TITLE:  Long Time Gone
AUTHOR: Michelle Kiefer 
E-MAIL ADDRESS: MSK1024@AOL.COM 
DISTRIBUTION: Archive if you like, just tell me where.
DISCLAIMER: Mulder and Scully belong to 1013, 
Chris Carter, and to the X-Files.
RATING: PG-13
CLASSIFICATION: Skinner in 155 words -  Scullyfic challenge 
COMMENTS:   Please visit my other stories at: 
http://members.aol.com/msrsmut/MichelleKiefer.htm 
Maintained by the wonderful Jennifer


He remembers a time before cynicism and world-weariness overcame him,
a time when he believed without question and trusted his government
was in the right.  Honor and truth were words to live by, so long ago in
that last summer before his eighteenth birthday.

He remembers walking barefoot across a lawn still wet with morning dew.
He remembers a girl with freckles and blonde hair that swept down to
her waist.  He remembers that her mouth tasted of ice cream and Tangee 
lipstick and promises of more.  If he concentrates very hard, he can smell
her Juicy Fruit breath and feel her ripe, young breasts cupped in the palm 
of his hand.

That boy, the one who worried about nothing beyond getting lucky on 
Saturday night, is dead.  He died in the stink of rotting vegetation in a
Viet Nam jungle, bleeding his life into the humid soil.  Someone else
was jolted back to life.