"Knowing Eternity" Innie Darling
innie_darling@hotmail.com 

Disclaimers: Mulder and Scully belong to Chris Carter and
1013 technically, and to David and Gillian truly.

Archive: Haven definitely, everywhere else is fine, just
please let me know and keep my name attached.

Spoilers: "Pilot" + "Lazarus" + "all things".   And for
Peter Greenaway's *The Pillow Book* too.

Rating: R for one naughty word?

Summary: Scully's love life in review.

Author's notes at end.
 

"Knowing Eternity"

She couldn't really remember her first kiss.  It had mixed
and melted in her mind with too many others - the practice
kisses on her arm from before, the kisses she had seen in
the movies, the kisses she had had after, but mostly with
what she had wanted it to be.  She could recall walking home
from school, seeing the boys from the Catholic school in
their light blue shirts, navy pants, and clip-on ties.  She
remembered feeling Gabriel watching her, recognizing her
from church, his brow furrowed as he tried to figure out why
she didn't go to Catholic school too, trying to determine if
she was a good girl or not.  And by the time the boys' pants
had turned to shorts, she knew Gabriel was going to kiss
her.  He had stopped her one May day, the May she was
fourteen, and looked at her carefully, stretched his arm out
slowly, and brought her to him.  Her eyes closed but his
didn't, and she was aware of his lips and the fact that her
left bra strap was slowly slipping from her shoulder.  He
released her, and she felt no transition, no moment of magic
dying, and no certainty about what was to happen next.  She
opened her eyes and they looked carefully at each other and
offered tiny smiles.  He squeezed her hand and said, "I'll
see you on Sunday." And so she took her time getting dressed
for church, wanting to look nice for her new
almost-boyfriend, and spent the service trying to remember
the kiss. And afterwards, there he was, waiting for her with
a note folded in his hand for her, and she took it quickly
and held it close and waited until she got home. Missy was
at a friend's house, and so she sat alone in their room,
unfolded the note, and scanned it quickly.  Her eyes traced
its shape, and her heart beat fast; he had sent her a poem.
She couldn't really remember what he had written as a
prelude, but the words of the poem still burned in her
heart, hurting her over and over again.  For he had sent her
Gerard Manley Hopkins's "Pied Beauty."

Glory be to God for dappled things -
        For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
                For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that  swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
        Landscape plotted and pieced - fold, dallow, and plough;
                And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
        Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
                With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
        He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                                                Praise him.

She knew that he had gotten it from the standard Catholic
school English textbook, where Hopkins was heavily
represented; he was both a poet and a monk. And she knew
that he had probably been trying to make a gesture
appropriate to a relationship - sending your girlfriend a
poem was one of the classier ways of expressing your
feelings for her - without really knowing how to do it.  He
couldn't write a poem, so he'd find one that worked and send
it to her.  And she had freckles, and that seemed to be what
the poem was about, and so he sent it. But it burned Dana
Scully, who hated her freckles, and she let the tears come,
first slow, then fast and hiccuppy and noisy, and made her
way to the bathroom to wash her face, dry her eyes, and
press her mother's powder onto her face in cakes that came
loose with her fresh tears.

***********************************************************

She was going to college, moving into her dorm, fresh after
a sleepless night of being on the phone with Missy, who was
full of last-minute advice and, finally, the stories she'd
always promised about her own first year away at school.
Her excitement had built all night, and after suddenly,
surprisingly, being close to tears at breakfast, her
adrenaline was back, and she was determined to be someone
fun at college.  None of these people knew the other
Scullys, could not compare her unfavorably with Missy, who
had always been the fun and pretty and daring sister, the
one who shared all of herself with everybody she knew.  So
she could begin anew here at college, and she would start
with her roommate.  She walked in and introduced herself,
and Dana Katherine Scully and Amanda Katherine Massey began
to talk.  Amanda was going to major in English and write the
great American novel, and her enthusiasm reminded Scully
that she too was capable of getting lost in a book, and that
there was more to her than science, which she had quietly
loved since she cut open a frog in seventh grade bio.  So
she looked through the course descriptions and headed for
the guidance office.  "But Dana, the poetry course is
required only for majors.  You don't need to take that.  Why
don't you take something more suited to your major?  Here
you go, Writing for Science Majors."  Scully grit her teeth
and tried to make the advisor understand.  "I know I don't
need the course, but I'd really like to take it.  I like
poetry, and . . ." she was interrupted by the shrill sound
of the phone on the desk.  "Mrs. Suhocki, Guidance," the
woman said, and then, after a pause, "Let me transfer you."
Then she continued with Scully: "Look, Dana, the poetry
courses tend to be much more difficult than the other
English classes.  Why don't you start with something easier
and then see if you still want to try it?  You don't want to
have a low GPA your first semester, do you?"  Scully stood
and thanked Mrs. Suhocki for her help.  She walked away and
registered for the poetry course at the English building.

