Fish Eye View

By Susanna Starz
SusannaStarz@hotmail.com


URL: http://susannastarz.tripod.com
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: A little bit for All Things, Requiem, and Three Words
CATEGORY: SH
ARCHIVE: Sure, just drop me an email to let me know

SUMMARY: Everything really IS a conspiracy.

DISCLAIMER: The characters of the X Files do not belong to me. No
infringement is intended.

*
Crap. I think she's on to me. This is the third time in the past hour
I've caught her sneaking looks in my direction. Intensely curious
looks. Her eyebrows are furrowed together in an expression of mingled
exhasperation and--is that pity? Sympathy? The placating smile one
reserves for the hopelessly insane?

"Mulder?" she asks, her voice soft and probing.

"Hmm?"

"When did you get that?"

"Get what?"

"That." One perfectly manicured fingernail taps against the glass,
inches away from the cheerfully gaudy ship bobbed on an endless stream
of bubbles.

"Oh," he says. "I don't know. One of the guys, probably."

She stares through the glass at it for a moment longer, blue eye big
and bulbous in reflection. I don't like the way she's looking at me.

"Is this a new fish?"

"Hmm?"

"Last time I fed your fish, there were four. Now there's five."

He shrugs, completely unconcerned. "Must've come with the UFO."

For a man long rumored to be among the world's most paranoid, he does
not seem to attach much significance to small changes. Whether it truly
troubles him when someting in his life is out of place it's hard to
determine. A man could go missing in the woods and it's surely an alien
abduction or bigfoot encounter, but an alien could land in his living
room and set up shop in his fishtank and it's just a present from the
guys.

The guys.

Yeah, I'm not too fond of them either. They have funny faces that
contort into scary expressions when they peer through the glass. Every
once in a while they come trooping into this poorly decorated apartment
to sweep for bugs and other electronic monitoring devices. The little
one likes to tap on the glass and send the other fish scattering. I
think, if that little toad-like one ever dared stick his hand in the
water, I'd take his finger off.

Fortunately for him he shows no such aspirations. He is content to
stare, his eyes obscenely big behind the double refraction of his
spectacles and the aquarium glass. Neither he, nor any of the others
have ever owned up to the little UFO that bobs merrily in the
aquamarine depths, but then again, Mulder's never really asked.

Of course, he didn't ask about the mysterious renovation his apartment
underwent about a year ago. Confused the hell out of him though. Just
another thing he blamed on The Guys. He tried to joke about it once,
with the little one. Made some crack about waterbeds being a lousy
gift. He was met with dead silence, so quiet that I'm sure they could
hear the little bubbles in my tank.

He never mentioned the waterbed again.

To be honest, I think he's grown so used to extraordinary events that
they no longer faze him. That's the only answer I can come up with to
justify why a man who's spent the better part of his lifetime hunting
for aliens hasn't noticed one living in his fishtank for the past few
years.

She noticed.

She makes me uncomfortable, the way she's always peering in here. Now,
I know she's responsible for feeding us and all when he decides there's
some pressing cause in the middle of the night that he feels the need
to gallop off to. But just because she shakes a little can of dried
fish flakes into the water doesn't mean I have to like her.

And I can't risk her figuring things out, when we're this close to
completing our plan. I've been talking to my bosses on the little radio
in my ship, tracking his movements and reporting on them. They're going
to take him soon, it's just a matter of time.

The other fish like her. They know when they see her face glowing
beyond the cool blue glass that they're about to be fed and they
cluster up at the top by the lid, little tails swishing eagerly in the
water. I sit on the bottom and stare at her.

I look like a fish, and I swim like a fish, although I don't think I'd
consider myself aesthetically pleasing. I'm nothing like those flashy,
brightly colored tropicals that capture your attention with a flip of a
orange speckled fin. I'm a little round, a little squat, gray in color
and I've got a mashed in face that slightly resembles a bulldog (if a
bulldog was a fish, that is). I'm cumbersome and stand out amidst Fox
Mulder's lean aquatic counterparts.

But he pays me no mind. I could be joined by a legion of my kind, all
bobbing and glowing next to our respective little UFOs, and he'd never
bat an eye. It's all too easy for him to believe that others play jokes
on him.

She's stopped poking at the glass and has settled back down on the
couch, mug of tea in hand. She's rambling now, something about an
epiphany in a Buddhist temple. I'm bored. I take my leave of them and
retreat to my ship, send out a message to home base, and then take a
little nap. When I wake, I peek outside to see what's going on, and
immediately regret it.

No one wants to see *that*.

You'd think they'd have a little respect. Maybe toss a blanket over the
fishtank for a while. Instead, I'm treated to a magnified view of the
two of them, bathed in blue light, humping like bunnies. Their bodies
are distorted through the glass, making this seem somehow even more
horrific than it already is.

Good grief. We're going to have to act soon, before they decide to
retire and wander off into the sunset together and never investigate a
strange disappearance again. We can't possibly hope to snatch him if he
doesn't put himself in a position to be snatched.

*

Finally got rid of the fool. Sent a message to my friends to have them
amp things up a little bit in Oregon, a place guaranteed to catch his
attention. Now that he's gone, I can just climb back into my little
ship and--

Crap.

I never really counted on her still coming around. I figured that once
he disappeared, she'd crawl off to wherever she came from and leave me
alone.

But no. She wants to take care of things while he's gone. She thinks
he's coming back. Doesn't want him to come home to a tank full of
starved pets floating belly up.

And my ship is a little noisy when it gets going. I can't exactly fly
off into the sunset if she insists on sleeping in his bed every night.

Crap crap and double crap. I wanted to make it home tonight. Maybe dine
on a little steak a la Mulder. Maybe flutter around in front of his
face a while and see if there was any recognition. See if he finally
realized how absolutely foolish he'd been not to notice what was right
under his nose.

Ah, she's going into the bathroom. I can make my break.

I'm in my ship and it's shaking and bubbling and getting ready for
liftoff when she appears in the glass, eyes wide.

Dammit, it was a trap!

She's smirking now as she reaches into the water and picks up my ship,
shaking it a little bit like a child would with a bath toy. It might
look like cheap plastic, but that baby is titanium. She's not even
gonna dent it--

"You," she says, staring right through the little window at me. "Are
out of luck."

And then she's walking, and the whole world around me is shaking as she
marches towards the bathroom. The bathroom? Oh, no no no no not the
toilet--

::flush::

*

"Missing a molly," Mulder says, a lifetime later.

"Yeah," Scully answers, looking down to hide her slight smile. "She
wasn't as lucky as you were."


THE END

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