TITLE: I Dreamed of Stars
AUTHOR: SpookyChick xfspookychick@yahoo.com
RATING: R
KEYWORDS: MSR, Angst, Scully POV, Oddness
SPOILERS: Post-ep for TINH
FEEDBACK: Yes, yes, yes! xfspookychick@yahoo.com
ARCHIVE: Fine, just let me know.
SUMMARY: I dreamed of stars. But first, I dreamed of darkness.
Yes... you were the man of my dreams, Mulder. I can just hear
you snickering about that. But in this nightmare, you were not
smiling.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Thanks many times over to JET for beta on my
last story, and for writing "An Influence of Stars," which is
unconnected with this piece but worth rereading in light of
Scully's comments in This Is Not Happening. This story is for
Leyla. Thanks as always to Jo, Tina, Amanda, Peggy, Michele, and
Megan.
DISCLAIMER: A couple passages are transcribed directly from TINH
and Closure, although I have fiddled with them a little. You
will probably recognize them. That writing isn't mine, and of
course, none of the characters are mine.
*
I Dreamed of Stars
By SpookyChick
*
I dreamed of stars. But first, I dreamed of darkness.
In the center of a blackened room, there you were. Yes... you
are the man of my dreams, Mulder. I can practically hear you
snickering about that. But in this nightmare, you were not
smiling. You did not cock your head at me in any crude,
suggestive joke. You did not swagger toward me to propose some
new, wild theory. You could not even stand.
You lay pinned in the glare of a spotlight. Its focused glow
underscored the vulnerability of pale, naked flesh against inky
darkness.
The chair upon which you were racked seemed completely alien.
Strapped to this elaborate pedestal of torture, your repose
spoke volumes of pain. You screamed at me in the language of
your body, pleaded for me to free you. But this was your
crowning glory, and some cruel, cosmic Jester appointed me
merely a witness to the court. I could only watch as restraints
held you firmly in place, as hidden captors tormented you, as
lines of hooks and wires tore the silence from your lips.
Unable to bear the expression on your face, my eyes slid across
your skin. I took in the tension in your chest, your arms --
finally alighting on your hands. You have such big, strong
hands, Mulder. Some evenings when you held me, there seemed room
left in your embrace to cradle a galaxy or two. I found my home
in your arms, as you did in mine.
Not this night. This night, you were just a speck of ghostly
white in a sea of ebony. The tendons in your wrists were pulled
taut as you clenched fists, shaking ever so slightly against the
rough bindings that clutched you to that grisly throne. As I
watched, invisible and impotent, my prince uncurled the fingers
of one trembling hand. You stretched toward me, Mulder, reaching
across space, time, and consciousness...
You dreamed of me.
*
I dreamed of waking.
Sudden and harsh, cool air swept across me as I sat up in bed
and dropped the blankets. Dressing hastily, thoughtlessly, I
tugged a coat over my sleepy form and grabbed my keys by the
door. Then I hurried across the motel parking lot to Skinner's
room. I sought comfort. I willed him to reassure me that it was
but a dream. Those words did not come; and as he accompanied me
out into the evening, I might as well have been a billion years
away.
"Mulder once talked with me of starlight," I spoke aloud to
Skinner.
Of my memories, I spoke only to the stars. They seemed so
vulnerable to me, the wide, dark sky ready to extinguish their
tiny points of light at any moment.
Remember, Mulder? Remember
When we found that the body of that little girl,
Amber Lynn LaPierre,
When you lost your mother and found Samantha
in a single breath,
When you whispered to me,
"These fates seem too cruel, Scully, even for God to allow. Or
are the tragic young born again when the world's not looking? I
want to believe so badly; in a truth beyond our own, hidden and
obscured from all but the most sensitive eyes... in the endless
procession of souls... in what cannot and will not be destroyed.
I want to believe we are unaware of God's eternal recompense and
sadness. That we cannot see His truth. That that which is born
still lives and cannot be buried in the cold earth, but only
waits to be born again at God's behest... where in ancient
starlight we lay in repose."
Some time later, as we bound up our wounds and prepared to chase
forever more lights in the sky, you whispered to me again.
