Stories 177-178: "Amnesia" and "Vapor Trail" by Khyber

[wendelah1]

Though summer is now over, we are continuing our leisurely reading through the series, "Khyber versus Season Seven." Discussion is winding down finally on the last post, but there are some new comments up, including an informative summary of the two longer stories by amyhit (thank you!).

Next up for consideration are two post-eps: "Amnesia," written for Brand X and "Vapor Trail," for Je Souhaite. These are both short, so I think we'll get through them a lot quicker. Both are rated Teen and above, I'd say, though check his intros to be sure. Spoilers for those episodes and for "All Things."

"Amnesia"

"Vapor Trail"

If the Internet Archive is having a bad day, the entire series can be found at Gossamer.

Comments

[a-is4addiction.livejournal.com]

Okay. I've been a bad girl and read ahead, so I'll have to reread these and come back with some better comments. I'm so enjoying the Mulder and Scully in this universe, but the more I read, the more I'm saddened by knowing that it isn't finished. Do we know, is there a chance that Khyber will come back and finish this series? I know his fandom emails are dead, but...I don't know. I just really need to know how it will end!

Since I don't have any specific comments yet, I will say that I love Khyber's style. Reading his stories makes me want to get out my keyboard and write X-Files again, and I haven't felt that pull since last year.

[wendelah1]

I'm so enjoying the Mulder and Scully in this universe, but the more I read, the more I'm saddened by knowing that it isn't finished. Do we know, is there a chance that Khyber will come back and finish this series? I know his fandom emails are dead, but...I don't know. I just really need to know how it will end!

Well. It isn't a good sign that his fandom emails are all dead and that he let his website go down. He did take a long hiatus from fandom once before and then came back and finished Sokol, started KvS7, then had another hiatus. I did post that if anyone had a "real life" email for him, to let him know we're reading KvS7. I don't know what else to do. If he has a Google alert set on his fandom name (many people do) then he'll know we haven't forgotten about him. I'd say there is a chance, albeit a small one, that this will be finished. If XF3 gets made? He was a fan of IWTB.

I have my own theory about what was supposed to happen at the end of this based on what has happened so far, how Sokol ended, and how much he liked the ending of IWTB; I'll post it at the end, I guess. In the meantime, give us your thoughts on this fic.

[write-out.livejournal.com]

Okay, okay, *these* stories I understand. And oh, how lovely they are too. I finally feel like I'm getting it, the big picture. Or maybe not, but at least these two stories aren't leaving me dazed and confused and just really sad.

These two are my favorites of the series so far. I'm going to post individual comments for them once I organize my thoughts.

Amnesia

[write-out.livejournal.com]

This is such a great little story. It drew me in right from the beginning, with Mulder and Scully laughing in bed and sounding comfortable, happy.

Some of my favorite lines:

"Whatcha doin' here, Mulder?"

He loves it when she contracts. It's tensionless, means that no one is actually in trouble.

and

He wants to give her amnesia (transient global amnesia, Mulder, it's not
uncommon but not easily explained) just let her be, watch her watch the world go by as if everything was happening for the first time.

and

"I liked Dr. Seuss. When we stopped watching it, the Grinch, at
Christmas I still liked it. I was fourteen."

There's a moment of silence in which each of them wonders exactly how she had started thinking of the Whos in Whoville, and then they both laugh quietly. The verbal equivalent of bumping noses when you kiss, Mulder thinks. It will take some practice.

There's laughter, tenderness and some lingering sweet awkwardness. They are so much more relaxed at this point in the series and the story ends not with a hint of trouble on the horizon, but with Scully's heart expanding.

Re: Amnesia

[write-out.livejournal.com]

Something else that struck me and that I forgot to include in my comment is how jarring the tone is from the previous stories. The angst/intrigue/deception is completely gone and it's almost as if nothing so crazy or distressing ever happened to them. So "Amnesia" is an apt title in more ways than one.

Re: Amnesia

[infinitlight.livejournal.com]

I don't know if I agree about the tone, but maybe it's the hangover of the previous stories that's making me think Amnesia has a kind of melancholy weird dream tone to it. There's the "we're alive" line (that's a repetition from one of the earlier stories, too, isn't it?) and although there's a lot of banter and a lot of mention of snuggliness, I'm not sure. Maybe I'm too suspicious.

Re: Amnesia

[write-out.livejournal.com]

There's the "we're alive" line (that's a repetition from one of the earlier stories, too, isn't it?)

