Story 94: "The 13th Sign" by prufrock's love

[wendelah1]

I meant to post this next story a week ago. Where has the time gone?

I debated whether or not to even post this here as it's long and kind of angsty. Okay, it's very angsty. On the Prufrock Reader Torture Scale, with zero being angst-free (there is no angst-free prufrock story as far as I know, at least none that I would recommend) and ten being "Negative Utopia" or maybe "The Wasteland," this rates at least a seven. It is neither season eight fic nor is it season nine, but William is there and so is Mulder so I am classifying it as season nine, AU, PG-13.

I have no idea why I like this story as much as I do, given that I hate babyfic and season nine, but prufrock writes a lovely, believable Mulder, negotiating his way through fatherhood under the worst possible circumstances, plus there's some mytharc thrown in for good measure.

You can't send the author feedback because she disabled her email address even before she quit writing fic. But you can let us know! Love it? Hate it? Even a one line review would gladden my heart. Leave suggestions for next time here as always. I promise we will get to them eventually.

On the eve of the demise of geocities, something amazing happened. Someone decided to try to save it all and move it to their own servers. Seriously. They are calling it "reocities." To see if a geocities site has been put back up by this wonderful, wacky person, just type in the old url, substituting an "r" for the "g" and voila, there it will be, maybe.

Courtesy of Reocities, here is "The 13th Sign".

I love the internet.

Comments

Re: Way late to the game

[wendelah1]

Prufrock's love's Mulder is canon Mulder as far as I'm concerned: no more or less self-absorbed and arrogant, and yes, just as heroic as he is on screen.

And having read and listen bed Fugue I just can't quite buy that Scully minus all the years with Mulder would still BE Scully, or be sufficiently Scully to just go with it.

That's an interesting comparison to make. The Dana Scully in "Fugue" has her memories of the X-Files returned but not her memories of her life before Mulder. The way I see it, they fall apart in the end because while Dana can remember being in love with "Bill," Scully wasn't "in love" with Mulder, nor was he with her. Without her core memories/personality to draw strength from, Mulder is more than she can handle on a personal level. Rivkat's Mulder is so self-involved that he can't deal with her loss without making it all about himself. It's frustrating to watch but kind of inevitable, when you think about it.

I see "The 13th Sign" a little differently having read the sequel but it's more or less the same version of Mulder in all three fanfics, the only difference being that prufrock's love's Mulder gets to change slowly over the course of the two stories, which I believe to be a consequence of becoming a parent. After Scully is taken, he is forced into putting another human being's feelings and needs before his own. And he does love and desire pre-abduction Scully to the extent that he is capable, and he wants to love Dana, too. He isn't able to put aside his grief and see her as a person apart from the woman he still wants her to be. The joy he feels at the end of "7 Days in May" is because he's in possession of something he thinks can save humanity (yay!) but also because he believes that Dana was healed by Jeremiah Smith and that "his Scully" will return. Mulder is still Mulder, in other words.

Fugue-Mulder doesn't even try to make things right between himself and his Dana Scully. He just jumps right back into his old life. He's not even self-aware enough to remember to ask if her memories have returned.

RE: Re: Way late to the game

[bmerb.livejournal.com]

Hmm... well that is food for thought. Maybe I'm just mad at PL for erasing the Scully I know and love. I also don't quite buy that Mulder was immediately attracted to Scully at the beginning so maybe that colors my perception.
You know I've read so much fanfic now that I think I forget Mulder's heroic nature in canon somewhat. Being quite the Scullyist leaves me at times at odds with Ditch!Mulder and Secrets!Mulder so perhaps I read in more arrogance than is strictly there, or find those fics that relate that a bit more appealing.
I'll give this one a reread with your comments in mind and maybe with the sequel included sometime and see what I think. And I'll go back and read more Nascent fanfic. Because it's my fave!

Re: Way late to the game

[wendelah1]

Hmm... well that is food for thought. Maybe I'm just mad at PL for erasing the Scully I know and love. I also don't quite buy that Mulder was immediately attracted to Scully at the beginning so maybe that colors my perception.

I don't believe that Mulder was immediately attracted to Scully either. But I can easily believe in a Mulder who could, in a haze of nostalgia/grief/despair over losing her again, look back on their first trip to Bellefleur and believe he had loved her--a little--even then. Because that's how people's minds work, isn't it? Memories are notoriously unreliable. We rewrite how we feel about our personal histories depending on our current circumstances.

This is an AU, written after the series ended in 2002. I can't speak for prufrock's love but when writing an AU, I feel particularly free to experiment with characterization because I am literally creating another universe whose characters are from the get-go acknowledged to be different from canon.

Your anger about Scully's memories being erased in this fic is understandable. I consider myself a Scullyist, too, and it definitely gave me pause, as did estella-c's comment above that returning Scully minus the memories of her time on the X-Files was a gift to Mulder. That's a creepy observation, frankly, and unfair to both the characters and the writer. YMMV.

Nevertheless, this fic resonates with me like few others do. I think the tragedy of her abduction and the resulting memory loss makes the romance palatable to me. Without it, it's just another happily-ever-after MSR fic, and in all honesty, I cannot abide most of them. To feel true to the series, the characters need to earn their almost-a-happy-ending, even in fanfic.

I kinda hated IWTB at the time (my feelings have softened after rewatching it on a small screen) but this scene felt right even back then.

MULDER: If you have any doubts, any doubts at all, just call off that surgery this morning. And then we'll get out of here. Just me and you.

[Scully pulls away and looks closely at him, smiling slightly.]

SCULLY: As far away from the darkness as we can get?

[Mulder smiles.]

MULDER: I'm not sure it works that way. I think maybe the darkness finds you and me.

SCULLY: I know it does.

MULDER: But let it try.

I think CC nails it here: the darkness inevitably does find Mulder and Scully. I think prufrock's love gets that in a way that many fic writers do not. And I don't think she's angry about it in the way that, for example, Rivkat and Mustang Sally are. I think she just sees it as part of the package. Her AUs are always at least as tragic as the series itself.

RE: Re: Way late to the game

[bmerb.livejournal.com]

Hmmm thanks for that. I still haven't seen IWTB so I'm probably missing a few key characterizations but eventually I'll get there. Right after I force myself to finally watch all of season 7 and (gak) the final two seasons. Maybe. Maybe I should just skip them though? Anything worth watching in seasons 8 & 9 (or the end of season 7 for that matter)?

RE: Re: Way late to the game

[bmerb.livejournal.com]

Also, ugh! Geez autocorrect, so frustrating!

RE: Re: Way late to the game

[bmerb.livejournal.com]

And... where is the best place to find PLs fanfic?

Re: Re: Way late to the game

[wendelah1]

For the stories which she's put on Gossamer, Gossamer without question. They are the most recent versions. (This is also true of Nascent.)

prufrock's love on reocities (a good samaritan saved geocities and put it on his server): http://www.reocities.com/prufrocks_love/