"You know, I never stop to think... that the light is billions
of years old by the time we see it. From the beginning of time
right past us into the future. Nothing is as ancient in the
universe. But, maybe they are souls, Scully. Traveling through
time as starlight, looking for homes."
In my dream, Skinner looked down at me with unreadable emotion
in his eyes, drew me back to earth with a glance. So I cut short
my musing and articulated my thoughts.
"Mulder once talked with me of starlight," I reminded Skinner.
"How it's billions of years old. How stars that are still long
dead, whose light is still traveling through time... It won't
die, that light. Maybe that's the only thing that never does.
Mulder said that's where souls reside."
"Hope he's right," I murmured finally, aloud.
"Hope you're right," I told you through the stars.
*
When I returned, at last, to sleep that night...
I dreamed of stars.
*
But first, again -- again?
I had to dream the darkness.
This time, Mulder, you were not restrained with cloth or metal
or implements I could not even recognize. Still, you did not
move. You lay on the ground, faded blue and gray and cold in a
dirty blanket. And when your latest captors, the group of agents
and officers guarding your body, parted for me to see you, you
did not gaze back at me. You did not answer when I demanded of
the intruders in our space: "How bad is Mulder hurt? How bad is
it?" You did not respond when I knelt to touch your scarred,
slack jaw. You simply lay there.
So I ran through the dark, breaking away from the people
surrounding me. Bodies tried to hold me, catch me, kill me with
the news of your death, Mulder. But I ran faster, faster,
tearing through the darkness as if the speed of light could
carry me to find someone to heal you in time. To save you.
I ran and ran and ran until a blaze began to spread across the
sky. Then I pulled up short; I could only watch. Just like in my
first dream, where you alone were illuminated for that torturous
fate. Damn it, Mulder, you have been persuading me of the
starlight for years. Now my eyes are open to it, my pupils
dilated wide. I believe. So why must I still stand idly by?
In this dream, the choice was not mine to make. So I stood, a
small black silhouette at the top of a tiny hill, witness to the
glow that bathed Jeremiah's compound. The brilliance washed over
the house, lit up the prophet and his abductee patients and took
them all away from me. They faded into light and I could not
stop it. I could do nothing. Nothing, Mulder! The frustration
when I threw open the doors of that empty building nearly burned
me up inside. You vanished in Oregon; now a hundred souls more
have gone; yet I remain fumbling blindly in this ocean of dark.
When is it my time?
I screamed up at the ceiling, willing it to split apart. But the
sky did not open. The building did not shatter around me. So I
did the only thing I could think of, and myself shattered
instead. I screamed again, and denied the death of the stars.
"This... is... not... happening."
*
Agents Doggett and Skinner arrived at the empty house soon after
me. They scooped me up and balanced me between them as I
stumbled numbly to the car. I do not recall exactly where they
took me -- some hotel, I think? -- or how I got there. I only
remember that I dreamed of stars.
*
Always, though... always, the darkness comes first.
Why must I dream the darkness to see the stars?
*
I dreamed the past.
I dreamed your bleak, gray years missing Samantha. I dreamed
losing your father, losing your mother, losing yourself in
profiles of serial killers and stranger, ever more evil
phenomena. I dreamed losing my father, my sister, and my
daughter, too. I even dreamed Agent Doggett's missing son.
Through these nightmares, I slept only fitfully. I clasped and
kicked at the covers, tangling the once-crisp white sheets
around my fevered form. The hotel's simple bed had no headboard,
no footboard -- nothing solid to grasp as I flailed my limbs out
into the darkened space of the room. I stretched in every
direction but forward, reaching for pieces of the past that
remained just beyond my fingertips.
*
I dream this very moment.
Sprinting toward your still form in hope. Stumbling away in
horror. I live it over and over and over again.
Through the endless black of the past, Mulder, you lit up a
thousand of my nights. Yet I cannot find you in this most
pressing time. In the search since your abduction, every glimpse
of evidence we spy is already ancient. Even tonight, Mulder: By
the time I found it, your body was a billion years dead to me.
As I lay small and dark on a spinning sphere of earth, I can
only wonder -- where are you *now*?
I pull my knees toward my chest and ball my fingers into fists,
willing myself to hang on as the planet tumbles recklessly
beneath me. Squinting my eyes tightly shut, wrapping my arms
firmly around my calves, I adopt a defensive posture against the
darkness.
