From: msebasky@yahoo.com
Date: Sun, 14 Nov 1999 16:09:16 GMT
Subject: By Any Other (1/1)

TITLE: A Rose by Any Other
AUTHOR: M. Sebasky
E-MAIL ADDRESS: msebasky@yahoo.com
DISTRIBUTION: Archive away, just keep my name on it and let me know
where it's at. Danke schoen.
SPOILER WARNING: Nope.
RATING:  PG for strong language.
CLASSIFICATION: Angst laden story about Scully contemplating her name.
KEYWORDS: Mulder and Dana Katherine Scully.
THANK YOUS: Thanks to all the people who know who they are.   And for
all those that have given kind words and encouragement.

Feedback welcomed and gleefully leaped at when received:
msebasky@yahoo.com

DISCLAIMER: I don't own them, I don't claim them, I don't make any
money off of them and I fully respect the people who do.   And that
includes the Disney Corporation.

Thanks to: Big Bill Shakespeare for the quote and Gillian and David
giving us more subtext than we ever asked for.   And Walt Disney for
the idea of animating your friends.

_______________________________________________________________________


They say a forest fire starts with a single match.

"Dana?"

The word made Scully's head pop up from the expense report in front of
her.

He never called her by her Christian name. It was always, "Scully,
this" or "Scully, that" so much so it seemed at times that her first
name didn't exist anymore. It sounded foreign coming off his tongue as
it swirled around the room, hovered up towards the ceiling for a
moment, then settled down between them like one of those unexplained
flying objects pictured on the wall behind his head.  Even the long-
forgotten pencils, bounced into corners from his fits of boredom and
frustration, seemed to notice his pronouncement of her diminutive two-
syllable first name.

If this were a Disney film (and oh how many times in the past would
that have been a convenient device, knowing that through the worst of
it all, there would eventually be a happy ending) animated mice would
stick their little floppy-hatted heads out from the dirty cracks in the
FBI's foundation (also known as the basement, also known as their
office, the Valhalla of all things that set one apart from the rest of
humanity for the rest of time, but no, she wasn't really bitter) and
trill in their pitch-manipulated voices, "He called her Dana! He called
her Dana!"

Then, perhaps, if this were a Disney movie, a musical number would
begin.

If indeed the sound of rodent song ever hit her ears, she would have to
discipline those mice with some strange truths. Perhaps sing an off-
key, note-limited recitative of her own about how somewhere in the past
7 years, she had unknowingly given up her identity as a woman named
Dana and invested her entire being in a new person with the single
generic moniker of "Scully". A slow, sad ballade that told the story of
how pretty Dana did a slow fade to black and when she finally twinkled
from view, she had packed in her hope trunk the dreams and future for a
person with that name.

It wasn't important.  As that William Shakespeare said, "What's a name
anyway"?

"Everything," Dana Katherine Scully thought to herself.  A name is
everything.

Women named Dana drove Volvos with strollers in the back and bumper
stickers that proclaimed them soccer moms.  Danas had houses with guest
bathrooms and gardens in the back yard.  They grew too much zucchini
and pumpkins not quite big enough to carve so they end up going to the
local grocery and buying the biggest pumpkin there to put in the garden
for the children to announce as a harvest miracle.  Danas had Christmas
eves with their husbands, trying to put together toys under just the
lights of the tree, mutually looped out of their heads on red wine,
reading instructions that had started in English but now seem to be in
Japanese while stifling rounds of hysterical healthy laughter.  Danas
husbands gave delicate diamonds for anniversary gifts, little stars for
Danas to wear that flickered with red and green lights, delicate and
beautiful like the Dana herself.  Danas had pasts, presents and futures
worth getting up in the morning for.  Sunlight and coffee, the sound of
hot water bubbling on a stove, the smells of oatmeal and floral soap
were all things in a Dana's world. Danas were whole people, inside and
out.

But stop the press, this song was in a minor key and the orchestra is
winding down.  Light cue 32....go.  Exit Dana stage left.    Be sure
she strikes that hope trunk.

