From: Denise Date: 13 Nov 2001 02:36:09 -0800 Subject: [all-xf] New: Life in the Inland Sea, 1/1 Source: atxc *Author: Jemirah (Denise) *Feedback: jemirah@hotmail.com *Spoilers: Vague ones for late season 1/early season 2. *Rating: R? *Category: Angst, what else? *Summary: 'The Erlenmeyer Flask' is dated May 8-23, '94 and 'Little Green Men' is dated July 7. What do you suppose Mulder went through during that time? *Disclaimer: I really wish I could make some money off of writing, 'cause I'm totally broke. *Archive: You want it, you got it, just please let me know! *Author's Note: Let's hear it for past seasons! *Special Thanks: To Ms. AM for reading and telling me she liked it; to XochiLuvr for beta'ing and telling me this 'kicked ass'. *Dedication: To Kate for making deals with me. Luv ya, sweety. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Life in the Inland Sea ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Through the window, he can see the under-side of a gutter. There are small gaps where the corrugated surface of the roof meets the gutter and in these gaps, birds have nested. He watches the little, plain, brown birds dart back and forth and peep out of their hidey-holes and wonders what it means that he knows the rate at which light travels to the earth from the sun but can't name the variety of bird he is watching. Sometimes a good education and an eidetic memory aren't all they're cracked up to be, he thinks. The birds hop up on the edge of the gutter and chatter noisily for a moment before flying away as if they have a particular destination and purpose in mind. He stares a few more minutes, hoping for their return. When it becomes obvious that he's alone again, his gaze falls away from the window and lands on his desk. It is dark in the room compared to the bright summer day outside the window and it takes his eyes a moment to adjust. While he waits, he wonders at the way his world looks small and contained within the small area he can't focus on. Finally his eyes pick out something bright against the blackness, which turns out to be his arm lying on the desk. His shirt sleeves are pushed up to his elbow and his skin seems terribly pale. He wonders when last that skin knew sunlight and warmth. His pulse twinges weakly in his wrist, then speeds up as he becomes aware of his respiration and heartbeat. The vein bulges, too blue against the paleness. He wonders what keeps him breathing, why he doesn't just cease to be. These blue tethers go nowhere, tie him to nothing. There seems no purpose to his life, where once it seemed so meaningful and driven. He sighs at his morose thoughts and the action seems to use more energy than he has lying around. There is a paper under his hand, this side blank except for the impression the full other-side has left. He runs his fingers over the backward swirls, loops and dots and wishes for the dark from before his eyes adjusted. A noise draws his attention back to the window, burning with sunlight. One of the birds has returned, but it seems sluggish and slow without its mate. ~~~~~ He watches his hands' reflection in the mirror as they tie the drawstrings on his pajamas automatically and wonders when his fingers became so long and square. And how did they learn to tie a bow with no input from his conscious mind? And what shall he do with his hands now that he's become so aware of them? There must be hundreds-- thousands of tasks they can process on their own that he could observe from a distance. He wants to see them as someone else would and wishes for mirrors everywhere to enable this. Like turning the doorknob ('why close the bathroom door when he's home alone?', a small voice in his head asks) and reaching for the light switch, like that.... Since he can't see the mirror anymore, he ambles into his room and flops onto his bed. He wants to curl in upon himself and in fact tries it for a few minutes, but it requires too much effort, so he stretches his long body out in search of comfort. It is not dark in his bedroom, since the sun has just begun to set, but he knows it won't be long. He can watch the shadows slither and grow their way across his ceiling and walls or he can close his eyes to it and be surprised by the progress they've made when he opens them again. This idea appeals to him; he hopes that motionlessness and closed eyes will lead to sleep. ~~~~~ Down, down, his thoughts go down until he knows little conscious thought. He is standing in a train station, but he's not waiting for a train. He's waiting for someone on the train, he realizes as it rumbles heavily into place. The door slides slowly open and people spill out by the hundreds of thousands. It doesn't occur to him to wonder how that many people could have fit in the small tube of the train because the person he's waiting for is walking toward him, last to step off the train. Diana is as sure of herself as she's always been and he thinks again that that's too much. She puts what would seem like a smile on anyone else on her face, but it seems like a pat on her back from herself to herself since it is Diana, after all and then she's speaking to him. He doesn't hear what she's saying since he can't remember what her voice sounds like, but he answers her as if he did, following her through the train station. No, he didn't wait long; yes, he reserved her a room at the hotel; yes he has some leads on an apartment for her; yes, he has an appointment to see A.D. Skinner in the morning. Dimly he wonders why he needs to see Skinner and why he's talking to Diana about it, but the information is supplied for him. His dream-self knows that she's coming back to D.C. to be his partner again and the way he feels about her and her departure years ago is old history. He stops behind her and thinks that this is crazy. He doesn't want to work with Diana again. He wants Scully or no one--Scully or NOTHING. This isn't right. He doesn't want this. A sense of panic rises from his gut and he feels it catch in his throat for a moment. This must be a nightmare, he realizes. He can end it if he tries hard enough, he just has to figure out how. He closes his dream-eyes and tries to forget his surroundings as he concentrates and focuses. Finally the fear makes its way out in the form of a scream which reverberates through the train station for what seems like years. When he wakes, he forces himself to lie there, panting and sweating and staring at his now-dark ceiling until he's calm. ~~~~~ Back at the desk in the dark-despite-the-window-room, he finds a deck of cards. Apparently they've been left behind by some other poor schmuck toiling away in the oblivion of wiretap obscurity. The cards have the Peanuts characters on the fronts, a dancing Charlie Brown on the backs and are in order by suit, all the backs turned the same direction. A smile finds his face for a short moment as he sympathizes with the boredom that the previous occupant of his chair must have fallen victim to. Making sure to keep the dancing Charlie Browns the same direction, he shuffles the cards a few