AUTHOR: cucumberspy@yahoo.com
TITLE: Most Frail Gestures
ARCHIVE: Goss, Ephemeral and Scullyfic improv site, of course.
Others, please do, just let me know..
VARIABLES:  I'm using the airdate timeline, with Tithonus happening
after SR 819.   Sort of post-Tithonus, but not exactly a post-ep.  A
scullyfic improv.  Items at the end.  PG.
SUMMARY:  Somewhere in the weeks after Tithonus.  Nail polish, a ghost
town, and a high school.  Scully's never smiled so much.

Many thanks to Geneva, Shelba, and Michelle,  the coolest beta
readers, and scullyfic for fun and improvs.
 

_____________________________________________
Most Frail Gestures            by cucumberspy
 

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me
of which i cannot touch because they are too near
 - e.e. cummings
 
 

(starve a cold; feed a fever; and for a gunshot wound, pray hard,
hard, hard)

One evening after she got out of the hospital, Scully propped herself
up on pillows and tried to paint her toenails.  Her hair was all
gathered up in a towel, damp brownish tendrils escaping around her
forehead.  Her tongue wiggled pink out of the corner of her mouth as
she reached for her feet but she couldn't bend that far forward, so
she held out the bottle of polish and said, "Mulder, would you come
and do this for me?"

Painkiller glazed her eyes, turned her voice swallowed and girlish,
yet it seemed imperative that he do this, so he took the bottle, his
fingers brushing hers.  The sweetish chemical smell clung to the top
of his throat.

He rubbed his thumb over the smudge of wine-colored polish she'd left
on her big toe and then carefully applied the color.  As still as he
tried to hold himself, his hand shook, slashing color across her toes.
 It all reminded him of the time that Sam had tried to make a doll's
boot out of their mom's nail polish.  It seemed like it would work at
the time: make a little clay model and paint it with layers and layers
of nail polish, then dig the clay out.  Simple, right?  But Sam lost
interest after the first few coats and the boot fell over and stuck to
the coffee table, leaving coral streaks on the varnish.

He could see the little blue veins through the pale skin covering
Scully's feet, little blue thread-veins running up the inside of her
ankle.  The spot between the knob of bone and her heel was cold, so he
rubbed his fingers over it.  She seemed not to notice.

He wiped a last smudge off her pinkie toe and said, "So, what do you
think, Scully, should I quit my day job?"

"Hmm."  She stretched her neck out like a turtle and wiggled her feet.
 "Passable.  Now, let me do yours.  Put your feet here," she said,
patting the bed next to her waist.

He grimaced.  He would do a lot of things for Scully, but letting her
paint his toenails was just.... well, girly.

"I promise not to tell, cross my heart."

"Scully, you're stoned."  He capped the nail polish and set it on her
dresser.

"Mm-hm, I know," she giggled.  "I think I took my dose twice...
Oops... Aw... come on..."

"No."

"J. Edgar did it.  Didn't he?"

"Exactly."  He caught himself against the door frame of her room.
"I'm gonna get some juice.  Want some?"

"Yeah, sure, whatever, Mulder."  She waved her hand and wrinkled up
her nose at him, sighing, as if to say, 'You are a lost cause.'

He ambled off to her kitchen and poured two glasses of Ocean Spray
Cran-Apple.  The juice might have been the exact color of Scully's
nail polish and frothed whitish at the top.

How bad could that be, anyways?  He could stop at the store and buy
some of that crap to take it off.  What was it, turpentine?  Acetone.

It would be something to laugh about later.

"Alright, you win, Scully," he said, the two glasses of juice cold and
collecting condensation in his hands.

But her face was already turned towards the pillow, eyes closed, mouth
open, her breath moving in the gentle cadence of rest.  He set the
glasses down and unwrapped the towel from her head, smoothed the
covers over her and just watched her sleep.  And he couldn't quite
shake the feeling that he'd just missed something important.

*

(give it time, give it a four weeks)

It was a thirty minute drive from inside the Beltway to C. Leon King
High School.  During the first ten minutes, Scully idly paged through
the latest Scientific American.

"Anything I'd be interested in?" he asked.

With a wan smile, she held it up so Mulder could see that it was the
'Special Nanotechnology Issue'.  "Nothing like what we saw with
Skinner," she said.  "But they made a guitar the size of a red blood
cell."