The departure of the Dana within her left the arena bare for Scully to
emerge.  Scully. Made of pure titanium. Full blown from the head of an
X-file, Scully was terrible and strong beyond anyone's expectation,
including her own.  Scully was ready and willing to squash the last
remaining echo of Dana that manifested itself only as a sudden desire
to weep like a little girl instead of holding firm in the face of the
ridiculously insurmountable odds that seemed to slither out of the
woodwork every time life took a normal twist.

Dana was a crybaby.  There was no room for tears in this brave new
Scully world.

She was 100% USDA certified Scully these days, carefully crafted from
only the most proven of materials.  Sexless. A bit on the cold side.
Harsh, like the first syllable sounded, "Scu."  Somehow, along the way,
a creeping fog of new identity had set in and shown her how to grow
accustomed, even enjoy protecting her inner substance through outer
style.

The suits helped create the new persona.  First rule of thumb: no soft
colors for a Scully. Get rid of Dana's silks and pastels.  There will
be no flowing chiffon here. Only blacks, grays, strong neutrals that
enforce her new Scully identity as the die-hard professional and
cynic.  Navy is acceptable, but still, only on happy occasions. Keep
the look hard and sleek.  It makes it easier to stay that way when
you're knee deep in slime in some godforsaken underground cavern
somewhere, trying not to scream your missing partner's
name. Look cool and you'll stay cool. There's a rule to live by.

Sandals are a thing of the past as well, strictly a "Dana" weakness,
like worn sneakers or fuzzy slippers.  A Scully always wears shoes that
give her not only height, but a decent heel to stand on and kick some
Consortium ass, when and if needed.  That element is essential to the
image.  And let's not forget religion as the final barrier, linked
always around her throat, keeping those vampires, degenerates and
partners at bay.

A walking cool front, a cross between Mr. Spock for logic and Cyrano
for panache. Scully.  Like "Dieter".  Touch her monkey.

"Dana?"

He used it again.  She found herself suddenly angry with him for the
casual way he let the person she should have been, could have been,
slip out of his mouth and back into her consciousness. Who gave him the
right to invoke such powerful ju-ju in her psyche on such a late,
processed air-filled Thursday afternoon?  In the split second between
his utterance and her reception of the sound waves in her brain, a
world that never was appeared, spinning on it's tiny axis before her,
gleaming like one of those diamonds given to another Dana.

Ah, but look at it, glimmering there!  Didn't the Danas world sparkle?
Didn't it just shine like a star in the firmament for the brief
millisecond Mulder's pronouncement called it back into conscious
existence?  More powerful than any dense, metallic alien ship rising
out of a gully of snow and ice, more alluring than long-limbed Greek
women singing sailors to their deaths perched on sharp crags above teal
waters, the life that wasn't danced before her, slipping its soft,
glass-littered tendrils around her heart.

Even as they cut deep into her, she found she could see the whole
contents of the Danas heart contained within the little twirling globe
of life.  The richness and wonder that comes from simply getting up in
the morning and reading a newspaper in your own sun-drenched kitchen in
your own cozy house. The beauty in weeding a flowerbed at the end of
your own driveway.   So different from the sterile worlds of medicine
and biopsy, so different from  the transient world of investigation
that a Scully thrived in. She even found that if she looked close
enough she could see herself waving from the porch of the house with
the garden in the back.

Waving hello?  Waving goodbye?

(come back...).

"Hello?"

"Hello?"

She came back to find that somehow during her reverie, Mulder had
materialized in front of her.   The remaining burden of memory fell
from her and Scully arrived dressed in full battle armor, ready to
rumble.

"Sorry, Mulder.   Can I help you with something?"

He smiled a sidewise sort of grin.

"Don't you sound like a cog in the Federal Government."

Scully of the armor plugged him with a normal dose of radioactive
withering look.  It had it's intended effect, driving him unconsciously
back a step, causing him to shift his weight a little too rapidly from
foot to foot as he continued on, trying to shrug off his discomfort.

"Just wondering what big plans Dana Scully has for the weekend. "

"Mulder...."

(shift, shift, shift, he could NOT stand still)

"I know, not very professional of me.  But I just thought..."

She cut him off abruptly.

"It's not that. I don't know what I'm doing yet.   I just need to get
this expense report in.  It's overdue as it is."

