Fugue 6/6
RivkaT@aol.com

disclaimer part 1

She picked the phone up on the first ring. "Scully."

"It's me."

She sighed. "I'm sorry, Mulder. I should have called."

"I thought you might not. I'm sorry, too. Forgive and 
forget?"

"We've done too much of the latter already."

A minute passed. His voice was low, nearly inaudible, 
when he spoke again. "I would rather not have 
remembered," he said. "I would rather have forgotten 
Samantha altogether, and that makes me feel...I just wish it 
didn't matter so much, and that's nearly as awful as letting 
her go in the first place."

"Trade you," she said without thinking.

"What?"

"...Nothing." 

"Scully, talk to me."

She wanted to tell him, really, or she wouldn't have let that 
comment slip out. Maybe it would be easier on the phone, 
where she couldn't see the pity and renewed guilt in his 
eyes; he'd have time to tamp them down in the recesses of 
his head where he kept all the other snapping monsters 
before he saw her again.

"I don't...I didn't get all my memories back. Just a little over 
four years' worth."

"Just the X Files."

"Just fighting with Missy, not growing up with her. Just Bill 
Jr. yelling at me for getting cancer. Just Ahab disappointed 
in me. Just...enough to be a little more real than Dana 
Parker, but not much."

She heard him breathing raggedly. Times like this made her 
wish that she still had a phone cord to twist, instead of this 
relentlessly convenient cordless wonder. She scanned the 
room, trying to find some distraction.

"Dana..."

Oh, the sympathy moment. Some people gave pity fucks; 
Mulder gave pity friendship. She really believed that he felt 
strongly for her, but it hardly mattered if he was too cool to 
show it except when she was breaking down. She would 
not be loved only for her weaknesses.

"I suppose," she said harshly, "the fact that you haven't 
noticed is a good sign. It means there's nothing too 
significant missing." Give or take thirty years.

"Have you talked to Dr. Foer?" The nice neurologist at 
Georgetown Medical School had been sympathetic, but 
clear: she was not likely to recover any more memories 
than she had already. No one could tell her what had been 
done to them. Normally, as a woman she might have been 
expected to recover more memories than Mulder from 
similar trauma to the memory centers of the brain, since 
female brains generally had memories stored in more 
places than male ones, but with his photographic memory 
he appeared to have come through with less permanent 
damage. Yes, she really would have traded with him, and 
probably he with her.

"Dr. Foer says...that the medical and scientific 
understanding of the brain is in its infancy. That what I 
have recovered is a testament to the resiliency of the 
human brain. That I should call him if I remember anything 
more. He says good luck, and don't forget the six-month 
checkup. That's what he says. Oh, and he asked me on a 
date."

Mulder was not even able to work up the stamina to joke 
about that last piece of information. A very bad sign. He 
was silent for a long time.

She tried to start again: "I suppose it's a bonus on the dating 
scene, not having any boring childhood stories to tell." 
Flippancy always worked for him.

His breath hitched, and then: "Scully, I'm sorry...You know, 
even...in Michigan, you were still yourself. I think I hated 
'Bill' so much because I was jealous of his perfect life, but 
you...Shit. I'm not doing any good for you like this, am I?"

She wondered how broad his question was. "No," she said 
honestly.

"Should I come over?"

"Probably not."

"Is there anything I can do?"

"I don't know, Mulder. But if I think of anything, I promise 
I'll call."

"Anytime, Dana."

"Goodnight," she said, and disconnected. 

That was how she felt: disconnected. Set adrift, unmoored, 
cast away on an unfamiliar, unloving sea. What are we, she 
wondered, but the sum of our memories, each one linking 
us like a thread to the overall fabric of what we are? Our 
pasts keep us within the boundaries of who we are, 
constraining yet also enabling us to find ourselves. Because 
if any choice is as good as the next, then none of them are 
any good at all.

