Disclaimer: They are still on loan, I claim no ownership over the lovely agents.
I don't know if this is a good explanation but it's what came into my mind like a thief in the night.
Memories from a Lost Time
Chapter 3
The beeping of the alarm clock raised to a maddening high pinched noise, agitated, Scully turned to the insisting sound, four hours had passed since she closed her eyes, wasn't she a lucky girl? Irritated, she snoozed the alarm, it was Saturday and all she wanted was to sleep in, it was what she always wanted on weekends but only succeed in three or four times a year. Before meeting Mulder sleeping in had been a normality in a peaceful, normal live.
Mulder's lips found the soft spot just below her ear and formed a warm round O, he was spooned protectively around her body like a warm blanket, a sleeping position they both liked and one which actually enabled Mulder to sleep.
"Don't be pissed, Scully. Tomorrow I'll let you sleep as long as you like, I promise. How does that sound?"
"Too perfect to be true, I know you, Mulder. You may have the best of intentions until someone claims his chicken speaks three languages, fluently. But tomorrow you'll be on your own, I've plans."
"Plans? What do you mean with plans, Scully? Plans like in going to a dinner?"
"Yes, Mulder. Plans like in going to a dinner!" A small smile played on her lips, as she turned to face him, and tenderly kissed the corner of his mouth. "Bill and Tara are visiting mom."
"Oh, an evening full of fun and positive energies."
Snuggling closer Scully smiled, "Bill is just worried about me and he thinks he knows best, he always has, you know. Let's get up and let the fun begins, Mulder."
"I've my magic stick right here in bed with me, I'll be more than happy to show you a fun trick or two, Scully?"
"Get up, Mulder. This was your brilliant idea not mine!"
An hour later, Mulder and Scully knocked on the front door of one Carina Eagletail. Leaning back on her feet, Scully crossed her arms over her chest, her mind already calculating her chances for a fast leaving. But knowing Mulder, she expected to be stuck here for a long time.
The door was answered by a blond woman in her forties, "Fox Mulder?"
"Yes and this is Dana Scully."
Stepping away from the door Carina Eagletail opened the door wide ajar, "come in."
Scully watched the woman closely, she was wearing a long shirt and a blouse in blue colours and her blond, curly hair was arranged in a loose ponytail. With her light brown eyes she seemed slightly foreign.
Carina Eagletail pointed to the couch, "please sit down. Mr. Mulder you asked for a regression session?"
"Yeah, I would like to clarify a past relation to someone in my present life."
The woman studied Mulder briefly, before her eyes turned to Scully, where they lingered for a longer time. After a few silent moments, Carina Eagletail's eyes drifted to a picture on the wall, following the path Scully's eyes landed on a picture of a native woman, dressed in white buffalo skin and somehow slightly melted together with a white buffalo, in her hands the woman held a pipe. Suddenly, Scully's dream was as vivid as the day before, rapidly Scully's eyes shifted to the woman before her.
"The Buffalo Calve Woman is important to my people, Ms. Scully, she gave the pipe to the people and taught us how to use it."
"Your people? I don't understand?" Scully's focus shifted between the woman on the picture and the woman in the chair before her.
With a mild smile, Carina Eagletail explained. "I'm a quarter Blackfoot. My father is Blackfoot and my mother English, as you can see the English is dominant in my features. My father wanted a life outside the reservation and succeeded. He never looked back. But luckily for me he never forgot his mother, my grandma, and allowed me to spent vacations on the reserve with her. That's how I learned about my history. My belief in past lives, however, is from my mom. I've found my own truth taking parts from from both my bloodlines."
"It's a nice picture." Scully offered.
Nodding, Carina Eagletail kept on studying Scully. "It is. I know Mr. Mulder is the one wanting to be brought back to a past life, but it's not what the spirits want, they want Ms. Scully to go back. You already made the contact. You had a dream yesterday, meaning you've already been back to your past life together. The answers are linked to you and not Mr. Mulder."
Bewildered, Scully looked from Mulder to Carina Eagletail, this was unexpected and frightening and she wanted to decline. "Why me?"
With the same mild smile, Carina Eagletail watched her for a few seconds, "you prayed with the pipe. It was the last time you turned to the pipe, you've come to make peace with it again, today."
