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Prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est; certum est, quia impossibile.
Scully was no longer shy about dragging him into churches. She’d pick Catholic if available, but when she felt the need it was any transept in a tempest. (She didn’t think that was very funny. Then again, she didn’t think South Park was very funny.)
Mulder himself didn’t see the point – not just of the religion; she’d known that for years. But also he didn’t see the point of the building. It was people who made belief, not stained glass. Sure, he could quote the research about the effects of ordered structures on mental states, and the importance of line-drawing between sacred and profane. But at the same time, he couldn’t shake the conviction that true revelation could strike anywhere, out in a forest or in a small boat at sea. That maybe it could only come unlooked-for, outside.
He’d tried to explain it to her once, this structural skepticism. Scully had stared at him with her usual slightly superior incomprehension. “Most people who pray,” she’d told him, “aren’t looking for revelation, Mulder. The burning bush, the still small voice, those things are the opposite of the day-to-day comforts of faith. Revelation is terrifying.”
“Then how,” he’d asked, “can religion pretend to encompass both, Scully? If the workaday pieties are so distinct from the rollercoaster of divine inspiration, why does one come in the costume of the other?”
“Durkheim posited that was the path of all organized religion,” she’d suggested, “moving from charismatic to bureaucratic.”
“You’re giving me sociology, not epistemology,” he’d pointed out, but she’d merely told him that the paradoxes of belief were not for unbelievers, which he’d considered definitional rather than responsive, and they’d left it at that.
It would have made a better story, perhaps, if the subsequent years and discoveries had caused him to change his perspective. If, having lost everything – his job, his identity, his son -- he had newly understood the comforts of solid, materialized faith, faith serious enough to build itself a building, to say ‘I will be here, tomorrow, next week, next century.’ But God was still silent to him. His faith remained in things more concrete and less distant – or at least so he hoped – than an anthropomorphic father figure.
He believed in truth.
He believed in aliens.
He believed in the existence of a way to stop them.
He even believed that there would come a day when they would stop running, when he could be Mulder again and she could be Scully.
He only wished that, instead of believing, he could know.
Not Too Shabby
“What are you doing, Dean?”
Dean looked up from his losing battle with the cheap tape and cheaper wrapping paper. Whatever it was that he was trying to package was now completely shapeless, and the blue wrapping paper had white patches where the tape had torn off and been reapplied.
Sam continued to look at him expectantly.
“It’s a present for Ben, all right?”
Ben. Sam hadn’t spent much time thinking about the Braedens since they’d left. He’d trained himself well enough not to imagine his own alternate histories, and he had no energy to do any differently for Dean. “Isn’t it a little early for a Christmas present?”
Dean shrugged. “Lisa’s Jewish. It’s almost Hanukah. And I looked it up, a lot of kids get eight little presents.”
“You looked it up?” Sam parroted. “Dean, is this serious?”
And then the air got a little heavy and they both looked at the package in Dean’s hands, a half-constructed Death Star of thin paper.
Dean took a breath. “I got him a postcard from New Orleans, one of the claws from that baldander, a pen that – uh, changes color when you turn it upside down, a bag of Chupa Chups, a matchbox Impala – not the right year though, Physical Graffiti -- a freakin’ CD, and don’t think I feel good about that, but kids these days – a can of Silly String, and a deck of cards.” He paused. “You think he’ll like ‘em?”
Sam had to clench his jaw, hard. “I think,” he said after a moment too long, “he’ll love them. Let’s – we’ll find a post office and buy some packing peanuts. Can’t have presents like that getting damaged in transit.”
Chuck Versus the Missed Opportunity
Chuck had hoped that Bryce wouldn’t ask; nobody else had. But even Bryce was not quite perfect; right before his last exam, Bryce popped the question:
“Where are you going for winter break?”
Chuck kept underlining, watching the yellow highlighter eat up paper. “I thought I’d just stay here.”
“What?”
He could imagine Bryce’s exaggerated look of shock. He didn’t want that to turn into pity, but – “Ellie’s got some comprehensive exams coming up, you know, and I didn’t want to bother her, so –”
“Great!” Bryce said. “You can come home with me. My folks would love to meet you.”
Chuck capped the highlighter and put it down. “That’s really nice of you, Bryce, but I’m sure your parents want to spend time with you, not some college buddy.”
“Chuck,” Bryce said slowly, “I’d like you to meet my parents.”
His head snapped up so fast it felt like something had broken. “What? Uh, what?”
Bryce already had on that wry, unconcerned expression that he used on everyone else. “Hey, you know what? Never mind. It was a stupid idea.”
“Okay,” Chuck said, not really understanding what he was agreeing to, but feeling that agreement was definitely required in this situation. “Okay, sure. Yeah. Hey, uh, I have the answers to the last problem set somewhere here –” He set to rummaging through his notebooks. “We could, I don’t know, go over them?”
“Maybe later,” Bryce said.
