FF: Notes from the Underground
Title: Notes from the Underground
Author: Ellie (windblownellie@yahoo.com)
Rating: G
Category: VA, implied MSR
Summary: Scully's journal entries, post-Trust No 1
Through the rest of S9.
Author's Notes are at the end of the story.
Thanks to XScribe for the beta and assurance I was not
being too obtuse in my references.
*********
January 16, 2002
Mulder,
It has been six days since I emailed you. No response
had arrived in my inbox, and I presumed that our ill-
fated reunion had put an end to the feasibility of any
contact between us. Yet when I returned from work
today, my super presented me with a package bearing
only the return address and ornate crest of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art.
I will admit that fear was my first reaction to the
package. Recently I have begun jumping at shadows and
creaks of the hardwood floors in the night; certainly
an anonymous package delivered to my home was reason
to be cautious. I nearly took William to my mother's
before I dared touch it, but I am glad I left him in
his bassinet.
When I removed the beautifully gift-wrapped box from
the packaging, I noticed that it was addressed to
William from his daddy, and I was overcome. Even
without opening it, I am not ashamed to admit that
tears threatened. When I tore off the blue paper to
reveal the stuffed animal inside, I wasn't sure
whether to laugh or to weep. It seems appropriate
that while other infants have their Teddies and Elmos,
our son has an eponymously named Egyptian
hippopotamus. Did you realize the faience blue is the
color of his eyes when he's happy?
In my delight over William's gift, I nearly overlooked
my own. The postcard had slipped to the bottom of the
box, and the earthy tones blended into the packing.
Only the lead white of the subject's dress announced
its presence to me. Reading your writing on the back
of Vermeer's 'Allegory of the Faith' was difficult
through my tears. I am saving the postcard here, so
that when you return to me, you can tell me who
composed the verses that you hastily scrawled across
the back.
****
Days of absence, sad and dreary,
Clothed in sorrow's dark array,
Days of absence, I am weary,
She I love is far away.
****
January 23, 2002
Mulder,
Only a week has passed, and I have already received a
three-postcard bouquet from you. How have you sent me
'Irises' from Atlanta, 'Oleanders' from Chicago, and
'Cypresses' from Detroit in such a short time? I
worry about the paper trail you are leaving, but the
cities are such travel hubs that I hope you are merely
dropping your notes in the mail while waiting for your
connection. These will be saved, cherished. You only
need to identify the oleander quote this time.
William and William have become inseparable. He has
always been a good baby, but now he cries when he
cannot have his hippo. I fear that you have sent not
just a gift, but your personality. I should not
complain about that; it is your personality that I
love.
****
But me, I'm still on the road
Headin for another joint
We always did feel the same,
We just saw it from a different point of view,
Tangled up in blue
****
I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though it all went wrong
I'll stand before the lord of song
With nothing on my tongue but hallelujah
****
And in my hour of darkness
She is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
****
February 7, 2002
Mulder,
Two weeks passed without a word from you, and the one
I received today came in a bright orange box with a
very expensive label. You are on the run for your
life, for our son's life, for the future of the world.
A stuffed toy for William and a few postcards sent
from train stations are one thing, but how on earth
can you afford the exposure and expense that comes
with sending me a Hermès scarf from Paris? What are
you doing in Paris to buy me such a thing in the first
place? While the silk Milky Way is stunning, it was
absolutely unnecessary. If you were here, I would
make you return it and do a neurological exam to see
if the last of your good sense had finally fled.
I'm wearing it to work tomorrow.
****
February 8, 2002
Mulder,
It strikes me as overly dramatic--even for you--to
send me a postcard of Michelangelo's 'Dying Slave.'
It, like yesterday's scarf, was postmarked from Paris.
I can only wonder at your business there; we've never
had any indication of threat there. Perhaps it is not
that there is a threat, but that it is a haven from
the dangers you have been facing? I would love to
pick up a telephone or compose an email to ask you,
but know it's not safe to do so. I have no address,
even if I would like to send you a postcard in return.
It is safer that way, but that knowledge does not make
the fact easier to bear.
There is something comforting in seeing your sloppy
scrawl, smudged ink and all, on these postcards. I do
not know whether these verses have all been songs, or
are also poems. This one, like the first, I cannot
identify, though it has a hint of the familiar.
Shakespeare, I think, to add another William to the
mix. I am certain none of it is your work. For all
your flights of fancy, you have never been inclined
towards the poetic.
****
From you I have been absent in the spring
...
Yet seem'd it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play.
