TITLE:Three Words AUTHOR: J.C.Sun SPOILERS: Momento Mori (US4) (Has anyone NOT seen/heard of it yet? ) RATING: PG for profanity CATEGORY: V, A, MSR, Mulder-Angst SUMMARY: On cool mountain night, Mulder comes to grips with the tragedy of the death of Scully and discovers a surprising truth about the major events of his life. FEEDBACK:YES! YES! GIMME! At this stage, I think even flames will be accepted.....You know you want to give me that feedback, so hit le button and gimme! Valeanna1@aol.com DISTRIBUTION: Feel free to distribute. If you'd like to archive it somewhere aside from Gossamer, etc, etc, please contact me first. You know the routine about keeping my name, disclaimer, etc, on it. DISCLAIMER: I really tried to get out of it this time, and I almost succeeded, but in the last paragraph, it became essential...so here it is, CC, 10-13, Fox own Mulder, Scully and CSM. ~Three Words~ J.C. Sun/Valeanna1@aol.com This is dedicated to Jester...Chicken! Under this lonely velvet sky, I can only think, only guess as to what the condition of my soul, much less that of humanity. Visions are clouded, somehow, in this clear mountain air; emotions diluted by the delicate purity of the larches. In their yellow-green beauty, serenity and peace and a sleep devoid of all things troubling. The fire crackles in it's bed of apple wood, the smoke and my mind twisting ever upwards.However, I can grasp the idea, the sense, that as a whole, we don't stand very high on God's list of Good Ideas. Yet, there are those of us,that shine with his blessing: the very young, the very old and a few, glowing, incredibly special individuals; They are very loving, the very caring and the oh so very quietly trusting. *I trust you,* they whisper, softly into the darknesses of your soul, and somehow bring a salvation you thought would never come. *I trust you,* they smile, clasping your hand in their own small, pale ones, filling you with joy, and it is *I trust you,* they scream as they plunge into the darknesses. Perhaps it's some accident, or a freak of nature, or even something implanted deep within your genes, but the tragedy is amplified thousand-time when they simply fold up and die with the burden of living, and you know that is your hand that set the weight upon their shoulders. You watch as your life is quietly fades away, each day weaker than the last, but always with those three, simple words hanging in the air. *I trust you.* There is a surprising strength in these three words; a strength I think is found in no others, except perhaps *I love you*. But so often, *I love you* comes directly after *I trust you.* After all, love is simply another form of trust. A different shade of the same lightness and just as harsh as the first. You watch them, you stand by their bed as the April morning sun slants in and you open the curtains for them. You lay delicate yellow daffodils, the first of spring, by their bedside, replacing them with dogwoods and lilacs and apple blossoms as time passes; you hold their hand during night time and you are the one who brushes their lips against her hot dry forehead, praying to a God you haven't beleived in for decades, praying for a heavan-sent miracle. Angels are supposed to come to lay their healing fingers upon their forehead; angels will come to lay their fingers upon her forehead. A patch of healing light will shine across her, and she will be cured forever, or she will drink holy water blessed by her Pope, and her eyes will flutter open and she'll gaze at you and say those blessed three words. Or, you will wake up, and it's all a dream; the product of random electrical pulses from your brainstem. No dreams. It is only in the silent and forgotten corners of the night, as you sit by their bedside, half-alive and half dead, that you realize no miracle is forthcoming. No sudden reprieve will be granted; God evidently doesn't beleive in last-minute pardons. God ain't the Governer: a tall, leathery man smoking a cigarette is, the man standing on the other side of the room. He may not live in the Governer's mansion, but the Governer pays close attention to what this man says. He asks you how is she? You answer coolly. Best as she can be, silently adding you motherfucker. He says, ah. You say that the doctors say she's got three months to live, silently adding you black-lunged bastard of a motherfucker. He says that it's quite expectable. A pause while he relights his cigarette. He says that she's actually lived quite long for someone with her condition. Quite long. Remarkable; he must commend the doctors. She will die, though, eventually. You say, thanks to you and yours, verbally adding you shit-eating, black-lunged bastard of a motherfucking whore. He laughs. Everyone dies. You say, but not this early. He says that you had the power to save her, but you let it go. You say what the fuck? He says profanity will land you in hell. You grab his shirtfront and tell him he will shortly be in hell. He laughs and pushes you away. He tells you you are stupid, and at that moment, you know he is right, righter than anything else; it is the first of his truths. He smiles. It's a cold, ghastly thing, a thin spiderweb chill jerking across his leathered face. He smiles. You know she'll die, he smiles, you know she will. You know that, and you know what you did. Number two, and you know it. WHAT? you scream. He smiles again, and this one is much worse, for it contains something in the latitude of true mirth. He sucks on his cigarette and he exhales in a long, winding blue-grey trail that curves upwards until dissipating in the dry hospital air. He leans forward and blows a faceful of it into yours, and borne on these particles are three simple words. You met her. You scream again, but this time it's a long thin shreik, the howling of a fading memory as it's buried in the subconscious, doomed only to reappear in flashes of dream or slips of the mind. You cover your ears, willing it to disappear. This is his third truth, and you know it in your bones, deep in your soul. Now, his eyes shift; now, they contain a curious mixture of amusement, pleasure, and an exquiste sort of sadness/regret/annoyance. He shifts, a rustling of Armani and Gucci on linoleum, scratched over desert sands. I wish, I truly wish, he says, it might have ended another way. It might have. Truth number three, and as if these words had the power to dispel him, he shimmers out of existance, leaving you with a handful of gritty substance: sand flowing through your fingers. At that moment, she shifts lightly, uneasily and her hands twitch. They grasp for something ntangible--the truth?--even as her chest gives a huge movement. It takes only a split of a second for you to return to her side, but you can only watch, tearing at your soul, as she writhes and arcs on the bed, in the grip of the pain that haunts every waking and living moment. Finally, after an eternity, her eyes flicker open to regard you. She slides one reverent hand down your cheek and draws you closer, closer until you can feel her breath sliding over your face and her scent filling your nostrils. Her lashes flutter against your cheek, and then, in the hoarsest of voices, she murmurs three words that change everything and leave you naked as a new-born in falling snow. They ricochet in your mind, boucnign about to wreak unmerciful havoc on the emotions you thought you had conquered; all your neat shelves are thrown into massive disarray as your heart quivers and freezes. An unwilling tear slips down your face and onto hers, down the smooth ivory of her cheek. A furious pain takes her then, and you cradle her, hold her and press your hands against hers until the tremors cease, all the while feeling the tearing of your heart. With a taut shiver, I yank myself back to reality. You can get lost in your memories; you can fall into their sensations and the world in them, so much more seductive than 'reality'. Colours shine brighter, happy things linger, while the evil never comes. In this, simple words draw parallells, showing you the way Fate casts her dice. My life is circumscribed by words, phrases of three words: Sam is gone. Never come back. I'm fine, Mulder. I trust you. Scully's dead, Mulder. I have cancer. And now, now, two sodium dexotral. To be taken with water before bed and after breakfast; prescribed for insomnia, severe nightmares and irregular REM periods. And always, always and forever three, utterly Dana words, spoken with such passion, such force, boring into my heart with that acid combination of taut regret and infinite sadness. Always, three words. ~Finis~