From: ephemeral@ephemeralfic.org Date: 1 Mar 2002 15:16:09 -0000 Subject: False Memories by Zuffy (1/1) by Zuffy Source: direct Reply To: zuffynuffy@yahoo.com Title: False Memories Author: Zuffy Email: zuffynuffy@yahoo.com Rating: PG Category: MSR Spoilers: Up to the beginning of Season 9 Date: Februrary 2002 Archive: Yes, but keep my name on it and let me know where it is, please. Synopsis: Two years have passed since Mulder left. And then a woman walks into a bar. Disclaimer: Mulder, Scully, and Doggett, are property of Chris Carter, 1013 and Fox, but it's the actors that I see in my mind. False Memories She's not entirely sure why she decided to walk into a bar. This bar. Maybe the flowering cactuses lined up in the window evoked heat and scorching sun. Or maybe the burst of laughter from within reminded her of a birthday surprise not that many years ago. Maybe instinct kicked in, a flash of the latent psychic streak she thought had dried up and turned to powder. Maybe it was simply the rain, the desire to wait someplace warm until she could reach her car without getting drenched. Wet feet wouldn't have bothered her in the past, when she was splashing through puddles alongside Mulder, but she's tired these days and lacks the energy for unnecessary grief. Inside, the walls are painted ochre and blue and blood red in vaguely Navaho patterns, but otherwise, it's just an upscale bar with a low soundtrack of jazz piano. A third of the tables are taken, the after-work crowds kept down by the intermittent storm. She hangs her coat on the communal rack and swipes at the large raindrops before adjusting the shoulders of her suit jacket and crossing the room to a table near the wall. The waitress appears almost at once with a dish of black olives and a menu. Scully orders the house white. By now, her mother would have fed Will, bathed him and dressed him for bed. They'd be cuddled in the rocking chair, reading a book about bunnies or tigers, Will pointing at the pictures and asking why, why, why until her mom would finally give up and say, "Some things are just because." Scully regrets that she accepted this autopsy that's kept her in Boston for two nights, regrets the need to beg for field assignments - no matter how half-assed - so she has an excuse to crisscross the country trying to find some clue to the great hole in her life. Regrets that there are no clues to Mulder's long silence; there's not even a pretense of "because." She takes her cell phone from her pocket and lays it on the table. At the next table a man with a shiny forehead and comb-over has pulled his chair close to a younger woman. They're both wearing business clothes, but the man has loosened his tie and the woman's blouse is unbuttoned to expose some cleavage. She stirs her drink with her finger and licks it while he talks about his kids. Her eyes shift to Scully, hold for a second, and return to the man. Caught eavesdropping, Scully quickly looks away. Her eyes skip across the other customers then freeze on a man at the bar halfway across the room. Her pulse races at the familiar profile, the strong nose - maybe even a bit too large - and the finely- carved chin. Without conscious intent, she calculates his height, needing him to be 6'1" exactly. His legs are bent as he sits on the stool, but judging from his lanky slouch he can't be far off her mark. At distance, the face so accurately matches the picture in her mind that her eyes fill with hot tears and she can't swallow. The man is stylishly dressed in a black v-neck sweater with pushed-up sleeves. He's sitting sideways, leaning toward a young woman who tosses her long blond hair over her bare shoulders. His hand is on his knee and, given the predatory incline of his body, it will soon be on hers. The young woman laughs and shakes her hair again and the man grins at her and taps one finger on her leg. The blonde sips her drink and nods with enthusiasm. She turns her head to catch herself in the mirror behind the bar as she pulls her fingers through her hair to lift it on top. The man stops speaking and lets his eyes roam to the other tables, one corner of his mouth turned up in a boast. Before Scully can look away, his eyes meet hers and the smugness fades, replaced by a flat, almost unblinking stare. Though the blonde is talking, the man continues to look at Scully until his companion takes his wrist. The woman squints in Scully's direction, her body pulled up straight and tense, but apparently finding nothing worth notice, she crosses her legs and laughs. The man makes a show of listening, but his gaze keeps shifting over to Scully, who finds that her own numb trance is a self-inflicted wound. For a bleak moment, she wonders if