Story 222: "The Laws of Coming and Going" by Buckingham

[wendelah1]

I love this story. I love everything Buckingham has written, so I don't know why we have only done one of her stories. This fic is set during season eight, sometime after "Dead Alive." Summary: Life after death.

"Tell me again," he says. His voice sounds coarse and needy even to his own ears, but somehow he's unashamed. "Please."

She's told him all of it already, a couple of times actually. He's heard about the wet, gritty snow and tough, dry flowers, how Frohike cried loudly and openly, like someone was tearing at his skin or ripping his fingernails off one by one, how her mother held her hand in a bone-crunching grip the entire time, as if she feared that Scully would slip through the cold earth to meet him, how the air was heavy with the smell of flames and it turned out that there was a house on fire, just five blocks from the cemetery, how Skinner's face was like stone, unmoving and unseeing, but his eyes held a wet glimmer of guilt, how Scully threw up in a dingy motel bathroom just before the car picked her up for the cemetery and how the baby just seemed like a heavy thing in her gut that day, an unbearable, painful weight.

She tells him it all once again, weaving her story of heartbreak, horror and hell with the same chilling seriousness that she used to deliver her case reports.

Yeah, it's melancholy. It suits my mood right now.

You can send email to this author. Please do, as the last I heard she was still working on a season seven story. I have also heard that feedback from readers encourages our writers to persevere. And we'd like to hear from you too, so please let us know what you think.

The nomination post is always open for business.

The link is to an archived copy, but if it goes down, or you prefer old-school text file formatting, you can find this story at Gossamer.

Read "The Laws of Coming and Going".

Comments

[sophie brown (from livejournal.com)]

I really enjoyed that one too, I like the darker fics. So many XF fanfics are light, fluffy pieces (and I do love those too) but the show was so much darker and more twisted than that, and so were were Mulder & Scully, especially by the end. Those were two deeply damaged people and it's good to see a fic that reflects that part of them without turning them into deranged sociopaths.

[wendelah1]

I try to present a balance here. I wouldn't say I prefer one type of fanfic over the other. My favorite stories have elements of comedy and tragedy in them, in the same way that the series does. Kel's writing is the best example of that, imho.

I understand the impulse to write them as deranged psychopaths. Scully does crazy stuff but only when she's under the influence of the Consortium. But Mulder does stuff that should get him kicked out of the FBI, if not committed to a mental institution, and on a fairly regular basis.

[estella-c.livejournal.com]

You're talking about Paper Hearts!

[wendelah1]

Man, I hate that episode. I couldn't even finish it the last time I tried, I got so angry at Mulder. That's Mulder at his absolute monomaniacal worst, but there are plenty of other episodes where his behavior is dangerous, illegal and/or crazy. "Deep Throat," "Demons," and "Fallen Angel" are three more that come readily to mind. The actual list is far longer.