Scully couldn't really say why she had been so determined to
take the course. It had been very challenging indeed, and
for a few weeks her only answer was that she liked
challenging herself; she discovered that poetry was as
technical as biology, and that she enjoyed immersing herself
in an alien discipline.  The day Jason came to class a
little early and sat right next to her, she thought there
might be another answer as to why she had insisted on this
class.  Fate had arranged it thus, she thought to herself,
and so their dance began.  They had been watching each other
with sidelong glances while poetry was read and discussed in
the class around them for about three weeks when he finally
asked her, as soon as class was over, if she wanted to go to
a movie.  They went, and the next day they were holding
hands on their way to the dining hall. Their relationship
for weeks consisted of poetry homework and escalating
kisses, and she thought she was ready.  That Friday, he
slipped her a note in class; it was foreplay disguised as a
poem.

                        May I feel said he
                        (I'll squeal said she
                        just once said he)
                        it's fun said she

                        (may I touch said he
                        how much said she
                        a lot said he)
                        why not said she

                        (let's go said he
                        not too far said she
                        what's too far said he
                        where you are said she)

                        may I stay said he
                        (which way said she
                        like this said he
                        if you kiss said she

                        may I move said he
                        is it love said she)
                        if you're willing said he
                        (but you're killing said she

                        but it's life said he
                        but your wife said she
                        now said he)
                        ow said she

                        (tiptop said he
                        don't stop said she
                        oh no said he)
                        go slow said she

                        (cccome?said he
                        ummm said she)
                        you're divine!said he
                        (you are Mine said she)

And she went to his room that night, her skin flushed
because of his wittiness and her mind aroused by how much
she wanted this, amazed that they both knew at the same time
that they were ready.  And so she went, body and mind, and
made him happy, but she could not reach the last stanza, and
left him without having come.

***********************************************************

It seemed like only a week since she had received her MCAT
scores, but here she was starting medical school.  Not just
frogs anymore, she thought.  She would, as a doctor, be a
daily witness to the mystery of the spark of life, and the
thought warmed and awed her.  She sat, alone and surrounded,
as every single first-year had in the large auditorium,
listening to a man with blurry features guide them through
what courses they would be taking that year, and what they
could expect for the next several years.  One speaker
replaced another at the microphone, and Scully sat and
listened dutifully, soothed by the orderliness and
efficiency of the proceedings.  She left the hall and walked
in the direction of her downtown studio apartment, unaware
of being watched. She remained unaware until she started
taking his class that spring.  It was Daniel who watched
her, whose eyes seemed to her to know everything about her:
that she had cut her hair short in an effort to try to look
older, more capable of responsibility; that the small of her
back ached sometimes and she wished desperately for a
massage; that she had never succumbed completely to her
body. It was Daniel whose constant attention led to her
weakening knees, and his declaration that he had seen her
red hair from the auditorium stage that first day brought
forth from her whispered confessions.  She was enraptured by
the thought that she could truly be the object of desire of
a man who was so intelligent, so decisive; she was used,
despite her hair and her brains, to being somehow
perpetually part of the background.  And then came the phone
call that turned her into someone she couldn't like, the
phone call that revealed that he was married and had a
daughter.  And yet she did not let him go, wanting the
certainty she felt when he held her that she was important,
significant, special.  And on their traitorous anniversary,
he sent her pink roses and a poem:

                How sweet I roam'd from field to field,
                        And tasted all the summer's pride,
                'Till I the prince of love beheld,
                        Who in the sunny beams did glide!

                He shew'd me lilies for my hair,
                        And blushing roses for my brow;
                He led me through his gardens fair,
                        Where all his golden pleasures grow.

                With sweet May dews my wings were wet,
                        And Phoebus fir'd my vocal rage;
                He caught me in his silken net,
                        And shut me in his golden cage.

