Comments:  This is a suite of eight drabbles (a
drabble is a story or vignette of exactly 100 words).
This is the second time that I'm using both this
structure and this title.  The first "Seven Famines
and a Feast," with somewhat different content, was a
Star Trek suite.  I liked the results so much that I
decided to convert it to an XF setting.

DISCLAIMER:  Mulder and Scully aren't mine.  I'm just
borrowing them.  TPTB can have 'em back when I'm done,
safe and sound.
 

Seven Famines and a Feast

-I-

The future seemed clear:  the three of them would be
together.  In a paroxysm of anticipation he gave up
his apartment, moved his things to her place.

Then the mirage disappeared.  His presence was a
danger to her and their child.  Three days after the
birth, he left them.

He was a fool to believe.

Each night he maroons himself in a new wasteland, the
barren expanse of pale cotton around him only
emphasizing his desolation.  He feels more empty than
the Sahara, drier than the Atacama, colder than the
Antarctic in winter.

Each day he starves a little more.
 

-II-

At breakfast in the local diner, he pours maple syrup
onto his blueberry pancakes.  Watching the syrup flow,
he flashes back to the glossy red sweep of her hair,
rich and heavy in his hands.  Feels it drip through
his fingers.  Remembers it sweet and warm against his
cheek as she presses her ripening body close to his.
Senses it spilling over his chest, his thighs, his
groin.

He doesn't remember putting down the syrup.  He sits
for a very long time, immobilized by memory.

No one sees his trembling hand as he pushes his plate
aside, the food untouched.
 

-III-

The habits of years die hard:  he still reaches
reflexively, a dozen times a day, for his cell phone.
A dozen more times he turns, looking for her, speaking
to her.  The words form automatically on his lips:
Scully, what do you think about . . . Scully, we'll need
to . . . Scully, let's go . . . Scully, Scully, Scully . . .
The phone's not there, she's not there, and the words die
on his lips, half-voiced.

Eventually he trains himself not to reach for his
phone, not to speak aloud.  But still he turns,
looking for her, turns and turns, a dozen times a day.
 

-IV-

At lunchtime, he pulls into a small town and steps
into the only restaurant there.  He orders the lasagna
special, then remembers it was what the two of them
had eaten, their last meal together.

Some masochistic impulse keeps him from changing his
order.  He stares at the meal for long minutes.  When
he finally eats, the food is as ashes on his tongue.
After a few bites, he signals for the check.

The waiter looks at his plate as he takes his cash.
He hears the unspoken question.

No, he's not hungry for this, but he's starving for
her.
 

-V-

The motel clerk accepts his payment and his
registration card, hands him a key.  As he walks to
his room he catches a faint floral scent.  He stops
dead in his tracks, his heart pounding.  It's Scully's
scent, he thinks.

His eyes devour the scene, willing her presence.  But
there is no sign of her, only an overgrown lilac bush
releasing its subtle perfume to the air.

He leans toward it as if towards Scully, inhaling the
memories real and imagined, hunger gnawing inside him.

He can almost taste her.

He draws one more slow breath and then moves on.
 

-VI-

In the evening, after he's choked down the greasy
delivered pizza, the silence becomes suffocating.  He
looks at the connecting door to the next unit and
remembers their times together on the road.

All those seedy motels in one-horse towns.  Nights of
bad food, lumpy beds, threadbare sheets, dripping
faucets and no Playboy Channel.  Knowing she was on
the other side of the unlocked door, hearing her
little sounds, made even the all-night religious
programming tolerable.

He masturbates, imagining her hands, her mouth, her
strong legs locked around his hips.  As he comes, the
loneliness rises up and smothers him.
 

-VII-

Late at night, desperate and afraid, he clutches a
pillow to his chest and cries.

In eight years he's managed to survive gunshots,
drowning, black oil, brain surgery, falling cows,
vampires, hallucinogenic spores, the smoking man, and
Krycek. He's survived alien abduction, vivisection,
and three months in a coffin.

He should have been dead twenty times over, and he's
still alive.  But he doesn't know if he can survive
this separation.

She is raising their son without him.  What he's
missing can never be recaptured.  He has never felt so
empty, or so inadequate.

He can bear anything except this.
 

-VIII-

For the first time in years he seeks sleep eagerly,
for it is there that he lives as he had once imagined.
In his dreams the bed is not a barren waste but a
paradise.

Scully's hair spills through his fingers as he inhales
her sweet perfume.  William slumbers in his crib,
peaceful and safe.  They're together, for all time.

In sleep he feels no restless hunger, no empty ache.

In sleep the feast is there for the eating, and he's
filled.

In sleep he can forget that, come morning, the famine
will return.

He wishes he could sleep forever.