Past Lives Wanted
by Mischa
mischablue@crosswinds.net

Category: VA
Keywords: Scully/Doggett UST, ref to past Mulder/Scully DAL
Spoilers: TINH. Brief spoilers for The Gift, Kitsunegari,
Pilot, FTF, abduction arc, Memento Mori, Roadrunners,
Tithonus... oh, heck, just general knowledge for all eight
seasons up to the beginning of DeadAlive.
Timeline: Three month DeadAlive interval
Summary: Recently on a stakeout you didn't have the heart
for, he turned to you and asked if you dreamed in colour.
Archive: Ephemeral yes; Gossamer yes; XFMU yes; SHODDSters,
yes; all others just drop me a line!
Disclaimer: Not mine, not mine. Chris Carter's. No
infringement intended, and no money is being made from this.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Remembrance is something that comes naturally to you now,
even though three months remain submerged in light and pain.
Memory is something you need, something you crave, and in
slumber history plays out in triple time. It hovers against
the darkness, a painful reality too clear to ever be the
truth you seek.

In what feels like a past life, memory was a good thing,
treated with fondness. Now it is simply a record of time
passing, but it is time you need, because you have already
lost three months of your life, three years of a child, and
you cannot afford to lose any more. Time is different now,
shared with a different man, pursuing a different angle of
the quest. Once, long ago, the truth was about finding
answers for the past. Now, it is about preventing dangers of
the future.

Recently on a stakeout you didn't have the heart for, he
turned to you and asked if you dreamed in colour. An idle
question that you felt had no purpose; John Doggett was not
a man of idle questions. Thinking of in now, in the
insightful clarity of a freed subconscious, you realise what
he was driving for...

/...splash of red blood painted across sky of tense failings
cerulean blue poured down a man's throat harsh white light
first nine minutes blur of spotted black and hum and sharp
silver stings.../

You dream in colour.

/...whistle of metal through the air murky green swimming
past frozen eyeballs blur of grey bending over to stare into
white emptiness of tumor enclosed in skull.../

You dream in colour and live until the darkness kills you.
The screams are weak. The screams can never fully force
their way out of your throat.

Doggett knows. You do not know how he knows, but you
suspect, and you have never wanted to reach across the
boundaries enough to ask. He carries the understanding
weight of technicolour dreams and greyscale pain under his
gaze.

You have held your suspicions ever since a psychic looked
him in the eye and confronted him with a truth he had never
confessed to you, ever since you caught him once silently
grieving over what you perceived to be a success. His job
only ever required him to find Mulder. There was no quota
availed to him on the measure of life involved.

He knows, and you feel his understanding each time you fall
into step with him. You are learning to walk in his pace
just as he is learning to walk in yours, and with each step
taken you both learn a little more, more pieces of
yourselves are revealed. He is a man of bravery, of honesty,
of integrity, and you hold each of those characteristics
close.

In what feels like an eternity ago you would have wanted a
man like this in your house, in your bed, in your body. Now
it is simply enough to have him in your life. He caught you
when you fell, carried you through the night, held you with
his presence when the pain of grief became too much to bear.
He kept you honest, kept you grounded. He watched you when
you didn't care to watch yourself. He ripped someone's god
out of your spine seconds before it consumed you alive.

Each action between you, each gentle swaying of dynamic,
speaks of a concern and respect you had forgotten in the
fires of trial, in the madness of human monsters forever
rising. He would always protect you -- his actions alone
speak for that -- and you are slowly coming to the
realisation that you would fight to do the same for him.

/...all is red of passion of heat of blood of death of the
colour of Emily's hair of Melissa's of silent stoplight
swooping out of the darkness that came when death was
forsaken in the field on the floor in a hospital room at the
barrel of a cold metal gun.../

Awaken with a start, tremble in the blackness. Somewhere in
the back of your mind the wild echo of your cries resonate.

Doggett is not a phoenix; he can survive and endure just as
you and Mulder have, but he can never rise from the dead.
Yet he rises out of the darkness that surrounds you, arms
held towards you like angels' broken wings, and you wonder
if this is still a dream. Yes, it would have to be a dream,
only played out in sketched wax figures formed within an
isolate pool of Indian ink.

He leans close and speaks to you with an understanding that
you cannot comprehend. Words that you could never understand
in the clarity of day, because in reality you are both
solid, both real, both practical. Not figments of soul
meeting briefly in the darkness. Not whatever it is you are
when this man touches you on the shoulder and you are
strangely soothed.

You would never want to forget this, but you will. His
gentle hands coax you back into sleep, a sleep where there
are no dreams. If rationality was not so blurred for you,
maybe you would stop to recognise that this man has come
into your life, this man protects you, this man can hold the
darkness at bay just as you have, just as others have.

In what feels like a lost collection of youthful memory you
would have held onto this man and never let him go. Now you
understand all too well that life is fleeting and years of
seeming immortality will always end buried under earth. Now
there is the responsibility of grief, a man in your heart
who now only exists in memory and crumbling soil.

And so you awaken without Doggett's arms around you, not
what
 you once may have hoped. As you lift your head to meet his
gaze, watching you from the corner, the feeling is enough
for you to call alone. In the darkness wisps of memory dance
away from you, away into the night, calling dreams of past
lives wanted away from your mind.

~ END ~