"Hmm, impressive," he said.  A little later, he added, "Hey Scully,
did you know there's a ghost town near here?"

Then he saw that she had fallen asleep, her head lolling against her
headrest.  She'd always been able to fall asleep anywhere, but she was
setting a record high since she got out of the hospital four weeks
ago.

When he pulled into the parking lot, he was tempted to let her stay in
the car and rest.  It was only her second day back after a whole month
off of work and even that was early.

He was also mildly tempted to blow off the assignment completely and
keep driving down to Richmond.  He'd read about a ghost town there,
just a few weeks ago.  It was  just east of the airport, built during
World War II.  A decoy town with streetlights and runway lights to
distract Japanese bombers from the real airport.  There were sidewalks
and park benches and sewer grates, but no houses.  At least, not until
a few months ago when the ghost town at the end of the dirt road
suddenly sprouted homes and families in the space of an afternoon,
only to have it all vanish just as quickly a few days later.

But Scully would kill him if she woke up in the middle of a ghost town
instead of at the high school.  She'd give him an acid glare and say,
'Mulder, if we're ever going to get the X-Files back, we've got to
work the system.  We can't give them anything to use against us or
they'll separate us again.'  And then she would sigh and say nothing
else and follow him off down the driveways to nowhere, poking around
in the phantom houses.

She did seem to sigh more lately, as if there were things lodged
inside her waiting to be said.  And sometimes, despite her
reassurances and the few days of closeness after she got out of the
hospital, he could feel her retreating again, just a little further
from him, and he was afraid that one day she would be as far as the
horizon, as far as the moon, with millions of miles of frozen vacuum
between them both.

And it was Scully who made the scut work bearable.  It was true what
they say, after all.  Scully was always the one to reign him in, only
he allowed her to.

And here they were, doing their new job representing the FBI to ninth
graders.  Kersh had given them the admonition, "If it looks bad, it's
bad for the FBI" and explicit instructions not to mention the little
green men.  Right, Agent Mulder?  Because you wouldn't want to be
giving the tour of the Hoover Building for the next month, would you?

No sir, I would not.

Mulder got out of the car and scooted his seat forward.  He stared at
the boxy case thing wedged between  the back seat and Scully's seat
back.  It was clunky, brown pebbled plastic, like an AV club refugee
pressed into service as a catch-all for these little presentations.
After all, the federal government was forever trying to cut back
spending.  Or maybe it had nothing to do with government spending and
everything to do with Kersh wanting to piss them off by having them
lug around loads of junk.  Yeah, that was it.  Even Public Relations
was out to get them because they weren't good little poster children.

Paranoid, Mulder, he told himself.

He thought Scully was still sleeping, but as he tried to wiggled the
case free from where she'd jammed it in, she said, "I'll get it," and
used her hands to push herself out of the car.  When he kept reaching,
she added, her voice sleepy and kind, "Mulder, I'm okay, really."

She started to tug on the seat release handle, then leaned back
against the hood of the car, eyes closed.  "Just move the seat
forward," she said.

"Maybe you should just hang out in the car."  Mulder shut his door and
came over to move Scully's seat forward.  "Look, we're even a few
minutes early, I could take you up to my place, it's only about twenty
minutes away.  It's just a bunch of kids.  I can handle a bunch of
kids."

He could hear her inhaling as he tugged on the handle of the case
again.   He turned to look at her and expected a frown but found her
faintly amused.

"No," she said, "push it the other way.  Mulder, the kids would eat
you up."

"I relate very well--" he grunted and stumbled back, surprised that
the dinky plastic handle hadn't come off in his hand and sent him
sprawling onto the concrete.  Instead, he hefted the case and shut the
door.

"Let's go," he said.  "Cause I'm not scared of a few kids."

*

(visitors to earth must sign in)

The high school was looked like it was built in the seventies, prefab
with tin-covered walkways and primary color murals that cheered on,
'Go Lions!'.   Mid-morning sunlight angled in white-golden sheets,
laying with squares of shadows on the sidewalks like some cubist mural
of light and dark.

"Hello," Scully said, glancing past the main office countertop and the
teal poster that said, 'All Visitors Must Sign In.'  A corner of the
poster was sun-bleached from where the light had hit it, probably for
years.

"Oh hello!  You're the feds, huh?"