"I… I don't understand."
"You don't have to right now, but this session will give you and your partner answers about your connection and heal you regarding your faith. With time you'll make amends with your faith."
Suddenly, tears sprung into Scully's eyes, how could this woman know so much about her? Know about her dream and her break with the church.
"Scully, are you ok?" Mulder caught her fidgeting hand from her thigh and stilled it. Meeting his concerned eyes, she wondered if she was indeed okay, she wasn't supposed to be the main target here, Mulder was. Mulder was the believer.
"My dream, it was a past life?"
Again Carina Eagletail nodded. "Some people have the ability to see their past lives without help. You had that gift yesterday. Sometimes it only happens once, other times the ability stays with you for life. With you, I don't know. Are you ready?"
Taking a deep breath Scully made her decision, she was curious about her dream and what seemed to be a past life with Mulder, but she was also doubtful, was she being played or was there some truth in all this nonsense. Locking eyes with Mulder, she saw that he believed and was curious. Shaking her head slightly and raising her eyebrow, she smiled.
"As ready as I can be."
"Mr. Mulder, will you please give the couch to Ms. Scully so she can lie down. You're welcome to bring a chair over next to her and hold her hand."
Slowly, Carina Eagletail talked Scully into relaxing her body and guided her to her special safe place, an opening in a forest bathed in sunlight. It was the forest she had lived near when she was around five.
It was a warm fall day and Singing Bluebird was walking in the woods with a basket, she had left her sons with her mother, when she set out to pick berries. She needed the time away from the village and needed to be alone. It was difficult to be near Running Wild every day without any contact between them, but she wouldn't miss being here for the world, somehow she carved his nearness even though it was bittersweet. Her father had been wrong, she hadn't grown out of her love for Running Wild, it was now four years since he forced her to marry Walking Proud and nothing had changed. She still loved Running Wild.
Today would probably be the last day, she could wander this far alone before winter sat in. She would enjoy it. Accidentally, her feet carried her to the special spot where she became Running Wild's woman. Sitting down, she allowed herself to visit the past, something she rarely did. She jumped when a hand landed on her shoulder and someone kneeled beside her, it took all her willpower to open her eyes.
"Singing Bluebird, it's me, Running Wild. Don't be scared."
Relieved, she stared into his gentle eyes, they had change so much, once they had been full of laughter and joy, but now they were full of sorrow and regret. She guessed they reflected her own eyes.
"Running Wild?" She whispered, not sure if he was real or a product of her fantasy.
"Yes, it's me." Positioning in front of her, he took both her hands in his. "I've missed you Singing Bluebird and I haven't forgotten my promise."
Withdrawing her hands, she asked. "If you haven't, then why do you give Coyote so many children? How come you haven't come to me before?"
Reclaiming her hands, he answered in a regretful voice; "I believed your oldest brother, he filled my head with stories of your happiness with your husband and how much you loved him. I was weak and I sought relief for my pain in Coyote's body. But I saw how you kept coming back here and how you stayed for longer and longer periods of time, you can't be happy with your husband. Now you visit him rarely and he never comes here. I should have known better."
"You should've." She agreed. "But I wasn't better, I believed you had forgotten me and was happy with Coyote. We are a lovely couple."
"We are." He smiled back. "Do you still love me, Singing Bluebird?"
Leaning closer, she whispered softly into his ear, "I never stopped."
For the longest time they just stared at each other, drinking the other in. They didn't kiss there would be time for that later. Now, they just wanted to look, to see the love in the other eyes and reconnect.
But finally, she felt his lips against her lips again and finally she felt whole again, when she became one with her lover. Their lovemaking was still rushed and coloured with the fear of being discovered, but now it was also coloured with a maturity and strength in their feelings for each other that hadn't been there four years ago.
Much later when the air started to cool of, Running Wild looked at Singing Bluebird. "Your sons, are the mine?"
"How did you know? She asked back. Pleased, that he had figured it out on his own.
"They have features from me and you but none from Walking Proud, it wasn't hard to see when I started to look at them without hate. I'm proud and would be even prouder to call them my sons."
"I wish you could."