People make so many choices every day, not even thinking 
of them as choices because they are so determined by past 
practice, habits, learning, inclination, or other impetus. But 
for her, every choice had to be made again. The sillier 
ones--do you like pink? what about shad? chocolate or 
maple frosted donuts? who do you believe, Paula Jones or 
Bill Clinton?--nearly drove her crazy, because she agonized 
over them to a ridiculous degree. She wondered what Dana 
Scully would have done, and then cursed herself because 
she *was* Dana Scully, and what did it matter anyway if 
she changed her mind, people did that all the time, and then 
she wondered if some formative experience had shaped this 
particular taste (when, at best, it was probably that Missy 
had said something scathing about redheads and pink) and 
on and on and on until she was sick of it. She was 
beginning to think of Dana Scully as "Danascully," one 
word, one concept. It was like trying to step into the life of 
one's identical twin sister. 

Everyone treated her as if she were real, and so maybe that 
made it the truth. And surely other people, who'd never 
missed time or seen the alien light, also wondered if they 
were real.

She was amazed, now, that she really hadn't understood 
Mulder's desire for a peg leg, a badge of suffering that 
would cause people to turn away in pity and horror. At least 
that reaction would require some acknowledgement of the 
loss.

She wanted a peg leg, but all she had was a tattoo: The 
snake swallows its own tail and shrinks from a circle into a 
dimensionless point, disappearing like a star winking out.

Perhaps the tattoo was appropriate after all, if unobtrusive. 
She found herself checking it in the mirror before she 
dressed each morning, to see if the circle was tightening.

She wanted to jump out of her head and come back when 
everything was more settled.

Unfortunately, that had only happened to her involuntarily, 
and rather unpleasantly.

At least it had settled one thing: after this, she couldn't 
really think about a transfer. This was the only job she 
knew how to do. It would probably have been more ethical 
to turn in her medical license; though she believed that she 
remembered how to exercise all the skills, she just didn't 
know what she didn't know. And she didn't want to find out 
in an emergency. So, instead of pleasure reading (which of 
course triggered all the anxieties about her tastes or lack 
thereof), she was mainly reviewing medical textbooks 
when she had the time, trying to ensure that she could still 
call herself a doctor. 

And a transfer was unthinkable for another reason. Dana 
Scully had been burned away, and not much was left 
behind. So the only thing to do was to find the people 
who'd done this to her and make sure that they could never 
perpetrate such an atrocity again.

She would find them, and she would make them pay.

Dana stood, stretched--the conversation with Mulder had 
certainly left her tense--and headed to bed, taking her gun 
from where it waited on the end table. She needed her rest.

After all, there was a lot of work to do.

***

Mulder was rooting around in her purse for a pen to fill out 
the crime report on their latest victim when he found the 
pills.

He held up the little orange tube. "Scully?" She could tell 
what he hadn't said: are you sick again?

"It's Paxil, Mulder."

"Paxil?" She really thought he didn't know what it was. He 
was a psychologist, not a psychiatrist, so why should he pay 
attention to the trendy new drugs?

"Number three on the MOAI hit parade." Still a blank look, 
waiting. "It's a serotonin re-uptake inhibitor. An 
antidepressant."

His mouth worked. He was taking her pain and converting 
it to his own. She resented that appropriation, but what the 
hell, it didn't diminish her own pain any, so she could 
hardly complain.

"Does it work?" he asked, after an eternity.

She shrugged. "They aren't happy pills. They just make it a 
little easier to get through the low days."

"Better living through chemistry."

He handed her the pill bottle and her purse; she looked 
down at them as if she had no idea what they were. 
Awkwardly, he pulled away and turned his attention to the 
crime report, then looked up.

"Scully?" 

"Yes?"

"Um...do you have a pen?"

She rolled her eyes and found the right compartment in her 
purse.

Mulder took the pen and snagged her hand when she would 
have pulled it away. "If there's ever anything I can do..."

"Look, there's been nothing wrong with my work, has 
there? No one's noticed any deterioration in my 
performance."

"Is that the good news, or the bad news?"

She pulled away, shocked by the insight. "Don't 
psychoanalyze me, Mulder. Save it for the suspects."

Muddy brown eyes stared at her. Oh, great. *She'd* hurt 
*his* feelings. 

"I just...How did Van Blundht get through to you? What did 
he say?" He'd moved closer, leaning down over her. She 
could feel his breath, but there was an invisible wall 
separating them that would have made any Catholic dance 
chaperone proud.

"He asked me about things he didn't know about me. He 
asked me about my past. Ask me about my past, Mulder."