*
Finally -- finally -- I will dream our future.
One evening, I will wake from this living nightmare and hurry
forth for comfort. I will not knock at Skinner's door -- I will
knock at yours. And when I lead you out under the canopy of sky,
I will speak to you directly, without resort to stars.
"You once talked with me of starlight," I will remind you.
"You told me that the light of stars are souls. That these souls
rush past us from the beginning of time on into the future,
looking for places to rest. Your beautiful mind, Mulder... that
was the only time you ever wondered aloud about God. You never
were sure. It might all have made sense sooner if only you had
taken the last logical step."
"Scully, dear," you will smile down at me with a hint of
laughter in your eyes, "I rely on *you* for logic."
Belatedly, I will put together the pieces for you and for
myself.
"You said there are souls in the starlight," I will begin. "You
said stars are souls searching for homes."
You will nod, quietly watching the comprehension wash over my
features. Oh, Mulder, so long I have sought you -- found you,
and lost you, and found you again.
"If stars are but souls looking for homes..."
Sleeping yet, my mind conjures the most disturbing, pitch-black
depths of night. Restless, I throw a desperate fist across
rumpled bed-sheets.
"If stars are but souls looking for homes..."
Lost somewhere in that moment between waking and slumber, I
uncurl the fingers of one tense, trembling hand. I stretch white
fingertips into the blind space of the room, my flesh so pale it
shines against the darkness. I reach forward.
"If stars are but souls looking for homes..."
In one more heartbeat, I will unclench both fists, throw my arms
'round your neck, tug your head down toward mine, and speak to
you a billion emotions with the sparks of my eyes. But the first
bit of my revelation must be uttered aloud. I need to hear the
words as much as you do -- it's like pinching myself to make
sure I'm not asleep. Do I wake or do I dream?
As I whisper,
"Mulder, you are home."
*
I dream of stars.
I dream of darkness.
I dream of that last heartbeat,
Of holding you in my arms for a billion years.
And perhaps -- just perhaps -- the stars dream of me.
*
End.
*
Loved it? Hated it? Made no sense at all?
Feedback, please! xfspookychick@yahoo.com
AUTHOR: SpookyChick xfspookychick@yahoo.com
RATING: R
KEYWORDS: MSR, Angst, Scully POV, Oddness
SPOILERS: Post-ep for TINH
FEEDBACK: Yes, yes, yes! xfspookychick@yahoo.com
ARCHIVE: Fine, just let me know.
SUMMARY: I dreamed of stars. But first, I dreamed of darkness.
Yes... you were the man of my dreams, Mulder. I can just hear
you snickering about that. But in this nightmare, you were not
smiling.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Thanks many times over to JET for beta on my
last story, and for writing "An Influence of Stars," which is
unconnected with this piece but worth rereading in light of
Scully's comments in This Is Not Happening. This story is for
Leyla. Thanks as always to Jo, Tina, Amanda, Peggy, Michele, and
Megan.
DISCLAIMER: A couple passages are transcribed directly from TINH
and Closure, although I have fiddled with them a little. You
will probably recognize them. That writing isn't mine, and of
course, none of the characters are mine.
*
I Dreamed of Stars
By SpookyChick
*
I dreamed of stars. But first, I dreamed of darkness.
In the center of a blackened room, there you were. Yes... you
are the man of my dreams, Mulder. I can practically hear you
snickering about that. But in this nightmare, you were not
smiling. You did not cock your head at me in any crude,
suggestive joke. You did not swagger toward me to propose some
new, wild theory. You could not even stand.
You lay pinned in the glare of a spotlight. Its focused glow
underscored the vulnerability of pale, naked flesh against inky
darkness.
The chair upon which you were racked seemed completely alien.
Strapped to this elaborate pedestal of torture, your repose
spoke volumes of pain. You screamed at me in the language of
your body, pleaded for me to free you. But this was your
crowning glory, and some cruel, cosmic Jester appointed me
merely a witness to the court. I could only watch as restraints
held you firmly in place, as hidden captors tormented you, as
lines of hooks and wires tore the silence from your lips.
