From: "Branwell" Subject: Submission 7K done in Windows Notepad Date sent: Wed, 18 Mar 1998 22:54:41 -0500 Title: Casting Off Author: Branwell Classification: VA (Vignette/Angst) Rating: PG Spoilers: Almost all the mythology through Redux II Distribution: No restrictions on further distribution. Just keep my name with it please. Reactions welcome at COMBS-BACHMANN@WORLDNET.ATT.NET My kids read my e-mail so please make responses suitable for family viewing. Disclaimer: Chris Carter, David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, and Ten Thirteen productions created and own these characters. My writing is for fun, not profit. History: I am trying to write a long (meaning multiple parts) story in the X-files universe. This became too long and too dark to work with the rest of the story. It is set in the fall of 1997 after REDUX II and before Detour. ************************** CASTING OFF In the back seat Mulder drifted off into uneasy sleep. A tight curve taken slightly too fast disturbed his balance and woke him up half an hour later. They were somewhere on the two lane road between Dubois and Digger. The sun had set, and the mountains were deep purple on the horizon. Scully and Flynn were still talking. "Your dad must have been a great officer to serve under, Dana. What a story!" Flynn was saying enthusiastically. Scully looked pleased and animated at his appreciation. Mulder knew Scully liked this kind of conversation. Most people did. That's what that whole Eddie Van Blundht thing had been about. Mulder was aware that he was a social cripple. Maybe that was the real reason he had wanted a peg leg when he was a kid. It would have been an outward sign of his emotional condition, and no one would have expected him to be normal. It seemed as though everyone around him thought he was oblivious to his faults and their probable cause. It was strange that they thought this, since they knew he was intelligent. Perhaps they found it too painful to contemplate him as the fully conscious victim of flaws he was powerless to correct. He had a degree in psychology, for Christ's sake. He knew that if a child doesn't develop certain skills within a window of readiness, those skills will forever be missing or stunted. It had taken many years, but he had finally forgiven his poor, tortured mother for the legacy she had passed on to him. How could she raise a whole child, when she herself was maimed by neglect and chilly rejection throughout her childhood? She had used every device and opportunity to avoid any intimacy with her son. When all else failed, she fell back on the platitude and the cliched reaction. Now he knew that her feelings too were locked up in some unreachable core where they churned away chaotically and impotently. His family had made a rare visit one night to a neighborhood family whose breadwinner was not involved in the Project. They viewed a home movie of a backyard cookout that the Mulder family had attended when he was only twenty months old. The person holding the camera panned slowly across the yard, pausing to allow each group the opportunity to clown around. In the background Mulder saw his toddler self plod doggedly toward the swimming pool. In the foreground his mother was listening attentively to every word spoken by a handsome tanned man in tennis whites. She had that fake smile that in seconds could turn to an expression as blank and cool as the face of a plastic doll. The first person to notice him leaning curiously over the edge of the pool was another mother with her own toddler. She tucked her child under one arm and sprinted across the yard to Mulder, whom she grabbed with the other arm. The cameraman noticed her sudden movements, and focused on her agitated approach to Mulder's mother. Tina sat there, unsure of what expression to adopt in this unusual situation. Apparently she finally hit upon humorous and she laughed at the antics of little Fox. She held him balanced carefully on one knee to avoid dirtying her pale blue dress. The other mother backed away, upset, but willing to give Tina the benefit of the doubt and assume she was hysterical. His mother put Fox back down on the ground almost immediately, and he read her lips admonishing him to be a good boy. No one said a word about the incident when the movie ended. His sister disappeared about two and a half years after this night out. It was an event that suggested few appropriate platitudes or cliches, and it put the final seal of silence on the Mulder household. He was better than his mother at going through the proper motions, but he was forever shut out of the complex subtleties that make up intimate relationships. He would never have such a relationship, any more than he would ever see the color red. Early in their partnership he learned from another agent that Scully had red hair. To him it appeared as a shining ash blonde, very pretty to look at. When Scully was so sick he had felt a closeness to another person that he had never expected to experience. Now that she was healthy, the gap between them was widening again, and he couldn't stop it. He pushed her away and she pushed back. He didn't know what to do anymore, without death to make everything simple. During his search for his sister he used to think that maybe when he found Samantha she would be a kindred spirit. He had been there to offer her more attention and affection than he had received as a child. Sam shattered this dream when she fled out of the coffee shop into Cancerman's car that night. She probably didn't have the energy it took to deal with someone like him. He had always tried to be philosophical about his handicaps, rightly believing that many people had worse burdens to carry. Still, he was beginning to feel more distant than he used to from the world around him, and a little tired of holding on. Sometimes he pictured himself as one of those rainbow colored hot air balloons, tethered to the ground in a gentle breeze. The moorings were gradually loosening under the constant pressure of the air currents, and every so often someone threw a bag of sand over the side of the basket. The death of his father, the revelation of the alien hoax, the loss of his sister--he was losing ballast at an alarming rate. Flynn finished a story that caused Scully to laugh softly. She was probably hoping that Mulder wouldn't wake and steer the conversation back into the areas where he could participate--work, work and more work. Mulder knew what would happen when the last rope whipped free. In his line of work he didn't need the drama of a note and gun. All he needed was one bad day where he was a step too slow, a few seconds too late to react, a little bit behind in putting the puzzle together. He wondered what it would feel like to rise fluidly, without effort, into the blue of the sky.