From: Blueswirl Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2003 13:54:47 -0700 Subject: NEW: Modern-Day Bonnie & Clyde (1/1) by Blueswirl Source: xff TITLE: MODERN-DAY BONNIE & CLYDE AUTHOR: Blueswirl EMAIL: cleojones3@gmail.com DATE: 8/5/03 ARCHIVE: Gossamer yes, anyone else please drop me a line first. RATING: PG CLASSIFICATION: V, R SPOILERS: through "The Truth" KEYWORDS: E-Muse Writer's Block "He Said/She Said" Challenge DISCLAIMER: The characters of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully belong to Chris Carter and 1013 Prods. and Fox Inc. I'm just borrowing and mean no harm. Challenge elements at end of story. * * * On the television, a gorgeous blonde in a silk camisole twists seductively atop rumpled sheets, gazing coyly at her man from beneath lowered eyelashes. He stands by the mirror, shirt open, a gun in his hand which he tosses on the bureau before moving towards her. Scully sits on the bed in a daze, watching the images flicker on the television screen. She's supposed to be in the shower. She drove the last leg today, a long one, and she's exhausted, so Mulder agreed to brave the rain and pick up food from the diner across the street while she cleaned up. Instead, she collapsed on the bed the minute he left, and now she's been sucked in to the movie, romanticized images of life on the lam sprinkled with the fairy dust of cinema magic. The storm kicks up outside as the glamorous life of fugitives plays out on the screen. Fancy cars, gorgeous clothes, perfect hair. Scully shifts back against the headboard. She would laugh if she wasn't so tired. The clothes that she's wearing came from a discount superstore, and the car they've been driving lately has a big dent in the fender and no power steering. She can't remember the last time she's had a haircut. It doesn't really matter, because she puts it in a ponytail every day anyway. The telephone rings. It's a wrong number, but the caller refuses to hang up. Instead, she just keeps talking, and Scully lets her do it, listening patiently as the woman rants about the fact that she's sure she has the right number, and that there's no way she's reached some random motel in Killeen, Texas. Scully just sits there and lets the woman go, eyes on the television and saying nothing, simply waiting until the woman tires herself out and disconnects. Bonnie and Clyde make their way through Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico, and Scully watches them go. She and Mulder have been to many of the same places lately, but without exhibiting any of the hedonistic joy evident on screen: the obsessive gun play, the delight in killing people. She knows that the taking of a life is nothing to celebrate. She's seen the trigger pulled too many times. She's pulled it herself. And she knows that the price for each death is a little piece of your soul. She wants to get up, wants to move, wants to shower and break the spell that the television has cast, but she can't. Her limbs are heavy and her mind is on strike. Instead she idly wonders how she got here, to this room, to this place. Nine years of choices, decisions layered one atop another, some looming large in her memory, others that she can now only dimly recall. If someone said make a wish, she would wish for innocence. At least, she thinks she would. Sometimes she allows herself to think about simpler times, about the way things were before. Before the FBI, before the X-Files. Before Mulder. It seems like someone else's life, no more real to her now than the images on the screen. The things that she's experienced have pretty much guaranteed she'll never sleep the sleep of the innocent again. She's seen too much. She knows too much. The movie stops for a commercial, interrupting her reverie. Scully looks around, feeling vaguely uneasy, defenseless and alone, wishing he'd hurry up and get back. Something seems different about this motel, about this town, although she's not sure why. It's not that this room is any different than any of the others they've been in; maybe it's that it's so much the same. The very sameness of their lives now has become a vortex that threatens to swallow her whole. She cannot stand the ammonia-filled stench of another dingy bathroom, cannot spend another night beneath another gaudy flower-patterned bedspread. She feels, tonight, like she's close to letting it all go, close to screaming. And that can't happen. She can't just unhook her sanity and set it free. They have too much to do. The date is set. Her mind is just wandering now, skipping randomly from subject to subject without warning. Scully thinks about growing up, moving from naval base to naval base, each time