Title: .waiting.to.drown.
Author: Penelopody and august
Email: penelopody@hotmail.com / appelsini@hotmail.com
Codes: M/S, S, A.
Archive: With thanks.
Spoilers: Everything to Requiem. Mulder is taken and returned here, although season eight has little reference.
And the man who sat before her was all kinds of a surprise. She watched his hands touch the table, the menu, the glass and, finally, her. The man who sat before her was all blonde hair blue eyes, looked worlds apart from all the other men (man) who used to make her sigh.
The man who sat before her called her Dana, called her often, called her bluff. And there were suddenly dinners to go to, and phone calls she could ignore. She stopped reaching for her badge, checking for her gun. She found that she could be more than the girl with the sad, sad eyes. She found that, in time, she could almost forget.
"She was two days old when she died, Mulder."
"Yeah. I'm, I wish-"
"-you weren't. I mean, you don't get to. "
.i.would.wrap.you.up.
The tinny baby screams were pitched to make her breasts leak. She folded her jacket across her chest and again (only) was horrified at her body's small betrayal. She walked through the glass doors without buying anything.
"Are you alright ma'am?"
"Yes. Yes."
Once again, with feel-.
.they're.in.a.movie.they.can.alter.anything
"I'm not confident we can stop this, Mulder."
"What do you mean?"
"I don't think-"
"You have to."
There are other worlds, she thought, seven years too late, after every character had recited someone else's line. She dreamed of leaving. Because she knew that one day they'd reach the final act. Because she was ready and that wasn't enough.
.this.is.the.end.
A knock at the door. She stands, to walk over. Another knock. She is puzzled at the impatience. By the time she reaches the door, it has been opened. Mulder stands, cradling his shoulder. She blinks, long, thinking she was stupid for believing she would never have to explain a broken door to her super again.
"Come on, we have to go," he says.
"What are you doing here?" She stands, immovable.
"I'm serious, there's no time. Pack some stuff, let's go."
She hasn't seen him in three years. And there is another man now, all blonde hair-blue eyes, who uses his keys to open her door.
She is not sure how she ever thought it could be over.
Her life was about teaching and parties and careful sex with a man who loved her enough to unquestioningly dislike the Mulder she speaks of, so rarely. The Mulder she left, once, in her mind, and twice, when she broke the rental on her apartment, threw out her clothes and left the FBI. The Mulder who stands now, in her living room, talking about the apocalypse, and aliens and things that make the bottom of her stomach turn.
"You have to tell me what's happening, Mulder. I'm just not going to follow you. I'm not. It's not like that."
To herself: anymore.
.and.all.we.know.of.hell.
She had imagined this moment many times, had believed it would happen, had believed it was true. Had imagined the smell of the world burning. Had heard him say, a thousand times in dreams, "it's started."
And then, maybe, stupidly, she had forgotten. Had let herself forget, although that's not entirely true because sometimes she still wakes from dreams of ice.
.it.is.a.tale.
Places (faces) that used to matter, that ought to matter, came to mean nothing. She wanted to graph it neatly and shade the area under the line as it expanded. She is a scientist. So she sat at a bus station beside a woman with too many children. She didn't move until they did, in a great long caterpillar line.
"You like kids?"
"Yes. Yeah."
"Heh. You want one a' these then?"
So she proved something.
Across the street a man pressed her shoulder. "The world is ending." She shook him away. The world is ever ending.
.sometimes.easier.not.to.believe.
"Pack your things." he says, feet moving before they know where to go. "Come on, Scully, this is it. They're harvesting, it's started. We have to go." If there were a time to protest at his control, his orders, it is not now. It has never been now, she thinks, throwing sweaters and shoes into bags, taking them out, and then putting them back again.
The world is ending and Mulder is the messenger. He's half crazy, she's always known it, although there are no tea and oranges that come all the way from China.
And if it weren't her life it would be so monumentally funny that she might never be able to stop laughing.
.tonight's.the.night.
On the day she left Washington, left Mulder, left it all, she woke up to the sound of her neighbor's dogs fighting. She lay in bed and watched Oprah where Dr Phil was saying to the stripper: "you've gotta find a job where you keep your clothes on." She listened to a man on the radio sing, "look how they shine for you."
If she had never gone to med school, if she had never joined the FBI, there would never be dead children and implants and neck scars. Take away, one piece after the other, until you're just breathing bones.
Here comes your wake-up call.
.the.ugly.truth.makes.every.one.of.us.a.liar.
Her friend Kathryn told her that she "had an abusive husband, too". Kathryn told her in the corner of a room at a party, while bad 80s rock played on the sound system. Kathryn laid a hand on her arm, and waited for her to speak.
"It wasn't, it was never like that," she said, simply, not expecting anyone to understand, not really sure she understood or just substituted memories for understanding.
"Right." Kathryn replied, smiling.
It wasn't denial, she knew, because Mulder left, and the child died. And when he came back, he kissed her on the lips and she couldn't feel the chill blains.
.everything.old.
The man with the blondehairblueeyes smoked, sometimes, and tossed the butts from her balcony. He kept her apprised of his schedule. Too soon he spoke with certainty. Far too soon, but she nodded almost gratefully. Nothing was the same.
"Don't be sad."
"I'm not."
