From: innie_darling@my-deja.com
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 1999 03:27:41 GMT
Subject: Fanfic: "Multi"

"Multi; or, Musings of a Damn Good-Looking Man"
innie_darling@hotmail.com

Disclaimers: Mulder and Scully belong to Chris
Carter and 1013
and Fox technically, and to David and Gillian
truly.  I would like
to add my advance apologies to the two of them,
even though
they have much better things to do than read my
fanfic; it must
be really odd to know that even though the
characters we all
write about are not really you, your physical
appearance is still
up for grabs.

Rating: PG I guess, for the reference to an
anatomically correct
inflatable doll

Category: love without sex

Archive: Haven definitely, everywhere else is
fine, just please let
me know and keep my name attached.

Spoilers: through "Biogenesis"

Summary: Mulder, in the psych ward, turns to
memory



"Multi; or, Musings of a Damn Good-Looking Man"
	Scully has a drawing of herself, made by
her nephew, in
her desk drawer.  I saw it there once, and it made
an immediate
impression on me, because it reminded me just how
deceiving
looks can be.  In the picture, Scully is sketched
in the strong,
simple colors of a child's imagination - orange
hair, white skin,
blue eyes.  She looks confident, uncomplicated,
singularly whole;
that is the lie of the drawing.  She is multi,
everything at once.
From my looks - hair the many shades of mud, eyes
the color of
camouflage - I should be the complicated one, but
I'm not; I'm
easy to summarize: she is my whole world.
	Which is why, crazy as it sounds, I'm
treasuring this time
in the psych ward, wearing the backless dress
called a hospital
gown.  I've out-Gibsoned Gibson; I don't just read
minds as he
did.  Perhaps because of my sessions with Dr.
Werber and the
drill-wielding Dr. Goldstein, the artifact has
affected my centers
of memory as well.  I've read that the Hindus
believe that memory
stays with the soul as it is reincarnated, but
that memories of past
lives are buried too deep to be regularly
accessible; I know now
that this belief is true.  Every life I've ever
led is open to me now,
but the only one I'm interested in exploring is
the one called Scully.
	The artifact has opened memories for me
that I didn't even
know I had - shames I had repressed, what happened
around me as
I lay unconscious, and they offered emotional
clarity.  This time is
a gift I intend to savor, fill with thoughts of my
beloved, of my life.
	I remember her visit to the psych ward,
the sharply controlled
emotion in her making its way into my mind as I
"heard" her flay
Skinner and Diana.  All I could think was: be
careful, Scully, a snake
can always grow another skin . . .   I remember
her vow to get me
out of there, words drenched in a love so deep
even I couldn't read it.
Were her words one lover to another, a promise to
uncross the stars
of our destiny, or were they the anguish of a
mother swearing revenge
for her hurt child?  I have thought of her as both
a lover and a mother,
for she combines the passionate equality of the
former with the
unconditional acceptance of the latter - all for
me.  Scully is, in a
sense, my true mother, for I was created by her as
surely as if her
genes really had been passed on to me.
	I had realized it as I pressed my face
into her womb at the
end of the Roche case.  She didn't just make me a
whole person -
words I later found the courage to say - she made
me a human being,
something I hadn't been since my sister was taken.
 Before she walked
into my office, I really was simply Spooky Mulder.
 All I knew of
women was emotional pain and physical pleasure.
Phoebe, Diana,
and all the others were one-dimensional women,
offering me sex in
lieu of companionship, intellectual sparring,
emotional honesty, and
love.  I had no respect for them or myself; I had
become like them,
and the neglected parts of me - kindness, humor,
esteem, love -
seemed virtually vestigial.  Scully made me
realize what I had been
missing, and under her touch I began to grow.
	I remember, early on, her remark about
being a woman in a
man's field - and I should have blushed for shame,
but I wasn't yet
honest enough to admit what I had thought of her
and done to her
from the day we had met.  When she first showed up
in my office,
I was pleased that the new spy was hardly more
than a girl, a
womanchild - perhaps a virgin for the sacrifice?
I thought I could
easily outmaneuver and overpower her if she tried
to threaten me