she completely misunderstood Mulder's reasons for silence. Only her dizziness keeps her from fleeing. The man draws away from his companion and his fingers drum on the counter. The bartender comes over, but he waves him away. Scully tells herself the resemblance is nothing more than the brain's overreaction to a finely cut jaw and a loopy strand of hair hanging over the man's forehead. It's the power of wishful thinking or maybe it's midmonth hormones. She looks down just as the waitress sets a tall goblet, filled almost to the top, on a sandstone coaster in front of her. She wishes she'd ordered something hot, something that would burn her mouth and take away the pain. The blond woman spins around once on her stool and the man drains his drink. She steps down, adjusts her top upward a notch and gestures with her head toward the far end of the bar. Her hips swing as she walks away from him, but the man misses the display. As soon as the woman disappears, he grabs his leather jacket from the next seat and heads straight for Scully. She reaches for her wallet, fumbling for a bill big enough to spring her from this confrontation. But before she finds what she needs, he stops across the table and shoves his hands in the pockets of his khakis. "Hi, I couldn't help but notice you and..." Up close the resemblance is even more startling, not diluted the way it usually is when she catches up with tall dark men spotted out of the corner of her eye. The sweep of the forehead, the fullness of the mouth, the day-old stubble on a jaw that is moving slightly as if he's unconsciously grinding his teeth. Above all the slightly hooded eyes that now search her face. But she finds no recognition in those eyes, no guilt, no remorse, no anticipation, no joy, no panic, nothing but polite apprehension. It's a face behind a window, a traveler on a train headed in the other direction. "I apologize," she says, looking down in embarrassment. "It was rude of me to stare." "I thought maybe you recognized me." He snorts softly and waits for her to look up again. "That didn't come out quite right." "You did look familiar, but that's no excuse for my bad manners." "And now?" "And now what?" It comes out harsher than she meant. "Do I still look familiar?" He glances quickly over his shoulder. "Actually, I'm not trying to pick you up, if that's what you're thinking. I really thought that we'd met before." He blows out a breath and looks toward the window. "That still sounds exactly like a pick-up line, doesn't it?" Improbably, "Norwegian Wood" starts playing in the background. The man looks around the ceiling to locate the speakers and Scully finds herself following his gaze to a dark corner. When she lowers her eyes, he's searching her face with such intensity that she feels he's mapping the contours of her thoughts. He then licks his lips and starts over. "One of the great old songs." "Yeah." Her throat is dry. She and Mulder had danced to it one evening in her kitchen when they'd been too needy to remember how to cook. He puts his hands on the back of the opposite chair and leans forward. "What I really meant to say is that I think you may know something important about me and I need to know what that is. Am I making any sense at all?" She presses her lips together and wraps her fingers around the glass. It's impossible that she has stumbled across him in a random bar. Even though his voice is the right cadence and he carries himself with loose-limbed grace, life doesn't work this way. So how is she supposed to tell this stranger that every detail of his face is engraved on her heart? He continues without waiting for her response. "I can't trust my memory. I think there's a whole part of my life that's missing - everything maybe." "You have amnesia?" She feels a jolt of adrenaline and a surge of irrational heat. But how many times has she been fooled by a look-alike, a clone, a shape shifter, a ghost, a body swap? She bites back her feelings and holds her breath. "No, that's the thing," he says. "I have a whole life full of memories, but I don't think they're mine." He pulls himself up to his full height, puts his hands on his hips and chews on his lower lip. "You think I'm crazy," he says. He doesn't seem drunk and his face is too full of frustration for a tease. And why would he bother with a stupid prank when he already has the evening locked up? She tries to keep her voice neutral, clinical. "I think your problem may be very real. But how could you know if *your* memories aren't yours?" "That's what bothers me. I shouldn't be able to tell." Just then the blonde comes out of the bathroom, walks back to her seat at the bar and looks around with a frown. She sees the man standing