"Agents Scully and Mulder," she said.  "We're here to see Principal
Ayers."  She leaned forward like she wanted very much to rest against
the counter.  Leaned forward but didn't touch.

"Sure thing," said the woman from behind her desk.  "Just a moment."

"You don't have to do this," Mulder whispered to Scully.

"I want to," she said.

*

(go team go)

"Hi, I'm Nuri Ayers," the principal smiled, holding out her hand to
shake.  She was shorter than Scully, with rusty-colored pixie hair,
and that was all Mulder really noticed.

This was a waste of time.  Scully thought so too.  He could see it in
the way she stood rigidly beside him, lips fixed in a rigidly
government-issue smile, her fingers curled into fists.  He could make
out the slightest bulk of Ace bandaging underneath her suit and
scrunched his hands into his pocket, against the swell of protective
anger.

There was so much to be angry about these days, but it almost wasn't
worth the effort.  Except Scully.  Scully was always worth it, though
in the case of Peyton Ritter she seemed not to care.  She dismissed it
like always, saying, "I'm fine now, I'm fine, Mulder.  Let it go."

He could not let it go, so he just balled it up and kept it somewhere
behind his liver.

The principal's voice diffused into an excited but unintelligible tone
as they walked.  Mulder picked out words like "thank you" and
"motivate" and "appreciate your willingness" as if they were actually
doing something and not going in to show a video to some high
schoolers and field questions any wet-behind-the-ears agent could have
answered.  There would be the same gushy comments he got from sloshed
twentysomethings and their blonde girlfriends.

'You're an FBI agent?  That's so cool.  Ever shoot anyone?'

'Yeah, sometimes.'

'Man, that's so cool.'

If they only knew.

My Life as an FBI Agent.  A Report by Fox Mulder.

I used to do things that mattered, but then we wanted too much truth.
Now my partner and I track manure shipments and check up on Joe
Schmoes in line for federal jobs.  Sometimes, they take my partner
away and give her some punk who shoots her and puts her in the
hospital.  Now my partner is tired and sad all the time and I miss
her.  The end.

Ayers pushed the door to the classroom open and poked her head in.
"Nell, your FBI agents are here!"

"Shee-it, feds!" a boy squealed.  "Quick, Dee!  Toss yo' weed!  Toss
yo' weed 'fore they come take you away!"

Muffled laughter and a girl yelling back, "Fool!  They gonna haul you
'way, Rodney!"

"Rodney Sikes!"  Nuri Ayers practically bounded into the room ahead of
the agents.  "You'll come to the office with me."

Rodney was about five feet tall, skater pants drooping so low that
Mulder wondered if they would fall off as he hopped around, all
energy.  "What?  I ain't done nuthin'!  Just tellin' Dee she needs a
be law abiding."

"He's lyin'!  I don't got no weed!  Miss Ayers, he's lyin' 'bout me!
Tryin' a get me in trouble!"

Mulder shrugged to Scully.  Scully set down the case and they waited
while Ayers and the teacher sorted out the fray.

*

(friends & heroes & failures)

Mulder sorted through the clutter in the case.  They'd picked it up
from Supplies and just taken it to the car, not bothering to sort
through.  It turned out to be like a little time capsule or like the
cities of Troy, all in layers.  On top were fresh, glossy flyers and
handouts and a video greeting from Louis Freeh.  But Mulder poked down
to the bottom and found pamphlets from 1970, a creased photo of
someone's kid, and a bottle of crusty looking old nail polish.  He
picked the nail polish up, rolling it in his hand.  It was sparkly
purple.  He slipped it into his pocket.

He clacked the tape into the VCR.  Someone switched the lights off.
Now stray sunlight glowed under the blinds and the television lit up,
volume too loud and fuzzy.  He retreated back against the chalkboard,
next to Scully.

Scully figured Ritter for a poor, scared kid, but Mulder wouldn't have
been surprised to find out that he was a Consortium plant.

Some days, he wanted to shake her.

"...BI has jurisdiction in cases of federal crimes such as kid..."

Here in the dark with the TV blaring, he glanced at her.  He could see
Scully arching her back, clenching her jaw.  Her stomach muscles must
be aching from standing so long.  "You want to sit down?" he
whispered.

"I'm fine," she said.

Really, he wanted to shake her.

"Come on, we'll tell them it's cause you got shot; they'll think it's
cool."

