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Title: Quick Bright Things
Category: V, Sc/P UST, angst, genfic
Rating: PG (I refuse to rate anything G)
Summary: Pendrell's moment in the light. Coffee, Shakespeare,
Knights of the Round Table.
Spoilers: Well, you know about Scully's cancer, right? You
didn't?
Oops, sorry.
Archive: Why not? Just *please* ask first (like I'd say no?
<g>)
Feedback: cazfic@ymail.com
Disclaimer: Uh...the waitress is mine. Everyone else: sadly, CC,
1013, and
Fox won sole custody. I'm not making a red cent off this, y'know.
Author's Notes: This puppy is kind of a departure for me, but one
I enjoyed
a great deal, nonetheless. This would be set shortly after
'Memento Mori', and shortly before
'Tempus Fugit/Max'. Be on the alert for the odd British spelling
or two.
Big hugs to Kristy, for being honest <g>, and to EPur and
jerry for the
usual wondrousbetas. Have I mentioned lately that I love you
three <g>? This
is for CiCi, whose Pendy-madness is inspirational (ask and ye
shall receive,
ma'am <g>), and for Jesemie's Evil Twin, who taught me the
importance of
writing what scares you. Thank you, ladies: you're treasures, the
both of
you :).
******
'Quick Bright Things' (1/1) by CazQ
( cazfic@ymail.com )
"Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,
Brief as the lightning in the collied night...
...So quick bright things come to confusion."
'A Midsummer Night's Dream', Act I Sc I,
William Shakespeare
******
"Would you like to go somewhere?" he asks suddenly,
turning on his
heel to face her, balancing carefully on the edge of the curb.
Around
them, chattering, laughing, murmuring, their fellow theatre-goers
stream
out into the night, swirling around them. They are two rocks
sitting quietly
in a river of people, biding their time.
She doesn't answer straight away. At first he thinks she will say
"Home,
please." That scenario unfolds instantly in his head, like a
flower blooming
and dying in time-lapse photography. The silent ride home, the
quick, dry,
dutiful kiss on the cheek at the door of her building, the
graceful "Thank
you, I had a nice time, see you at work," as she slips
inside, alone.
Then she tilts her head slightly, biting her lip as she looks out
at the
steady current of humanity, and the light slips like a thief into
her eyes,
showing him what she's really wanting to say, which is
"Away, far away,
anywhere that isn't here, that isn't this. Over the hills and far
away...".
As she shifts her weight from foot to foot on the cracked, dull
sidewalk, he
sees this one unfold, blossoming in his mind also. He would take
her hand,
take her away, wherever she wanted to go, wherever she didn't
know she
always wanted to go.
They would get in his car, his boring, sleek, grey government
worker-drone
car, and just go, over the hills and far away. No packing, no
explanations,
no hurriedly scrawled notes or apologies left behind. Just him
and her and
a car, no explanations owed, and a continent of empty roads
unravelling
before them.
Who knows where they would go, with the whole world lying within
their
reach, bright and bursting with possibility? Mexico, he think
suddenly, with
certainty. He has never been, but he can picture it perfectly
now. They
would drive, all night, all day, watch the country spreading out
before
them. Crossing the border at dawn, the sun so dazzling...
"Coffee," she says suddenly, and it's as if she's
speaking in code,
expecting him to figure out the real meaning lying behind the
word. Tell
me what coffee is, and the treasure, the three wishes, the hand
of the
princess, might be yours.
He does not know what coffee is. He was thousands of miles away,
on the hot
white sands of a Mexican beach, anointing her pale back and
strong shoulders
with sunscreen. She would smell of coconut and salt water, and
taste of it
too, and she would be healthy, so healthy and so alive...
"I'm sorry...what?"
"Coffee...would be good. I mean...if you want to..."
"Oh, of course, yes. Coffee." His brain finally escapes
from the heat and
glare of Cozumel, and gets back to the task at hand. "I know
a nice little
place a couple of blocks away...we could walk down there, if
you'd like..."