at Scully's table and the frown deepens. Her heels click against the floor as she pursues her course toward them. The man turns to face her and he runs his hand through his hair. Scully's heart stabs at the familiar gesture. "Hey, I just ran into an old friend," he says. "So I see," she replies taking his arm possessively. "So introduce me." Up close, the woman is older than Scully first thought. There are lines around her neck that her bead choker can't hide and the circles under her eyes have been glossed with white concealer. She's wearing a diamond on her right hand and gold bangles that shift up and down her arm. Despite the fresh lipstick, the woman's smile is thin-lipped, a stretch across her face. "Oh, yeah, Sarah this is..." Scully half rises from her seat and extends her hand, "Dana." "Dana, pleased to meet you." Sarah says it quickly and immediately looks up at the man so Scully gets the point that her existence is a matter of indifference. Sarah lowers her voice, "I'm all ready, hon." The man carefully slides her hand off his arm and says, "There's something I need to talk to Dana about." He pronounces her name slowly as though he's inspecting it from all angles. "Just wait for me at the bar. Order yourself another drink." "But I'm ready to leave now." She bumps her hip against his. "Dancer boy." "This is something important." "I thought we had something important." "Just let me do this. It's about a mutual friend." It's been so long since Scully's been the object of another woman's jealous anger that she's surprised by the intensity of the once-over she now receives. "I'm gone for a minute and you start hitting on some other woman." "I'm not 'hitting on' her." He glances at Scully and raises his brows quickly as though they're partners in a shared joke. He's a stranger, her inner voice reminds her. "Oh, like you haven't been hitting on me?" The blonde's face is flushed. "Look, I'm just trying to be honest here." "If this is some kind of three-way, count me out. Either you and me leave now or I leave alone." He nods as she says this, as though he'd predicted it. "Let me get you a cab then." Out the corner of her eye, Scully sees the woman with the cleavage tap her companion on the hand and point to the pair with her chin. The other conversations at nearby tables seem to have died down, too. Scully pushes herself farther back in her chair. The Mulder look-alike reaches out to touch Sarah's elbow, but she pulls away and, in a flash, slaps him. "You bastard." She walks quickly away, her hips no longer swaying, grabs her coat from the rack and storms out the door. He watches her for a few seconds, then turns back to Scully and shakes his head. "I guess I deserved that." "I'm sorry for breaking up your evening," she says. "I didn't mean to offend your date." "My date." He says it with an odd finality. "You're giving me too much credit. Sometimes I just need to verify that I'm alive - nothing deep, just a good... just someone who'll let me touch. The body keeps needing even when the soul is dead. Hell, that's what makes it easy." He looks older, too. She can see that now in the creases in his forehead and lines around his eyes. "So," he continues, "I just confessed that I go around to bars and pick up women for an evening. There's probably not a chance in creation that you want to continue this conversation." "I was about to leave when you came over, actually." He nods again, although she knows that the full glass of wine betrays her. His eyes glint green and brown when the light strikes them, but it's not enough to mask their inner darkness. "Actually, that's a lie," she says. "But the man you remind me of... When I look at you I see him. How can I possibly listen to you fairly?" He waits silently, at her mercy. She needs to hear that voice again, to close her eyes and listen to him read license plates if necessary, so she can just pretend for a few minutes that Mulder's back. She swallows the dust in her throat. "If you want to talk, sit down." He surprises her by pulling out the chair next to her rather than the one across the table. He grins, then flags the waitress and asks for a glass of water. Turning back to Scully he says, "The difference is you don't *remind* me of anyone. I'm just sure I know you." They wait in silence while the waitress returns to the bar, leans across and tells the bartender something. Gradually, conversations resume at the tables around them, the drama now finished. The waitress brings the glass of water, sloshing a little over the edge. The man rubs his hand down the glass, then sucks the moisture off his thumb. "You're actually listening to me. This is more than I deserve." "You were saying that you have