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Title:    Rebirth:  Soul Unbound
Author:   Meredith

Classification:   V,A, UST
Rating:   PG
Spoilers:   Yes. Takes place during "Emily." You won't 
understand this unless you've seen or read about the episode.

Summary:  Dana Scully struggles to understand what Emily's 
life and death were meant to teach her.

Disclaimer: Not mine. No copyright infringement is ever 
intended, of course.

Author's Note:  This is another installment of post-episode 
vignettes that track the emotional mindset of Dana Scully 
during the 5th season -- regarding life after cancer and her 
complex relationship with Mulder. These are all stand-alone 
stories. 

Feedback:  Oh, please. I live for feedback and happily respond 
to everyone. Thanks to all the wonderful folks who wrote 
after the first installment and encouraged me to keep going. 
Please send positive and negative comments to meredith40@juno.com 
or meredith_elsewhere@yahoo.com.

Thanks: To my wonderful friend MCA who never minds reading the 
early drafts of garbage and kicking me in the right direction, 
and to a great group of friends who watched "Emily" with me, 
both physically and in spirit. 

*********************************************

Rebirth:  Soul Unbound

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"I have no never-again, I have no always. 
In the sand victory abandons its footprints."

     -- Pablo Neruda 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Each end has its beginning, and this one began as they often 
do. I dreamt.


Alone. 

I was on a shore, in a wasteland, a desert. The night, the 
indigo darkness, was overwhelming, sweeping across barren dunes 
and driving me forward in desperate urgency. 

I strove. To find the truth, the meaning, the answer. 
My salvation. 

The whipping sand -- my only companion, my only sensation -- 
drove itself mercilessly against my skin, burrowing into my 
pores, past my mouth, nostrils, down my reflexively choking 
throat. I could not deny its presence, its opposition to my 
struggle, but could not understand why it fought me so. After 
all, I only sought the truth.

Yet in this quest my barriers were stripped, eliminated, 
and I was forced to wade, walk, agonize through the suffocating 
grit that surrounded me, threatened to sway me, keep me from 
my grail. 

The object, the answer was near. Below me, just under the 
surface, nearly trodden under my careless bare foot.  When I 
bowed to claim the thin gold chain, the elusive, fragile truth, 
only then did I feel the silence, the absence of the whirling 
sand, miss the company of the sting, the sharp, biting insistence 
of the tiny grains, a primal element in the creation of the world.

Nothing. Nowhere. The sand abandoned me with the worthless 
trinket, an icon without meaning. A foolish quest left me numb, 
cold, the empty symbol in my unfeeling hands. 

Only when the sand left me was its insistent message clear. 


I awoke on a hospital bed, next to the tiny, lifeless body of 
a child who breathed no more. 

Alone. 

--------------x--x----------------

I should have found a different church. Bill's church *would* 
have a large stained glass panel of Mary and the Infant Jesus 
directly over the altar, in inescapable view. I stare at my 
clasped hands instead. Irony can be sickeningly heavy-handed. 

The priest is reading, but the passage floats past me, 
meaningless, ineffectual. He doesn't know me, he didn't 
know Emily. Everyone who knew the child is dead. He can't 
comprehend the perversion that brought her into this world, 
nor the evil that took her from it. It doesn't matter that I 
can't either. 

Mulder was right. She was a miracle that was never meant to be.

I wish I didn't believe in miracles, hadn't seen and 
experienced my own. Perhaps, then, I could distance myself 
from belief, from the inevitable pain of having to accept the 
unacceptable. Perhaps I could begin to understand what I 
feel - the betrayal of being blessed with the miracle of 
creation only to have the miracle of life denied.

I loved her. 

For the first time in decades, I instinctually, blindly, 
loved a creature at first sight. Without pretense. Without 
comprehension. And of course, without reason. As Melissa's 
child, she needed me to turn my life on end to rescue her. 
As my own, she compelled me to fight for her fragile life.

I've never had the need to consciously sort out my priorities. 
They've shifted automatically according to life's circumstances, 
and I have accepted every change as necessary. Fundamental. 
The emotional chain of command -- to Mulder. To work, to family. 
And most recently, to life. 

Until the first set of Emily's DNA results were in my hands. 
Then the second set. Until I picked up the phone and summoned 
the courage to ask Mulder to come to here. Until my very heart 
cried out as he lifted Emily into his arms and lovingly held her 
all the way to the hospital. 

Until I succumbed to primal fear for the first time in my life.

My decision-making skills evaporated. I spent those few 
horrible days in the hospital, on the surface reacting to 
every new development with cool, calculated authority. The 
professional exterior hid my confusion, indecision, my gut-
twisting fear. But I did what necessary, all the while trying 
to convince myself that I was doing the right thing. That there 
was no one else to make the choices. 

There could have been no crueler introduction to motherhood.  
And I'll not have the chance again.

I haven't decided what that fact means. It's true that I'll 
never understand the beauty of creating life with the soul 
to whom I am bound. But it's also true that those nameless 
men against whom we fight will never have an innocent creature 
to threaten, to manipulate, to use as a means to destroy our 
work. 

I told my mother the truth. That I didn't miss the opportunity 
of having a child until it was no longer afforded to me. I had 
never before seriously considered the possibility - until the 
moment I learned definitively that it no longer was one.


The priest speaks again, this time from his own heart. 
Fleeting, the words are snared by my mind haphazardly, 
without sense.







Did he truly utter those last words? They echo softly from 
the depths of memory, from a nightmare born of deepest fears. 
My deepest fears. To love with my heart and soul unconditionally, 
only to be abandoned. 

Alone. As ever.

And it is my failing, my curse. My fault.

Mulder sits next to me, our shoulders touching against the 
back of the hard wooden pew. He, from the beginning, believed 
me. Was by my side during the entire ordeal. He never stopped 
fighting, for me or Emily. 

Together. As ever.

If I could turn back time these last few weeks, I would change 
only one decisive moment. In the chilly, harshly white hospital 
room, I would have admitted I needed -- ached -- for him to stay.

Old habits die hard. 

He pulls, I push. He opens doors, I close them. Instinctually, 
without thinking. Until recently. Until mere weeks ago, when 
we miraculously ceased to struggle, and I finally understood 
how easy it would be to keep the door wide open between us and 
travel freely....

And it was so beautifully open for a while. I want that 
freedom back. 


I'm not even aware of the final prayer releasing the living 
from their mournful obligation until Mulder takes my hand gently 
and whispers into my ear. "I forgot something. I'll be back in 
a minute."

He rises with the small crowd leaving now that the service is 
over, then stoops down again toward me, almost as an afterthought. 
"Wait for me?"

A harmless question - one that he doesn't even let me answer 
before he quietly slips away.

Moments later my mother's hand falls on my shoulder. She, too, 
asks a harmless question.

"Are you ready to go?"

Where -- back to my brother's house? To Washington? To my 
life?

No. 

I don't want to go back. I'll wait for Mulder, and we will go 
forward - together.

Because every end has a beginning. 

END

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"This word... wants nothing but to write your name. 
And even though my brooding love silences it now, 
later the springtime will pronounce it."

     -- Pablo Neruda
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thanks for reading.