with force.  Her only other weapon, I thought, was
sex.  When she
stood on my doorstep in only a robe over her
underclothes, I thought
the moment of dictated seduction had come, so I
held myself aloof
until I felt her shake in my arms, as she hasn't
let herself do since until
the Padgett case.  Small wonder she trembled - I
plunged her into a
nightmarish world, sniping at her even after she
had demonstrated her
lack of ulterior motives by saving me, by staying
tirelessly at my bedside
as I lay unconscious.  And then I had the nerve to
get possessive.  I
mocked her desire for a normal life, I did not
allow her near anyone
except her own family, who would certainly have
taken her from
me had they realized how controlling I was.  I
dictated her
boundaries; peeing on her would have been the only
less subtle
way of marking her as my territory.  So how have I
become enthralled
by her, I who once thought of her as simply backup
- someone to do
background checks while I followed my own selfish
hunches?  She is
luminous, true, and surely deserves a nimbus for
the number of times
she has saved me, but I have been pursued by
beauty before, and it
was never as clean as this.
	I'd like to say that I loved her from the
moment I met her, but
I honestly wasn't enough of a man at that point.
My enhanced memory
makes clear to me only now what has been submerged
for so long - the
time I first fell in love with Scully.  It was
when her father died, and I
could add vulnerability and an enormous capacity
for love to the picture
of her I held in my mind - loyal, brilliant,
patient, funny.  When his death
hit her, all she prayed for was that the father
she'd adored, idolized,
and admired had been proud of her - she was so
pure, so fragile, needing
consolation for her heart that her head couldn't
give her.  All of my
obstinately lingering doubts about her fled in
that moment, chased out
of me by the sincerity of her childlike pain.  And
something good made
me drop my juvenile quips and reach out and trust
her.
	Not that I've always shown it, or lived up
to her.  I writhe with
shame as I think back to what I did not long ago
to Scully.  She makes
me feel strong even when I am at my most
vulnerable.  Sitting naked in a
 shower, red with the blood of two strangers, she
never let a doubt enter
her mind.  And therefore my mind too.  I thought
then that there was
nothing I could do that would shake her.  But I
managed, by choosing
to trust another over her.  It was a choice
between my goddesses (for
she is many in one, and the only being in whose
context the word "faith"
makes sense anymore) and a little easy
gratification, too cheap to be
called joy, happiness, or even pleasure.  A deity
or an inflatable doll, and
I chose Diana, the latter, trusting I could simply
let her air out when I was
done and return to my previous worship.  Has
Scully taught me nothing,
then?  Am I so fundamentally dishonest that I turn
from her challenges
to seek meaningless assurances that I alone am
right?  Am I still so
fundamentally selfish?  Eager to rescue my sister
so I will be a hero,
the UnProdigal Son?  How much better am I as a
savior than Gerry
Schnauz?  Do I still only make friends with those
who can help me
along my twisted path?  Am I willing to let
everything accumulate
until it crushes Scully, she who has stayed with
me despite everything
that is me?
	As I rock back and forth, bumping against
the padded walls
of my cell, memory suddenly turns kind, taking
away images of my
own cruelty and offering instead samples from its
stores of delight.
This time, even my body remembers her, apart from
my mind.
Why should that be?  I have touched others more
recently than
I have her.  Perhaps it is because touching her
hair, her cheek,
her back, or even just the tip of her nose is the
zenith of tactile
experience, and my fingertips, my whole body,
strain to return
to her.  Will I get that chance?  My arm stretches
out slightly,
and my fingers splay to accommodate a back that
isn't here.  I
can only imagine what I must look like on the
hospital monitors,
but Scully would understand that I'm trying to
hold her.  Kinesthetic
memory rocks my body as I remember how I spooned
up against
her as she swung a baseball bat for the first
time.  I remember being
close enough to kiss.  I remember dancing with her
as Cher's voice
floated over us.  I remember holding her after
Penny Northern died.
I remember being held by her as she sang to me of
bullfrogs,
friendship, wine, and joy.  My body tries to
