SUMMARY:  Red sky at night.

NOTE:  Thanks and popcorn to Jemirah for beta editing.
 
 
 

They're driving into the sun in a rented Taurus.  Scully's legs ache from
inactivity, a pent-up itch deep within the muscle.  Sitting inside the car
amid the faint scents of ages-old sweat, Pine-Sol and french fries is
becoming overwhelming.  She watches Mulder driving, his eyes squinting and a
hand shading them against the glare, and leans forward to put a hand on his
arm.

"Can you pull over for a minute?"  She doesn't take her hand from his arm
for a moment, absurdly pleased to note the brown color of her skin, the
patch of sunburn at the wrist where she forgot to apply sunscreen.  Her skin
has been a study in contrasts for too long, she thinks, bleached bone
against black shadows.  It feels good to see colors again.

He glances at her for a second, then looks back to the road, searching for a
place.  When he sees a rest area on the left side of the road, he turns the
Taurus and pulls into it, ignoring the double lines and other drivers.

Scully closes the door and walks through the parking lot without looking
back to see if he's following.  A row of picnic tables line the edge of the
lot, leading toward a reserve of rocks and mountain.  For the life of her,
she cannot distinguish any difference between this hunk
of rock and any other they have seen over the past two days:  all red, all
jagged, all here for the foreseeable future.

She sits at the wooden table furthest from the car and traces the lines of
graffiti on the surface with one finger.  The road is fifty feet away from
her; the cars passing are pickup trucks, ancient Cadillacs and Buicks.  The
Taurus looks out of place and all alone in the lot; a spindly-legged
thoroughbred ignored by a field full of carthorses.

Mulder walks to the table to join her.  He walks straight-backed, tension in
the line of his shoulders.  He sits beside her, the two of them facing the
sun.

The sun is dipping ever lower in the sky, scarlet rays thrown across carmine
rocks and pink-gold sand, red on red on red.

Scully turns toward the sun, the fading rays warming her face even as the
night-desert air begins chilling her bones.  Since her cancer, she's felt
the cold more keenly, a snake tearing her flesh, exposing her.  The chills
are always with her, settled within her in an almost comfortable balance,
reminding her.

She shivers involuntarily and Mulder struggles out of his coat without
standing, hands it to her without taking his eyes from the sunset.  For a
moment, she considers handing it back, then shrugs into it.  It is soft
against her skin, warm from his body heat.  She breathes deeply, and smells
dry-cleaning fluid, Ivory soap and desert air.

"Are you all right?"

"I'm fine.  I just needed to stop for a while; needed some air.  I'm tired,
Mulder."

"Maybe you shouldn't be back at work."

"I said I'm fine,"  it comes out harsher than she intended, and she tries to
smile to soften her words.  "I've spent too long in hospitals, Mulder, too
long sitting around waiting to die.  I need to move again."

She remembers the time in hospital, her time of dying, too well.  The
painful importance she placed on each and every moment.  Clinging to
whatever routine she could find, imposing her own desperate order on a
disordered life.  She has spent too long trying to impose order, attempting
to force things into place.

He keeps his face turned away.  She has made him uncomfortable, she thinks,
with this talk of mortality.  He has never liked looking too long into the
abyss, while she could never tear her eyes away.

"You believe in an afterlife, don't you Scully?" he asks her, still without
looking at her.

She's tired, and has to bear down to form an answer.  "Well, belief in an
afterlife is a tenet of the Catholic faith.  And with all I've seen...I
guess I believe.  I believe in something, that we don't just walk into
darkness after life.  That something else waits for us, something positive.
Some kind of happiness."

"So if heaven is true happiness, what does that make hell?  Anything less?"

"You're fixated on this, aren't you?"  she looks at him for some idea of
what he is really asking, but he refuses to meet her eyes.  "Well, I'm not
entirely sure I believe in a hell.  But the commonly accepted teaching of
the church seems to be that hell is a state of despair.  Like never being
able to see those you love.  So I guess one can be in hell on earth.  I'm
not so sure about heaven."

"You don't believe in heaven on earth?"

"What is this, twenty questions?  Why the sudden attack of spirituality,
Mulder?  Is there something you're not telling me?"

"I'm wondering what makes you happy.  What would be heaven for you," he said
simply.

She breathes out, heavily.  "I'm not so sure that there's any such thing as
pure happiness.  A feeling of safety, I suppose.  Of being loved."

"How do you define love?"

"Seeing someone's strengths as clearly as their faults.  Altruism comes into
it, I guess; a willingness to deny the self to some degree to make the other
happy.  Agreeing to spend two days in The Middle of Nowhere, New Mexico
looking into the theft of a bunch of cows..."

"Those cows were abducted, Scully."  He tries to act affronted, but cannot
hide his grin.

"So what's your definition of love, Mulder?"

He doesn't answer straight away.  The road is empty now, earlier traffic as
forgotten as ghosts.  The air is so still that dust motes hang, reflecting
the fading light, tiny angels returning to earth.

When he speaks, his voice is so soft she has to strain to hear it.
"Respect.  Admiration.  A willingness to go to the ends of the earth for
someone.  Fear."

"Fear?"

"Fear, pain, the whole damn thing.  Love only speaks so truly to us because
of our fear that it will leave."

She looks away from him for a moment, then back.  "I didn't know you were
such a poet, Mulder."

He smiles again and leans forward to push a strand of brittle hair behind
her ear.

"You don't have to take care of me, Mulder.  My cancer is in remission,
I'm...well, fairly happy with my life.  You don't owe me anything."

The stress is still apparent in his eyes.  He lowers his head. "Remember
when I said the truth would save you, Scully?  Do you think I was right?"

"The truth, miracles, computer chips.  I don't know anymore, Mulder, it's
all blurring together.  People save each other, I suppose, a little bit
every day."  She looks back at the sky, smiles and gestures toward the
mountain.  The sun has almost disappeared, a last sliver of light on the
horizon.  "When we were little, my sister Missy used to call that the sun
line:  where the last rays of the sun meet the earth.  You ever think about
horizons, Mulder?"

She can see him shake his head, out of the corner of her eye.

"People used to think that the horizon was the end of the earth.  Until they
learned that it was really just the beginning of something new."  Her speech
is getting slower, her eyes drowsy.  She is warm in the embrace of his coat.

"Do you..."  She cuts him off by running her finger along his lips, then
points to the sun line, the imprint of him still on her fingertip.

"The sun's almost gone, Mulder.  Watch the sky."
 
 
 
 

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