"...cases such as the famous Lind..."

"It's not that bad, Mulder, really."  There was that pale smile again.
 I'm fine and I'm moving to the moon, Mulder.

Fine.  You're fine, Scully.

"Just a little sore," she said.

She pressed against the blackboard, like she was trying to disappear
into it.  For one dizzy moment, he thought he might kiss her, while on
the TV, Louis Freeh was speaking to students "...Integrity and
honesty, of fairness, of speaking the truth, of protecting against
violence, making the right decisions, being loyal to the things that
are important to be loyal to, and to not support the things that
should not be supported. All of those values are the ones that we
share today..."

Mulder bent over to whisper to her again.  "Is that what they told you
when they recruited you, Scully?"

In the flickering half-light he watched her arch her brow.  "Fidelity,
bravery, integrity?  Mulder, we..."  She closed her mouth and turned
her head away.  Whatever other words she would have said were
swallowed up by something inside of her.  It was like that shot wound
devoured words, but the silence had started months before.

More insipid narrative on the TV and the muffled staccato of gunfire
as a shiny, young agent leveled his weapon at a paper target, much the
way Mulder imagined that Peyton Ritter had aimed his gun at Scully.

*

(& who you are when all the lights come on)

"Any questions?" Mulder said.  No one raised a hand.  In one of the
middle rows, a girl with glasses pushed atop her piled braids pulled a
book out of her desk and resumed reading.  Mulder dipped his head and
squinted to get a better look.

It was the Large Print Edition of 'Winnie the Pooh.'

Cute.

"No questions at all?"

"Yeah, I got one."

The boy, Rodney, was back.  He slouched in the doorway and pulled a
chewed up plastic straw from his mouth to ask, "You ever shot anyone?"

"Sometimes, when I had to."

"Cool."

Yeah, real cool.

"How about you?"  One of the girls directed her question at Scully.
"You ever shot anyone?"

"Yes, I have," Scully said.

But they wouldn't ask the really important questions, the ones that no
one ever thinks to ask.  Questions like, what do you dream about after
you shoot someone?  And what do you do when your partner isn't on the
other side of the door?  And how do you feel when you see her lying
pale in a hospital bed, how do you feel?  Does your heart constrict
and do you think, when did it happen that I became half of one instead
of one of two?  When did it happen?

But maybe these were the questions that could be like turpentine,
stripping away the paint layer until only what was raw and bare
remained.

"How do you run in those shoes?"

The girls seemed delighted with Scully and the fact that she had a gun
and chased down bad guys in heels.  It sort of delighted Mulder too.
He wanted to tell Scully stories.  He wanted to say, 'See this woman?
She came to the Arctic for me.  She shot me once too.  And she held a
gun on Skinner once.  Twice.'

They would say, 'Who's Skinner?'

And he would say, 'My boss' and his mouth would hurt from the
grinning.

"Yeah," he said instead.  "Scully, how *do* you run in those shoes?"

"Just practice," she said.  "I guess."

"Do you ever hate your job?" one of the kids asked.

Mulder shrugged.  "Well, it's not all chasing bad guys.  We do have to
do paperwork.  Or wiretap.  Background checks."  He saw Scully's fist
sneaking up to her mouth to hide her amusement, but there was also
warning in her eyes.  Don't say too much.

Aw, and he was just getting warmed up.

"What do you love about your job?"  The girl reading the Winnie the
Pooh book fixed her eyes on Scully.

Scully fit her hands together.  "Well, I like knowing that my work
helps save lives and give families closure.  I like that it's
unpredictable.  I never know if I'm going to end up in Georgia that
week, or Kansas."  She looked at Mulder.

"I like... my partner," he said quietly, answering her more than the
class.  "It's good to be part of a team."

Scully's expression softened, but there was silence in the room for
just a moment too long, like he'd said something embarrassing and he
was the only one who didn't realize it.  Oh well.

"What other advice would you give to students who wanted to join the
FBI?"  This from Rosetti.

Scully answered quickly, "Well, study hard, get good grades.  Stay out
of trouble..."

He watched her speaking but he wasn't listening anymore, just seeing
her mouth move and thinking, Ah, Scully.  You should be the FBI's
spokesperson.

She watched him too much as she spoke.

