TITLE: Elegy with a Feather Falling Inside It AUTHOR: Bonetree RATING: PG CATEGORY: Vignette, UST SUMMARY: A crow's feather, a motel room and a lesson before dying. TIMELINE: This happens right before "Tithonus." Mention of "Quaqmire" and "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose." DISCLAIMER: These characters aren't mine. No profit is being made and no infringement is intended. FEEDBACK: Sure. :o) Bonetree@aol.com AUTHOR'S NOTES: Thanks to Snark, Kim, Vivian and dtg, and to Dani and Revely for the betas. For S. Get well soon, my friend. ***** JACKSTRAW INN COEUR D'ALENE INDIAN RESERVATION IDAHO 11:34 p.m. Split-eyed. That's what the Sheriff on the Reservation had called his dog as it shoved its head through the passenger window toward her, the animal's muzzle too pointed, the neck a straight line and the body too thin to be a dog. The expression on its face hadn't been as vicious and she remembered it, but there was something in the way it moved, some urgency to reach toward her that was not the amiable movement of domesticity. From its gray face the thing had stared at her, one eye the color of old newspaper shot with gold, dead as an element, and the other blue, blue and alive as her own. "That's a wolf," Scully had said, taking a step back, and Mulder a few feet to her right and armed only with a clipboard at the moment, his Sig tucked beneath the long cape of his trench had been beside her instantly, his hand out to touch the wolf's nose or warn it away. "Yeah," the Sheriff said, smiling at her reaction. "Wandered onto my land when he was just a baby. Split-eyed, you know. Supposed to be good luck." "Just keep him inside the car," Mulder growled, and now his whole body was between her and the wolf. It looked unkempt, both its eyes taking her in, brow furrowed. She met both the eyes and stared right back. Behind them, the man they'd come to question Donald Fortner, farmer and procurer of large amounts of fertilizer, enough to be suspicious in the wake of the OK Bombing pulled away in his battered pickup, its back loaded down heavy onto the wheels with manure. The Sheriff, who'd called both of them "F.B.I.," the term interchangeable with either of them and singular and plural, laughed and pulled away. She looked down, her own trench feeling like lead, drenched from the earlier rain, and the sky was pewter and low, the air thick with storm. The smell from the truck lingered after it like a ribbon, and she turned away from it, a pile of manure behind her where the truck had spilled over as it pulled away. A wasted trip. Another errand to keep them off their caseload, to keep them together but keep them away. "Hey Scully," Mulder said, tucking the clipboard inside his trench as a patter of rain started on his shoulder, a tiny ratting sound. He toed the manure with one black shoe. "What's brown and lays on the battlefield?" She didn't answer, her lips pursing as she squinted up at the sky, her face hardening. "Gomer's pile," he said, nudging her. "Get it?" She'd turned and walked back to the car, the ubiquitous just-above- Economy rental tucked beneath a tree and haloed with a racket of crows. Mulder was calling behind her and she lost his voice in the sound of the birds, their great black bodies clamoring in the limbs. When she reached the car a schism of lightning and they took flight, a crack of thunder following, making her jump. Then, on the roof of the car, a heavy black feather tapped down on the hood, landing blade down in front of her face. A woman pushing a dark toddler in a shopping cart rattled across the rough surface of the lot. "Bad luck," she said, and turned the baby's face with her hand. She rattled in the opposite direction toward the dirty looking market called "Meatland," the baby's eyes on her around his mother, his mouth open on an O. Scully looked at the baby, then at Mulder's dark shape as he rounded the car toward the driver's side. Without a word, she reached for the feather and tucked it into her pocket, climbed in and said nothing as they drove away. Almost midnight now and she was standing beside the window overlooking the parking lot, the buzz of tired streetlights coming through the thin glass, the cars' dark headlights staring back, the feather in her hand. If she rubbed it one way it was soft, smooth as silk. The other and it broke into segments, feeling artificial, unreal. She still wore her suit, though the black jacket, black as the feather, was draped over the back of the chair by the pressed wood table. Her cross hung on its clasp at her collarbone. Her feet were bare. She took the feather and held it up toward the streetlight. It had a strange oily sheen as it caught the light. (Bad luck ) The wolf's face stared back at her from behind her eyes. She barely heard the tap at the door, and she turned only when it opened, Mulder slipping in carrying a brown bag the size of his hand, a dark stain on its bottom. It smelled like fat and salt. "I got you some soup," he said softly. He was wearing jeans, tennis shoes, a long-sleeved white T-shirt that hugged his chest. She'd noticed recently that he was filling