Title: Seven Famines and a Feast Author: EmGee [mgtrek@juno.com] Rating: R for adult themes and heavy angst Codes: MSR Spoilers: Through Existence and Nothing Important Happened Today Feedback: Good, bad, early, late, long, short -- bring it on! Summary: Each day he starves a little more. Comments: This is a suite of eight drabbles (a drabble is a story or vignette of exactly 100 words). This is the second time that I'm using both this structure and this title. The first "Seven Famines and a Feast," with somewhat different content, was a Star Trek suite. I liked the results so much that I decided to convert it to an XF setting. DISCLAIMER: Mulder and Scully aren't mine. I'm just borrowing them. TPTB can have 'em back when I'm done, safe and sound. Seven Famines and a Feast -I- The future seemed clear: the three of them would be together. In a paroxysm of anticipation he gave up his apartment, moved his things to her place. Then the mirage disappeared. His presence was a danger to her and their child. Three days after the birth, he left them. He was a fool to believe. Each night he maroons himself in a new wasteland, the barren expanse of pale cotton around him only emphasizing his desolation. He feels more empty than the Sahara, drier than the Atacama, colder than the Antarctic in winter. Each day he starves a little more. -II- At breakfast in the local diner, he pours maple syrup onto his blueberry pancakes. Watching the syrup flow, he flashes back to the glossy red sweep of her hair, rich and heavy in his hands. Feels it drip through his fingers. Remembers it sweet and warm against his cheek as she presses her ripening body close to his. Senses it spilling over his chest, his thighs, his groin. He doesn't remember putting down the syrup. He sits for a very long time, immobilized by memory. No one sees his trembling hand as he pushes his plate aside, the food untouched. -III- The habits of years die hard: he still reaches reflexively, a dozen times a day, for his cell phone. A dozen more times he turns, looking for her, speaking to her. The words form automatically on his lips: Scully, what do you think about . . . Scully, we'll need to . . . Scully, let's go . . . Scully, Scully, Scully . . . The phone's not there, she's not there, and the words die on his lips, half-voiced. Eventually he trains himself not to reach for his phone, not to speak aloud. But still he turns, looking for her, turns and turns, a dozen times a day. -IV- At lunchtime, he pulls into a small town and steps into the only restaurant there. He orders the lasagna special, then remembers it was what the two of them had eaten, their last meal together. Some masochistic impulse keeps him from changing his order. He stares at the meal for long minutes. When he finally eats, the food is as ashes on his tongue. After a few bites, he signals for the check. The waiter looks at his plate as he takes his cash. He hears the unspoken question. No, he's not hungry for this, but he's starving for her. -V- The motel clerk accepts his payment and his registration card, hands him a key. As he walks to his room he catches a faint floral scent. He stops dead in his tracks, his heart pounding. It's Scully's scent, he thinks. His eyes devour the scene, willing her presence. But there is no sign of her, only an overgrown lilac bush releasing its subtle perfume to the air. He leans toward it as if towards Scully, inhaling the memories real and imagined, hunger gnawing inside him. He can almost taste her. He draws one more slow breath and then moves on. -VI- In the evening, after he's choked down the greasy delivered pizza, the silence becomes suffocating. He looks at the connecting door to the next unit and remembers their times together on the road. All those seedy motels in one-horse towns. Nights of bad food, lumpy beds, threadbare sheets, dripping faucets and no Playboy Channel. Knowing she was on the other side of the unlocked door, hearing her little sounds, made even the all-night religious programming tolerable. He masturbates, imagining her hands, her mouth, her strong legs locked around his hips. As he comes, the loneliness rises up and smothers him. -VII- Late at night, desperate and afraid, he clutches a pillow to his chest and cries. In eight years he's managed to survive gunshots, drowning, black oil, brain surgery, falling cows, vampires, hallucinogenic spores, the smoking man, and Krycek. He's survived alien abduction, vivisection, and three months in a coffin. He should have been dead twenty times over, and he's still alive. But he doesn't know if he can survive this separation. She is raising their son without him. What he's missing can never be recaptured. He has never felt so empty, or so inadequate. He can bear anything except this. -VIII- For the first time in years he seeks sleep eagerly, for it is there that he lives as he had once imagined. In his dreams the bed is not a barren waste but a paradise. Scully's hair spills through his fingers as he inhales her sweet perfume. William slumbers in his crib, peaceful and safe. They're together, for all time. In sleep he feels no restless hunger, no empty ache. In sleep the feast is there for the eating, and he's filled. In sleep he can forget that, come morning, the famine will return. He wishes he could sleep forever.