recapture these moments,
mimicking its earlier positions.  But then my body
seems to remember
touches my mind has absolutely no recollection -
conscious or not -
of.  When did I ever spank Scully, pat her little
ass?  When was I ever
stretched out on my side, head propped up on one
hand, on the
rocking surface of a waterbed, as I inched ever
closer to Scully,
lying flat on her back?  It can't be fantasy since
my body knows
the truth of these memories, but it can't be real,
since my mind's
blankness denies these images.
	Through my memories, I realize anew I
haven't let Scully
hide anything from me.  I have forced her trust,
and then been
dumbfounded by what I saw. She is multifaceted,
multitalented,
multi-everything.  She is bone-deep true, many in
one.  She is a lovely
woman, a protective partner, an excellent doctor,
a headstrong daughter,
the best agent in the bureau, and my entire world.
 She is emotional,
professional, passionate, and disciplined.  Am I
as complicated and
multifaceted as she is?  I must not be, since
every part of me trusts
her, loves her, believes in her.
	And the shame of having abused her for so
long returns - a
thousand memories consciously denied return
unbidden to me, and
I gladly accept this purgatory, knowing my only
karma is now,
proving myself worthy of her.  I remember that she
stopped wearing
perfume after Melissa was murdered, as if all the
sweetness in the
world ought to be confined to her sister's grave.
 I remember her
broken voice, pleading with me to name her a
murderer in my stead,
as she lay in a hospital bed, crushed by cancer.
I remember thinking
how justified she was when that look of surprised,
betrayed, and
ultimately resigned despair crossed her face as I
held Modell's gun
on her.  She had already made it clear - too many
times to count -
that she trusted me, was my willing partner,
despite her knowledge
that I consistently held out on her.  And her face
showed that she
thought she should have seen this coming, that she
could only trust
a true human being, not a single-minded crackpot
who fell under
the influence of every monster he encountered or
deliberately sought
out.  It was at that moment, as a single tear fell
from her eye that I
realized that the perfect circle of her iris could
have been the model
for a wedding ring.  I remember my jealous rage
when I found out
she had seen a vision of a dead girl.  Who was I
jealous of?  Her own
heart?  It was the only confidante she had left,
since I began to clear
her life of everything except me.
	I'd gotten so used to thinking of myself
as the person with
nothing, the eternal underdog, that I didn't
acknowledge that because
of me, Scully had even less.  When I was in
trouble, I could ask for
her, just as I did when faced with Nurse Nancy and
her vixens.  Scully
came even when I couldn't call her, like after my
solo Arctic
adventure with Schwarzenalien.  But as she lay
helpless, what good
could I do her?  I could ask for her - "I need my
doctor" - but it was
hard to imagine the reverse.  What would she say -
"I need my
conspiracy theorist, who isn't here right now
because he's ditched me
once again"?  I think I could have been what she
needed, but I never
made the effort.  And for that I know I am damned.
 But it still hurt
that I had to wait so long to learn about Emily.
I simply have not
been able to forget the loveliness, passion, and
grace in my beloved
as she bent over her newly-discovered daughter.
She appeared a
modern-day madonna, whose child would be
sacrificed for nought,
leaving the bereaved mother to redeem the world.
She was so deeply
shaken by the whole experience that not only did
her composure crack,
her detachment falter, but even her handwriting -
the last bastion, I
had once nicknamed her controlled copperplate
penmanship - became
erratic.  I noted with sadness how letters and
even words blurred
together, how blotches from tears appeared on even
unrelated papers
and liquified her words, how the curves of her
cursive capital "I"s began
to mimic the outline of a mother holding her child
securely, wonderingly.
And I fell in love with her once more, and I vowed
never again to take
her for granted.  I want to be able to live up to
that promise.
	I remember her utter honesty.  I remember
her blinding
sweetness.  I remember her piercing pain.  I
remember how multivalent
she is, the range of loves she offers.  She is so
many in one; she makes
me dizzy.  For there is nothing so complicated as
a good person.  And
she is the best.