times. It is something to occupy his hands with, which is almost as important as something to occupy his mind with, but it again makes him very aware of them. His fingers seem to have strange angles and curves that he's never noticed before, along with dry, creased skin. He idly thinks that this fascination with something he's looked at every day of his life must be a symptom of some mental disturbance but dismisses the thought, seeing it as a shortcut to said mental disturbance. He looks to the window, hoping yesterday's birds will be there, chattering and hopping about to distract him from himself. Instead he finds the single bird, still alone. It sits motionless in almost the exact spot it was in the last time he saw it, its feathers rustling slightly in the breeze. It blinks at him just as he starts to wonder if maybe it's died perched there. The action makes him feel as if he's intruding on some great, private sorrow. He looks back down at the desk again. He brings his arm back up to lie on it, hoping to be able to see his pulse again. While he can still see the long blues and deeper blues of his veins and arteries, the twitch he watched yesterday isn't visible today. He moves his arm about, hoping to find the position that enabled him to see it before, but with no luck. He wonders if maybe his life isn't merely a delusion, a figment of someone's imagination-- maybe the God he doesn't want to believe in--and he's the butt of some great cosmic joke. A consciousness looking for evidence of a life that doesn't exist. ~~~~~ His phones never ring, no one knocks on his door, no one speaks to him in the halls at work. Other than giving updates to his superior on his 'information-gathering' progress, he's spoken to no one in days. He listens to the conversations he's eavesdropping on in only the most haphazard fashion and vaguely hopes that someone is double-checking the tapes he records every day. Lying in bed with the blankets drawn up over his head, he feels like he's floating. He's doing the dead-man float in the middle of his own personal sea while all around him the land is dry and teeming with people who either don't see him or are ignoring his pleas for help. This is his life, he thinks in a moment of pure, blinding terror /clarity. (The terror is all that's clear and real to him anymore.) This is what he's destined for: endlessly drifting in a sea he can't swim in. Part of him knows that he only feels this way because the hot breaths he's exhaling are bouncing off the blanket and hitting him in the face. Another part of him knows that he'll be in exactly the same place five--ten--fifteen years down the road. This is what keeps him frozen in place, terrified. Life in the inland sea. ~~~~~ He's flying over the clouds, great rosy, wispy clouds that he can half see through. They skip under him at an astonishing rate, tumbling and tossing, turbulent in their solemn journey. He watches as for a while, enjoying the beauty of it. After all, it's not every day that one gets to fly above the clouds. He has to take advantage of this, make sure it's something he remembers forever. His hair is moving against his forehead and the sun is reflecting pink and gold and orange on the pure, white clouds as it sets. He seems to be caught in a perpetual sunset, he thinks prematurely just as the sky goes cold and glassy with grays and blues. The wind picks up and he's hurtling through space, freezing cold and numb. His hair is plastered to his forehead, hanging in his eyes, so he moves to push it away, only to find that it's soaking wet. He wonders how it got wet; there can't be rain up here above the clouds. He looks down at them, through them, to see people where there shouldn't be any. The air is so thick and he feels like he can't move and suddenly he realizes. He's not looking down at clouds, he's looking up at waves of water passing over him. Thick, glassy, greasy water, clotted with seaweed. He wakes covered in sweat again and tries to convince himself that people will speak to him, he's just got to make some kind of effort. His colleagues, his superiors, his parents even will speak to him if he gives them the chance, this much he knows. And Scully.... Yes, that's it. He'll talk to Scully. She'll bring him back to reality, help him to focus. She always did before.... The phone rings and rings and rings, finally giving way to the click and static of an answering machine. The bottom drops out of his world as he realizes how alone he is. He should've known; it was sheer insanity to think there was any comfort out there for him. ~~~~~ He remembers his mother sitting at the kitchen table, afternoon sunlight lapping like an ocean wave at the window behind her. Her dark hair shone like gold and the birds trilled and sang like everything was normal, like his mother wasn't slicing her skin open with his school scissors. He'd sat there in front of his science project, watching, staring, unbelieving until she'd noticed the terror in his almost-13 year old eyes or the way his body had become paralyzed at the site of her blood. Then she'd told him to gather his crayons and things while she made supper as she'd gone into the bedroom to put on a long- sleeved sweater to hide the small cuts on her arms. She'd cooked dinner for him and his father like nothing was different and hadn't said anything about the scissors he'd left on the table where she'd dropped them. As he flashes back to his mother, he realizes that he understands her now. It was an attempt to regain at least part of what she'd lost--control. He wonders if it helped her. He wonders if it hurt her to do it as much as it hurt him to watch it. He stands in front of the mirror and wonders if it would hurt her to see him with the scissors in his hands now. His mirror-hand moves slowly and purposely down across his arm, once or twice in the air before making contact with his skin. He expected it to hurt more, so he does it again. Nothing. Surely it'll start to hurt eventually, he thinks as he moves the blade across his arm once more. After a moment, he looks from the cold mirror flesh to his arm. Three shallow cuts--scrapes, really--stand out in irritated red insistence against his pale flesh and he wonders why he never thought of it before. ~~~~~ Returning from his weekly progress report, he finds his picture of Samantha turned face-down on his desk. It can only mean one thing--Scully's been here. She must have some information for him, a lead of some sort. Chanting 'believe, believe, believe' to himself, he feels his dwindled resources start to replenish, feels his inner gauge start the long, slow journey from 'E' to 'F'. He gathers his things and grabs his car keys; destination: Watergate Hotel--Scully. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ *The end. Thank you for reading! Any interest in this might inspire me to write a sequel.... :D ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ *Blatant reminder: jemirah@hotmail.com . *My website: http://surfacing.com/jemirah/ . ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~