Scully sat in the pew, at the very back of the church. Her hands clasped solemnly in her lap as she stared at them, hoping to derive some answer from somewhere. He had slammed the door in her face.
Actually slammed it, shut her out. She could not believe it. After all of these years, the sacrifices, the truths and the lies, he had shut her out. And now she sat in her solitary sympathy trying to understand why.
She had made a mistake that she was aware of.
She thought. She thought about how her Catholicism was taught to her and how she rejected it. And now she embraced it with open arms? Why? Why did she? Because she was dying? She had rejected her religion so many years ago. Believing in something you couldn't see would make you weak, submissive. But now that she was dying she needed to believe in something. If not him, then Him.
She touched the gold cross on her neck. Hadn't he wanted her to believe? Hadn't he wanted trust? She believed, no in them, but in him, her partner and her soul mate. Of all the things she was sure of, she was sure that they were meant to be together. For eternity, two souls combining to form one perfect union.
Her head became to heavy for her shoulders to support. It fell into her waiting hands and she began to sob.
It was her life! Why did she feel so used, so responsible for his sadness. She hadn't slept with him. She hadn't slept with Ed, but she had wanted to. She thought that if someone used her body, she might feel new again. If someone could fuck her, it would take all the pain away. But she couldn't. She just couldn't give herself over to someone when her body, heart and mind belonged to someone else.
Someone who didn't want it.
His armor was tarnished. He was manic-depressive and paranoid. He was arrogant and self-degrading and pessimistic. And he was the one that had caused her to feel so guilty.
So guilty for loving him. She herself felt guilty for being so weak and allowing herself to fall for him.
Love? What was love? This was more than love that drove her to the doors of the church at two o'clock in the morning. It was more than love that drove her to scream in the shower that morning and scald her skin, patiently awaiting the burns that would appear. It was much more than love that made her feel like she was drowning when she was crying.
She was destroying herself. Destroying herself from the inside out. Her tears ripped holes through her heart, burning acid into wounds she had caused. Over nothing. Over everything.
Why was it, that in the night, when her solitude surrounded her, did she, cut her arms? To see the blood flow. Blood so free of the cancer and the hurt, she laughed to see it. It flowed down the drain with her tears and sweat, combining in the dank sewer to be washed away. She saw the life pour from her, as she knew she would soon experience.
Would he give up on her now? Give up on the cure? Would he let himself, or push her's aside like another useless quest that would possibly be picked up at a late date, after no possible fruitful ones had been discovered.
What did she mean to him? Was she just another *thing*? Another object in the way of his sister? Or was she helping the quest, unraveling piece by piece the truths blanketed in lies. Layers and layers of lies.
Never to be unraveled.
He sat on his couch, a bottle of Jack in his hand. A half empty bottle of Jack in his hand. A nearly empty bottle of Jack in his hand.
His hand lying beside his head, on the floor at the foot of his couch.
Stupid question, after stupid question. They just kept coming, not one of them answered. But once one was brought to the surface, another followed, and another and another...
Catholicism, it was supposed to be a sanctuary. As a girl I was so naive. No fun, with no guilt feelings. Following the teaching of a man, not flesh or blood, but spirit. We Catholic girls make up for so much time, just a little too late.
And why was it that we girls were the ones to blame? The sluts, the sinners, the whores. Most of all the skeptics. My brothers never went blind for what they did, but I was marked because I was too opinionated. The confessional was not a place to confess, but to debunk some insane theory of a God I could not see. Bodies I could see. Bodies I could cut up and feel. There was no God, there was no God in science, in med school. That was when there was no God in me.
What I learned then, I rejected, but now I believe again. Maybe it's this cancer that is eating at my brain that makes me believe. Or maybe it is him. Maybe it is my partner who eats at my brain, asking me silent questions and giving me silent answers. Silent pleas that I cannot answer. If he would just speak up, for Christ's Sake! Then if for Christ's Sake, why not for my own?
Sunday school, we all had our reasons to be there. We all had to believe in something and our minds were made up for us. The good girl, the naive girl, and the girl whose parents forced her to go and would have to do three Hail Mary's for reading a chemistry book under the table. What sinners.
How it boggled my mind in my later years of these priests. Of how their celibacy consumed them and ate at their mind. We're they forced to do evil and sinuous deeds late at night, when no one was around. Crying to God for some sort of release. Were they as lonely as I was, as I am?
We were all sinners. We were all saviors. But most of all we were all sinners, coming into the House of the Lord and thinking of our own problems. When we should be thinking about Christ's body. Christ's body that I had to eat when I was twelve years old and that digested in my stomach. Christ's body that I found when doing an autopsy on a thirteen- year-old boy, found in a ditch on Interstate 71.
Where was God then? Where was he to spare this boy? This boy that had just received the body of the Lord and embraced it?
But now, now I know that God is here. He is watching over me. Possibly grieving, possibly laughing, or possibly condemning me for having such thoughts. I am a scientist; I must disprove things before I prove them. That is my method to my madness.
He cried to God for some sort of release. To a God that he had no notion of. He found none. He lay back on the couch, fly open, and cried himself into a drunken sleep.
He was awoken to a gentle tapping on the door, the time read "12:00, 12:00, 12:00..."
He stumbled to shaky feet and padded his way around objects, reaching his destination. Opening the door slowly, and shielding himself from the harsh light from the corridor.
"Why?" She asked simply. "Because what?" "Because it's my life too. Because I love you. Because you're my painkillers and my antibiotics and my heroine."
She stared at him, her angry tears running down her cheeks.
"You're fucking narcotics. You're me, and I'm you, and I'm so fucking lost in you I have no idea where I begin. I fucked him too. I must have."
"I didn't sleep with him." She ground out through gritted teeth.
"I want it to be us together. I want my solitude in you. Not two hundred miles from here. I need my solitude to be wrapped around me. I need you, can't you see that? Can't you understand already? Can't you believe?"
He stood in the doorway, looming over me. I expected to be scared, for the hurt, the pain and the anger he showed in his eyes was so intense and it was all directed at me.
"I believe in you! God damnit! I believe in the sickness that is killing me and that's why I don't want to *have* to believe in you. But I do! You're the only thing. The only thing that is real. I'm not even real." I shouted.
We were silent for some times. I tried in vain to regain my closely held composure and precision. It must have been out to lunch. The tears rolled hot and angry and scared down my cheeks. He looked at me, his eyes leveling on mine. They spoke volumes, but had been washed of all the hate that they had held millenniums ago.
"We can be real together." He whispered and pulled me into his arms.
****_X_ FIN! _X_****