****
February 14, 2002
Mulder,
With your usual timing, a postcard arrived for me
today. Certainly nothing could be more appropriate
than the Venus de Milo, or dearer to me than knowing
you are thinking of me. I had seen you print rather
than write so rarely that I could barely identify it
as yours, but the method of transmission left no
doubt. The only gift that would be more treasured
would be you at my side as I write this.
In your stead, I have the other man in my life. He's
curled asleep next to his William, who is now slightly
worse for the loving. One of his legs has a strange
orange stain, whose origins even I can't determine,
and his tail is looking a bit frayed. Our son goes to
sleep listening to stories of our adventures together,
which can be no more harmful to him than listening to
tales of wolves eating girls or witches cooking
children. Tonight I told him about being lost in the
Florida swamps, singing because you wanted me to.
Though I am sure I may just as well read my JAMA out
loud to him, for all he understands. It is the tone
of voice, rather than the words themselves.
The words you send to me are charmingly appropriate.
Love notes about Pythagoras and atoms hark back to our
years of brainy, bantering courtship. Between anyone
else, it would make me laugh, but between us, it is
right. It reminds me that you will come back to us,
and I will make you sing these words to me.
****
They knew it, the fervent pupils of Pythagoras:
that stars and men revolve in a cycle;
the fateful atoms will bring back the vital
gold Aphrodite, Thebans and agoras.
****
February 20, 2002
Mulder,
Have you been to see the art you are sending me in
miniature? I show it all to William, and tell him you
are, and that one day we will all go together to see
it. Do you know that beyond a few trips to Tijuana in
high school, my only trips out of the country have
been to the ends of the earth with you? It would be
delightful to stand next to you, staring at the 'Raft
of the Medusa' and trying not to smirk as you whisper
Melville in my ear. Or, more probably, some
distasteful comment about cannibalism that would
threaten to send me into a fit of giggles that would
be suppressed in favor of chastising you for your poor
taste.
I am lonely here without you. Work is not the same
without you here to challenge me on it, and the
frustrations of teaching are not the same frustrations
that plagued me in working with you. I can only hope
that you are journeying homeward, to William and me.
Yet I fear a Prague postmark means you are only
traveling farther away. Keep going far enough west,
and you will circle the world and return to us.
****
Life's a voyage that's homeward bound.
****
March 13, 2002
Mulder,
Our son is missing. I have cried out all my rage and
grief, hugging that silly hippo to my chest. I am
alone in my silent apartment with my despair and a
stuffed animal in the place of our son. These past
two years have been the hardest of my life--harder
even than the year of my cancer. Then, everything was
self-contained, but for all we never spoke about it,
your hand was always on the small of my back when I
needed that extra help but wouldn't ask. I need that
now, and after this emotional tilt-a-whirl, my
emotions are so close to the surface that I would be
willing to ask. Yet I cannot. You are halfway around
the world, and I must find comfort in a few words of
Shakespeare on the back of Da Vinci. It is not enough
this time.
I want you here, running off half-cocked into the
night with the Gunmen and returning with our son. The
usual suspects were rounded up and no answers were
found and Mona Lisa's enigmatic smile reveals nothing
to me.
****
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
****
April 1, 2002
Mulder,
It seems apt that on April Fool's Day I am tangled in
a web of deceit and half-truths. A man appeared,
refusing to give his name, who has convinced everyone
with a DNA test that he was you. I know otherwise;
you would not play such coy games with me after this
much time, and you would not have looked so
perplexedly at the Williams in the crib. I know in
the very depths of my soul the smile that would have
crossed your face in that moment, and it was nowhere
to be found. How can I explain that logically to
everyone else?
I could tell them that you have been sending me these
postcards and poems, and that I just received one
today. Surely a man who mailed a postcard from Moscow
last Wednesday is not now sitting on my sofa. It is
not the note of a man who is coming home. You would
not send me 'The Astronomer,' contemplating the
intricacies of mapping the heavens and quoting Millay,
if you were on your way home to me.
Yet I must wonder who this man is who shares such a
close genetic relationship to you. If I contemplate
the heavens, will I find my answers there? Can we
both look up at the stars and navigate our ways back
to each other?
****
Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world,
which I find myself constantly walking around in the
daytime, and falling into at night. I miss you like
hell.
****
April 3, 2002
Mulder,
William is gone. No decision in my life has ever been
so hard as letting my sweet baby go. Gone to
strangers, in an unknown place, under an unknown name.