"Hush. It'll all be fine. I'm glad you told me."
He was someone's son, too.
Later he said, "So we can never-"
"-I'm sorry."
"You could have told me sooner, Dana."
"I know."
There was no accusation in the 'we'. For days she thought he would leave. She wished he could leave. There was inertia in him, in her, in this too long encounter. But there were things that made blindness valuable. And she never told him.
.if.I'm.not.back.again.this.time.tomorrow.
Take a deep breath and call your mother, she said as she did.
"Dana-" It was the voice of a woman who expected to lose more than she had, a woman who had already lost too much. She didn't ask 'where are you?' though it was felt in every syllable.
This was the normal life, a life in the sun, so she told her.
"You should really come and visit me sometime, mom."
"Oh Dana, sweetheart, of course I will."
She was frightened, more frightened than she should be, but she spoke of the blonde man who gave her teaching tips without patronizing and the apartment and the near children she worked with and in the end she was perhaps smiling.
Take a deep breath and wait, she said as she did.
.the.view.from.up.there.
She finds her passport, swallows another protest. The saliva is thick in the back of her throat. And she hates that for this moment she can be glad that both of the dead echoes of her are safely under the ground.
There are practical things, like tampons and tinned food and whether an insane Oxford graduate will be of any use now that there is no conspiracy, now that it is all just 'the end'.
She won't learn to scream again. And it's not a victory.
.found.her.asleep.
"You didn't… Dana… she wasn't baptized?"
"No, mom." Who knew what she believed at that time, but it had nothing to do with water.
"Oh. Did you name her?"
"No." Though she had. Of course she had.
She sits on her sofa, fingers gripping the vinyl handle of her bag. Mulder crouches in front of her, coaxing. "Scully, it's already started. In a few hours, we're not going to have power, we're not going to get out of the city."
"Why are you here?", she repeats.
"I'll explain on the way. Come, on."
Her fingers catch his thumb.
"I'm not going to go with you," she says, suddenly, holding his face, making his eyes look at hers. "I've learned when to stop."
.and.maybe.you're.gonna.be.the.one.who.saves.me.
For a second she thinks he may leave. It's a little something she used to keep with her, she used to turn over in her mind at night, the fact that there was someone who would literally go to the ends of the earth to find her.
She doesn't want him to go but then, she doesn't want to spend the rest of her life with him, in a room, like the living hiding under bodies of the dead.
And he sits down on the sofa. She looks at him and he shrugs. She shrugs. They sit together on the sofa. She still grips the vinyl handle of her bad. She wonders why she packed no night clothes.
They sit, in silence.
"I'm not leaving without you, Scully." he says, finally.
"This wasn't supposed to happen anymore," she replies, quietly.
.you.remember.what.I.remember.
Once, years ago, Mulder had her up against the shower wall, hand on her neck, hand on her hand. The water had run cold, had chilled her and he struggled to keep balance as he pushed her against the tiles. She was too short, and his knees popped, and her face was patterned with the lines of the tile.
"I love you," he whispered, running his hands along the water on her shoulder. She had been silent as she watched them in the mirror.
.days.before.you.came.
She couldn't pin down how she missed him when she left. She chose to have no language for it. And she felt she had no right to it. She had a skeleton language for her baby, a tiny broken skeleton of incomplete sentences, and that was far, far too much.
Somedays she thought she'd seen her way through the maze with him, her way through the maze to a blue sky.
the city will burn the city will drown the city will not remember or tell again. andy warhol designed the velvet underground's debut album cover with banana that peeled, yellow to pink. forty years later, our skin would be peeled back with less glee, and without the billboard charts to announce it was "disappointingly received".
.no.longer.afraid.of.the.dark.
Presently, the power shuts off. So this is the way the world ends, with coffee spoons and t.s. eliot stringing up his family and breaking down her door for food. There is no screaming, no sirens, and she lives in the city with continual power shortages, so it could be anything. Except this time, it's not. This time, it's not.
"Where could we go?" She asks hesitantly, of the darkness.
"The gunmen. Have a place ready."
"The gunmen," she sighs, with the memory.
"Scully, I know, I know that things between us, I mean, it's been years. And I thought, I always thought you would, I mean-"
"-Mulder."
"If I'm wrong, Scully, then I'll, but I'm not wrong. But we have to go now. Please."
...In the room where women come and go...
.a.pocket.of.change.and.you.on.my.mind.
She has tiny scars on her hands from when she used to be a smoker. She's no longer afraid of flying, but she won't own a cell phone ever again.
She has to close her eyes because seven years of Mulder weighs more than three years without. Even if she wasn't a scientist, she would know that.
The man with the blondehairblueeyes gave her a ring and understood when she wouldn't wear it, but it was Mulder who untied her hands over and over.
.just.to.see.if.you.can.
"Let's just go."
She follows Mulder, like so many times before. Like the past three years never happened, like the blondehairblueeye-
"Oh."
"What?" Mulder turns, sharply.
"I just-"
"He's dead, Scully. He's, they're already gone."
.anywhere.but.here.
"What do you want to do?" He asks, fingers tapping impatiently on the steering wheel.
"Just drive." She turns and watches the road being captured by the headlights, and then fading away.
Title: .waiting.to.drown.