                He loves to sit and hear me sing,
                        Then, laughing, sports and plays with me;
                Then stretches out my golden wing,
                        And mocks my loss of liberty.

And she sat in the restaurant across from him, flushed with
shame, remembering the meaning of the poem, knowing also
what he thought it meant.  He intended it as a declaration
that she had caught him, that she was the one for him, but
she knew the poem to be her beacon out of this relationship
she was in for all the wrong reasons, her lantern as she
walked the road back to herself.  She left without looking
behind.

***********************************************************

It was the morning after a night spent on the couch with
Missy, hearing another pep talk she needed even more than
the last one.  She was at Quantico for her first day, the
smallest of the new trainees.  She stood with her spine
straight; she was already a doctor, and inferior to no one.
She had passed her last physical the day before, and
exchanged a chance smile with the man waiting in the
hallway.  She felt strong and prepared until a gun,
surprisingly heavy and seeming to throb with energy, was
placed in her hand and she was set, wearing protective
equipment for her eyes and ears, in front of a target shaped
like a man.  She pulled the trigger over and over, her
fingers throbbing in response to the gun, her arms sore from
recoil, as her mind pounded out the irony of a doctor firing
a gun.  She did no worse and no better than anyone else, and
turned, unsatisfied, and saw the man from the headquarters
hospital hallway.  He was dressed in blue and was wearing an
instructor's badge.  He smiled at her, and she checked to
make sure there was no wedding ring before she smiled back.
He had been observing the new class, and at her smile he
lingered, then checked his watch, shook it impatiently and
held it up to his ear, and made for the exit while pulling a
granola bar from his back jeans pocket.

After that day, she
saw him around a lot, mostly in hallways on her way
elsewhere, but often eating a candy or granola bar or
drinking juice outside in the parking lot, as if his food
and drink were cigarettes, forbidden inside the building
complex.  She was scrubbing up after a January day in the
pathology lab when she heard a voice she knew must be his,
addressing someone unseen.  He was asking for a blood test,
quicker at the labs than at the local hospital, but no one,
it seemed, was around to oblige.  She stepped out of the
washroom so quickly her cross swung crazily on its chain,
and as it landed on her collarbone she offered to draw his
blood and run whatever test he needed.  "Just routine," he
assured her; "it won't take long.  I really appreciate
this."  He followed her out of the pathology area and up to
the standard medical bays.  He sat on the edge of the
adjustable bed and smiled up at her while she expertly
maneuvered the needle.  "Would you tell me your name?"  She
blushed, remembering that she had left her trainee badge in
her pathology locker, and that she was supposed to wear it
all times when within the FBI complex.  And this man in
front of her was an instructor.  "I'm Dana Scully," she
said, "and I left my badge downstairs because I had taken it
off to assist with an autopsy."  "I'm Jack."  He made no
mention of her infraction, and she softened immediately,
smiling quite genuinely at him.  "Jack Willis.  You know, if
you've been on your feet at an autopsy all day, I don't want
to hold you up.  There's no need to run the tests right now,
or even tonight.  You can just store the blood and have
someone run the test tomorrow."  "Oh, it's no problem," she
began to assure him, but then dropped it as he insisted that
she not let him interfere anymore with her plans for the
evening.  And that was that, it seemed.  They walked out of
the building and separated at the door.

Six weeks later,
Scully was in a theme restaurant, in a booth shaped like a
submarine with about ten of her classmates, wincing a little
at their exuberance in singing her "Happy Birthday."  Just
as they finished and Tom Colton pressed his lips to her
cheek - a move which every other man at the table
immediately copied - she saw Jack Willis walk in, a few
friends in tow.  Not that much later, she heard the birthday
song begin again, but this time, it was for Jack. She saw a
waitress rush over and tie a birthday balloon to his wrist,
and thanked her lucky stars they had missed her.  She was on
her way back from the ladies' room when a zealous waiter
caught her and fastened a pink balloon on a white ribbon to
her wrist.  As she and her friends left the restaurant, she
caught Jack's eye and they both grinned sheepishly at each
other while gesturing towards their wrists.  He found her at
Quantico the next day and that night they had dinner and
started a relationship.