false memories." "No, I was saying that I live inside this shell. My so-called memories are something projected on one of those big surround screens. They're all around, but they don't touch me. They look deep, but there's nothing but surface. I don't *feel* anything for them. I can't remember ever feeling anything." She recalls the picture of Samantha that Mulder kept on his desk and the way he read through her diary, reliving each day of her torture. She remembers how he grieved at his mother's death and his father's. She remembers the time she almost walked out of their partnership. The one thing impossible to say about his life was that he'd never felt anything. She draws a finger across the table and starts softly, "The fact that you're telling me this disproves that you have no emotions. You're expressing fear, anger..." "Those don't count. There should be something that matters in my life." He screws his eyes shut and rubs a spot under his hair. His breathing is suddenly quick, ragged, and then slows. After thirty seconds, he says, "Tell me about the man I look like." Here's the pay-off. Here's what it's all been leading to. Here's where she's supposed to break down and give away some secret about Mulder, something she doesn't even realize is important. She straightens in her seat. "First, I'd like to know more about the person you're not." He shrugs and rubs his thumb over his fingertips. "Him? He's not very interesting. He's got a nice sunny apartment on the Charles, pricey furniture, a couple of oriental carpetss, a fully equipped kitchen in which I open bottles of beer. He works at the Social Security Administration." The man must pick up her surprise, because he interrupts himself and says, "What?" "Nothing. Go on." "Supposedly he's been there - I've been there - for 12 years as some kind of supervisor. Good performance reviews; I checked. Did military service before that. I've got a clearer memory of boot camp than anyone deserves. But no one at the office seems to care if I do any work or not or even show up. So," he shrugs again and studies his hands, "I've been staying home, lying in my nice bed trying to poke holes in my memories. When I get tired of that, I watch trashy movies." "Porn?" She says it before she can stop herself. He laughs and spins his glass around once or twice. "Good shot. I read poetry, too, if it that's any compensation. Looking for emotions." "Have you found them?" "I can *see* them very clearly. I know what they look like." Her instincts tell her it's him. Her instincts also tell her she's been fooled every which way. There's a reason things happen. There's a reason this man is telling her this story. "Look," she says, "lots of people aren't satisfied with where they ended up in life. Perhaps a therapist..." "You don't think I've tried that?" His voice rises and there's suddenly a wall between them. "They fail to understand the difference between illusion and delusion." He slouches back in his chair, looking at his glass. As the silence stretches the table starts to jiggle from the nervous motion of his foot. Finally he leans forward, picks up the cell phone and holds it up to her. "You have a life full of things that matter. You have people who wait for you to call. People you love, who need you. That's what I'm missing." He takes out his wallet. There are only a few cards and he moves too quickly for her to catch what's written on them. She realizes that he hasn't given himself a name. "Here, can you at least tell me who this is?" He slides out a cropped picture and passes it along the table. She shivers when she sees it. "Where did you get this?" "Is it mine?" "How did you get this?" "It was in the lining of my jacket, probably slipped through a hole in my pocket. Or maybe I put it in there. I don't know. It's the only clue I've had, at least until you walked in here." The story is just odd enough. But what does it prove except that this man has Mulder's jacket? She pushes the photo away. "It just occurred to me. Have you been in an accident? Automobile maybe? There'd be some sort of report." "I don't think so. The marks on my body aren't like that." "What are they like?" "You want me to show you?" Somehow his voice has turned her question into something she didn't intend. "I'm a doctor. I have a clinical interest." She hopes it's too dark for him to see the color flush her cheeks. "In that case..." His hand hovers for a moment and then he makes a circle on his left shoulder. "I have a puckering scar here. It looks like it could be a gunshot wound." He gauges her reaction. "I've checked pictures in books. Believe me, I've tried to figure this out." "I believe that...I do..." "I have a mark here," he pushes back