"Yes," she says, suddenly decisive, "I'd like that
very much." She offers
him her arm, and he lets it slip through his, and together they
slide into
motion, into the swirling, speeding current of Washington's
citizens at
play.
They stroll down the sidewalk, the sound of her heels clacking
echoing
through the unquiet chambers of his mind. She is silent, gaze
trained
straight ahead, flicking across the people in their path with the
practised eye of a field agent trained to see danger everywhere.
She
should never have been trained for the field, he thinks, with a
rush of
anger, dull and hot: she ought to have some innocence left. She
should
be able to walk down a street and not look for the hidden gun,
the
glint of the switchblade, the faces of the killers.
Enough, he scolds himself. Enjoy this for what it is, and for
what it will
never be, while you have the chance. Tonight, as far as all these
people
know, she's yours, and why not pretend that she is, just this
once?
So he enjoys the slight weight and pressure of her arm linked
through his,
the sensation of walking in rhythm with her, the odd admiring
look
another man casts at her, the slight traces of her perfume that
drift his
way on the gentle night breeze. He revels in it, because she is
walking
with *him*.
He enjoys it, and he does not think even once of the way her step
lengthens
to match her partner's as they stride down the hallways of the
Hoover. He
does not even consider the way she permits her partner to place
the weight
of his hand (so heavy, too heavy a weight for her to bear,
certain to crush
her in the end) at the small of her back. He does not even
entertain a
thought of how he has seen her partner looking at her on occasion
when her
back is turned, the way his eyes travel so longingly over her
body as she
leans over the centrifuge or peers at a PCR result.
No, he does not think of any of these things, not once. He never
does.
Far before time, they are there, and he entertains mad thoughts
of carrying
on down the street, each time they pass a cafe telling her
"No, not
this one, not this one, just a little farther." They
wouldn't get very far
before she figured him out, though, he suspects. So he steers her
gently towards the door, into the warmly-lit oasis of the
coffee-house.
They take a window table, and sit facing each other across the
small,
scratched expanse of wood. Beyond the glass the river continues
to stream
past, the flow a little slower here, further from the theatre,
but still
making him itch to knock on the glass, to yell "Look at me,
yes, me, Brian
Pendrell, having coffee with Dana Scully." It's like being
swept into a
backwater, swimming slowly in the still, calm shallows with her.
"I'll have a non-fat decaf tall latte, please," she
says, favouring
the waitress with a quick, reserved smile.
"I...uhh, I'll have the same," he says, with no idea
what he's just ordered.
If he drinks coffee, it's usually the evil, black,
caffeine-charged brew
cooked up in the corner of the SciCrime Lab, the kind that helps
him keep
his eyes open when poring over a set of fibre analysis results
for the fifth
time at 1am. He's only been here twice before, usually alone
after another
disastrous date. He has imagined bringing her here, though,
sitting with
her like this, the smoky jazz washing softly over them.
The waitress, young, round-limbed, innocent-faced, jots down
their order and
disappears behind the counter. He looks down at his hands, lying
pale and
flat on the table. He's afraid to look into her eyes, in case he
fully loses
his mind and ruins everything by saying what keeps running
through his mind
tonight: come away with me, come away from here, from him, from
everything.
Just come away.
"I...Agent Pendrell," she begins, before trailing off
into silence for a
second. "I'm sorry, I don't even know your first name."
No, he thinks, no, it's alright, why should you? It's not as if
they've had
a chance to talk much tonight: she met him at the theatre two
minutes before
the curtain went up, breathless and full of apologies, something
about
Mulder, a casefile, phonecalls that had to be made and working
late. He
might have expected as much.
"Brian, it's, uh, it's Brian. I never liked it much anyway,
really. I think
I was destined for MIT from the day my parents picked that one
out of the
baby-name book."
"It suits you," she says kindly, far too kindly, and he
thinks desperately,
no, no it doesn't, if you could only know me, you would know that
it
doesn't. It doesn't suit me anymore than Fox suits *him*. He
should have
been called Lancelot, and I should have been Arthur. No, not even
Arthur.
