if something happens to him," I said. "I'll have nothing to live for!" he guffawed. I guess it couldn't have been as funny as it seemed at the time. Maybe we just needed the laugh. "You wanna stop the aliens, don't you?" I asked when we finally got over our hysteria. "I don't think we can," he admitted. He glanced at me; I don't know what reaction he was expecting. "Sometimes I don't even care." "We have to try," I said. "I've been trying for a long time. I've been looking for proof for the last eight years, and now I'm back from the dead, and it's still not enough proof," he said. "I don't know if hating Kersh is enough to get me through another forty years of this." Again, I knew what he was talking about. After that soul-eater brought me back to life, I thought something would happen. Hell, I figured at least we'd nab the guy who shot me. But Skinner kept it all quiet. Welcome back from the dead, now go find Mulder. I guess you could say I found him. I found him and I tried to give him back his light saber, and now he was telling me he didn't want it. "What about the kid?" I asked him. "What, Scully's kid?" he asked. "I hope that kid gets to grow up and grow old and die without ever finding out what his place is in the universe. But you know, Doggett, you know better than anyone that I can't guarantee it." My son Luke was murdered, that's what Mulder was talking about. By his way of thinking, eight years and eighty are about the same, so there wasn't too much to complain about. Luke just didn't get to live as long as most people, and he had plenty of time to understand that any God he happened to believe in was okey-dokey with having him die. "Maybe there is a heaven," Mulder said. Maybe you should shut your trap, I thought. "Pie in the sky when you die," I said. "I didn't get any pie, Mulder, did you?" "I think it's for children," he said. "A place for kids who die. I believe that, Doggett." What I really wanted to do was bust him in the face, but it didn't make any sense and I wasn't gonna do it. He seemed to catch on anyway, and he finally shut up. I felt bad, though, because I know what it's like when you have something on your mind and no one wants to let you say it. "I know what you're going through," I said. "We returned to our places, but no longer at ease here," Mulder said. "Give it time," I told him. "Time's on my side," he said. "Next time will be for keeps." ##### We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their gods. I should be glad of another death. from "Journey of the Magi," by T. S. Eliot Feedback, if you'd be so kind, to Kel: ckelll@hotmail.com 1