From then on they met secretly four times a week and Coyote never became pregnant again. They made peace with the fact that they could never truly be together before Singing Bluebird's father passed away, he would never allow it, and Proud Walking didn't mind being married to the daughter of a respected elderly. But it was a hard life, always hiding and pretending, and never being able to tell her sons, who their real father was.
They day came where Singing Bluebird was free to live her own life but again fate had a bittersweet twist, on the very same day her father died, Running Wild died as well. Both men died in the same hunt party, one as a hunter and one as a holy person blessing the hunt. Singing Bluebird was now thirty and realised her chance of truly happiness in this life was over, but she had her sons to live for and for that she felt blessed.
The last picture Scully saw, before she was called back to her safe place was Singing Bluebird as an old woman, her hair salt and pepper and her face full of wrinkles, holding a divided pipe in her hands. Slowly, Singing Bluebird connected the stamp to the pipe head while praying.
Bit by bit, Scully opened her eyes, confused, she blinked several times before the room came into focus the movie played in her head during the session had been so believable and felt so true. Her mind had fooled her into believing she was there, into believing she was a native woman living hundreds of years ago.
But she must have fallen asleep; it was the only explanation, and remembering her last try with regression therapy, she was amazed of her ability to fall asleep. She must be more exhausted than she thought. Her mind refused to accept what her heart believed so easily, that she had lived a past live with Mulder, a life where they was forced to be apart.
Feeling a small squeeze of her hand, her eyes travelled to her hand and up the hand that was linked to hers and further up the arm and up to the face.
"Hey." Mulders smiled at her.
"Hey yourself." Unsatisfied with her position, Scully tried to get up, a struggle not easy to overcome; her muscles were uncooperative and weak.
"Relax for a while Ms. Scully, it's okay to let your guards down for a moment. You went deep that's why you're so tired right now. You will be on your feet soon."
Lifting her eyebrows, Scully snorted, "right."
"Ms. Scully, I've taped the session for you to take with you home. Do you have any questions?"
"No. No, not really."
The mild smile tugged at Carina Eagletail's lips, while she watched Scully. "Still proud. Well, then I will explain the last part of your past life. I'm sure you both understood the bond you shared in that life. But neither of you know the Native traditions, the pipe is central in our lives, it's sacred. You connected the two parts of the pipe; it means that when the two of you meet as opposite sexes in a life and dare trust your abilities to spend a life together, as committed love partners, you'll break the spell that has kept you apart for so long. It will be hard and some will do their best to keep you apart and many rules must be bended for you to be together. But if you endure and stay true you'll success. A marriage to the pipe is powerful, some day you'll understand."
Accepting the tape, Scully sat up and straightened her clothes, it was spooky how well the woman read them.
"By the way stop being foolish, you are more than friends! Life gets to much easier when we admit our feelings. You've come full circle to remember and outlive what you promised each other so long ago."
Back in the car, they shared a long look, "more than friends, just what we agreed on yesterday. Amazing huh, Scully?"
Licking her lip, Scully opened her eyes widely. "Yeah, pretty amazing, Mulder."
"We must be soul mates, Scully, you're a believer. Uh, exciting!"
"I must say, it's weird, Mulder. I don't know what to believe. But in your past life experiences we were always friends how can that be? You ditched me along the way?"
Biting his lower lip in fake shock, Mulder pretended to think for a while. "Of course not, Scully. Maybe we chose to meet as the same sexes in our recent past lives to avoid the pain of being separated again. Nobody separates friends like they separate lovers, maybe we were protecting ourselves. I think that's the reason, it makes sense. And we did make the commitment wrong, saying we would always want to be together."
"But why come together as lovers in this life, Mulder. We're not afraid of being hurt now?"
"Sure we are, but maybe we've faith that we'll make it this time. Now we've the strength to endure like Eagletail said. It sure hasn't been easy so far and we break a lot of rules, don't we?"
"We are just bending the rules, Mulder. Breaking the rules would get us fired but bending the rules works just fine." She couldn't come up with a better explanation and wasn't sure it mattered, perhaps it was all about faith and taking chances. She was taking a big chance with Mulder.
Hey - Mitauye Oyas`en
The End