Kay, perhaps, or Gawain, or one of the nameless spear-carriers in
Camelot
who faded into the shadows cast by Lancelot's flaring,
dark-hearted sun.
There is no question, of course, of what her name should be. Not
Guinevere.
She should have been named Elaine, the strong, enchanting Lady
used and
abandoned by the flawed hero. Elaine, the original Lady of
Shallot, floating
downriver, beautifully dead in her barge, to remind Lancelot for
a brief
moment of what he left behind, what might have been his.
"Pend -- Brian? Are you alright?"
"What? Oh..." Her pale hand with its deft physician's
fingers lies over her
his, her skin cool and smooth, so smooth. "I'm sorry, Dana,
I...I must've
zoned out for a moment."
"I was just going to say that I...I had a really nice time
tonight. This was
fun, really...fun." She shapes the word carefully, as if
trying out her
skill at speaking a foreign language. "I've always loved the
theatre, I
just don't get the chance to go much these days, working in the
field.
I wanted to thank you again for thinking of me."
"It was my pleasure," he says quietly, willing his
voice not to crack. Their
coffee arrives, and he watches her stirring hers, watches her
staring down
at the tiny whirlpool forming in the cup.
He remembers trying to push his heart out of his mouth and back
down into
his chest where it belonged as he rode the elevator down to the
basement
that morning, the way she'd taken the test results from him with
a quick
thank you and already begun to turn away when he spoke. It had
been easier
to do in the end than he could have ever imagined, to say
"Agent Scully, if
you're not busy this evening, I have tickets to 'A Midsummer
Night's Dream'
at the Folger Theatre. Would you care to join me?"
As she gazes out of the window into the descending darkness,
cradling
her cup in her hands, he remembers how Mulder stiffened, kept his
back to them, leant over the files he was inspecting as if
nothing could
fascinate him more. The way Scully's eyes flickered to one side
for a
second, as though trying to see behind herself, before she
laid a hand on his arm, smiled, accepted.
She sips gingerly at the steaming coffee, tongue flicking out to
wipe the
traces of it off her lips, and he remembers the voices he heard
as he
retreated down the hallway. Mulder's voice, dry, crackling with
banked
fires as he casually said "You know, Scully, in
Shakespeare's day that
play was probably considered the equivalent of the perfect date
movie."
Her muffled reply, cut off as the elevator doors closed.
Jealous much, Agent Mulder, he wonders? You shouldn't be. Oh, you
shouldn't be.
He shakes off the memories, determined instead to indulge himself
for once,
while he has the chance.
He traces the line of her lips with his eyes as she begins to
speak again,
remembers this time to listen to the sense of the words as well
as the
sounds, so that he can come up with sensible answers to her
gentle
questions. They talk of this and that, of his MIT days, of
Quantico, of the
more polite items of Bureau scut currently doing the rounds (he
courteously
omits the various choice rumours about the X-files division, of
course, and
she knows it, earning him a warmer smile), of some of her less
sinister
recent cases.
Her disease sits between them on the table at first, squat,
black, heavy,
whispering to him to look, look right there, between her eyes, at
where the
tumour hides under the skin and bone. Presently, though, tired of
being
purposefully ignored, it slinks away, heading back to her
apartment to wait
for her in the lonely darkness of her bedroom. It's gone, at
least for now,
and a quiet, warm wave of gratitude washes over him.
Later, though, as the last dregs of coffee cool and film over
with milk in
their cups, he looks at her, incandescent, glowing, quietly
radiant. She
gestures one-handed, laughs a little at some idle remark of his,
and he
cannot keep the thought away: such brightness is very close to
burning out.
Now his merciless memory dredges up the day he heard about her
cancer as it
became the latest message in the Bureau's horribly efficient
rumour mill,
the news creeping along hallways, hopping from desk to desk in
the bullpens.
Was it really only two weeks ago? It feels like a lifetime.
He remembers entering the lab and the sudden fall of silence, the
way
Agent Linden finally approached him, her black gypsy eyes big and
glossy,
and whispered the word to him, the name of the beast. The way he
coughed,
fought for breath for a second, and then ordered them all back to
work,
diving for the comfort of tox screens and blood typing,
pretending he didn't
feel their painfully sympathetic stares.