It went on for quite some time,
never rushed or frantic, constantly being deferred when one
or the other of them was too exhausted by other devotions -
he from his field work, she from classes and autopsies.  It
was relaxing, comforting, and they didn't share too much.
They still had oases away from each other.  It was because
they both felt that expectations had nothing to do with
their relationship that they decided they could go away for
the weekend together without making it into an enormous
issue.  And so they took off for the Pine Barrens the
weekend after Thanksgiving, and chatted easily the whole way
up despite the snowstorm.  They got to his late parents'
cabin and discovered the little red stove did little to ease
the cold, so they got under the covers, and Jack held a lock
of her hair, lifting it from the stark white pillow, and
said, "At least your hair is warm, Dana.  It looks like it's
just bursting with fire, but never mind the rest of us.
Thank God I wore two pairs of socks!" he finished,
mock-melodramatically.  She smiled and sniffed with the
cold, and said, "It may look warm, but it's not thick enough
to be.  It was always my mother who had that nice thick
hair.  When I was little and I was very cold, I used to
stick my hands in her hair, hovering just above her scalp,
and her hair would warm my hands up."  "Well, you keep me
warm enough, anyhow," he said, and she laughed as he called
her his portable furnace.  "Or," he said, "maybe my portable
summer," and he recited for her, as they lay snuggled in the
bed, one of Shakespeare's sonnets:

                Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
                Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
                Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
                And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
                Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
                And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
                And every fair from fair sometimes declines,
                By chance or nature's changing course untrimmed;
                But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
                Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
                Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
                When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:
                So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
                So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Her eyes filled with tears, and she kissed him quietly as he
held her companionably.  They had their weekend, and came
back to Washington and continued their half-casual
relationship.  They spent their birthday together, playing
pool on a slanting table, and exchanged a cashmere sweater
and an engraved watch.  These, she thought, were hardly the
tokens given by young, impetuous lovers, filled to the brim
with passion.  She knew then, with a slow, waxing certainty,
that she wanted more than contentment, and she told him so a
few weeks later.  There were no scenes, no bitterness, and
they parted amicably. She felt only slightly lonelier than
when she had been with him.  And she remembered the famous
sonnet, and decided it didn't suit her, really; she was not
unchanging like the summer, and she certainly didn't need
someone else to immortalize her.  She straightened her spine
and went forward again.

***********************************************************

These were the things Scully thought about in the back of
her mind as she cleaned her apartment, as she sat through a
stakeout, as she lived alone.  It surprised her that every
man she'd been with had given her a poem, that they all
thought or felt that that was what she wanted, or needed, or
that was what would make her let them in.  And what about
Mulder? she thought suddenly. He's never given me a poem.
Why not?  It couldn't be that it was not his thing; she'd
never met a man more literate than Mulder.  And he was, at
heart, a romantic. But he had his humorous side too, and the
poems she had been given would have drowned that out; they
were too one-sided, too romantic, trying too hard to sum her
up in a few words.  Mulder was different.  He offered her
crime scene details as another man would give a Valentine.
He taped funny songs that made him think of her and played
them for her when they were alone in the Hoover building,
worn out from so much overtime.  They had listened to the
Smoking Popes' "Rubella" ("Yeah," he'd said, "most of my
girlfriends were diseases too") and They Might Be Giants'
"S-E-X-X-Y" ("Get it, Scully?  She or he is sexy *and*
they've got an extra chromosome.  I thought that might
appeal to the horny doctor in you") just last Friday.  And
he made Chinese takeout on her coffee table in front of her
TV seem like a candlelit dinner at the Ritz.  But these
thoughts didn't make her stop thinking of poetry, and so she
got out her Norton anthology, a few books down on the shelf
from her Bible and her hardcover copy of *Moby Dick*, and
began to read.  She had learned so much from that class, she
thought gratefully.  The poems spoke to her, made much of
her, and she reveled in them.  She read through the evening
and her eyes were beginning to close when they fell on a
poem she remembered from class, a poem that had always made
her wonder who e. e. cummings could have known that answered
that heroic, tender description.  She read and reread it,
and flipped through the volume until she came across the
blank card she had bought a few months ago and stuck in the
book for safekeeping.  It was blank inside, but had on the
front a painting of a dark-haired man dancing with a
red-haired woman, both in formal clothes from the nineteenth
century.  She copied the poem on the inside:

                because you take life in your stride(instead
                of scheming how to beat the noblest game
                a man can proudly lose,or playing dead
                and hoping death himself will do the same

                because you aren't afraid to kiss the dirt
                (and consequently dare to climb the sky)
                because a mind no other mind should try
                to fool has always failed to fool your heart

                but most(without the smallest doubt)because
                no best is quite so good you don't conceive
                a better;and because no evil is
                so worse than worst you fall in hate with love