his hair and rubs a spot high on his forehead. "It's small, but there's a bump like bone that healed over. I don't like to think about what it might be. Under here," he pushes his hands through his hair searching, "there are ridges almost like my skull was sawed open. Any of this ring a bell? You have any friends with big malpractice suits?" She smiles at his sarcasm, then lifts her hand and hesitates. He pushes back his hair again. "Go ahead." Slowly, she touches his forehead, probes the small lump. His skin is warm and barely damp and it's like electricity to touch him. "Do you remember what caused this?" She hopes her voice is steady. "I don't remember what caused any of them. You think they stuck something into my brain?" "I don't know. I don't think this hole explains what they did to you." "But you think there is a 'they'?" For a moment, it feels like a trap. She speaks cautiously. "It's plausible. A possibility." "Not paranoid?" "Not inappropriately paranoid, no." He seems to consider her words for a minute, then turns the photo around to face her. "So what about this? Does it mean anything?" What's the worst that can happen if she believes a lie? What's the worst if she turns her back on the truth? She takes the photo and allows herself to smile. "The man you look like. The baby is his son." He takes a pair of horn rims out of his pocket and examines the picture more closely. His jaw tenses and releases, a small knot forming as he scrutinizes the face. "Can I meet this man?" "No." "No?" "He's... I don't know where he is." "Well, we could find him." "No. He disappeared without a trail. I've tried, been trying, to find him." "He disappears. I appear." "You know it's impossible." "I don't know that anything is impossible. 'A woman walks into a bar dot dot dot.'" "A woman walks into a bar and then the alarm sounds and she wakes up." "So what happens to me? Do I wake up, too, or do I evaporate in a puff?" He smoothes a bent corner of the picture. His concentration is intense. "The story doesn't end that way. It can't." As she bows her head, her hair swings across her face and he starts to reach toward her cheek, his hand an open gesture, then clenches his fist and lowers it to the table. "Dana, you don't believe it does either." She keeps her eyes on his long fingers. She's given him possession by handing him her name. "Did he ever see the baby?" "He took that photo and then he held him..." she doesn't want to continue, doesn't want to walk her way through the memory of those brave smiles. "He held him?" "He held him until he fell asleep." "And then he disappeared?" "He *had* to leave." "What's his name? The baby?" "William. He's named after my friend's father." "Maybe he would talk to me." "He died seven or eight years ago." There's a heavy sigh. "How old is baby William?" "He's two now. The picture was taken three days after he was born." "And, there's a wife? Did he have a wife?" He's testing her now, working around the edge of the matter, trying not to get too close too fast, she's sure of it. "No, not that I know of." "Then who's William's mother? Not someone like Sarah. He wasn't like that, was he?" "No. William's mother is a friend." "Did he love her?" The rhythm of her pulse, normally unheard and unfelt, now fills every contour of her body. "Yes, I think he did," she says over the roar. But her words feel disloyal, a failure of nerve, so she corrects herself. "I know he did." It's his turn to nod. He has swept her along on his questions, but now he's silent. She wonders what he sees in his inner landscape, what he feels, and how he measures this story against the others he has been told. "Did she... did she love him?" he asks at last. "Yes. With her whole heart." "I didn't used to call you Dana, did I?" "No," she whispers. "You called me Scully." He completes the gesture that he started earlier, cupping her cheek in his hand as she leans into his touch. "Are you sure? That I'm me?" "Can't you tell, Mulder?" She puts her hand over his. "Mulder, huh?" He mouths the name again, as if to test the possibilities. "Shouldn't this be the moment when Monty opens the third door and I'm reunited with my old self?" He strokes his thumb below her eye, wiping away the dampness "Yes, yes it should." It seems insanely funny and she starts laughing through her tears. He watches her, smiling, and then says, "What happens now, Scully?" Only the way he says it is not really a question and she knows her answer need not be spoken. *~*~*~*~* Author's note: I wrote this story in honor of Littljoe's birthday. Many thanks to LT for quick and helpful beta. Feedback always welcome at zuffynuffy@yahoo.com Zuffy's other stories at http://Zuffy.tripod.com/index.html