Author: Darkstryder

Title: The Midnight Sun

Catagory: A, V, R

Keywords: MSR, character already dead

Summary: Love conquers all.

Disclaimer: Don't sue! I'm a starving artist!

I'm such a hipocrite. I don't even
*read* character death stories, much less
write them. But this has been stuck in my
head for a while.

This is based literally from Ray Bradbury's
story "The Lake." It is simply beautiful.
You can find it in his collection of tales
called "The October Country."

Feedback is not optional. Resist or serve.
CClaib2155@prodigy.net

One small note: I've used this quote before
in another story of mine called "Soul Hunter."
Also, this is NOT a cancer story. She had something
else. Okay, maybe it was cancer. I don't know.
Whatever. Don't ask me.

the midnight sun
darkstryder

****

"Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal."

****

I felt the cool waves splash over my feet, sending
shivers down my spine with their icy touch. The sand
felt hot beneath me as I watched the thin wisps of
clouds moving through the sky above me.

If it was summer the boardwalk would have been full
of people, some walking hand-in-hand and leaving
matching footprints deep in the dunes that surrounded
the ocean that moved with a dancer's grace, pulled
by the sun and the moon. If it was summer there would
have been the smokey smell and taste of hotdogs and
cold splash of icecream, music slipping through the
air.

But it was not summer, and I was alone.

I would miss the beach when I left.

My eyes drifted upwards. The sun was setting. It was time
to go.

I stood, the sand swirling beneath my feet. I moved towards
the sea, standing knee-high and not caring about the
coldness that binded me, or the salt-stung wind that
burned my eyes.

I called her name.

"Scully . . . Scully . . . Scully!"

Maybe I expected her to answer. Maybe that's why I
stood there, numb, screaming out a name that no longer
had a body.

I remembered that just three days ago, when she was
curled in my lap and wrapped thickly in a blanket,
said that she loved me. I remembered how her
red-gold hair had faded in the last few months, but
how her pale-blue eyes had brightened when I told her
I felt the same. I remembered how her lips had tasted
like honey and felt like silk. I remembered her sparkle.
I remembered her laugh that could make the rain stop
and the sun shine. I remembered her strength and
determination that had kept me alive all those years,
her heart of gold and mind quicker than any other.

I remembered how she had died not long after,
still in my arms.

The doctors had tried to keep her alive, but it was not
enough. She would no longer sit next to me on long car
rides, would not laugh at my jokes, would not eat pizza
and drink beer with me on nights after a grueling case
that threatened to steal our sanity.

So on my last day at this place I had come to say
goodbye one final time.

I may not have been loved as a child, but I knew what
love was, and I knew that I loved her. It was a love
that surpassed Life and Death. A love that mortals could
ever hope to feel. A love that was sunny days and warm
hearts, of fire and ice and mind and touch. It was a
love that was filled with the years of working side by
side and growing closer with each day.

Knowing that she would not answer, I left the water,
shivering, and stood wet in the sand. I do not know
how long I waited there, watching and waiting. But
in the last ray of light I knelt down and created
a castle out of sand, shaping it fine, as we had
done during our time here.

But this time I had only built half of it. Then I got
up.

"Scully, if you can here me, come and build the rest."

I walked towards the speck that was my car, and the
waves drifted onto the shore and smoothed out the half-built
castle.

And I walked off into eternity.

******

The next day I left.

I moved across the country to California, working there
as a profiler for their branch of the Bureau. The work
consumed me, letting me forget about the past.

Yet I couldn't forget her.

In a few years I met a beautiful dark-haired woman
named Brigit. I knew her for a time, and we were married.
She suggested the east coast for our honeymoon.

I don't know why I agreed.

As we stepped out of the car on that beach, I felt
my old world come back into the living. Brigit looked
lovely in her new clothes. But she didn't sparkle.

I walked up and down the beach, trying to push
away the repressed memories that surfaced. I could almost see
Scully and myself sitting on the beach, looking out
into the sea, content with just each other.

Brigit and I spent the next two weeks there, and I visited all
the places that Scully and I had went to. I smelt and tasted
the smokey hot dogs and listened to the carnival music.

I thought I loved Brigit.

At least I thought I did.

******

"Fox."

She didn't call me Mulder. The only woman I let
call me that was dead.

"Who's this?"

In her hands she held a picture of a beautiful woman
with red-gold hair and ivory skin and crystal-blue
eyes, a woman smiling for me and me alone. I had
forgotten that Brigit and I were staying in that
exact same cabin.

Gently, I took the picture, running my hands
over it as if I could somehow feel Scully's smooth
skin beneath my fingertips. Even now I could
still taste her.

Brigit did not sparkle. Her laugh did not make
the sun shine. Her strength did not keep me alive.

"Someone gone," I managed to whisper.

And I left.

******

I walked along the beach for hours, holding the picture
in my hand. Without even knowing I had gone to that
place where we had first kissed. Where we had sat
and watched the sun set and the stars rise. Where
she had told me that she would love me forever.

Over the years I had grown, but she had remained small
and beautiful, my angel. Death does not permit growth
or change. She is still looking at me and smiling only
for me.

She is forever young but I will love her forever, oh, God,
I will love her forever.

I lowered my eyes to the sand. This is where I held her,
I thought. This is where I held her.

Something drew me to the water.

And down at the water's edge there lay a sand castle,
only half built, just like we used to make. She is half
and I am half.

There in the sand was a single set of footprints,
small and strong.

And then I knew.

"I'll help you finish it."

So I knelt down and shaped it with grace, tall and strong
and beautiful. And when I was finished I turned away
quickly so as not to see it crumble by the waves, as
all things do.

Then I walked back up to the cabin where a strange dark-
haired woman waited for me, smiling . . .

THE END

Tell me what you think.

IMPORTANT: The entire point of this story was that, no,
Mulder *did not* get over Scully. This is not a Mulder/other,
because he did not love Brigit.

For all those who got that, thank you.

visit my 'shipper/angster site:
https://members.tripod.com/~Darkstryder/index-2.html

Thank you.

---Darkstryder
5.9.98