TITLE:  The Wind and the Rain
AUTHOR: Birgit Mueller
EMAIL ADDRESS: rm12908@navix.net  (ALERT!  bg50001@navix.net NO LONGER WORKS.)
DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT: Do what thou wilst.
SPOILER WARNING: 4th season (sorta)
RATING: PG
CONTENT WARNING: MSR, Character dies
CLASSIFICATION: V, R, A
KEYWORDS: Mulder/Scully romance
SUMMARY: Far in the future, Scully reflects on life with Mulder.

DISCLAIMER: I own them!!  I own them ALL!!!  BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!!  ...Ok,
maybe I'm exaggerating a little.  *sniffle*  All right, I admit it,
1013 and company own the characters, but please don't sue me.  I
don't have anything worth taking anyway.

This is just a little scene set far, far in the future.  If you wish, it
*can* fit in with my other stories, though that wasn't the explicit purpose...

It's a significant departure for me, since I've never before tried to
write either vignettes, or in the first person, *or* in the present tense.
So c'mon, gimme feedback (even if it's only to tell me it's
time to start those antidepressants again <g>)!  *whimper* *pitiful
look*


=================
The Wind and the Rain
by Birgit Mueller
(rm12908@navix.net)
=================


     He never stopped calling me Scully.

     The strange irony of that beckons to me from the well of memory,
and despite the cold ache in my soul, I can smile enough, just a
little.

     The landscape is dull and frigid and wet against my face.  It is
only fitting.

     *Going conventional, are we, Scully?*  I can almost hear his
voice echo the words.  Of course -- cliche' endings never did appeal
to him.

     When we made love for the first time, he called for me -- for
Scully -- in the sweet darkness.

     The cancer is always there, always lingering in the recesses of
my spirit like a dark and baleful phantom.  I always thought I would
go before him into the breach.  I planned on it.  I counted on it.  I
am selfish.  I don't want to live without hearing his name for me
again spilling from his lips.

     When I was forty-six, I took his ring and his surname.  And
still, he said, "I do, Scully.  I really do."  And the justice of the
peace gave a faint and puzzled smile when I laughed and he kissed me
before the ceremony finished.

     I am too old to be standing in the rain.

     Bewildered, I heard the hesitant, distant voice on the phone
call me Mrs. Mulder -- it sounded stilted, artificial, even after all
the years.  I am Scully, his Scully.

     Mrs. Mulder, I'm sorry, your husband...

     I am absurdly wounded that I hadn't somehow *known*.  He left
me without saying goodbye.  There had been no visitation, no
intuition, no imprint upon my unconscious.  It fascinated me to
realize I had expected one.

     It was because it was him.  I expected one from him.

     The rain is picking up.  I don't want to leave.  I have no one
to go home to.  There is nothing but the sound of my own heartbeat,
thudding forth the seconds without him.

     I am still.

     And I don't know when, exactly, but something changes, and I
wonder if it is within me or without.  Like the gradual shift from
darkness to dawn, I cannot find the moment when I felt him, but like
the first glimpse of the sun, I am sure.

     Suddenly, so sure.

     I hear his soft breathing in my ears.  Even the eternal skeptic
in me wants to believe.  I can feel his warm and gentle hands
smoothing back my hair, tracing the lines in my face, his touch so
light, as if it were the wind.  Only the wind.

     *Goodbye, Scully.*

     His voice is so real in the rhythm of the rain that I am almost
startled by it.

     He never did stop calling me that.

**END**