From: Anne 
Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative
Subject: NEW: The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face (1/1)
Date: 15 May 1996 17:56:16 GMT


This is a short piece of nonsense that crossed my mind when I 
wondered whether Scully had ever gone overseas to see her father when 
he had shoreleave.

Usual disclaimers apply ... they're not mine, never were, never will
be ...

Anne
(menolly@dial.pipex.com)
________________________________________________________


The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face ...

It was cold again.  The antiquated heating system seemed unable to
cope with an Oxford winter and he wondered, not for the first time,
what the English would make of a New England winter when they seemed
barely able to cope with their own.  He blew on his hands and got up,
leaving the essay he was working on, and walked across the room to
switch on the kettle and try to find a clean cup somewhere in the
mess that his scout refused to touch.

The coffee made, he padded slowly back across the room, cradling the
hot cup carefully, and absently looked out of the window.  A flash of
copper caught his gaze and held it.  He put the cup on the desk,
coffee dripping unnoticed as he watched the young girl chase across
the quad lawn, laughing at the older man who walked a little more
sedately on the path around the lawn.  The hood of her jacket had
slipped back, allowing her hair to spill free in a vibrant contrast
to the snow lying on the ground and framing the buildings.

Sitting at the desk, looking through the gothic arches that an
architect in a fit of whimsy had designed for the windows, he looked
for his binoculars and, failing to find them, picked up his camera
to watch a little more closely.  Somehow the energy of the girl was
invigorating, and infectious.  He laughed to himself as he saw her
pick up a handful of snow and fling it at her companion.  Moving the
camera he watched the snowball break apart in a flurry on the man's
coat and noted subconsciously that it seemed military.  The man
appeared to be her father.  The girl ... he looked again ... was
definitely a girl.  Short, maybe fourteen years old.  Almost the
same age as ... he stopped that train of thought before it began to
destroy him again, his gaze flicking momentarily to a photograph of
a dark-haired child that sat on his desk.

The girl outside ran back to her father, her breath visible in short
puffs of frozen air as she tucked her arm into his and laughed up at
him.  He continued to watch through the camera as they crossed the
quad and turned to enter the arch leading out of college.  Abruptly
the girl stopped and looked back, gesturing, perhaps pointing to the
startling beauty of the sandstone buildings trimmed with snow in the
late afternoon sun, glowing with a red gold that echoed her hair. 
Her father said something that made her laugh again, just as her gaze
swept past his room.  He clicked the shutter on the camera in a
reflex action as she seemed to look straight at him, a smile on her
face, her hair a copper gold halo in the dying sun, framed in the
darkness of the arch.  She turned with her father and left, slipping
away into the darkness. He sighed, unsure why he sighed, and returned
his attention to his essay and the results of an experiment with
Siamese fighting fish.  He always felt rather sorry for the fish,
teased with imagined and actual threats they couldn't substantiate.

Two weeks later, at home for the Christmas holidays, his photographs
arrived in mail from the developing lab and that afternoon in Oxford
returned to him in force as he looked at her face.  The peace of that
brief moment returned to him and he felt a tranquility long
forgotten. He tucked the photograph into the book he was reading that
day, and it lay undisturbed for 15 years until Dana Scully, waiting
yet again in her partner's apartment for him to finish packing for
another assignment, flipped open his copy of Moby Dick, looking for
her own peace and finding the photograph.  She looked at it for a
moment, then looked again, her voice cracking as she called his name.

"Mulder ..."

_____________________________________________________

Author's trivia notes: (i) A 'scout' is an Oxford college cleaning
lady - they come round at an unearthly hour and empty your trash and
(usually) clean up generally, including washing any coffee cups and
so on ... but my scout had a tendency not to wash up cups and so on
for students she thought needed to learn to pick up after themselves :) 
(ii) there actually is an experiment with Siamese fighting fish on
the Oxford psychology (PPP) course, testing to see what colours the 
fish react to and perceive as a threat.

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