DISCLAIMER JAZZ: "The X-Files" and its characters are the 
creations and property of the fabled Chris Carter, Ten Thirteen 
Productions and Fox Broadcasting. I am, of course, using them 
without permission. No copyright infringement is intended. All 
other concepts or ideas herein are mine.
RATING: NC-17
SPOILERS: Through US season 7
ARCHIVE: ONLY ON THE AUTHOR'S OWN WEBSITE 
(http://rowan_d.tripod.com/elizabethr.html) UNTIL STORY IS 
COMPLETED. This way I can mess with the early parts as later 
parts develop...
TIMELINE: Though this takes place sometime after "all things", in 
this universe "Requiem" did NOT happen...



"Water's Edge"
by
Elizabeth Rowandale (bstrbabs@earthlink.net)


Epilogue:



**Time passes in moments.

Sensual breaths on the wind, treasured intimacies and storms of 
change.  Sometimes you can feel them as they happen.  Sometimes 
they crystallize with distance and memory.

I will miss Melissa for the rest of my life.  And Ahab.  And 
Emily.

*And Daniel...*

I will dream about the cramped and dusty little basement office 
at the J. Edgar Hoover building for as long as I breathe.

I will never pass a day of my life that is not colored by the 
sound of my heels slapping the wet pavement as I ran toward Deep 
Throat's prone figure.

We have done something with our lives, Mulder.  Something 
extraordinary.

You're not entirely out of the fight.  Neither am I.  We don't 
work isolated X-Files anymore.  No more sewer monsters or spooks 
or reincarnations or invisible men.  Though, it's not unusual to 
get a call from Michaels and Brennen on a lazy Sunday morning and 
throw them a few helpful hints from our endless store of morbid 
and arcane knowledge, all the while hoping Christopher is not 
really listening to what we say.  But the real fight.  The fight 
against colonization.  The fight for the future.  We're not out 
of that yet.  I don't think we ever will be.  It's part of our 
past.  Part of our blood.  If we didn't continue that fight, we 
might be keeping Christopher safer for today and tomorrow.  But 
not for his future.  And not for his children's future.  We stay 
low profile as much as we can.  Until Christopher is older.  
Until he can be taught a little more about the world he lives in.  
And how it's just a little bit different than the one his friends 
live in.

I wish he didn't have to live that way.  But I am selfish.  I 
want to raise a child.  My life is what it is.  And there is no 
way to keep my child anything less than a part of my life.  In 
the end, Spooky Jr. must inherit the remnants of the life Lord 
and Lady Spooky have built.

You vanish now and then.  For days at a time.  You tell me you'll 
be back.  Sometimes you tell me where you've been, what more 
we've learned.  Sometimes you don't.  That's not new.

I wouldn't trade my current life for the world.  But 
sometimes...sometimes, when the wind smells of a coming storm, 
and the streetlights are glittering on the rain dampened streets, 
and a shadow glimmers at the mouth of an alley--I want to just 
get in the car and drive.  Get in the car beside you and throw 
caution to the wind and drive off on the adventure, stay in a 
scuzzy motel room and struggle with small-minded local cops and 
climb inside elephants and chase phantoms into damp trees.  I 
want to pull my weapon and hear you pull yours beside me.  I want 
to leave sunflower seeds on the cheap and worn comforter of the 
extra bed in our motel rooms.  I want to run in heels and get 
blood on my white silk blouse.  I want to patch your wounds with 
a makeshift med kit from a motel office.  I want to be Mulder and 
Scully.  Sometimes I stand out in the night and breathe in that 
pregnant air, and tell myself the dampness on my cheeks is the 
first drops of the impending rain.

But in the end, I climb the stairs to our apartment.  To 
Christopher.  To you.

It may not always be this way.  Five years from now we may all be 
on the run.  We may be chasing through corn fields in South 
America.  We may be living underground and carrying cases of 
vaccine against the black oil and dreaming of the soft couch in 
our quiet living room.

But it's all about the moments.  The snapshots of life that stay 
with you for all the days to come.

Hitting your body with mine, rain drowning our senses.

Closing my eyes on the dance floor, your hand so tender against 
the small of my back.

The smell of your cologne in the upholstery of my car.

The sound of your breath in the darkness of my bedroom.

Christopher pulling up on the coffee table for the first time and 
you looking more ecstatic than you did when you learned my cancer 
was in remission.

Waking up to the feel of your lips on my spine.

Melvin Frohike crying when I finally asked him back into our 
apartment for dinner.

The wind in Christopher's face as he smiled so brilliantly at the 
kite you flew for him in the park.

The pain of the injections; the fire beneath my skin and your 
protective arms pulling the ache from my flesh.

James Maley's eyes tracking my every motion and breath at the 
hearing.

Standing beside my car afterward for a good ten minutes, 
motionless, cocooned in your trench coat, sheltered by your arms; 
remembering to breathe, scars burning on my arm.

Your mouth drinking from my breast.

I have loved you for so long, Mulder.  I knew that.  I didn't 
know I could barely keep my feet beneath me without you close by.

I thought the X-Files was something I would one day leave.  I 
thought someday in the future my life would shift away from this 
bizarre and foreign terrain, and take me back home.

I didn't realize home is not the place you began.  Home is the 
place you hope to find.

Home was something you couldn't find when we met.  Maybe that was 
the truth we were both looking for.

But now...when I stand at the water's edge and I feel the soft 
touch of Emily's fingers against my palm, and I remember the 
smell of my Mom's perfume on the day my father's ashes scattered 
across the water, and the wind turns cold and my inner eye 
flashes through needles and white lights and cold medical tables 
and rough hands on my skin--I reach back and my hand meets your 
warm flesh.

And for me...that is the final piece of the quest.

Mulder?  Baby?  I think we're home.**


******

End of "Water's Edge"
bstrbabs@earthlink.net

Edgeheads--I love you all.
Look to the "Water's Edge" website in the next couple of weeks 
for extensive thanks to all those who helped with and contributed 
to this project, as well as production notes, song lists, 
alternate scenes, and a plethora of other behind-the-scenes 
information.
This has been an amazing ride, and I could not have done it 
alone.
Words cannot express my gratitude to my tireless and timeless 
betas: MaybeAmanda, SheaClaire, Carol, Miriam, Teddy E (my 
marvelous mother:)) and my Darling Husband Peter.  They deserve 
more credit than I have the financial where-with-all to give.

We made it!!!!:):)  I hope you all had even a fraction of the fun 
reading that I have had writing!:)