*

(still waiting)

It was time to pack up and he tossed the video back in the case, on
top of the other two cassettes.  The classroom had cleared out and
there were FBI flyers on the floor and in the trash can.  Mulder
suppressed a smile.

I feel that way too, kids.

"Look at this," Scully said, holding up a glossy that had been
fashioned into a paper crane.  She tucked it into Mulder's pocket, and
he thought, Now I know we will be okay.

Just like that.

She poked the mess inside the case.  "You won't be able to close
that," she said.

"You're welcome to fix it."

So she lifted out the videos and shoved aside the ream of papers with
her palm, fitted each cassette back in like puzzlework and closed the
case, flipping the shiny latches carefully.  He could almost smell the
tart scent of steel warmed by her hands.

"Ready?" he asked.

"Yeah, ready," she said. She rested her hand on the table and looked
at him.  Blinked.  Looked at the floor, away, out the window.

He grabbed the handle and said, "Let's blow this popsicle stand."

He made her smile.

Outside, the day was still bright and azure, sky so high, air so cold
it was solid on the skin.  Mulder felt his nose chilling even as he
jiggled the key in the lock.

A strident voice: "Agents--"

It was Rosetti striding down the length of the parking lot as she
pulled on a fuzzy blue sweater.  Her heels clicked on the pavement, on
the fine brown patina of leaves long ground into the asphalt by
passing tires.  "Agents, I just want you to know how much I
appreciated this, your coming out," the teacher said.  "I do think the
kids really enjoyed it."

"Oh you know," Mulder said, "it's just our job."

Rosetti shook Scully's hand, then Mulder's.

"You're doing a good thing," she said.  "A wonderful thing.  I respect
the work you people do."

"Er, thank you," Scully replied, leaning against her door.  Winter
wind tried to wrap her hair across her nose but she swiped away the
strands.

"Yes, well."  Rosetti clasped her palms together, seemed embarrassed.
"I just wanted to thank you."  She gave a little wave and turned and
raced back off again.

Scully dropped into the car, pulling the door shut.  "Let's go home,
Mulder."

So they drove.  He thought of the phantom town again, with perhaps a
few days of phantom life.  "Did you know that there's a ghost town
near here, Scully?"

He puzzled over it, wondered what kind of ghosts would come to a town
that had never been inhabited.

"With real live ghosts?"  She was teasing.

"I don't know," he said.  "Might be.  You wanna go?"

She turned her head and peered at him through one open eye, looking
dubious.  "Do the ghosts come out at daytime, Mulder?"

He wondered if she might bring up that bizarre Christmas incident.
She had gotten shot that time too.  Both of them had.

"No," he said.  "No ghosts anymore."  Just for a few days, there had
been, he thought.  Like us.  "But maybe we should go sometime.  When
it gets warmer."

"Sounds good," she said.  "Maybe we'd even meet some ghosts."

He eased the car on to the freeway and a semi careened past.

"Scully, I thought maybe..."

She had her head thrown back against the seat, eyes closed.  "Yeah?"

He fished in his pocket for the nail polish.  It was warm and he
pressed the bottle into Scully's had.  "You owe me a pedicure,
G-woman."

She glanced down at the bottle, then closed her eyes again and she was
smiling.  "Purple's not your color, Mulder.  But I have this bottle of
hot pink that really makes your feet look tan."

"Hot pink?"  It was his turn to sound dubious.

"And ghosts," she murmured.  "Hot pink for you.  Ghosts for me.
You've got to open your mind up to extreme possibilities, Mulder."
 

-30-

you made it this far.  feedback me cucumberspy@yahoo.com

Author's note: Yes, I know that C. Leon King HS is in Tampa, FL.  And
Nuri Ayers is *not* that short.  But I heard they were revoking
artistic licenses and I wanted to use mine before it got taken
away.... *g*  So too with Portugee Road.  There are no houses there,
but I fudged on the details.

Improv items were:

A special "nanotechnology" issue of 'Scientific American'
magazine! - from feldman

Someone talks a walk on a brisk fall day through crunchy falling
leaves in
a favorite old sweater. - Dallas   (Okay, I sort of fudged on that
one, making it walking on a brisk winter day, but I hope I can be
forgiven.)

Mulder wanting to know how Scully really does run in those heels. -
Mara

Scully painting someone's toenails - hers, his, whoevers - LRuth

someone reading winnie-the-pooh - sybil