From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Lara=20Alonso?= Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2001 22:37:59 +0200 (CEST) Subject: Story submission Source: direct Title: Wise up Author: Lara AC Email: zhivagomsr@yahoo.es Rating: PG Category: Story, Romance Spoilers: Field Trip, Small Potatos, Pilot Keywords: MSR, ScullyAngst, Scully's POV, post Field Trip Disclaimer: Mulder and Scully are property of CC, 1013 and Fox. Aimee Mann's lyrics are used without permission. Summary: Scully gets over a brief moment of angst in her car, with a little help from her partner. *************** Author's notes: This is my love letter to Paul Thomas Anderson. So if you recognize a scene from Magnolia in here, well, it's totally on purpouse. All I can say is that I love PT's writing and directing and although I mentioned him in my earlier story "Rewarding Mulder" I wanted to say a clear and loud "I love you" to him because if The X files have taugh me something it's that you have to say `I love you' while you still have the chance. Feedback: zhivagomsr@yahoo.es (Please, please, please.) **************** "No,no. I was wondering... man oh man. I think I feel like a bit of a scum-bucket doing this, considering that I came here as an officer of the law and the situation and all this but I think I'd be a fool if I didn't do something I really want to do which is to ask you on a date." John C. Reilly to Melora Walters in "Magnolia" **************** Wise Up by Lara AC I think I have less idea to why I stopped crying than to why I began. Maybe it's the song or maybe it's this little trick I have, this little thing. I'll tell you about this trick later. I had been crying for ten minutes before I turned on the radio. I've been crying for five minutes more since that. I bet my eyes are all red and and my looks are not very attractive at this moment. I didn't have any tissues at hand so I just let my tears run down my cheeks. Their warmth gave me some guilty comfort I'm not willing to give up. These cheeks wetted by tears are still a bit burnt from our trip to Brown Mountain, still cherry red stained. They no longer hurt though. For the last week I had to be careful whenever I washed my face or put on my make-up, trying not to be too rude yet. But that's not why I started crying, if I really know why. Crying was not my idea. I just wanted to feel angry. Everything was going fine. I run down the FBI headquartes stairs as I usually do. I got the the car keys from my purse like I do everyday, trying not to stare at the Apollo 11 keyring. I even put on the seatbelt and none of my movements were different from the ones of the day before. The key was about to turn on the engine when I felt the unstoppable need to cry. One moment I was making a list on my mind of the groceries I had to buy for the weekend. The next moment I'm sobbing in the middle of the FBI parking, where any agent could see me. But even the possibility of being embarrased in front of my equals or superiors was not enough to contain my tears. I hate it when something escapes my control. And when I realized this, too, I began to cry harder. And now I'm here making a fool of myself and yet not having the stregh to drive home. Again it all happened when my brain refused to focus on the important things (my groceries, but also the phone call I promised to my mother or the check in my pocket that I have to remember to give to my landlord) and went all by itself to God knows what place. But when my brain came back it whispered very slowly to me: "you're such a coward, Dana". I thought it was a strange statement to make at the moment but I had to admit that, as always, my brain was right. And for a woman like me, who survived cancer with just the necessary amount of tears, I claimed defeat quite soon in this battle. I don't allow myself to be this emotional, not to mention this is a public place. So I'm a coward and I cry like a coward. I just wanted to go home from work, that's all. I grabbed the wheel with my hands, as if that would ease the pain, dry the tears, calm the storm. I told myself this couldn't happen, this was too much a cliché, Dana Scully couldn't be crying inside her car like an unhappy married woman. All these years building these walls... and all I got from it was loneliness. I wrapped myself so carefully inside this glass caged hoping I could go on not unseen but untouched. People I know thinks it takes so much courage to be like me, brave like me, but I know better. Almost everything I do is made out of fear. And when not it's just because I was caught unguarded. Such a fake I am. You see walking down a street and you think: look, what a woman, how proud she walks, how confident she looks... but I'm not like that inside. I'm scared to be scared, and I'm scared to try and fail. I'm afraid to go step by step to the shore because of what I might see if I stare at my own reflection in the waters. Loneliness has scared me so much that in the end loneliness won me over. Mulder may be a loser by choice but I know I'm alone by choice. The sky darkened in a matter of seconds and huge grey clouds projected hideous shadows down on earth. This point reached I was very worried by the fact that my cry was becoming too loud for the FBI standars so I turned on the radio. A very soft sound came from it and as I recognized the song I found myself singing along with it. It was a very surrealitic moment but in a way it made alright to be crying and singing at the same time. "..it's not what you thought when you first began it...you got what you want... now you can hardly stand it though by now you know, it's not going to stop..." Tears run smoothly down my skin and their salty taste caught in my singing. "...it's not going to stop... it's not going to stop 'till you wise up..." I let my head rest against the window, and everything was in a blur and my voice cracked but went on. "You're sure there's a cure and you have finally found it..." A weak, sad smile crossed my lips. It might have been the absurd of the situation waking up my sense of humer or it might have been that I was beginning to see The Trick coming. "You think... one drink... will shrink 'till you're underground and living down, but it's not going to stop... It's not going to stop... it's not going to stop... ... it's not going