Paper work.  The ultimate Scully weapon had been pulled out of it's
hangar.  Seeing it's approach and  the fact it was aimed directly at
him, (well the man never turned in an expense report on time) Mulder
did a full retreat,  shuffled back to his desk and flopped down,
reaching for one of the open bag of sunflower seeds littered over what
little surface area was left.  It was a critical time for a Scully.
Either he'd let it go or get to feeling safe with a 200 pound desk and
what seemed to be on any given day, 5000 pounds of paper strewn between
them.

"You seemed a million miles away there."

Great.  He felt his retreat was successful.  Hit him with the paper
work-raygun again.

"Mm.  Sorry.  Like I said," she daintily shook a well aimed receipt at
him, "expense report."

He just looked at her.  From his expression she knew that he had hit
the outer wall of Fort Scully and found it sufficiently daunting,
covered in bureaucracy.   As it should be.  There would be no more
storming of the Bastille today.   Tell the troops to stand down, Scully
is victorious.  Back to work everyone.

But the sound of her own first name, the oddity of its falling into
audile space hadn't quite left her yet.  She focused harder on the
numbers, each digit doing its job, blurring her vision of the woman
that managed to infiltrate the hidden stainless steel recesses of
Scully world.  A woman with longer hair.  A women with lines on her
face only from laughter.

Funny running into her today like an old high school acquaintance in a
shopping mall. Those type of encounters, so unexpected, were always so
jarring.   The Dana looked good.  The Dana looked happy.

Really funny, that.

------

Seventeen minutes by the clock.  Seventeen minutes of numbers and
receipts.  Mulder hit his rhythm eating sunflower seeds, his feet
propped on his desk, the tilt of his chair hinting at disaster should
he make any sudden moves, a copy of some alien conspiracy newsletter
open before him.  Seventeen minutes of balancing, reimbursing herself
for different trips to different states.   Threat of vampires
here........unexplained cattle mutilation there.......carry the
two....drop the seven........

Her voice sounded out loud in the room as her pencil hit the desk.  She
could only hope she didn't sound as surprised as she felt.

"You called me by my first name."

"What?"

Mulder's confusion made him seem more rumpled and semi-groomed than
before.  The man could learn from her adopted persona about the power
of a steam iron.  He looked at her, pure puzzlement on his 6-foot plus
frame.   The chair, against all odds, landed forward in a safe
position.

"A few minutes ago"

(seventeen to be exact)

" you called me by my first name.  You never call me by my first name,
Mulder.  You always call me Scully.  It took me by surprise."

Blink blink.  No reaction.  She searched for a way to stop this runaway
train that she herself had started.

"That's all."

Blink blink.

"Mulder, that's why I didn't answer you right away."

She got the feeling she could have announced she was pregnant with
Skinner's love child and he would have expected it more than this thin
explanation that had arrived out of nowhere about something that wasn't
really that seemingly important anyway.   As her words finally settled
beneath his surface, a cautious, almost defensive smile crept across
his face.   She knew that look.  Mulder was turning his attention on
something that could prove more interesting than those propaganda rags
he seemed to read at the rate that he popped sunflower seeds in his
mouth.  She could see him actually chew his next words before he spoke
them.

"Are you asking me why I called you that or just clarifying a fact?"

His question held her up. There was no right way to handle this.  This
was a job for a Dana's tact or a Scully's wit.  She found that she was
having trouble accessing either of them at the moment.  Dana was long
gone and Scully was apparently with her, having lunch.  She certainly
wasn't finding anything appropriately acerbic nearly fast enough.  She
got the feeling a cat might get, who has jumped off a ledge on impulse,
expecting to right itself in midair with the ground growing closer and
the memory of exactly how to perform this particular maneuver wiped
clean from its head with surprise.

"Neither.  Both.  I don't...let it go, Mulder.  You just surprised me.
That's all.  Can we leave it at that?"

Apparently not.

