Story 14: "Blood and Breath" by RivkaT

[wendelah1]

This week's choice is mine. I decided to look through the spoiler category in Gossamer for Gethsemane. I felt there had to be another, more satisfying take on the episode. Look what I found! "Blood and Breath" is by one of my favorite writers, rivkat . I love the way she sees Scully and this is a very Scully-centric piece. Like "Primal Sympathy," it was posted in 1997 during the hiatus, but it is a very different approach to the cliff-hanger at the end of Gethsemane.

Here is what the author had to say about the work:
Classification: XAR
Rating: R for violence and sexual situations
Summary: Post-Gethsemane, and major changes are afoot. If there's a genre you don't like (and I think you know what I mean), stay away.

There are spoilers in the comment thread.

Let us know what you think; let the author know what you think; and please, let us know your suggestions for next time. I promise we will get back to the queue in a couple of weeks.
"Blood and Breath"

Comments

[emily-shore.livejournal.com]

You are so fast at this.

I only got through it so fast by not actually thinking very much as I was doing it. I thought it would be fun to try to get down my initial reactions as I was reading the story, but in doing so I did say a number of things that weren't quite right or weren't very well analyzed. So now it's time to backtrack!

I don't believe that she found her own cure, not for the cancer that was rapidly growing within her nasopharynx.

You're right. I was emphasizing that idea in order to emphasize Scully's agency, and the idea that no one else had done it for her. She didn't find the cure, but she did win it for herself by her own attempts (that is, escaping along with the jelly). I guess I almost see her time in captivity as a sort of allegory for her "dark night of the soul" with cancer. I don't know why that is, and I can't articulate my feeling very well, but it is almost like the dark mirror version of the hospital and the chemotherapy and all the rest of it. The place where you live, but lose your soul.

One thing that I wonder is about the difference in the result between Scully surviving because of her own toughness (as in this story), and Scully surviving because of the efforts of others (as in the show and in the other story). You might think that it would make more sense for her to learn to trust based on the latter scenario and not the former. But perhaps Scully has to reach out from a position of strength?

Despite that fear, she chooses to try to create an intimate, loving relationship with him. Not dead yet? In the face of all that has happened, I think she is choosing to live.

Yes, I do think you're right. I suppose I was just withholding judgment, both because the story ends so quickly there and because sex in rivkat world is so rarely unequivocally healing or healthy. A good analogue here is the resolution of Tikkun Olam. I know that was too fast for a lot of people, and not a tangible enough improvement. It is clearly the style of this writer not to offer a long drawn-out resolution phase to the story (as compared with Arizona Highways, for example). She suggests the change of heart, and lets the reader fill in the rest. It is the change of heart that's the important bit, after all.