to stop 'till you wise up..." So the song helped me forget it was who was sobbing locked in my car after work, but it was definetely The Trick was convinced my tears to stay safe and sound inside my eyes. I have to tell you about The Trick but it's really humillating. The Trick, when not in use, has caused me no small amount of guilt and stress so I decided that no one else but me will ever know it. That's a promise I intend never to break. The Trick is that whenever I feel sad, or angry or really, really pissed off (with one exception: The Trick is useless if it's Mulder who pisses me off) I think about Mulder's slides and I feel better. It's so silly and girly but it works. I love Mulder's slides and the way he explains a case with their help. He looks like a college teacher giving his lesson to his one student. Me. Mulder's slides also remind me of the first time he used them in my pressence. That was about three minutes after I met him. The fact always makes me smile. The Trick always makes me smile. And of course the idea of Mulder's slides leads me everytime to the ideo of Mulder's glasses. I have to say that anyone who has seen Mulder wearing those glasses of him will have to agree that thought is enough to make you smile. So now I'm a bit more calmed and I managed to quit crying. Almost. When I think I have everything under control again I hear a knock on my window. I look outside and I see, should have known it, Mulder. Of all the agents of all the offices of all the sections within the Bureau working here at this moment it had to be Fox Mulder who found me crying. How typical. "Scully? Are you okay?" His worried seems authentic, although he can't see any mutant threatening my life this time. "I'm fine, Mulder. It's nothing." He walks the way around to my passanger's door, which is open so he opens it and sits besides me. At first he doesn't say a word, but he touches my right cheek with his fingers. Very gently. "You've been crying." I nod. "Why?" "I don't know." I am still weeping, softly, but I am. "You don't know why you've been crying?" "No. I just got in the car and... began crying. I don't know why. It just happened." "I got very worried when I saw you here, like this. I thought I might have done something..." "It's not you, Mulder. It's just..." "You're unhappy? In general, I mean." His question catches me by surprise. Am I unhappy? If I am... How can I break my partner's soul by telling him? "I can't afford to think about it, Mulder. I don't know, I guess I'm not really unhappy." It seems pretty stupid to be discussing this in a parked car but... you can't expect normality from Mulder. "My life may not be what I want but I'd be lying if I said that I don't like my life at all." "You've been thinking about that a lot. Uh?" I nod again, aware of Mulder's knowledge of my desire for a regular life. "I've been thinking a lot about it too. This year is almost all I've thought about." Beat. Like he doesn't know what to say next. "This year I've made some mistakes." And again I nod, he's refering to Diana I dare to say. "But I think that's okay because even if I made mistakes they helped to realice that at the end I always turned to you. No matter how stupid I acted my path ended up taking me to where you were so I could forgive myself." "Mulder, I'm not as unhappy as you think. I wasn't crying because I was disappointed with where my path has brought me." I was crying because I couldn't get the nerve to make the journey the way I wanted. "It's okay to cry without reason, Scully." He touches my skin again and I lean over him and rest my head on his shoulder. "Just don't get me worried. Okay?" I nod against him, his hands now stroking my hair the way he always does when he wants me to forgive him for something wrong he thinks he's done, something I don't blame him for. "Mulder?" He utters something like `um-hu' as if he wasn't paying attention to me, too busy playing with my hair between his fingers. "Your mistakes don't piss me off so much when you say they lead you back to me." "Scully, everything in this world manages to lead me back to you." That does it. He can't say something like that and expect me not to kiss me. So I kiss him. Unexpectedly. Briefly. Almost like an attack. But he repells my attack quickly and easily. "Don't do that." His tone is too serious for me to be okay with it. "Why not?" "Because you don't want to do that." "Don't I?" I shift my body a couple of inches, releasing Mulder from my weight. "I told you I've been thinking a lot. And who I am right now is not enough for you." "What?" I have the feeling I'm going to need The Trick many times today. "Scully, if I was really going to be honest with you I'd have to tell how much I wanted you to kiss me and how good it felt. But now I owe you being honest with myself first. And that means I have to tell you I feel so fucked up that you don't really want to put yourself through the tragedy of trying to be in love with me. At least not now." "I don't want to?" He shakes his head and I let his arms embrace me. We're in such an intimate position that if anyone from the Bureau saw us... well, I think we would be having that `talk' with Skinner we've been avoiding for years. "Nop, you don't want to." I can feel him smiling behin me. "But it was nice of you to ask." "You're welcome." I feel so much better now, and at the same time I feel unspeakably sad, if that's possible. I tried not to chose loneliness for once but loneliness found me anyway. "And Scully?" "Yes?" "I would really like you to ask again... sometime." "Deal." I put my hands over his hands over my stomach. Raindrops were beginning to fall over the car, rhythmically driping, and Mulder and me show no real want to change our position. Not even intention. "Mulder, I should be driving home. And, surprise, we're not moving." "Surprise, Scully, you're not crying anymore." "Well, Mulder, I think it's time for you to know about The Trick..." **************** "Honest and clear is possible and good and it makes for better storytelling." P.T. Anderson **************** You liked it? You hated? Is my English getting any better? For those who have the book "Magnolia: The shooting script" I stole a line from page 204. Sorry Paul. Ha. And you thought there could never be such a thing as a The X files/Magnolia crossover...