Unable to bear the expression on your face, my eyes slid across
your skin. I took in the tension in your chest, your arms --
finally alighting on your hands. You have such big, strong
hands, Mulder. Some evenings when you held me, there seemed room
left in your embrace to cradle a galaxy or two. I found my home
in your arms, as you did in mine.
Not this night. This night, you were just a speck of ghostly
white in a sea of ebony. The tendons in your wrists were pulled
taut as you clenched fists, shaking ever so slightly against the
rough bindings that clutched you to that grisly throne. As I
watched, invisible and impotent, my prince uncurled the fingers
of one trembling hand. You stretched toward me, Mulder, reaching
across space, time, and consciousness...
You dreamed of me.
*
I dreamed of waking.
Sudden and harsh, cool air swept across me as I sat up in bed
and dropped the blankets. Dressing hastily, thoughtlessly, I
tugged a coat over my sleepy form and grabbed my keys by the
door. Then I hurried across the motel parking lot to Skinner's
room. I sought comfort. I willed him to reassure me that it was
but a dream. Those words did not come; and as he accompanied me
out into the evening, I might as well have been a billion years
away.
"Mulder once talked with me of starlight," I spoke aloud to
Skinner.
Of my memories, I spoke only to the stars. They seemed so
vulnerable to me, the wide, dark sky ready to extinguish their
tiny points of light at any moment.
Remember, Mulder? Remember
When we found that the body of that little girl,
Amber Lynn LaPierre,
When you lost your mother and found Samantha
in a single breath,
When you whispered to me,
"These fates seem too cruel, Scully, even for God to allow. Or
are the tragic young born again when the world's not looking? I
want to believe so badly; in a truth beyond our own, hidden and
obscured from all but the most sensitive eyes... in the endless
procession of souls... in what cannot and will not be destroyed.
I want to believe we are unaware of God's eternal recompense and
sadness. That we cannot see His truth. That that which is born
still lives and cannot be buried in the cold earth, but only
waits to be born again at God's behest... where in ancient
starlight we lay in repose."
Some time later, as we bound up our wounds and prepared to chase
forever more lights in the sky, you whispered to me again.
"You know, I never stop to think... that the light is billions
of years old by the time we see it. From the beginning of time
right past us into the future. Nothing is as ancient in the
universe. But, maybe they are souls, Scully. Traveling through
time as starlight, looking for homes."
In my dream, Skinner looked down at me with unreadable emotion
in his eyes, drew me back to earth with a glance. So I cut short
my musing and articulated my thoughts.
"Mulder once talked with me of starlight," I reminded Skinner.
"How it's billions of years old. How stars that are still long
dead, whose light is still traveling through time... It won't
die, that light. Maybe that's the only thing that never does.
Mulder said that's where souls reside."
"Hope he's right," I murmured finally, aloud.
"Hope you're right," I told you through the stars.
*
When I returned, at last, to sleep that night...
I dreamed of stars.
*
But first, again -- again?
I had to dream the darkness.
This time, Mulder, you were not restrained with cloth or metal
or implements I could not even recognize. Still, you did not
move. You lay on the ground, faded blue and gray and cold in a
dirty blanket. And when your latest captors, the group of agents
and officers guarding your body, parted for me to see you, you
did not gaze back at me. You did not answer when I demanded of
the intruders in our space: "How bad is Mulder hurt? How bad is
it?" You did not respond when I knelt to touch your scarred,
slack jaw. You simply lay there.
So I ran through the dark, breaking away from the people
surrounding me. Bodies tried to hold me, catch me, kill me with
the news of your death, Mulder. But I ran faster, faster,
tearing through the darkness as if the speed of light could
carry me to find someone to heal you in time. To save you.
I ran and ran and ran until a blaze began to spread across the
sky. Then I pulled up short; I could only watch. Just like in my
first dream, where you alone were illuminated for that torturous
fate. Damn it, Mulder, you have been persuading me of the
starlight for years. Now my eyes are open to it, my pupils
dilated wide. I believe. So why must I still stand idly by?
In this dream, the choice was not mine to make. So I stood, a
small black silhouette at the top of a tiny hill, witness to the
glow that bathed Jeremiah's compound. The brilliance washed over
the house, lit up the prophet and his abductee patients and took
them all away from me. They faded into light and I could not
stop it. I could do nothing. Nothing, Mulder! The frustration
when I threw open the doors of that empty building nearly burned
me up inside. You vanished in Oregon; now a hundred souls more
have gone; yet I remain fumbling blindly in this ocean of dark.
