Don't kid yourself, Jimmy; if a cow ever got the chance, he'd eat you and everyone you cared about.

[threeguesses]

Stolen from lowriseflare, who got it from fated_addiction:

Give me a pairing (or character, or the name of a show) and a prompt (a word, a phrase, a situation, an emotion, a few lines from a song or, hell, even an entire song) and I will do my best to write you a snippet based on your request.

Not sure how well this is going to work, considering this is a fic journal read by very few people, but TOO BAD, I have three seconds of free time and the newfound ability to write only in 200 word chunks. Come at me.

Comments

[wendelah1]

Dana Scully, faith

[threeguesses.livejournal.com]

Scully believes in god intermittently.

When she’s eight years old and Mel filches one of Bill’s porn mags, spreads it out on the kitchen table and makes Dana look—she believes then, badly. She hides in the downstairs bathroom, nose mashed up against the smelly guest soap she isn’t allowed to touch, and prays so hard she gives herself a headache. She spends all week worrying about hell—what it’s going to look like, if the dark of her closet is any comparison—but at Confession the priest seems bemused. He only makes her say three Hail Mary’s.

She believes a little easier then.



By the time med school rolls around, she doesn’t believe in much. Or, more specifically, her beliefs are restricted; secular. The central nervous system and endocrinology. Biomechanics.

Daniel Waterson.

(One night, when his wife and daughter are away visiting family, he takes her home with him. All the times before have been quick – in his office, against the bookshelf or in his chair, always between classes. Dana is forever sneaking into gross anatomy late, a mess of sticky fingers and aching thighs, her knees still shaking.

Now though, now they have time. He drags her through the front hall and up the stairs (Dana is left with only the briefest impressions of plush carpet and painted spindles), and dumps her on the bed. The bedspread is paisley. She can smell Mrs. Waterston’s perfume on the pillows the entire time he is going down on her.

Afterwards, he falls asleep almost immediately. Dana pads through the dark house on bare feet, peeking into rooms. There is peanut butter in the fridge and the shoes are lined up neatly in the closet. Mrs. Waterston uses ivory soap and Dana’s brand of tampons. When Dana leaves at five a.m., buttoning up her jeans and slipping out the door, she borrows one for the road.

She does not feel guilty.)

When she confesses that sin, nearly twenty years later, she’s told to think about what she’s done and pray to the Stations of the Cross until she thinks it’s been enough.

Mulder’s gone missing and she’s three months pregnant. It’s never enough.

And God remembered Rachel, and opened her womb.



After William, she doesn’t believe in anything.

After Mulder comes back from the dead, she believes so bright and hard it’s practically blasphemous (Mulder’s just a man; you shall have no other gods before me).

And after it’s all over—an unremarkable house, an unremarkable job—she believes quietly, only on Sundays and then just during Easter, Christmastime. Lapsed, Father McCue would say.

Scully likes to think she’s happy then.



December 22nd, 2012 dawns sunny and cold. Mulder has a shotgun and water purification tablets; around her neck, overtop of the cross, Scully has a pouch and two cyanide pills. She says the Our Father, and when she gets to the end—forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us—she tries to mean it. She does.

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

Somehow, despite being composed mainly of elements I've never been able to reconcile (Scully's faith, Daniel Waterston, everything post The Truth) this snippetfic you've written is so. good.

I especially love the "until she thinks it's been enough / it's never enough" bit, and After Mulder comes back from the dead, she believes so bright and hard it’s practically blasphemous, and the entire last section. Guh, especially the entire last section, which just took this prompt to a whole new level of chilling and awesome and, just, Scullyness.

Hopefully I haven't missed the train on this one, because if there's even a tiny chance a prompt of mine will get a response as wonderful as this one, I've got to try suggesting something. Okay, um:

Mulder:

Blindness or too much brightness can be
the same thing

Scully:

Once again he asks if I’m ready for more
though I’m old enough to know
this is the only life I have

Either:

I keep trying to believe in pain
because pain, so easily mystified, holds true


I've given three, simply because poetry prompts are trickier to fill than word prompts, so it seems only fair you get to choose one that works for you. All poetry snippets by Susan Musgrave.

Maybe I'm being pushy here, but um...any chance you want to name this snippetfic of yours? I think it's substantial enough to merit a name, and that way I'd have something to think of it by in my head, is all. *is hopeful*

[threeguesses.livejournal.com]

Wow, thank you! Those are basically my least favourite parts of the series too, but for some reason I end up writing about them more often than not. Perhaps because I'm trying to reconcile it in my head? Who knows.

As for what this would be called--hmm. I'll probably post and name it properly eventually, but in the meantime; And the earth was formless and void.

Finally, as for the prompts: will have to consider. No promises, but hopefully you'll get a snippet of something.