From: clone347@aol.com Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 20:46:55 EDT Subject: xfc: NEW : bells over london --- by darkstar (1/1) Source: xfc Title : bells over london Author : darkstar Email : clone347@aol.com Archive : I would be honored, only please let me know where this baby's going so I can write from time to time. :) Category : MSR, romance, vignette Rating : G. This is a happy story. Spoilers : nothing I can think off, although if you're looking for general timeline, I picture this set somewhere post season four, when they're celebrating life after her cancer. Disclaimer : I'll put them back. Honest. Author's Notes : I can't believe I've gone and written fluff. Or at least, something that I consider fluff because it is definitely 180 degrees from my normal Muse. I wanted to provide a brief but detailed "snapshot" of one beautiful moment between Mulder and Scully, to look at them in a context that I had never placed them in before. I actually rather enjoyed the challenge summary : What are our best memories? The things we have done or the things we have dreamed? Is there really that much of a distinction? Scully reflects on a very special Christmas. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Bells Over London (1/1) by darkstar - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - I love the time and in between the calm inside me in the space where I can breathe I believe there is a distance I have wandered... -- Elsewhere Sarah Mclachlan I miss waking up, the dark velvet comforter wrapped under my chin, burying me softly and completely as the snow buries the gables of the hotel and the bricks on the windowsill : sensation of security, peace, of a little brown mouse tucked into a nest of cotton and wool. In the moments before the morning comes to consciousness, it was easy to believe that I am even smaller than the mouse, that the room and I had been shrunk down to figures in a crystal globe. Everything was complete-- the blue and cream striped wallpaper, the charcoal sketch of St. Paul's cathedral hanging by the mirror, the rebellious heap of chiffon at the foot of the bed where my dress slid off the hanger during the night-- only it is all in miniscule. Even the little Christmas tree was perfectly preserved, a flourish of greenry and red satin and gold beads balanced precariously in a teapot on the dresser : I lacked a proper container and personally never cared much for the beverage customs of the city in the first place. In that respect I remained an unabashed Yank. I miss the moments after waking up, when your eyes are not open but they are not shut, when they are something in between. Cracked down the middle or at the corners, allowing one, two, three stray beams of light to float into view colored gray, pale gold, watercolor blue. I knew it is Christmas morning just by the colors, but perhaps this recognition was attached more closely to the echoes of church bells in the distance. Bells over snow-- a distinctly London sound I will always hear in the back of my mind when I am alone in a room. The city becomes part of you that way, and you become part of it; when you leave it follows you, but only because you have forgotten something of yourself there. You've left it sitting in your room, beside the bed, like a piece of luggage you meticulously packed then forgot. I miss the view from the window, the first thing I saw when I open my eyes: a parade of rooftops, stiff and formal in their powdered snow wigs with the affectation suited to any English noble. A thousand furnished rooms, Eliot said. One could see where he got the inspiration. I used to linger in bed, watching the houses and imagining what each of those rooms would look like, who lived in them and what they were do at that moment. A child sleeping, a man polishing his shoes before work, a woman rolling over to wrap her arms around her husband and pretend she was cold so she could lie closer to his heart. By the time the week was over, I felt I knew them all quite personally. I had filled in the blanks of their lives and loves and all the petty inconsistencies in between. Of course I intended to write it all down when I left, perhaps in book, perhaps in a poem, but after I left the city the images faded. Magic has a pesky habit of disappearing on you once you try to take it back to reality, and I do admit I resented it. It left me with the feeling that they had all moved and no one had written to tell me of new addresses or phone numbers. In time I forgave them for it, but still wonder on occasion what they are doing, if someone else has picked them up and is creating new and different lives for them. What will they see that I missed? What will they forget that I remember? I miss the knock on the door, his face entering the room framed with a wreath of steam from two dark blue ceramic mugs. Hot chocolate for both of us, heavy on the marshmellows, because drinking coffee meant we were responsible adults and who wants to be responsible on Christmas morning? We wanted youth, chubby-faced, energetic; we wanted to tear down stairs in flannel pajamas and tear wrapping paper, little spaniels set on pile of bones. We wanted to be reckless. (Look at you,) I grinned. (Father Christmas himself.) (Father Christmas? I'm shocked. I'd think you'd have come up with a more non-gender term of holiday cheer. Didn't you hear? I'm in England now. They're turning me into a traditionalist. Heaven help tradition. Happy Kwanaza, then. Satisfied? Perfectly. Stop grinning and just give me the mug, Mister. Grumpy on Christmas, Agent Scully? Keep this up and I'm going to make you wait until after lunch for your present. Try it and your room will be ransacked by noon. Just spare the sock drawer. Not even Scrooge would come between a man and clean socks. I'm more ruthless than that. I'd go for your toothbrush. You wouldn't dare. Try me. I'd steal your fancy Prada heels. The ones you dropped two hundred for on Conduit Street. I'd throw them in the Thames. Then we'd be swimming on Christmas, wouldn't we? They do that in Hyde Park, you know. I'd be happy to hold your clothes while you took a little dip. You'd like that, wouldn't you. Icicle-Scully. You work the frozen look well. I'd make it a point to melt all over your sunflower seeds. Ok, ok, truce. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas.) Little conversations like that seemed to last for hours but the day passed within a space of five minutes. In looking back I recognize the incongruency : I tried to stretch the time, pull and tug at each minute until it took forever, but time is like a rubber band. You can only stretch it so much before it snaps and flies across the room. You can't even see where it has gone, it moves that fast. In retrospect, I miss it all. Even the complications, the lack of heat in the floorboards, the overpriced cab fares, the soot that clung to the snow in the downtown streets, the pretensions of the very wealthy and the very British. Even the sadness that came when I left the room for the final time, leaving the velvet bed and the striped wallpaper to the next magic-seeker. Even the goodbyes to the clerk at the front desk and the old doorman who always insisted on carrying my parcels for me even if they weren't heavy. But if in the end I had to measure it all up, and weight it all out, my one regret would be the fact that I can never go back. You can't go back to a place you've never been. You can't remember things that haven't happened yet. You see them, for a while-- like the people in Eliot's furnished rooms, you see every detail, ever color-- but inevitably they disappear in the clamor of reality. One by one they fall, clogged up in traffic jams, wandering lost down streets without snow, knocking in futility at churches where no bells ring, not even on Christmas. Like fairies, they die the moment they are not believed. They fade, they shimmer and vanish. But sometimes, just sometimes, you can bring them back by clapping. Sometimes, when I sit alone in a room, when I catch him looking at me out of the corner of my eye, the back of my mind tingles with the echoes of the bells they say I have never heard. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - the end. that was dangerously fun. The Muse and I would love to hear your opinion of our trip to the lighter side. Shall we continue with the foofiness? Cease and desist? Don't worry, my angst muse is still alive and well...just biding her time ::evil grin:: Any questions, comments, or Mulder clones are welcome at clone347@aol.com where they will be worshipped daily with love and incense. Especially the Mulder clones, although I'll take Krycek in a pinch. :) thanX for reading darkstar