(I'm not Chris Carter. I'm not a good writer. One of these distresses me far more than the other.)

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Dana reached for the light eagerly, fleeing the broken walls of her body. There was nothing to stay for, and so many departures to be redeemed. They were waiting, all with the same eagerness, no matter how brief or long the separation.

"Mother . . . Bill . . . Charles . . . Melissa . . . Ahab. Emily!"

"Welcome home, Starbuck. I'm proud of you," her father said.

Dress whites and his arching wings didn't look incongruous at all.

Her mother wept joyfully, tears sweeter than laughter. The siblings knocked all their halos askew as they hugged each other.

"Mother!" a small voice sang.

Emily danced in the air, whole and exuberantly happy. Dana spread her untried wings and danced after her. When they landed at last, Dana held her daughter close. Emily put her arms about her mother.

"I was afraid . . . . I'm so glad you're safe," Dana choked.

"I was here in the light, with my other mother and father. I'm fine!"

Dana looked up and saw the Sims.

"Thank you," she said and they said.

Thank you . . . for being the family of a lost child. Thank you . . . for not letting her die unnoticed and unloved. Like a fledgeling puppy Emily arced from one to another of her family, tumbling toes over wingtips. Dana laughed with an ease she'd long forgotten.

"Where is Mulder? I need to introduce you two."

"Honey, I'm so sorry," Maggie sighed.

"Hiding out, is he? Embarassed because I was right and he was wrong? That's nothing new."

"He isn't here."

"He is dead. I saw it. After four days . . . ."

"You suffered too," her mother said.

"He'd worn them out. They were bored, and tired, and they let me bleed out after an hour or so. I know he'd hoped for that." She smiled, shakily. "All right. I promise I won't gloat. Just tell me where he is."

"He didn't belong here. You have to leave that part of your life behind," Bill said.

Melissa chimed in before Dana could turn on him.

"I tried to get through to him, but he wouldn't believe."

"Mother . . . ? He let you call him Fox. You like him!"

"He loved you. I hoped that would be enough to lead him to the truth."

"Show me!"

A place without boundaries can still have an edge, a balcony where the blessed can look down at the tiny pitiful world, and beneath it to a place even more inconsequential and impotent.

Angel sight was strange. Hell was less than a flyspeck, and yet she could see it clearly. There, where each grain of a great ring of sand was red-lit by its own heat, where tears of fire fell in patches and squalls.

Long-fingered hands flailed, trying to beat away the embers that pelted him. His back was charred, and he lay in his own ashes like a log on an ill-tended hearth. At every shudder smoke wisped like dust from under his weight. The pale skin of his sides, and any place his writhing body touched the sand, surged like a boat's hull on red waves, with a spume of weeping blisters.

Of course it was fire, his one unreasoning fear. Charcoal cracked from swathes of pink, where skin and nerves regrew to char again. She would not have thought there was healing in Hell, until she saw what a mercy its absence would be.

"Shhh. It's all right, everything is all right," her mother soothed, weeping for Dana's tears.

"How could he believe? Even Mulder needs a little evidence. I was loved, so I believed there was love. My father protected me, so I could believe Heaven did too. He never had a chance!"

"You don't question your Commander, Starbuck."

Disapproval . . . but she had faced her father's disapproval before.

"Mulder never had any difficulty believing in demons -- he met enough of them -- but mercy? Justice? Love?"

"Honey, he had you," Maggie comforted.

Her daughter laughed, with a bitterness very out of place.

"Oh, yeah. A partner who spied on him, disbelieved his theories, lied when he needed me to back him up, and hurt him so badly he nearly killed himself. I never . . . never even told him . . . ."

Melissa tried to deflect her stubborn little sister.

"Fox knew you loved him, Dana. He loved you."

She told him the worst of it.

"He shouldn't have. They used me like a choke chain, dragging him away every time he got close to the truth."

Emily hovered in front of her like a cherub.

"Don't be sad, Mommy. Nobody here has to be sad."

"Starbuck, come on. It's time to come into the Light."

They were moving away, moving toward the bright center of Heaven.

Emily's laughter trilled as she glided toward them. Dana saw the trust and love that connected her to them, ties as solid and real as her own fingers and toes. Just as clearly she saw the far thicker bonds holding her and them to the one source of trust and love.

She wanted to be near that source, with a longing that made all lust or hunger only whims. She moved just a step closer, and could have wept for the increase of its glory. She'd find the children of her spirit there, the lovers of her heart, the answers to every question . . . and most of all, the splendid work of making herself more fit to be in that Presence.

One cord went in the other direction. It was slack and uneven, in some places thick as a cable and in others barely a thread, and it coiled from her heart down to where no other light came. There is still choice, even in Heaven. After all, the angels fell.

"This too is Your will, and just, and right," Dana said, and knew she was heard. "I believe. I just don't understand. And I can't leave him alone like that."

She took a step back from the light. Even so small a separation introduced her again to pain and fear.

"Please . . . please let my family be comforted."

She couldn't hear the calls any longer, of those who had waited for her. Only stillness, understanding stillness, as she took another step back, and turned, and hesitated. Understanding and -- could it be? even now? -- forgiving.

Perhaps that was delusion, the realm she was about to enter already claiming her. Without it she didn't think she could have taken the next step, and thrown herself from Heaven.

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(Another early work. The first chapter, this time, of another unwritten novel! Please note: I'm not a believer. I've tried to write here as if i was, but consider it fiction and not a lie.)