She came by later that day, as chance would have it, and he
looked up as she
entered the lab to see, and marvel, at how high she held her
head, how
straight her spine was, daring them to pity her. He had stuttered
through
five minutes without mentioning the c-word, when she leant in
close to him
and said quietly, for his ears only "Yes, Agent Pendrell, I
have cancer. It
is inoperable, but I'm receiving treatment. And contrary to what
you may
have heard, I'm not dead yet. Now: breathe." They have never
mentioned it
again.
In his eyes her cancer is coloured, the dull, scratchy black of a
dead
raven's wing. It's a lump of coal, in which are fossilised hazel
eyes
and long, lean limbs, bewitching matinee idol good looks and
incomprehensible quests, journeys that were never hers to take.
He is not a violent man by nature, not in the least, but he's
never wanted
to hurt anyone this much, as badly as he wants to hurt Mulder. He
can't
say why, but he knows, deep in his bones, that Dana Scully would
not be
dying were it not for Fox Mulder. He tries not to imagine his
fist smashing
into Mulder's face, the brightness of blood and the crunch of
bone. It
would solve nothing, of course, but...it might bring a little
justice to it
all.
He drinks the coffee without even tasting it, focused instead on
the
movement of her throat as she swallows, the way the light lies
like a
lover's touch on her full, wet lower lip, the rise and fall of
her voice
like a warm sea as she talks of Shakespeare's heroines, entangled
in
night-magic.
Eventually the cups are hollow once more, and the waitress leans
heavily on
the counter, filing her nails and looking meaningfully at the
clock. They
should go. She has to get home to her cancer and her loneliness
and her
rapidly disappearing store of life, and he has to go home, try to
sleep, and
hope to forget.
He holds the door for her, and they emerge, blinking, onto the
quiet, dark
sidewalk, the rush and chatter of people having long since faded
away. She hails a cab, and he steels himself for the quick peck
on the
cheek and the awkwardness of goodbye.
Instead, she surprises him, leaning up to brush her lips against
his,
chaste, and yet warmer than he could ever have imagined. Her
mouth
smiles a little against his, so quickly that it's gone when she
pulls away,
and he might have thought he imagined it, except for the tiny
crinkles at
the corners of her eyes. In the endless, liquid depths of her
pupils, he
sees a little of his own amazement at her gesture reflected back
at
him. "Thank you for a wonderful evening," she murmurs,
beginning to
turn to get into the cab.
"Dana, wait," he calls, suddenly, reaching out to take
her wrist. "Tell him,
he whispers, inhaling the scent of her as he breathes the words
into her
ear. "Tell him he has nothing to be jealous of, and make
sure he understands
why, Dana." Make sure that he understands that I can't steal
what doesn't
want to be stolen, he pleads silently.
She searches his face for a moment, her own inscrutable, and
then, for the
first time that night, treats him to a quick glimpse of that
thousand-watt,
full-blown smile. She nods, reaching up for a split second to cup
his cheek
with one hand, and then turns, and in a whirl of copper hair,
white skin and
black trenchcoat is into the cab and gone.
Mexico will remain forever a treasured dream, then, something to
indulge in
bitter-sweet dreams of behind the dark of his closed eyelids,
late at night.
He would never have dared to ask her, and she would never have
gone with
him: that much he is certain of now. There is only one man she
would take
that beautiful journey with, only one man who would be permitted
to share
with her the sight of the blazing sun rising over the Pacific,
the
star-filled, flower-scented nights, the life remaining in her
heart.
Even the knight un-named in epic, unsung by bards, has his
defining instant
of nobility and sacrifice. His moment in the light is ending,
quick and
bright as it was, but there may be a little light left in the sky
yet for
someone else before darkness and confusion falls.
Lay down your arms, Lancelot, he thinks desperately, raising a
hand to
his lips in the dark. Lay down your arms and ride back to the
lake while you
still can.
FINIS
******
cazfic@ymail.com