Even after the cheating accusation and the scandal, Chuck had thought that moment was the most confused Bryce would ever make him. Sometimes he wondered, what if he got a do-over? But he’d still have been the same bumbling Chuck Bartowski, and plus there’d still have been the NSA test in his future, so four out of five sf geeks would have to agree that it wouldn’t have made a difference.
Bloodline
“I’m so sorry,” she said to the Wilcoxes, closing the folder but not pushing it back towards them, not willing to make the rejection so physical. “The defects are genetic, not the result of a prenatal injury, which means our procedures can’t help you. I can make a referral –”
Lyda – the one who wasn’t pregnant – leaned forward. “We have a surgeon. But she doesn’t think that the baby would be able to survive ten hours in surgery. She told us that you – that your clinic might be able to help with that. We have money –”
Claire closed her eyes. Every time this happened, it was the same debate: help a child now, risk exposure and arrest and all the other children who weren’t yet able to ask for her help. Many times, she said no. Sometimes she even convinced herself that she’d only said no to the right people.
Refusing them was never without pain, the kind that didn’t fade in a flash of healing heat. And she couldn’t exactly pick up a new gene sequencer in the discount aisle at the supermarket.
“There’s every chance that you won’t be suitable for the protocol,” she warned. “I’ll need to talk to your surgeon.”
But they weren’t listening; they were hugging and crying in each other’s arms, awkward over the heavy lump of belly.
Claire looked down at the folder, seeing the ultrasounds in her mind’s eye. Someday, she thought. Someday I’ll fix you too.
Metropolis Underground
“Don’t say I never take you anywhere,” Clark told Lex, trying not to smile.
“I have never in my life considered saying such a thing,” Lex snapped, his curled lip making clear that he knew Clark was laughing on the inside. “Also, we’re in a sewer.”
“I’m sure the rest of the League will be here shortly,” Clark said, trying for a reassuring tone.
“Wonderful! More witnesses to my humiliation.” Maybe reassurance wasn’t what Lex needed. Unfortunately Clark didn’t have a change of clothes for himself, much less for Lex.
“Look, that giant alligator isn’t going to stay unconscious forever, and I’m not going to be able to get it out without causing serious structural damage to the city – which I know you hate. So you’re just going to have to wait for my backup to arrive.”
“You could dismember it,” Lex suggested silkily. “Solving both problems.”
Clark gave him a look to indicate what he thought about that plan to murder an innocent (well, sort of) creature for convenience’s sake.
So when Jimmy snapped a picture of Lex rising – almost like Venus on the half-shell, if Venus had been bald, furious, and covered in a mixture of giant alligator snot and sewage – from the manhole, Clark didn’t bother to hide his laughter.
Dial Tone
Dana Scully’s mother once told her that, for an adult, there was nothing worse than a phone call in the middle of the night. “It rings,” she said, “and you jolt awake and, for a moment, you run through all the people you love who are out there. You pray, before you pick up.”
Her mother had taken enough of those calls to know the limits of prayer.
But for Scully, it was different. For years, the ring in the darkness had meant that Mulder was out there. Pensive, perhaps depressed, drunk, or even despairing, but sometimes just chatty or occasionally gleeful at interrupting her night. Always Mulder.
For Scully, it was the silence that terrified her, each unbroken night like she’d confidently put her foot out to rest on a step that wasn’t there any more.
When Scully prayed, she prayed for noise.
So, I miscalculated: two more spots for tomorrow night, if anyone wants to claim them.
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Any chance for Scarecrow (Ambrose)/Tin Man (Cain)?
If not, Heroes! Matt! And fatherhood!
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It's weird to be writing Clark and Lex right now, when I feel like the show's gone somewhere interesting that I'm not really following. This whole exercise has been grueling, but also educational.
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Next year maybe...
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That was awesome! I will respond again when I have something besides uncritical joy to spread!
Thanks!
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I loved this fic because it doesn't answer in a straightforward way. Even better, Mulder says things that I myself sometimes feel like, "faith serious enough to build itself a building,". It's also perfectly in line with other things that Mulder has said over the years, I'm thinking All souls in particular. The dialogue format is a great way of forcing Mulder to vocalize his thoughts, and I like that he and Scully are still proding each other, but that they've reached a truce. They do sound like a married couple (I suppose that would be appropriate, after 9+ years).
The lines are equal parts hilarious ("slightly superior incomprehensibility" - so true!), and heartbreaking, such as Mulder's aside about William.
Also, I kinda like the fact that you sometimes incoporate words I don't know (the Latin) because it means I have to use my brain and learn something new.
So, again, it's great to have more X-Files fic from you, and thank you again for writing this.
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*wanders off to get another fic*
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“You could dismember it,” Lex suggested silkily. “Solving both problems.”
My adoration for Lex knows no bounds, much like his shamelessness.
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And I haven't run out of adoration for Lex yet, nor do I foresee an interruption in the supply.
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Claaaaaire!
Oh, that was awesome. Thanks. :D
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::dies from delight::
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