A little ways past the ocean, Scully stands and watches the waves because a long time ago she looked away from death and now there's nothing left.
The ocean is dead. The plains are dead. The people are dead. The universe might as well be dead because all Scully can see is a quiet madness, a silent desperation. The oceans ebb and flow and eat the land away, build it up a shore away. The sun always shines dimly, and sometimes the moon comes out to play.
Sometimes Scully dreams, and other times she does not.
She is tired of the memories, assumed they'd fade with age, but really, she doesn't age. Why would she expect her brain to?
The man, she doesn't remember his name, he told her to look away. Just look away. Clyde Bruckman told her she'd never die and she pragmatically though that might not be a blessing.
It isn't.
For ages now, she's been looking for death, trying to recapture the dark shadow that nearly smothered her in a millisecond flash of ecstasy death before she pulled the curtain away and saw—she saw everything and was suddenly afraid.
Now she walks and stands alone, watches the sunset and sunrise over dead seas and ancient brittle coral beds where nothing lives save for her memories. Scully has long stopped think of herself as a messiah, destined to share humanity's achievements with distant star travelers yet to arrive. No one's coming. No one ever did.
Humanity destroyed themselves by themselves. After a long time, she's come to the conclusion that the aliens were a hoax. It's so sad and so silly after such a long time, to realize that the most important years of her life weren't important at all. But she's wandered the world and walked on the ocean bottoms and she's found the remnants and the documents before they turned to dust. Everything is dust now.
There is no grass. There is no microbe; there is only Scully. Blood red hair against the grey seas and the red dust and bare skin. She has traced her body with knives and guns have never pierced her skull. The ocean never crushed her; she has not lost consciousness in a century or so. She doesn't know. There's nobody to know.
For a long time, she's been running across the world silently looking for the black spaces, for bones, for anything that would signify death. Funny, how long she examined it, touched it, experienced it with others, and now she can no longer recall its smell, its feel or emotion.
Once every decade, she screams for it. Shrieking into the wind, Dana Scully can be heard all over the planet as she howls and begs for them to give her life back. Them, whoever they are. There is no God, there are no aliens, there is only her. And she wants her life back. She wants her life to end, like it should have.
Once in a decade, Scully closes her eyes and does not dream. She looks to the stars and the world around her and she does not dream. Death, she thinks, is this.
Once in a decade, Scully closes her eyes and does not dream.
She does not dream; once in a decade, Scully closes her eyes and cries and tries to find a way to die.
Fin.
I can say with good reason that this is the final X-Files fic I will write. I can't believe I finished this story.
If you liked, or didn't, or read it simply, leave a review.
Thank you. And thanks to the X-Files, who I am in no way related to.