From: XScout [xscout3@hotmail.com]
Sent:
Thursday, July 13, 2000 8:01 PM
To: XFC; Mysterious&Suspicious;
MTA; EMXC
Subject: [MTA_Stories] New: Why the Caged Bird Sings 1 of 1
by XScout
Title: Why the Caged Bird Sings
Author:
XScout
Classification: VA
Rating: G
Spoilers: End Game, Paper Hearts,
Closure
Keywords: None
Summary: Is false hope better than no hope at all?
Disclaimer: Fox Mulder belongs to Dana Scully as
she belongs to him and
Samatha Mulder belongs to Heaven. I suppose Chris
Carter also gets a
percentage as well as 1013 and Fox. They're not mine but
I'll do with them what
I please, as long as I don't profit from it. Profiting
from other people's misery
(mainly Mulder's) would be unethical.
Author's Notes: Well, I have to break this writer's
block sometime and now is as
good a time as any. Stuck in the middle of
several different stories, one with a
deadline, mixed in with work and
relationships, and you get one big brick wall.
Hopefully this story will be
the sledgehammer. Feedback is appreciated and
always responded to. XScout@hotmail.com
**********************
Why the Caged Bird Sings
**********************
Twenty-seven years is a long time to think about
something. To obsess about something every single day for 9855 days has a
lasting effect on a person. You always have it in the back of your mind, no
matter where you are or what you're doing. It's in your dreams, your nightmares,
and your delusions. It becomes a part of you. Eventually it becomes so
intertwined with your own being that to be without it would be the same as
losing one of your senses.
I thought that the end of my search for my sister
would bring me happiness, that finally knowing the answer to the greatest
mystery of my life would bring me some peace. I know now that I was wrong.
My quest for the truth behind my sister's abduction
has been a driving force in my life for so long that the idea of living without
it hovering over me is daunting. I had something to work towards, something to
drive me. Now it is gone and I have lost all direction in my life. No, that is
not true. I still have Scully, and she remains my compass as always. But my map
is gone, and with it my hope.
Twenty-seven years of built up hopes; when those
come crashing down, it is a shattering revelation. Despite all the doubts along
the way, put there by counselors, parents, fellow agents, and even murderers, I
have still maintained the hope that Samantha was still alive. I held onto that
hope, feeding it with all the tidbits of information I had gathered over the
years until it had grown into a safety blanket that I could wrap around myself
in times of despair. The night can chill you to the bone without a blanket and
that is what the truth does.
The truth is out there. My motto. My downfall. I
remember, during the Roche case, Addie Sparks' father saying that not knowing
was better. I didn't agree with him then, but I do now. To discover that you
have been searching for ghost for more
than half your life is not a
comforting realization. My sister is dead, having been taken to the stars over
twenty years ago by a force I cannot comprehend in order to save her from a fate
worse than death. Surrounded by confusion and disbelief, it is
almost
impossible for me to come to terms with this. Why would the Bounty Hunter tell
me that my sister is alive? Did the Consortium really believe that she was
alive, that They considered her lost somewhere? I have so many questions and
only one
answer - Samantha is dead.
I told Scully that I was free. What I didn't
realize was the price that came with freedom. I was free from the obligation and
guilt that had been plaguing me for so long, but was the truth better than
absolution? No. Because as long as I had the hope that my sister was alive, I
had purpose. I had the faith that all that my quest had cost Scully, our
families, and me was worth it. But now it was all for naught. I can comfort
myself with the knowledge that the existence of extra-terrestrials has been a
worthy discovery and that the defeat of the Consortium was also an important
pursuit. However, they were all reached because of the simple wish to find my
sister.
I've heard the question asked, "Why does the caged
bird sing?" I answer that it is precisely because the of the fact that the bird
is in the cage. Within its confines, the bird does not know what is outside, the
dangers and hardships that await it in freedom. It sings because it has hope. I
am that bird and the cage was my quest. I am free now and I can no longer sing.
I know why the caged bird sings. It is because the
truth is too painful and ignorance can be a savior.
*******
End
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