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. 
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.

****

****

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.

****

****

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.

****

****

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.

****

****

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.

****

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.

****

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?

****

****

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.

****

****

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.

****

****

********
Author's Notes: William is a famous faience 
hippopotamus at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New 
York; Vermeer's 'Allegory of the Faith' and VanGogh'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

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