But, I hope, a safer life awaits him there. Here he
came under too much threat, too much of a risk. You
and I may not like what our lives have lead us to, but
we have made a conscious choice in the matter; he did
not ask for this, and I will not see him subjected to
the kind of life Emily had. I may never see him
again, but I know he will have a better life for it.
I can't say that I will. I don't know where I've
found the strength for it. I feel as if I've been
splintered into a million pieces, never to be
reformed. You can quote me Virgil 'til you're blue in
the face and I'll not believe this will ever be a
pleasant memory. Knowing it is the right choice
doesn't mean I have to be happy with it.
You've now sent me Dante and Virgil, journeying
through hell. A more appropriate image could not be
found. I've been to hell and back--we both have--
several times now. I can't do it any more, and I
can't do it alone. Come back to me, so that if I must
endure this, it will not be alone.
****
Perhaps even these things, one day, will be pleasing
to remember.
****
April 30, 2002
Mulder,
I can only hope that the unicorn you sent me from New
York two days ago means that you are coming home to
me. It certainly seems a hopeful sign. Do you
somehow know all that has happened, and how much I
need you now?
I don't know that it's safe for you to return, though.
While I have heard nothing more about the pursuit of
William, and I presume he is safe, it still seems you
are a prime target. No matter how much we may need
each other now, I fear it will not end without a
violent struggle.
You may be wiser in this than I, having spent the last
months working to resolve everything. Perhaps you
have. Perhaps you will appear on my doorstep
tomorrow, and we can ride off into the sunset
together.
If only our lives worked that way.
****
We shall find peace. We shall hear the angels, we
shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.
****
********
Author's Notes: William is a famous faience
hippopotamus at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York; Vermeer's 'Allegory of the Faith' and Van Gogh's
'Irises,' 'Oleanders,' and 'Cypresses,' and the
Unicorn Tapestry can also be found there. Other works
can be found at the Louvre. I recommend a visit, but
you can also see them online at www.metmuseum.org and
www.louvre.fr.
In order, quotes have been taken from:
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "Days of absence..."
Bob Dylan, "Tangled Up in Blue"
Leonard Cohen, "Hallelujah"
Lennon/McCartney, "Let It Be"
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 98
Jorge Luis Borges, "The Cyclical Night"
Herman Melville
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Virgil, The Aenid
Anton Chekov
Author: Ellie (windblownellie@yahoo.com)
Rating: G
Category: VA, implied MSR
Summary: Scully's journal entries, post-Trust No 1
Through the rest of S9.
Author's Notes are at the end of the story.
Thanks to XScribe for the beta and assurance I was not
being too obtuse in my references.
*********
January 16, 2002
Mulder,
It has been six days since I emailed you. No response
had arrived in my inbox, and I presumed that our ill-
fated reunion had put an end to the feasibility of any
contact between us. Yet when I returned from work
today, my super presented me with a package bearing
only the return address and ornate crest of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art.
I will admit that fear was my first reaction to the
package. Recently I have begun jumping at shadows and
creaks of the hardwood floors in the night; certainly
an anonymous package delivered to my home was reason
to be cautious. I nearly took William to my mother's
before I dared touch it, but I am glad I left him in
his bassinet.
When I removed the beautifully gift-wrapped box from
the packaging, I noticed that it was addressed to
William from his daddy, and I was overcome. Even
without opening it, I am not ashamed to admit that
tears threatened. When I tore off the blue paper to
reveal the stuffed animal inside, I wasn't sure
whether to laugh or to weep. It seems appropriate
that while other infants have their Teddies and Elmos,
our son has an eponymously named Egyptian
hippopotamus. Did you realize the faience blue is the
color of his eyes when he's happy?
In my delight over William's gift, I nearly overlooked
my own. The postcard had slipped to the bottom of the
box, and the earthy tones blended into the packing.
Only the lead white of the subject's dress announced
its presence to me. Reading your writing on the back
of Vermeer's 'Allegory of the Faith' was difficult
through my tears. I am saving the postcard here, so
that when you return to me, you can tell me who
composed the verses that you hastily scrawled across
the back.
****
Days of absence, sad and dreary,
Clothed in sorrow's dark array,
Days of absence, I am weary,
She I love is far away.
****
January 23, 2002
Mulder,
Only a week has passed, and I have already received a
three-postcard bouquet from you. How have you sent me
'Irises' from Atlanta, 'Oleanders' from Chicago, and
'Cypresses' from Detroit in such a short time? I
worry about the paper trail you are leaving, but the
cities are such travel hubs that I hope you are merely
dropping your notes in the mail while waiting for your
connection. These will be saved, cherished. You only
need to identify the oleander quote this time.
