TITLE: Rain AUTHOR: Dreamshaper FEEDBACK: is gladly recieved by dreamshpr@aol.com, who really isn't terribly mean and scary, even if she rambles on and on... ARCHIVE: Please do. You know how it works--email me if you haven't loved me before CATEGORY: VA RATING: PG13 SPOILERS: All over the place, but nothing major and nothing really new. Aqua Mala is the newest EP hinted at, I think--don't laugh! SUMMARY: The drought has been very, very long. DISCLAIMER: Hiatus has been even longer! Yeah yeah, not mine. No money. No suing. All good. NOTES: I've written something every other day this week. Go me ;) Is it time for me to take a break yet and give you all a chance to miss me? Well, no cause for alarm right now Just another story...read. Enjoy. Send feedback! ```````````````````````````````````````````````````````` It's been raining for so long. Cold, hard, driving rain. The grey, bleak kind that ominously darkens the skies and threatens with flashes of light in far-off clouds, the faintest rumbles of thunder. The kind of rain no one in their right mind leaves their home in. I haven't been in my right mind for a long time, I don't think. Maybe I don't want to be, maybe I do. Maybe I can't--Hell, maybe I am. Who knows? Who cares? Still...the rain...it's cold and hard but for that it's good. A kind of scouring, cleansing rain. The streets, dry and dusty with drought, will be washed clear. Undoubtedly the wilting flowers and browning leaves will perk up. Perhaps the people who live with brown lawns, the people who live with dry harvests, perhaps even those with dying farms will have cause for hope when the rain is gone. The storm is huge and... I--I suppose even I could... The rain is cleansing, after all. People are looking at me so oddly as they rush past me, hidden by flapping raincoats and dancing umbrellas. I suppose I don't blame them--they look at me no more oddly than a thousand people have looked at me before. I want to smile at them, show them my hands. Clean, I would tell them if they would listen. No blood on *my* hands. Nothing there to be alarmed by. The rain washed it all away-- The rain. I stop, lift my face to the storm. It pours down over me, a benediction that I shiver before, a blessing I wish deeply to accept. It bites into me, punishment for sins, for transgression unknown and those that are familiar. Lovely. I slosh on, hardly aware of my sodden clothes, my hair browned by the rain, dulled by the rain, and flowing with the rain onto my face. I wonder where I am and don't care and then I wonder again, and all the while the rain pounds down. And I remember other times when it rained and I was a different person when it was gone-- It rained the first case I worked with Mulder, and we stood in it and laughed and after, there was nothing for me but him and the work. It rained the day of my father's funeral and I cried and walked away colder. And after, I was shaken and twisted and resolute. It rained in Kroner, and I talked to a woman I hardly knew about things I know nothing about, like love, and a tiny part of me hoped. And it rained in Florida, after I had given up hope. While I delivered a child, and left my partner to fend for himself as best he could. After I lost hope. Before I let myself fall... And now it's raining again. Funny. I wonder what will happen when it is done, when it is clear and the world is dry. I wonder if I will survive. Oh, how the mighty *have fallen*. Brilliant Dana Scully, beautiful Dana Scully, bitter Dana Scully--will she survive the rain? Who knows? Who cares? At the moment...not even me. Oh, I suppose I care, in some secret silent way. Survival is an instinct after all, I have always had good instincts. I fled my apartment, didn't I, my apartment and the shiny knives, the sharp razors, the chalky horse-pills and the gleaming gun, and I went out into the cleansing rain. Surely that was survival. I was hanging on by my fingernails back there. Holding onto the edge and barely-- I wanted to let go. Courageous, religious, stubborn Dana Scully saw herself over the edge, fingers bloody from hanging on, trembling and wild eyed, and she almost allowed the blood to slide her free. She almost fell into the crevasse, she almost let herself go on the wind, the howling, laughing wind. And then she fled into the cold and the grey and the bitter harsh rain, and the wind followed-- But now my hands are clean. No more imaginary blood on my fingers. And that is, I suppose, a step back from the cliff. Or maybe it's a sign that rigid Dana Scully is too scared to step away from life. Or perhaps...a sign that determined Dana Scully is too strong to give in to death. Who knows? Not me... Not yet. Ozone crackles in the air. I love the smell of it--pure energy, waiting and ready. I used to be like that, when I was young. When I was young. Like I'm so old now. I might be haggard, on occasion, but I am *not* old. But I'm not ozone anymore either. What comes between? Not comfortable middle age, not for me. Not a cozy family in a tidy house with a hyper dog and cranky cats. Not a smile across a crowded table. Not even someone to wrap around at night when it's cold and rainy and the world is gone, just for a moment. My dog got eaten by an alligator. Crocodile. Whatever. I shouldn't laugh, should I. I mean, Queequeg--poor little thing. Maybe it *was* divine justice, as Mulder suggested when we were coming home dogless and with only colds and a peg-leg story to keep us from falling over the edge. He *had* eaten parts of his former-- Poor Queequeg. I bet the old biddy was tough as-- Yes, I'm laughing like a loon in the rain, old man. You just sit there across the street and watch me--maybe scurry home to your Pomeranian or Cocker Spaniel and tell your old wife you saw a deranged woman standing in the rain, laughing at the clouds and the wind. I probably shouldn't think such thoughts about poor old men, either. But he shouldn't look like that at a woman who has fought for centuries to be strong and is now deciding how far strength will carry her. Not even if she's laughing in the rain. He should be pleased by my defiance of the