Title: Stargazing Author: Nat Keywords: M/S ust, V Not much action, just an imagery and a What if? piece. Rating: G, nothing offensive in here!(I hope) Spoilers: um general ones for closure, but that's about it Summary: Some secrets sit like bombs waiting to explode, weighing on our consciousness. Others alter the fabric of our existence, intertwining with our pasts and forever changing who we are, who we become, and who we love. Author notes: This is one of my first stories! So please, please respond! Even if you have nothing to say other than I should be knocked over the head and abducted before writing again! Disclaimer: they're not mine and with the amount of money I have I couldn't buy them! So don't sue! Just think of it as a homage! :) Feedback: Yes!! Soccerdev1@aol.com Archiving: I'll be soo happy if you want to archive this, but please tell me, so I can gaze at my name in print! Wait...Except for Gossamer and Ephemeral. Lastly, Thank you Beth, for helping me and listening to me blabber on even though you couldn't care less about x-f. So thanks for being there. I love ya hon! Oh yeah and if you listen to this with Moby's album, especially My Weakness, it is greatly enhancing! Stargazing "Seeing isn't believing, believing is seeing." -Eros The ring is shiny and bright, almost brutally so. The spring colors reflect and dance in it; lustrous reds, light, misty greens, brilliant lavenders. They're particularly vivid this year. Over the edge of the trees he can see the sun setting, deep purple and red. Loose leaves pirouette in the sunset, a dark, musty green. He is alone. Well, as close to as being alone as he can get. The crowds left hours ago, leaving behind unused tissues, gum wrappers, and silence. A silence that wraps around him like a warm, luxurious blanket. The scent of fresh grass and fresh wood surrounds him. He breathes in deeply. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. The sky above him darkens turning from a pale, aqua blue to a dark, liquid black. The stars slowly began to appear, one by one, hundreds by hundreds. He imagines the sky as an inky blank with stars kicked across it like sand and the blue-black waves dripping onto the small lights, covering them. Each one totally alone. He imagines people being kicked across the sky, slowly, their fall is long and ignorant. They too are alone. There are sand stars and people stars. And there are star stars. Tonight it is people stars, and people trees and people clouds.(it's a clear sky) He tries to fall into a small pile of rotten leaves, but catches himself before crashing to the ground. Tonight he has learned Two Rules: One, no one can fall on purpose and two, that secrets are not meant to be spoken aloud, even if it is just to the stars.(the star stars) Secrets are like blood, they spill out brilliant, but spread quickly, and take with them parts of you and if they take away enough you can die. They are also different colored on the inside. There are red secrets(Shared) and blue secrets.(inside) His mother died five days ago. Died from twenty- three small tablets, before she could break the second rule. Her blood flowed out taking with it all of her concealments, blue red. When he heard about it his blood stirred too, angrily and his Secret(blue) cried in disappointment. Nothing likes to be lonely, not secrets, blood, people, or birds. He thinks about his Secret, the loud one, the old one. The one that might be shared, but is not because they were one. The tree branches dip in the wind as if they are trying to hear his whisper. But, he has not broken the second rule, he just whispers a name. Brett. Brett, in with a swoosh, out with a whoosh. Inhale. Exhale. Brett. A name he has whispered to the silence before. Just to see how it sounded, how it tasted. It sounds familiar, but odd to say, like saying your own name out loud. It tastes like thick maple syrup with dark, vibrant strawberries, and loamy dirt. Brett, he cries, naming the trees and the bushes, distinguishing the stars(every kind) and the sky. Brett. Brett is his brother. His unknown twin, a mystery shrouded in the shades of day. When he was young, very young, so young that he can't remember it, he first woke up sweating from his twin's dream, a child's nightmare of loss and broken toys. It never bothered him; he was born with it and he would never get used to not having it. They never shared a conversation or communicated, they just shared dreams and memories. They were different bodies they both knew. But they could not distinguish a difference of identities beyond names. And so they used names to differentiate each other; Brett has a blonde, wide eyed mother and dreams of falling a long, long way, Fox dreams of dark, rolling black and white bubbles swallowing them up. Sometimes one will be playing in the sand, creating the same sand castle he remembered building a year ago, it does not matter to them that they never built that one. If one did something the other did too. They do not think of themselves as me but us, not him but me. They learn early on not to speak out loud of the other since their connection is so inexplicable and against all laws(not the Two Rules, but other laws, the laws of love and life, of how it's to be lived and when and why.) They know nothing else but they recognize their relationship as abnormal. There're some things they just know. They know they don't look different, but understand it is their minds that are the same since moles and chins do not matter in dreams. They are incapable of explaining things, but the other always knows. They accept their separation as inevitable and right. They are one and neither of them are ever alone. Time has passed since their childhood days of silent, barely comprehensible dreams and thoughts. They are different now. Small, smiling stars(sand) have put up blocks and they have different interests, different lives. Terror and heaps of grief and guilt heralded large walls. They have boundaries and lines. Their thoughts have definable shapes and colors. They can be alone. His mother never knew he knew. He never brought it up because when he was old enough to do it he couldn't think how to. How do you tell your parents that? Especially, since one of his parents was a violent drunk and the other was withdrawn and repressed. They would hear it as nothing, register it as nothing, just another oddity in their life, just another unheeded