having to start over again. New house, new schools, new doctors, new neighbors, and her mother had to handle all of it. She couldn't understand it, swore that it would never happen to her, that she'd never live a life that had her following a man halfway around the globe and back again. Her mother always warned her that one day she'd feel differently. "Someday," she said, "you'll give your heart to someone, and then the most important thing to you will become building a life with them, wherever that may be." She'd broken Mulder out of jail and they'd headed off, never looking back. It was crazy, when you really stopped to think about it, which is why she rarely does. People were probably saying that he'd lost his mind and taken her along for the ride, and sometimes she thinks they might be right. Because, really, what can they do? With the odds stacked against them the way they are, how can they possibly make a difference? How can they possibly change anything? It's the burden of knowing, she realizes. To know and not act -- down that road, madness lies. The movie resumes, and Scully hears Warren Beatty as Clyde, explaining their lack of a plan to Bonnie's family with a hint of shame in his voice. "At this point, we ain't headed to nowhere. We're just runnin' from." Maybe that's what we're doing, she thinks. We're just runnin' from. Outside, it's pouring, the bottle-green sky really opened up now, heavy drops drumming against the metal siding and drenching the parking lot. She can hear thunder roaring over the noise of the television. Perhaps a tornado is coming. Perhaps it will lift this motel right off of its foundation, and spin them off to a land where the phrase "December 22, 2012" has no meaning. She doesn't know what to think, these days. She doesn't know what to do. The rules no longer apply; there's no one from whom she can seek guidance, strength, or protection, no one besides Mulder, not on this earth. As for God, she isn't sure what to think anymore, but part of her still wants to believe in Him. Wants to believe that He played a part in saving her life countless times, that He answered her prayers and brought Mulder back to her. And so she prays to Him still, despite her fear that she's used up her allotment of miracles, asking for His protection for their son. Their son... She gave him up. The last few nights she's had a recurring dream about him. About William. It always starts the same way, with her running through the woods, in the dark, guided only by shafts of moonlight that filter in through the trees. She hears him calling for her, plaintive wails mixed with an infant's choking sobs, but no matter how fast she runs, she can't seem to get any closer to him. She always falls at the same spot, tripping over a rock or a branch, something she doesn't even see, tearing her pants and scraping her shin when she hits the ground. Dirt on her hands as she picks herself up, forcing herself to move faster, feet churning madly as blood drips down her leg. And yet his cries grow ever more distant, tearing at her heart, until she reaches the edge of a cliff, gaping black space stretching empty as far and wide as she can see, his baby voice echoing both within the cavern and somewhere beyond. It is always then that she wakes to find her face streaked with silent tears, her hands clenched into fists of helplessness and rage. And she is stung by the same agonizing pain of sorrow and regret. It burns inside her, a little ulcer of guilt eating away at her core. A gnawing sense of panic and fear for him, for their son. She gave him up. Five years from now he'll be old enough to ask questions of his adoptive parents. She wonders what they'll tell him. Sometimes she wonders if he still remembers her a little, or if the image of her face, the sound of her voice, has already faded into oblivion. She mutes the television and opens the small suitcase that lies beside the bed, tugging a plastic bag from the inner pocket. The bag is fastened with a zip closure and she peels it open, pulling out a small square of folded blue cloth. She lays it on the bed, carefully spreading it out. It's just a tee shirt, a basic Carter's for infants top with three small snaps running from the neck down across one shoulder. The last time he had worn this shirt was when she'd put him to bed, the night before the woman from the agency came. She'd bathed him, and dressed him, and fed him, and then sat with him in the rocking chair, singing him little songs until he fell asleep, his delicate eyelids finally fluttering shut. The next morning, she packed up all his things, all his clothes and toys and books, and gave them to the woman who was taking him