When is it my time?
I screamed up at the ceiling, willing it to split apart. But the
sky did not open. The building did not shatter around me. So I
did the only thing I could think of, and myself shattered
instead. I screamed again, and denied the death of the stars.
"This... is... not... happening."
*
Agents Doggett and Skinner arrived at the empty house soon after
me. They scooped me up and balanced me between them as I
stumbled numbly to the car. I do not recall exactly where they
took me -- some hotel, I think? -- or how I got there. I only
remember that I dreamed of stars.
*
Always, though... always, the darkness comes first.
Why must I dream the darkness to see the stars?
*
I dreamed the past.
I dreamed your bleak, gray years missing Samantha. I dreamed
losing your father, losing your mother, losing yourself in
profiles of serial killers and stranger, ever more evil
phenomena. I dreamed losing my father, my sister, and my
daughter, too. I even dreamed Agent Doggett's missing son.
Through these nightmares, I slept only fitfully. I clasped and
kicked at the covers, tangling the once-crisp white sheets
around my fevered form. The hotel's simple bed had no headboard,
no footboard -- nothing solid to grasp as I flailed my limbs out
into the darkened space of the room. I stretched in every
direction but forward, reaching for pieces of the past that
remained just beyond my fingertips.
*
I dream this very moment.
Sprinting toward your still form in hope. Stumbling away in
horror. I live it over and over and over again.
Through the endless black of the past, Mulder, you lit up a
thousand of my nights. Yet I cannot find you in this most
pressing time. In the search since your abduction, every glimpse
of evidence we spy is already ancient. Even tonight, Mulder: By
the time I found it, your body was a billion years dead to me.
As I lay small and dark on a spinning sphere of earth, I can
only wonder -- where are you *now*?
I pull my knees toward my chest and ball my fingers into fists,
willing myself to hang on as the planet tumbles recklessly
beneath me. Squinting my eyes tightly shut, wrapping my arms
firmly around my calves, I adopt a defensive posture against the
darkness.
*
Finally -- finally -- I will dream our future.
One evening, I will wake from this living nightmare and hurry
forth for comfort. I will not knock at Skinner's door -- I will
knock at yours. And when I lead you out under the canopy of sky,
I will speak to you directly, without resort to stars.
"You once talked with me of starlight," I will remind you.
"You told me that the light of stars are souls. That these souls
rush past us from the beginning of time on into the future,
looking for places to rest. Your beautiful mind, Mulder... that
was the only time you ever wondered aloud about God. You never
were sure. It might all have made sense sooner if only you had
taken the last logical step."
"Scully, dear," you will smile down at me with a hint of
laughter in your eyes, "I rely on *you* for logic."
Belatedly, I will put together the pieces for you and for
myself.
"You said there are souls in the starlight," I will begin. "You
said stars are souls searching for homes."
You will nod, quietly watching the comprehension wash over my
features. Oh, Mulder, so long I have sought you -- found you,
and lost you, and found you again.
"If stars are but souls looking for homes..."
Sleeping yet, my mind conjures the most disturbing, pitch-black
depths of night. Restless, I throw a desperate fist across
rumpled bed-sheets.
"If stars are but souls looking for homes..."
Lost somewhere in that moment between waking and slumber, I
uncurl the fingers of one tense, trembling hand. I stretch white
fingertips into the blind space of the room, my flesh so pale it
shines against the darkness. I reach forward.
"If stars are but souls looking for homes..."
In one more heartbeat, I will unclench both fists, throw my arms
'round your neck, tug your head down toward mine, and speak to
you a billion emotions with the sparks of my eyes. But the first
bit of my revelation must be uttered aloud. I need to hear the
words as much as you do -- it's like pinching myself to make
sure I'm not asleep. Do I wake or do I dream?
As I whisper,
"Mulder, you are home."
*
I dream of stars.
I dream of darkness.
I dream of that last heartbeat,
Of holding you in my arms for a billion years.
And perhaps -- just perhaps -- the stars dream of me.
*
End.
*
Loved it? Hated it? Made no sense at all?
Feedback, please! xfspookychick@yahoo.com