Story 133: "Butterfly" by Oracle
Nov. 6th, 2010 07:11 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
amyhit.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
xf_book_clubContinuing our theme of early seasons fanfic, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wendelah1 has kindly let me post Butterfly. Apparently Oracle went looking for post eps for Excelsis Dei, and finding none, she decided to write one herself. It was fandom's good fortune that she did. What she wrote is a charming little AU with both a strong emotional arc and a perilous mystery for Mulder and Scully to get to the bottom of - all in just 30K.
Butterfly is the kind of fic Goldilocks would approve of - not too schmoopy, not to angsty, not too plain, not too purple, not too fluffy, not too hard-boiled. Just right. Besides, who doesn't love seeing baby Mulder and Scully be awesome and adorable together?
I read this fic recently for the first time myself, and as you can tell I'm rather fond of it. But that's just me, what do the rest of you think?
Water spills through a crack at the top of the door.
Scully can't think. How many minutes does it take to drown? Five minutes? Five minutes before permanent brain damage, in any case. How many minutes have passed?
The door is a waterfall now. Surely there's enough pressure to burst it open. She starts pounding on it.
"Mulder!"
She's done everything, tried everything. Now she's screaming his name even though he can't answer. He's trapped in the bathroom. He's drowning. Her knuckles are bleeding. Ms. Dawson stands beside her, trying to soothe her, maybe trying to pull her away.
The door creaks. How many minutes have passed? More than five. About ten. Ten minutes. Mulder must have found a way out. Some air vent, some hidden passage. This isn't how it ends, she thinks. This isn't the end.
The door unhinges. Scully pulls Ms. Dawson out of the way as they watch it burst open with a gush of water, two bodies washed in the swell. Mulder and the nurse. Neither of them is moving.
You can read Butterfly on Oracle's website, or, if the pretty blue text distracts you and you don't mind fiddling with the link a bit, you can read it on her Gossamer page instead.
Remember, feedback makes an author happy, and suggestions make us happy.
wendelah1 has kindly let me post Butterfly. Apparently Oracle went looking for post eps for Excelsis Dei, and finding none, she decided to write one herself. It was fandom's good fortune that she did. What she wrote is a charming little AU with both a strong emotional arc and a perilous mystery for Mulder and Scully to get to the bottom of - all in just 30K.Butterfly is the kind of fic Goldilocks would approve of - not too schmoopy, not to angsty, not too plain, not too purple, not too fluffy, not too hard-boiled. Just right. Besides, who doesn't love seeing baby Mulder and Scully be awesome and adorable together?
I read this fic recently for the first time myself, and as you can tell I'm rather fond of it. But that's just me, what do the rest of you think?
Water spills through a crack at the top of the door.
Scully can't think. How many minutes does it take to drown? Five minutes? Five minutes before permanent brain damage, in any case. How many minutes have passed?
The door is a waterfall now. Surely there's enough pressure to burst it open. She starts pounding on it.
"Mulder!"
She's done everything, tried everything. Now she's screaming his name even though he can't answer. He's trapped in the bathroom. He's drowning. Her knuckles are bleeding. Ms. Dawson stands beside her, trying to soothe her, maybe trying to pull her away.
The door creaks. How many minutes have passed? More than five. About ten. Ten minutes. Mulder must have found a way out. Some air vent, some hidden passage. This isn't how it ends, she thinks. This isn't the end.
The door unhinges. Scully pulls Ms. Dawson out of the way as they watch it burst open with a gush of water, two bodies washed in the swell. Mulder and the nurse. Neither of them is moving.
You can read Butterfly on Oracle's website, or, if the pretty blue text distracts you and you don't mind fiddling with the link a bit, you can read it on her Gossamer page instead.
Remember, feedback makes an author happy, and suggestions make us happy.
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late comment to my own rec. oops. 2/2
Date: 2010-11-16 01:51 am (UTC)Mulder has pulled her half onto his lap.
"It's okay, it's okay," he whispers. "It's just another
dream."
When she opens her eyes she leans up and brushes her lips
against his mouth. It hurts to pull away. She's crying
again. He strokes and soothes his hands along her back,
urging her to take deep breaths.
The flight attendant pauses beside their seats. "Sir,
ma'am...is everything all right?"
"Yes," Mulder replies. "Just a bad dream."
It's not that she's distraught, or that Mulder is comforting her that bothers me. It's the details, mainly that there are so many of them. She's (half) on his lap, he's stroking her, soothing her, urging her to breathe, whispering to her. Meanwhile she's crying. Plus it's all happening in public. One or two of these things would seem appropriate, but all of them together create an emphasized impression of her helplessness, and Mulder's contrasting command of the situation. Then a flight attendant comes by, at which point I feel like Scully would be mortified. To add insult to injury Mulder actually tells the flight attendant it's "just a bad dream" that has upset Scully, which infantilizes her all the more.
I also don't really like the idea that Mulder actually did die and Scully has made up a dream world in which he's alive and they're together - not for this fic anyway. I think someone - maybe her - could write a fic very similar to this one, in which that was the implication, and I think that fic could be really good. But IMO it wasn't the point of this fic. Butterfly is a little bit quaint to me, and certainly not so very dark as all that. When I read Butterfly it felt like coming across an up kept cabin in the woods, not a deep dark unexplored cave full of creepy sounds, which is what that other premise would be to me.