William and William have become inseparable. He has
always been a good baby, but now he cries when he
cannot have his hippo. I fear that you have sent not
just a gift, but your personality. I should not
complain about that; it is your personality that I
love.
****
But me, I'm still on the road
Headin for another joint
We always did feel the same,
We just saw it from a different point of view,
Tangled up in blue
****
I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though it all went wrong
I'll stand before the lord of song
With nothing on my tongue but hallelujah
****
And in my hour of darkness
She is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
****
February 7, 2002
Mulder,
Two weeks passed without a word from you, and the one
I received today came in a bright orange box with a
very expensive label. You are on the run for your
life, for our son's life, for the future of the world.
A stuffed toy for William and a few postcards sent
from train stations are one thing, but how on earth
can you afford the exposure and expense that comes
with sending me a Hermès scarf from Paris? What are
you doing in Paris to buy me such a thing in the first
place? While the silk Milky Way is stunning, it was
absolutely unnecessary. If you were here, I would
make you return it and do a neurological exam to see
if the last of your good sense had finally fled.
I'm wearing it to work tomorrow.
****
February 8, 2002
Mulder,
It strikes me as overly dramatic--even for you--to
send me a postcard of Michelangelo's 'Dying Slave.'
It, like yesterday's scarf, was postmarked from Paris.
I can only wonder at your business there; we've never
had any indication of threat there. Perhaps it is not
that there is a threat, but that it is a haven from
the dangers you have been facing? I would love to
pick up a telephone or compose an email to ask you,
but know it's not safe to do so. I have no address,
even if I would like to send you a postcard in return.
It is safer that way, but that knowledge does not make
the fact easier to bear.
There is something comforting in seeing your sloppy
scrawl, smudged ink and all, on these postcards. I do
not know whether these verses have all been songs, or
are also poems. This one, like the first, I cannot
identify, though it has a hint of the familiar.
Shakespeare, I think, to add another William to the
mix. I am certain none of it is your work. For all
your flights of fancy, you have never been inclined
towards the poetic.
****
From you I have been absent in the spring
...
Yet seem'd it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play.
****
February 14, 2002
Mulder,
With your usual timing, a postcard arrived for me
today. Certainly nothing could be more appropriate
than the Venus de Milo, or dearer to me than knowing
you are thinking of me. I had seen you print rather
than write so rarely that I could barely identify it
as yours, but the method of transmission left no
doubt. The only gift that would be more treasured
would be you at my side as I write this.
In your stead, I have the other man in my life. He's
curled asleep next to his William, who is now slightly
worse for the loving. One of his legs has a strange
orange stain, whose origins even I can't determine,
and his tail is looking a bit frayed. Our son goes to
sleep listening to stories of our adventures together,
which can be no more harmful to him than listening to
tales of wolves eating girls or witches cooking
children. Tonight I told him about being lost in the
Florida swamps, singing because you wanted me to.
Though I am sure I may just as well read my JAMA out
loud to him, for all he understands. It is the tone
of voice, rather than the words themselves.
The words you send to me are charmingly appropriate.
Love notes about Pythagoras and atoms hark back to our
years of brainy, bantering courtship. Between anyone
else, it would make me laugh, but between us, it is
right. It reminds me that you will come back to us,
and I will make you sing these words to me.
****
They knew it, the fervent pupils of Pythagoras:
that stars and men revolve in a cycle;
the fateful atoms will bring back the vital
gold Aphrodite, Thebans and agoras.
****
February 20, 2002
Mulder,
Have you been to see the art you are sending me in
miniature? I show it all to William, and tell him you
are, and that one day we will all go together to see
it. Do you know that beyond a few trips to Tijuana in
high school, my only trips out of the country have
been to the ends of the earth with you? It would be
delightful to stand next to you, staring at the 'Raft
of the Medusa' and trying not to smirk as you whisper
Melville in my ear. Or, more probably, some
distasteful comment about cannibalism that would
threaten to send me into a fit of giggles that would
be suppressed in favor of chastising you for your poor
taste.
I am lonely here without you. Work is not the same
without you here to challenge me on it, and the
frustrations of teaching are not the same frustrations
that plagued me in working with you. I can only hope
that you are journeying homeward, to William and me.
Yet I fear a Prague postmark means you are only
traveling farther away. Keep going far enough west,
and you will circle the world and return to us.
****
Life's a voyage that's homeward bound.