away. She wanted him to have them. She would have no need for them. But this shirt, this one, she kept. She runs her fingertips across the shirt, and in its softness she feels the velvet of his baby skin. She closes her eyes and she can see him so clearly, precious William, with her blue eyes, his father's brown hair, and a smile that was all his own. The shirt still smells like him, a little bit, and she's quick to put it back into the bag although she knows, despite her efforts, that the scent will fade with time. Shirt into the bag, bag into the pocket, suitcase back down on the floor. And then her face is crushed against the starched cotton pillowcase, a lump in her throat that she can't dislodge no matter how hard she tries. When Mulder comes in she sits up fast, feeling exposed, caught in the act. It's her cheeks that are wet, even though he's the one who's been out in the downpour. She suspects that he knows what she's been thinking about, but he doesn't ask, and she loves him for that. "Great day for a walk," Mulder says, handing her a white paper bag stuffed so full it won't close, and two styrofoam cups with raindrops balancing on the lids. The baseball cap he's wearing is wet enough to look brown instead of red, and he throws it on the floor, hangs his soaked jacket on the back of the chair. "Thanks," she says. It's all she can manage at the moment, with the weight of his gaze on her as she leans over to put the cups on the nightstand. As a child, he had learned to read moods instantly; he would have had to, in the kind of house he'd grown up in. She knows that he's reading hers now. She opens the bag as he kicks off his shoes. The smell of the food in the greasy paper sack brings back sudden, unexpected memories of long-ago stakeouts. "What'd you get?" she asks, although her stomach is churning, her appetite lost. "Sandwiches," he says. "One roast beef, one turkey, and some mashed potatoes." His jeans are soaked from the knees down and he peels them off, tossing them to the side, grabbing a pair of gray sweats from his bag and pulling them on. "We can share 'em if you want." She shrugs, pushing the bag towards the center of the bed. "I'm not that hungry right now." He nods, tugging his shirt off over his head before flopping down beside her. She doesn't have to see his face to know that he's as tired as she is. The exhaustion rolls off him in waves. "Me neither," he says. She slides over so that she's laying next to him, and he slips an arm around her shoulders, pulls her into the nook that lies between his arm and his chest. Weariness has crept deep into her bones. "I'm glad you're back," she says. He pulls her a little closer, and she lets her eyes drift shut. Suddenly, she remembers she had forgotten to turn off the television. She looks up, and it's still playing mutely in the background. Mulder's watching it, silently, drinking through a straw stuck into one of the styrofoam cups. "You know," he says, "the real Bonnie wasn't willowy, finely-cheekboned, and platinum. She was just a tiny freckled red-head with a fiery temper." She raises an eyebrow, fixing him with a look. "And your point?" His lips turn up in a hint of a smile. "No point," he says. "Just making an observation." She grabs the remote and turns off the movie. She's already seen it, she knows how it ends. Badly. This time last year she was alone. Now, they are together again. Nothing else matters. Except William... She closes her eyes, and does her best not to dream. * * * CHALLENGE ELEMENTS INCLUDED (with tense changes in a few cases): 1. The last few nights she had a recurring dream (or nightmare) about ___________. 2. Her mother always warned her that ___________. 4. The telephone rang. It was a wrong number but the caller refused to hang up. Instead, she ______. 5. Something seemed different __________. 6. The last time he had worn this ______ was when _________. 7. If someone said make a wish, she would wish for __________. 8. As for God, ___________. 9. People were probably saying __________. 10. This time last year she was __________. 11. Five years from now he'll be ________. 13. Outside, it was _______. (Make the weather do something, for example, by playing off the inside atmosphere. Choose a season.) 14. Suddenly, she remembered she had forgotten to _________. (Say anything but "breathe"!) 15. On the television (or radio or CD player), _______ was _______. 16. She suspected that_________. 17. The smell of _______ brought back ________. 18. As a child, he had learned __________. Thanks to Bone for making Writers Block so much fun, even for the slow people , and to Lisa for kick-ass beta. Feedback is always treasured at cleojones3@gmail.com.