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ALL THE SOONER
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"she never let on how insane it was/ in that tiny kinda scary house/ by the
woods by the woods by the woods/ black-dove black-dove/ you're not a
helicopter/ you're not a cop out either/ black-dove black-dove/ you don't
need a spaceship/ they don't know you've already lived/ on the other side of
the galaxy"
-"black-dove", Tori Amos

"She want us to think that she's strong..."
-Fox Mulder, Mind's Eye
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When night falls, it falls quickly. Unobtrusive at first in childhood, but
as our capacity for thought grows with our bodies, so does the realization,
slowly clouding the snow-white innocence of day.

Night had fallen, and there I sat, eyes blankly ahead, arms clutching at
the blanket around me. I dreamt of my ghosts, rising as they fell.

Who am I?

Some called me the "Ice Queen"- cold, frostbitten indifference, devoid of
whatever benefit there may be of human emotion. Others referred to me as the
more logically capable half of the "Spooky Patrol", wasting time and medical
expertise on chasing aliens and the slightly tattered quest of my partner,
Fox Mulder.

The truth?

Hah. A concept that we would never be able to grasp, not long enough, not
fully enough.

But the truth about me was that I was a taut wire, worn, and waiting for
release.

Tired, yet too frail and too weak to cast my star into the night night
sky. An incandescent paper butterfly searching urgently with both wings
torn.

Worn away by a smiling childhood and societies unheard glass-stained
cries, I never quite learned how to scream.

Photographs became exhausted from being held too often in my hands, the
corners yellowed. The faces were fuzzy and oddly familiar, but no longer mine to touch.

Oh, how I longed for the scream, for a sleep that lay so peaceful and
beautiful...

Smiles faded not so slowly from my memory..

Before me, on all sides, lay a great ocean, the cold wind howling
painfully in my reddened ears. My compass had long flown overboard. The distant shore became too unfathomably far away to even dream of. Once, I, Starbuck, had sailed the
sea under the warm protection and certain guidance of a loving captain named
Ahab. There had always been the fussy warmth of family running amok and laughter ringing up to
kiss the sunny sky and rice-paper white clouds above. But one by one, they
had been torn from me, ripped from my fingers soaked with their blood.

I grasped blindly ahead with groping hands to reach for what wasn't there,
what couldn't be there,
and what could never be there, ever again.
I sailed alone in the ocean of my mind and heart, curled up tightly into a
paper ball that could so easily be tossed overboard, and drowned. The
stagnant memory of day faded with a small girl named Emily, leaving that
night unsullied by a benefit of stars and a small glass spun moon.

Wandering, I became too infinitely exhausted to pull my way up to the
light.

And so I drifted, surely farther from the shore, not quite knowing if I
would sink below the surface of the water, and sometimes, not quite caring.

There were times that I could feel another ghost ship close at hand. When
the fog lifted for short, intangible seconds of time, I could see the bruised
and battered raft of Mulder- equally lost, scared, and
painfully alone.

But there stood many walls between us... walls and the sea, mixed together
as ludicrously as the rift itself... oh, if I could shatter those
walls, guide my ship to his, and maybe together we would sail back to the
distant shore...

The walls were thick, and in my hand I held only a small, golden cross
with which to hammer through. And just when I would find a crack or finally
hammer a small hole through the walls, the tides would change, pulling us
far, far, away from each other. The walls were always replaced even thicker
than before...

And there I would stand, more alone than ever.
Collapsing to my knees, head bent painfully downward, I began to think that
my pleas up to heaven above had gone unheard, unanswered, and unwanted as so
many before.

And there I stood, ready to fling that golden cross into the abyss of the
churning sea below me, when I felt the warmth of a light descend, encircling
me in its arms. A rapt smile floated upwards. The cross fell to the
floor, gently, not quite forgotten, but then again, not quite remembered,
either.

I remember once asking Mulder why the night fell so quickly.

And he had told me that it was so that day could come, all the sooner.







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