Mulder rocked forward and leaned his elbows on his desk fortress.  His
slender hands formed a peaked triangle that just touched the bottom of
his chin.  Feeling the Mulder Closer Scrutiny Calvary on the way, she
reached for her briefcase and coat.  If she moved firmly enough, she
could get out of here before another volley fired and another dose of
Scully radiation was needed (with the amount of that she shot him with
daily, it was a wonder he didn't glow in the dark).  Besides, it was
close enough to five for this government's work and she could use the
excuse that she needed to stop by accounting on her way out and drop
off the expense account.

She just about made it too.  She was most of the way out the door when
he finally spoke up.

(good tactics Mulder)

 His tone, though.  It was thoughtful, considerate.  Certainly not what
she had expected when he had her on the ropes so clearly this time.

"It's a good point.  I don't know why I don't use your first name.  I
guess I really never got in the habit of it."

He paused to give her a chance to cut in, rebuke him somehow.   Maybe
he was just checking her reaction to this.  Maybe somewhere within him
he was aware that he was toxic with Scully radioactivity.  But she said
nothing. There was nothing to say.  He was right.

He took her silence as encouragement and foraged on.

"When we first met, we were formal with each other.  It was
always 'Agent Mulder, Agent Scully'.  Over time, I guess we just lost
the 'agent' part.  I don't know, maybe we skipped a step."

He shrugged again and smiled that disarming smile.  She found herself
warming to him despite it all.  So many skipped steps.  That was an
understatement.  Hell, whole staircases, spiraled up between them they
never thought to climb.    She fumbled with her briefcase, trying to
formulate a reply.  Before she could do so, he jumped back in, maybe he
thought to her rescue?

"Whatever the case, we never really made it to, to...I don't know...
Fox and Dana."

She was completely unprepared for him to speak the two linked names or
the effect they could have together.  They seared through her and once
more, out of nowhere, that little shining reality appeared more
powerful than before, floating like a bright spectral mirage made up of
transparent fibers of possibilities gone past.

 (hello little world....look at you)

The world spun and beckoned her to looker closer, come nearer, see what
it would have held if things had been different.  Climb one of its
hidden staircases or two.

(oh no.... no.....)

This time the Dana wasn't alone under the Christmas tree.  Someone was
with her, sweet red wine on his breath.  The same someone was carrying
the pumpkin from the car, helping her throw dirt on the fruit to make
it look like spontaneous generation.  Waving with her from the front
porch this time, bathed in easy contentment, holding her hand, a slight
stoop to his tall frame.  His eyes sparking like the diamond underneath
the cowlicked hair.

(spin, spin little world.....my little precious world....)

Through the maze of glass strewn tendrils that threatened to choke her,
drag her down, she realized Mulder having found his voice and
confidence, was still speaking.

"..... good thing we didn't.  I mean, you just seem like "Scully" to
me. It just seems to fit you.  Like it's who you really are inside and
not just some name you were born with.  The you I know..."

(no no..look closer)

"..the true you."

The words did their harsh work again.  But this time, they hit only
stainless steel halls, echoed there repeating, grew louder then faded
out.

And there, to her relief, at the end of one long corridor was Scully
the mighty, closing the door that let the tendrils in, driving them
back, plucking out the glass shards littered across her inner self
until only detached perception and logic remained.  Her head was filled
with the cool benediction that arrived as Scully the formidable clicked
her high heels on steel floors.  The little planet whirled away, out of
view now, safe behind the air-locked door, out of reach from all the
madness that surrounded this metal fortress she inhabited now.

(be safe danas world...go far far away from this and stay safe.....
scully's here... all will be well...she'll keep you safe......and so
far away from this ....  )

Don't look back.

"Scully?"

Sound the all clear.  The door at the end of the hall swung shut and
only Scully remained.

Mulder was looking at her, sensing the arrival of the hidden warrior
under the slight frame and helmet of red hair.  She knew he could
subtlety perceive the hardening of her skin as she turned into iron
from inside to out.

"Scully?  Do you know what I mean?"

"Scully??"

Time to go.

Her fingers moved smoothly as she buttoned her sleek black trench
coat.  A wry smile hit her lips and the words came welcome, pure
Scully, unconscious and unbidden.  They carried her invincible out the
door into halls of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's dust and
files, towards accounting, into elevators and out into the unknown
Thursday.

"It's my name, Mulder.  Don't wear it out."