comment in a life of unheard words. Besides, he could not give a separate flesh to his brother's life. They were one dream. One thought and sometimes two thoughts as one. Sometimes he wonders if he is essentially different from other people. If he is a mutant or more advanced. But sometimes is a word of luck and chance. A word for changing seasons and green moss. Of snow and rain. Of stars(every kind) and water. Sometimes is a regretful word, a half-hearted word. Sometimes he uses that word but only when he is half, never when he is complete. Brett turned into a sometimes and then a never. But, Scully is an always. He can't tell her, and yet the secret looms between them large and stifling. There are so many reasons. So many excuses. It wasn't until recently that he even figured it all out. The answer came to him quickly, in a clouded light. Brett was a clone. It explained everything; their connection, the reason for their separation, why Samantha was taken and not him. It wasn't until later that he wondered if maybe he was the clone. Not possible he thought. But, it lurked at the far reaches of his brain, where Brett couldn't access it. There were other reasons too. He feared she wouldn't believe him, after all she wouldn't even believe in documented proof of aliens, so why would she believe in this? Even Mulder had his doubts. She had asked once why he felt the need to pursue the paranormal. Why, Scully? Because he was born with the paranormal running through his veins, because if he didn't he might consider himself insane. And then there are other reasons too. The deep ones that are slowly eating out his heart and leaving a shell in it's place. Fox Mulder knows how to keep secrets and this is one that wants to be kept. They don't talk about his childhood. She talks about hers; laughs about Bill and brags about Missy and Charles. She remembers and smiles a glittering smile. She doesn't ask him about his childhood because she assumes that samantha overshadowed it and his life was one giant, sorrowful cage. She is right. But, Brett's life was happy and through him Fox found a way to escape his cage. For hours he would slip into a trance and exist as Brett. There wasn't a difference to him; if his mother cried he escaped to his world of baseball games and lolli pops. He fell asleep to days of picnic filled trips to the mountains and family hugs. And then the lines began to bisect them. The first line laid down was by Brett after his first real kiss. A long kiss with the prettiest girl in his grade. He wanted it to be his. He didn't want to share it, compare it with Fox. Fox saw it of course, but didn't experience it as usual; he visited it. He couldn't feel the kiss, he just saw it. Like he was watching from a distance. After that they put up more lines, heavy thick ones in permanent ink. They built walls around all the people they loved- except for Mulder's mother who they both recognized as Theirs to share- and put certain thoughts in closed jars. But, memories they shared. They would go back and laugh their silent laughs and smile their invisible smiles. And, yet it changed them; boundaries in unseen parts gave their lives different textures and feels. They started obeying the life laws and their unspoken rules. They were growing apart, like two Siamese twins whose legs are slowly becoming unattached. Their cord is splitting, slowly breaking, and both of them accept it. They are adults now and might be able to finally meet, but they have learned the difference from dream and blood and the price it pays to turn thought into flesh. Slowly, very slowly, they changed. First they stopped being able to experience things as the other and then their memories separated. Now, their only connection is dreaming: when Brett accepts Mulder's dreams and their guilty pain and Mulder dreams of smiling kids and fatherhood. But, they both felt the loss of their mother. Brett was knocked down by it at his daughter's soccer game and Mulder just broke down. It wasn't really the loss of their mother, it was the destroying of their link. As if there was one section they could no longer gain access to. Mulder was there at the funeral, mourning her, her secrets that left with her sticky blood. The knowledge that drained out of the crack in her mouth and seeped into the tile-wood floor. Brett is already beginning to forget. His life has a texture now and loss can be made to fit shadowed dreams. He does not feel the sunset this afternoon nor will he ever. He will never see the new, golden ring sitting dully in his brother's tired hands With the secrets(blue) gone they are two, separate. Mulder has lost a brother, a sister, and a mother. He mourns him(no longer me) and tries to remember, but he is left with nothing more than hazy apparitions, a name, and certainty. But, Fox Mulder needs nothing more. The sun is rising, pale and pink. The leaves are not tossed by the wind, but they continue to fall. A man stands on the top of a gentle, sloping hill. The night has cleared, the sand has floated away in a light blue wave. He slowly strokes the ring and runs his thumb over it's inscription. Suddenly she appears at his side. But, she says nothing and the silence continues on its lonely path. She tries to reassure him and she does. Reassurance wrapped securely in with a ribbon of silence. Comfort bottled up in a strong solution of mute waters. Holding without touching. Dancing without floating. He reaches down to hold her hand. She lets him take it and he caresses it slowly. His secret sits in his chest heavy and lonely and then starts dissipating, lightening. Sometimes he will remember. Sometimes he won't. Sometimes he doesn't believe in endings and is in awe of the night; of how purple turns to black and black to blue. Sometimes he believes in endings, sudden and abrupt. But, he always believes in beginnings. And always is everything, the glistening sun, the scattered stars, the muddy roots of pink flowers, . Always is looking to the future and dropping the burden of the past. Always is sparkling, spraying oceans, Samantha's smile, mystery, forever. And Scully is forever, and always. - - - - - - - - - - - Thanks for reading it! I adore feedback! Thanks to the most amazing sort of beta ever, Annex! And just a general call out to everybody in the phile world, you guys make my online life a blast and it's great having other focused people to talk to you :) -nat