****
March 13, 2002
Mulder,
Our son is missing. I have cried out all my rage and
grief, hugging that silly hippo to my chest. I am
alone in my silent apartment with my despair and a
stuffed animal in the place of our son. These past
two years have been the hardest of my life--harder
even than the year of my cancer. Then, everything was
self-contained, but for all we never spoke about it,
your hand was always on the small of my back when I
needed that extra help but wouldn't ask. I need that
now, and after this emotional tilt-a-whirl, my
emotions are so close to the surface that I would be
willing to ask. Yet I cannot. You are halfway around
the world, and I must find comfort in a few words of
Shakespeare on the back of Da Vinci. It is not enough
this time.
I want you here, running off half-cocked into the
night with the Gunmen and returning with our son. The
usual suspects were rounded up and no answers were
found and Mona Lisa's enigmatic smile reveals nothing
to me.
****
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
****
April 1, 2002
Mulder,
It seems apt that on April Fool's Day I am tangled in
a web of deceit and half-truths. A man appeared,
refusing to give his name, who has convinced everyone
with a DNA test that he was you. I know otherwise;
you would not play such coy games with me after this
much time, and you would not have looked so
perplexedly at the Williams in the crib. I know in
the very depths of my soul the smile that would have
crossed your face in that moment, and it was nowhere
to be found. How can I explain that logically to
everyone else?
I could tell them that you have been sending me these
postcards and poems, and that I just received one
today. Surely a man who mailed a postcard from Moscow
last Wednesday is not now sitting on my sofa. It is
not the note of a man who is coming home. You would
not send me 'The Astronomer,' contemplating the
intricacies of mapping the heavens and quoting Millay,
if you were on your way home to me.
Yet I must wonder who this man is who shares such a
close genetic relationship to you. If I contemplate
the heavens, will I find my answers there? Can we
both look up at the stars and navigate our ways back
to each other?
****
Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world,
which I find myself constantly walking around in the
daytime, and falling into at night. I miss you like
hell.
****
April 3, 2002
Mulder,
William is gone. No decision in my life has ever been
so hard as letting my sweet baby go. Gone to
strangers, in an unknown place, under an unknown name.
But, I hope, a safer life awaits him there. Here he
came under too much threat, too much of a risk. You
and I may not like what our lives have lead us to, but
we have made a conscious choice in the matter; he did
not ask for this, and I will not see him subjected to
the kind of life Emily had. I may never see him
again, but I know he will have a better life for it.
I can't say that I will. I don't know where I've
found the strength for it. I feel as if I've been
splintered into a million pieces, never to be
reformed. You can quote me Virgil 'til you're blue in
the face and I'll not believe this will ever be a
pleasant memory. Knowing it is the right choice
doesn't mean I have to be happy with it.
You've now sent me Dante and Virgil, journeying
through hell. A more appropriate image could not be
found. I've been to hell and back--we both have--
several times now. I can't do it any more, and I
can't do it alone. Come back to me, so that if I must
endure this, it will not be alone.
****
Perhaps even these things, one day, will be pleasing
to remember.
****
April 30, 2002
Mulder,
I can only hope that the unicorn you sent me from New
York two days ago means that you are coming home to
me. It certainly seems a hopeful sign. Do you
somehow know all that has happened, and how much I
need you now?
I don't know that it's safe for you to return, though.
While I have heard nothing more about the pursuit of
William, and I presume he is safe, it still seems you
are a prime target. No matter how much we may need
each other now, I fear it will not end without a
violent struggle.
You may be wiser in this than I, having spent the last
months working to resolve everything. Perhaps you
have. Perhaps you will appear on my doorstep
tomorrow, and we can ride off into the sunset
together.
If only our lives worked that way.
****
We shall find peace. We shall hear the angels, we
shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.
****
********
Author's Notes: William is a famous faience
hippopotamus at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York; Vermeer's 'Allegory of the Faith' and Van Gogh's
'Irises,' 'Oleanders,' and 'Cypresses,' and the
Unicorn Tapestry can also be found there. Other works
can be found at the Louvre. I recommend a visit, but
you can also see them online at www.metmuseum.org and
www.louvre.fr.
In order, quotes have been taken from:
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "Days of absence..."
Bob Dylan, "Tangled Up in Blue"
Leonard Cohen, "Hallelujah"
Lennon/McCartney, "Let It Be"
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 98
Jorge Luis Borges, "The Cyclical Night"
Herman Melville
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Virgil, The Aenid
Anton Chekov