out, filling in. The leanness he'd had when she met him at 33 was gone now. He was older and his body showed it in that way that some men's did. As the year's had passed, she'd grown more chiseled, her features sharpening while his softened. It was as though they were turning into one another, changing places as subtly as the seasons. "I'm not hungry," she said. Habit. He pursed his lips, set the bag down on the table. "You've got to be hungry. You haven't eaten all day." Had she not? She honestly couldn't remember. She was still thinking of this as she turned and went to the bed, the feather in her hand and pointed down, the hard quill in her hand, jet black against the white of her hand. Her eyes focused on the place where the dark met the light. The mattress sank down beside her. She felt the warmth of his leg against hers. "I thought you were going out," she said, still looking down at her hand as if it belonged to someone else, the feather shining as a car pulled into the lot and its lights snapped off, the engine dying. "I did," he said simply, and gestured to the soup, smiling wanly. She watched his hand come over, the back of one finger touching the back of hers, the nail reaching out to touch the feather. "'Bad luck,'" he said, and let out a small sound that suggested something between a breath and a laugh. "I don't believe in luck," she said, not realizing it was in her mouth to say. "You don't seem to believe in much about what we're doing anymore," he offered into the quiet. The room was dark, just the glow of the lights outside, and even those beginning to go out. "That's not true," she said, but the defensiveness she wanted to feel wouldn't come. She meant it, though, and her hand crept up away from his, reached up and touched her cross, noticed it out of place. The feather touched her throat. "It is," he said, and now his upper arm was touching her. "You know, for all your talk about me needing this work, about it being my 'white whale '" That teased a smile from her as she recalled them sitting ten feet from shore but adrift from the whole deaf, dumb world. "I think you need the work as much as I do. Maybe even more." She shook her head. "No," she said. "It's not that." "What then?" His voice was just above a whisper, the warmth of his body around her. It made her feel what? Safe? She despised that. It made her pull away, down onto her side on the bed, curled away from him, her layers coming on like a shell. Her hand was a fist around the bit of crow, the blade against her cheek. "Do you remember Clyde Bruckman?" she asked into the darkness. The streetlight had buzzed itself out. "Of course." "Did I ever tell you what he said to me?" Her voice shrank as she shrank, her legs drawing up. "About what?" She heaved in a breath. "I asked him," she said as she exhaled. "About how you'd die," he said quietly, and she could hear him swallow. The words caught in his throat. She nodded, though she knew he couldn't see it. Her silence would be enough. "What did he say?" He sounded like a child. "I asked him " she said after a few beats of silence. "I asked him how I would die, and he said that I wouldn't." She could feel him turning this over. He was still on the bed. "What does it mean?" she asked, her voice flat, far away. She could no longer see him in the thick black of the room. Outside, rain started, thunder in the distance, that hard rain, too much too fast. The air swelled with it, smelling green. Then she felt him move, the cheap bed moving too much as he settled in behind her, an arm coming around her like a wing, his hand holding onto her forearms. He slid it up to her fist and opened it, squeezed. The feather fluttered to floor and tapped. "I think he meant your faith, Scully," he whispered next to her ear. "I think he was talking about what you believe about that." "How would he know about that?" she replied, a quake in the sound. "How can anyone know? Sometimes I don't know myself. You said it yourself. I 'don't seem to believe in much anymore.'" "I meant about the work," he replied. "Not your faith. That's something else. That's " He hesitated, searching for words. "It's how you carry yourself. It's how you move through the world, Scully. There's something about you that says that nothing can touch you. Something essential you believe. I don't know if it's God or something else. I don't know what it is because I don't have it myself. I think you have to have it to understand. But I think Clyde Bruckman saw it because he had it, too. You wear it. He wore it. It's what you believe." "I don't know what I believe," she said, and it sounded resigned. But as she said it, she squeezed his hand, her legs unfolding and finding a space between his calves. They were quiet for a long time, and she listened to the rain. It seemed a universe away. "I know what I do," she heard him say at last, a whisper, his chest rising against her back. She smiled faintly, though her eyes were shining. "Yes," she said, and pressed herself against him, light flooding the room in a flash of light. She closed her eyes against it and they covered themselves with the night. END