Mulder closed his eyes. Surely God had designed his face 
to show pain; that and blankness seemed to be his 
best-executed expressions.

She could reach out to him, but she'd just run into that 
invisible wall.

Scully waited, and finally Mulder opened his eyes and left 
her alone.

***

That night, when Scully returned to her apartment, she 
found the door unlocked. (Like any good paranoid, she 
always tested it before just shoving the key in.) 

She pulled her gun and leaned against the wall, considering 
her options.

As she'd just decided to call for backup, the door swung 
open, releasing a sweetish haze of cigarette smoke. "Please, 
Dana, no need to wait out in the hall," the dim figure inside 
said. His voice was soft, but carried well: a man used to 
being heard.

Scully aimed directly at him and stood in the door, until she 
realized that she was a perfect target, backlit as she was. 
She stepped into the apartment and quickly hit the light 
switch.

"You can put the gun down," he said. He sounded amused. 
"I just want to talk to you."

"What do we have to talk about?"

"Old times," he whispered, and she took a step forward 
involuntarily.

"Tell me why you're here."

"Don't you remember? We always met at your apartment, 
Wednesday nights, whenever you weren't out chasing crop 
circles with Agent Mulder."

"You're lying!" She fumbled in her pocket for her cell 
phone. Mulder would...Mulder would...

"Shall we ask Agent Mulder's opinion? Go ahead, call 
him."

Mulder would believe him.

She looked desperately around the room. Dana Scully 
didn't betray her only friend. She was honorable; the only 
things she was sure of were her professional competence 
and her integrity. She remembered that for sure.

"Don't worry, Dana. I understand...the change in 
circumstances has been difficult. If you want to remember 
the last five years the way we gave them to you, we won't 
be offended. We have other ways of regulating Agent 
Mulder now."

She'd somehow let her gun arm fall down at her side, but 
she raised her weapon again and aimed for a heart shot. 
"What's your name?" she asked, and heard her voice shake. 
Tears threatened to blur her vision.

He walked forward, until he was almost touching the gun 
and she had to look up to see his face. "I don't remember 
anymore. Could you really shoot me, after all we've 
shared?" His voice was like oil spilled on the sea, fouling 
everything it touched.

He put his hand on hers, not trying to take the gun, just 
touching, stroking, down past her wrist and her elbow, over 
her shoulder and collarbone, ending at her cheek.

"Do you remember any of it?"

She was breathing his breath now. It smelled bitter and 
dark, chocolate with a hint of ash.

"Do you remember this?"

He kissed her with utter familiarity, his hand snaking out to 
capture the back of her neck to hold her at just the right 
angle--not an easy thing, with their height differential. She 
stood still when she should have pulled away screaming. 
Such a distinctive taste...

She heard the gun fall to the floor, and he released her. She 
staggered back until she hit the wall and leaned against it 
for strength.

"When you want to remember another life, Dana, I'll be 
waiting." He pressed a business card with nothing but a 
phone number on it into her nerveless hand. It fell to the 
floor immediately, but he didn't pick it up.

When the door closed, her legs gave out, and she collapsed. 
Lying on the floor was actually rather comfortable; there 
were no decisions to be made and noplace to go. She could 
lie there forever if she wanted to, and no one would tell her 
any more lies.

It couldn't be true.

But Dana Parker had done some ruthless things that had 
surprised both Mulder and Dana Scully, remembering 
them. Lack of inhibition or return to form?

Mulder--her feelings about him were too complex to be 
implanted as a cover story for a spy. There'd be no reason 
to do it, if he trusted her and she was busily betraying him.

The lesson the smoking man had given her was more 
nuanced: there was no way that she'd ever know for sure. 
She could never be confident that she'd peeled back the 
final layer of what had been done to her and rediscovered 
the real Dana Scully underneath. For all intents and 
purposes, there was no real Dana Scully. There was only 
Dana, who could choose what she would become.

Who would you be if you weren't who you were?

How would you know?

The hardwood floor slowly transmitted its chill to her flesh, 
until she was shivering.

She lay there, waiting for the next intervention. When she 
got an external stimulus, she'd know how to respond.

Until then, she was content to wait. 

END

Thanks much to Agent Sabine, who asked the tough 
questions.