elements, not scurrying off, looking over his shoulder as if he expects me to call him back, maybe even-- I want to call him back. Tell him what a marvelous thing I am doing here in the rain. Tell him all about Queequeg and Starbuck and Ahab. Maybe I could even tell him about the white whale of truth. But he probably needs to walk the dog and talk to his wife and call his children. What will I do if I am old? What will there be for me? A Bureau pension, or will the Bureau have long ago forsaken me--well, whatever. A rocker on a porch or a bedpan in a home where I tell the orderlies about a man named Mulder and a girl named Samantha and the men who ruled all our lives? What will there be for me? What is there for me now? That, I suppose, is the question, and I can't see the answer through the rain lashing across my face. Leave the rain? No, not yet. Forget the question? Yes, we've gotten good at forgetting what we saw and didn't see, haven't we Dana? But-- I see the past clearly enough. I think maybe my skin is cracked with the past and my hair is dry with it and my heart is broken with it and my eyes are blank with it. Maybe I *am* old. Maybe the years have aged me with twice, three times their weight, and now to that little old man who scurried from me *I* am the ancient husk. I stop again, let the rain wash the age from my face. Let it do its cleansing and its scouring and wonder giddily if I could make a fortune selling rain to women with too much money, too many years and too many sins. Look at me, I'd tell them. Testimony to the healing power of the rain. Then I'd laugh and run off with their money. But the questions nag. What, what, what--when and where and who and if-- Not even the rumble of thunder and the crack of rain in puddles can drain out my own mind any more. I wandered far, I think, and long, and the rain has washed me clear. Time to sit and think and ponder myths and mysteries and lies that no one ever thought would become truth. Hmmm. My hands are pruned, and white. My arms are white too. Goosebumped and blue veined and cold as corpses under the cold lash of the rain. I imagine if I could look in a mirror my face would be veined and white and dull. My lips would not be carefully dyed red anymore, my eyes not highlighted, my marks not covered. I would be stripped clean. Stripped to the essentials, and ready to think. Ready... Am I ready to hold on some more? Ready to fall, ready to claw my way up? Am I ready to step out of the rain? My sister is dead. My father, friends from the office, people I trusted. My dog is dead. My daughter is dead. My womb is useless. I have passed Death on occasion and felt His chill. I have lost, and the chill of the rain can't compare. My partner has asked me if I want him to chose. My mother has lost weight worrying again that I am ill. My older brother hates me, my younger brother is cold. My godson is nearly a stranger, my nephew a joy I will never fully understand. I am laughed at, I am scorned. I look for a Truth that might not even exist. I am losing, and the harsh beat of the rain reminds me. My boss looks at me with eyes that tell me to fight even as his words tell me to give in. My colleagues look at me with fear, and respect. I have beaten Death at His own games, I have fought Him at every turn. And my partner touches me with pain and need and love and betrayal. I-- I could win, and the rain has washed me clean. How...extraordinary. Clean, not just stripped of dirt and facades, but...clean. Inside, where it counts. Where the wind blows and the holes are dark and deep and my soul-- But I can't hear the wind now, not even that howling banshee cry of it that haunted me in my apartment tonight and followed me when I started wandering. And the holes...are suddenly not so deep and dark. And my soul is somehow lighter. When did this happen, this change inside me? In between my longing for the gun and sleep, my laughing at old men? How could that happen? Not even the Holy Water could purify me when I touched it to my skin-- That water, I think as I tip my head back again and let the rain run over now numb skin, was blessed by a man in robes. This water... How corny. Blessed by God. What a *good* little continually lapsing Catholic I am, with my doubts and reservations and my thoughts of Death. My mother and my Father would be proud. A flash of yellow--yes, a cab. Easily hailed in this rain, with all the reasonable people locked indoors. I'm sure I look quite drowned. Wonder what the cabbie would think if I told him I had just climbed off and stepped back from a ledge? What if I told him I had triumphed over myself and it was all because of the rain? What if I told him I was clean inside and ready to go on? No, I decide as I flash a smile I'm sure is pale blue and trembling. There is someone to tell who will understand much better. "Where to?" The driver asks, concern in his dark eyes. I settle back, give the address through suddenly chattering teeth, and wait, with a smile for the water cascading on the windows, a smile I bet the cabbie thinks is for him. And here we are, in no time flat--I must have wandered further and less aimlessly than I had thought. A healthy tip for the friendly cab driver, a small wave, and I am inside, dripping rain across the lobby and into the elevator. Oops. Puddles. Hopefully the people that pass through them will find purity and not broken bones-- And there he is. "I have a lot to tell you," I say, and can see he is bewildered because I am shivering and soaked, but not angry and hurt and defeated. His eyes look like pools, rainwater thick and heavy--how odd I didn't notice that before. Or how odd that it's happened now. He opens the door wider, ushers me through with a hand on my sodden back. "Come in." And I come out of the rain. END ```````````````````````````````````````````````````````` Write me to tell me you liked it, hated it, thought I should get a hold of the annoying tendency I have to pontificate, have decided I'm an idiot. Or perhaps...a genius. I dunno Don't laugh at me! Write to me! Do not be afraid! I come in peace ;) Dreamshaper dreamshpr@aol.com