Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1998 21:22:05 -0400 From: SummerQ Subject: NEW: ...In My Life (1/1) SummerQ TITLE: ...In My Life AUTHOR: SummerQ EMAIL ADDRESS: peace56@hotmail.com DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT: Gossamer yes, anyplace else please ask first. SPOILER WARNING: The Duane Barry trilogy. Tiny ones for Chinga. There are vague U.S. Season 5 spoilers, and unless you are familiar with the events in 'The End', the story might be a bit confusing. RATING: PG-13 (fairly mild profanity, and discussion of a serious, though not sexual, topic). CONTENT WARNING: None. CLASSIFICATION: V, A, UST but not overt MSR. Safe for non-squeamish NoRoMos. SUMMARY: Mulder reflects on the women in his life, and how they've changed it. Assumptions are made about his early childhood. DISCLAIMER: I do not own Mulder, Scully, the X-Files, or any entity related thereof. This is not for profit. Any elements recognized as being from the X-Files belong to the Fox Network, Chris Carter, and 1013. My greatest thanks go to Shell for being a *wonderful* editor . I would love, cosset, and generally cuddle feedback. peace56@hotmail.com ********************* ....In My Life by SummerQ I never liked the abuse of alcohol or drugs. Never liked that feeling of losing control. Control is an important thing when you're living with someone who's depressed. You learn to not say anything -- sometimes not even feel anything -- that would upset them because if they go over the edge, if they turn on that oven, pick up that knife or gun, it will be your fault. Only now am I tempted to just stop the first dealer I see on the street and buy whatever he's got. Work was my mind-altering substance of choice -- my alcohol, my tranquilizer. It helped me not to care about people. What do you do when even your work is gone? They are all taken and I never get them back, not really. My sister through simple kidnapping and my mother through the drugs they gave her to help her with her depression. Depression caused by raging against an immutable barrier -- the implacable self-righteousness of a group who were not, could never have been, parents. Long after her hope of finding Samantha was gone, the guilt of failing to safeguard her lingered. By the time she had regained aspects of herself, I too was gone. I was playing basketball. I was studying psychology. I was applying to Oxford. I had been fixing my own meals for years. I had been putting the pen into her tranquilized fingers to sign my straight A report cards for years. I wasn't doing it all for her any longer. I was doing it for me, and maybe for one or two of my memories. I think that for what's happened in my life, I'm pretty damn sane. But as I watch my world collapsing around me I think that it's pretty natural to want to go insane. And then I remember my mother. I remember her lying in bed, the darkness of her room blurred by bright spring sunshine that had leaked past the edges of shades and heavy curtains meant to keep out all light. The wrinkles permanently creased in the nightgown she had worn for days. The eventual sickening smell of untouched cereal. I had been away for almost a week at the state basketball competitions, and she didn't care if the room smelled like sour milk. I don't want that type of madness. I don't want to spend years of my life staring into space remembering. No, I really just want to begin a descent into sweet oblivion. To believe that Samantha is back, to regress to a twelve year old again, to not watch my partnership slowly deteriorate. To leave the saving of the world up to someone else. But right now, I am tired. I am tired of watching those around me dead or dying. I am exhausted by constantly fighting and not even knowing what it is that I'm trying to defeat. Weary of watching every event with suspicion. Worn down by straining to discern pieces and details that might show that it was intricately planned to maneuver me towards some elusive goal. Hell, I'm even tired of my own egocentrism. And so I turn to the one escape that's left to me -- running. Now I know all the obvious metaphors: running from relationships, running from problems, running from loss. Running from myself. That last is not strictly accurate. Running *after* myself maybe? Shit. Listen to me. 'Not strictly accurate'? What the hell kind of PC, technical sentence is that? I can't even bring myself to say the word 'truth' anymore. And so I run, and my feet slam against the asphalt sending twinges up my leg. My lungs gulp in the thick summer air as if it was hot milk, flavored with exhaust instead of vanilla, meant to soothe away bad feelings and get me ready for bedtime. The smoky aftertaste of twilight barbecue lingers on the back of my tongue long after I pass the occasional balcony or apartment patio that it comes from. I feel the sweat trickle down my sides, and my back until it seems that I'm running through water. And as always happens, my mind clears. I can feel each muscle in my foot push off from the ground as soon as it hits it. I can feel my chest expanding to take in oxygen. My mouth is thick and dry, my skin slick. It is concentrating on the physical that lets my mind work on the worries that I'm avoiding most without interference from my brain -- or my heart. And so I contemplate Scully. My sister, my mother, my work and now her. My partner, my confidante, my best friend, my...something. Duane Barry didn't hurt as much as this does. Then there was someone else blame, to hurt, to beat up in my mind. Dragging him back from the grave, shaking him until his screwed up brain rattled, breaking his nose so that his blood spattered all over me. Blood on my face, on my hands, covering my shirt. Except the cross. The cross was always untouched. That was my biggest mistake. In my mind, I want to see Scully as pure. Ours is a Romantic Relationship. Not one of those supermarket types where the women on the cover are in uncomfortable positions, with eye shadow up to their eyebrows, but something out of the Days of Yore; unsullied by anything but my hand on her back. Of course, this *is* from a guy who regularly watches "Alien Probe". Hey Mulder, Dr. Oxford trained psychologist, can we say "Madonna/Whore" syndrome? I knew we could. So we have a Romantic Relationship. I wore her colors into the battle to save her. None of the stories ever said what to do when the war is finally lost and she wants those colors back. And I want to go on saving her. I want it so badly that I ache with it. I know that she is my equal. And in so many ways my better. Yet there has to be some way I can protect her. Maybe I couldn't save Samantha from whoever took her. Maybe I couldn't make myself more important to my mother than her drugs, but by God I am *not* going to screw up again. Scully will be safe. The five years she spent working on the X-Files will *not* be wasted. And because she is all I have left, I wrap her in cotton wool and tissue paper. And because she does not want cotton wool and tissue paper, she fights it. It and me. The damnedest thing is that I'm doing it to myself. I watch Scully. I watch her when she doesn't know I'm there, and I watch us when we're together. I stand back outside myself and watch us talking to each other. I know what I'm going to say and I know how she's going to react. And I can't stop myself from saying it. I am going back to my apartment, eyes on the street in front of me. I automatically move aside to let someone going the other way pass. "Mulder?" I know that voice, though it's impossible to remember if it has been featured more prominently in my dreams or my nightmares. It can be a wire thin whip or sound as if it was wet satin. I stop, and the rhythm of my breathing is broken. I take in air through shredded gasps and brace my palms on my knees. My legs tremble and I do not acknowledge her until I can be certain I will not straighten only to fall. "Scully." She looks at me. "I was going to wait at your apartment, but I saw that your car was still there so I decided to take a walk." As my gaze trails upwards, our eyes meet with a click that is almost audible -- like that of marbles hitting. And I know. "Walk with me Scully?" She comes to me and we walk, side by side. I start to reach towards the small of her back, to guide her, but I do not. Our arms brush almost casually, and there is an awkward fumbling of fingers. We end palm to palm, our hands intertwined. Her warm dry fingers lightly rub the beads of sweat on the back of my hand into the skin. And I know. I will not lose this. *********************