                ---human one mortally immortal i
                can turn immense all time's because to why

She was going to give Mulder a poem.  Why not?  Did she
always have to wait for words?  Scully thought briefly, with
amusement, of the movie she'd rented a few weeks ago, *The
Pillow Book*, and the scene she had rewound over and over
again, her breath caught in her throat at the sheer
eroticism of it, when Ewan McGregor had turned the tables on
Vivian Wu; upon understanding her disappointment in his
handwriting on her body, he'd faced her squarely as they
knelt on a bed, and peeled off his shirt as he held her eye,
and said, "Make me your book."  She too, had taken up a pen,
as eagerly and gingerly as Vivian Wu had, to offer the words
that she felt, to mark him as her own.  She couldn't wait
until their "anniversary" to give the card to Mulder.  And
as the days between the date that marked her birth and the
date that marked the beginning of their life together
dragged on, she smiled to herself, hugged herself in secret
glee that she at last had someone special enough to write
these words for.  Even if, as was likely, he had forgotten
the day, or its significance, she would have made herself
proud; she was fiercely independent, and in love, and the
two went together better than she could have imagined.  And
she walked into their office on March 6, and went up to him
with a smile and put the card on his desk.  She turned and
walked back to hers, startled to see a card in a creamy
envelope lying on her desk planner.  She looked up and
caught his eye, and they opened their cards together.  She
gasped, and he laughed; they had chosen the same card - the
dancing couple.  And they, as one, opened the cards and bent
their heads to read.  What she found on the inside of her
card was a poem that made a single tear fall from her right
eye.  She knew this poem, its celebration of a loving and
lovely woman with intelligence, grace, and a sense of humor.
 She had read this poem to herself before, and it had made
Mulder think of her.

                I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
                When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
                Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
                The shapes a bright container can contain!
                Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
                Or English poets who grew up on Greek
                (I'd have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek).

                How well her wishes went!  She stroked my chin,
                She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand;
                She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin;
                I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand;
                She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,
                Coming behind her for her pretty sake
                (But what prodigious mowing we did make).

                Love likes a gander, and adores a goose:
                Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize;
                She played it quick, she played it light and loose,
                My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees;
                Her several parts could keep a pure repose,
                Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose
                (She moved in circles, and those circles moved).

                Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
                I'm martyr to a motion not my own;
                What's freedom for?  To know eternity.
                I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
                But who would count eternity in days?
                These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
                (I measure time by how a body sways).

She read the poem as she read the unwritten words Mulder was
simultaneously offering her: I love you, Scully.  You are
mine and I am yours.  We can be together from here on in.
When at last he looked up, having read the poem several
times because it was unfamiliar to him, he smiled at her and
said, "You know, Scully, this is new to me . . .".  And even
though she knew he was talking about the poem, she smiled
and changed the subject slightly so that they were talking
about their love for each other: "It's not new to me."

The end.

Author's notes: I wrote a Mulder perspective story last
time, so it seemed only fair to do one for Scully.  The
title, of course, is from the Roethke poem.  I thought it
would be interesting to trace her romantic development, as
Gillian herself did (much better) in "all things."  Gabriel
and Jason I made up, but the rest of the men are from the
show.  I have as little right to the poems as I do to the
show, but I'm doing this out of love for both, and doesn't
that count for something?  The poems (in order) are: Gerard
Manley Hopkins's "Pied Beauty," e. e. cummings's "May I feel
said he," William Blake's "Song" (from *Poetical Sketches*),
Shakespeare's "Sonnet 18," e. e. cummings's "because you
take life in your stride(instead," and Theodore Roethke's "I
Knew a Woman." Likewise, I have no rights to the songs I
mentioned.  I have no rights at all, it seems to me.  In any
case, please let me know what you thought.  I'm at
innie_darling@hotmail.com <mailto:innie_darling@hotmail.com>.  Oh, and
by the way, the card I
mention really does exist.  I can't remember whose painting
it is; it might be Renoir. Thanks! - Innie