It is? I didn't catch that; I'll have to go back and check that out. I took that "we're alive" as Scully thinking back to the close calls they've both recently had, but I was thinking more of the actual series and not what Khyber had just put them through.

I think I've got my own amnesia because the previous stories did not register much at all as I read this and "Vapor Trail." I was just glad to read about a relatively happy Mulder and Scully without having to divine what was real and what was being engineered by others. I just reread "Amnesia" and don't sense any true melancholy. My own blinders? I don't know. Like Mulder says, they might still bump noses on occasion but they are finding their way. You say you are maybe too suspicious. Maybe I am too accepting?

Re: Amnesia

[wendelah1]

I think what happened to them should cast a pall over everything that happens later, so that sounds right to me. You think it could be a dream? I'll have to reread with that in mind.

You can't be too paranoid while reading Khyber fic.

I looked back and skimmed. "We're alive," etc. is a line from Planet Spooky.

Meanwhile, if-- to be honest, probably when-- there's an "again"
it'll be against a rental car,

(trying to lookout over his shoulder until keeping my eyes open
is no longer an option)

or on his kitchen floor,

(he says a certain word that I didn't know I liked and I feel myself
turn into honey, I'm knees on linoleum and where we join and nothing
else)

or under a blood-temperature shower

(we're alive we're alive we're alive)

in a dizzy-hot Southern motel room like a coy flashback to the first
time that mattered. It'll be hot words and dares and darkness, no
soft goodnights like the one I'll hear in about three minutes. As
long as you turned away from the other person to get dressed, does
it still count? Does that mean you have to apologize when you snap
at him, or take it personally when he shoos you off to do the
dull but necessary?

Re: Amnesia

[infinitlight.livejournal.com]

You are amazing for finding the reference, it has been bugging me and I intended to put the stories in Word and search for the phrase. I remembered the paragraph surrounding it as being much more desperate-feeling so the phrase is probably a lot less significant than I'd imagined.

Yeah, I've been wondering if this is a dream, if they never woke up in "Where I End". There are more stories in this series, right? I wonder what I will think by the end of them.

Re: Amnesia

[wendelah1]

I think Planet Spooky is a desperately sad story when read in the right (or wrong) frame of mind and I think the phrase is important, if only because it reccurs.

I don't think this one is a dream, but I can't give you textual evidence for that off the top of my head and I'm lying in bed, getting ready to sleep in a minute or two.

There are three more stories which he wrote for this series and three more he had planned at one time, but never finished.

Re: Amnesia

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

I remembered the paragraph surrounding it as being much more desperate-feeling so the phrase is probably a lot less significant than I'd imagined.

No, you're right, infinitlight. We first hear of it in How gravity Works, but then Mulder tells us again, in more detail, in Home From the War, when he's telling Scully what his memory of their first time together was like. That's when the full impact of the scene really comes through:

"It was after Modell," he began hoarsely. "We stayed in Virginia
that night, we were both just fried. We checked into this crappy
hotel, we got a double, just figured we'd crash for a few hours and
drive back early in the morning. But we couldn't sleep, we were
talking and you, uh, you went to get us a couple of sodas or
something. I lost it, I just curled up in a ball, I was crying
and... how I'd almost killed you. And you, ah," he motioned
abstractly with his hands, "you lay down with me on the bed for a
while, until I got hold of myself. I went and took a shower, and I
heard the door open, the bathroom door. It was one of those
glass-door showers, hazy, and I could see you through it. You were
naked, I could just see the colors. You were beautiful, Scully, you
were so beautiful I was speechless. You got in with me and you said
'we're alive.'"

Re: Amnesia

[wendelah1]

I thought that myself but then "All Things" happens in the interim. Maybe try watching it, followed by "Brand X" and then read the post-ep?

I'm going to do that right now. I'll be back.

Amnesia

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

I like Amnesia, but I do find it to be a bit of a leap after the dark and anguished way that WIEAYB ended. I think I would have preferred if How Gravity Works had followed, rather than preceded, the Home From the War trilogy. How Gravity Works had that feeling of hope and possibility, and yet avoidance and denial - Mulder and Scully were so close to each other, so close that all it would take is for one of them (probably Scully) to reach out the slightest bit for the other, but they were still too wary, and careful not to reach for each other (Once burned, twice shy. Twice burned, forever shy?). From there, I can see how with the slightest shift into just the right balance, they could end up the Mulder and Scully we see in Amnesia.

-the slow, silent midnight they shared three weeks ago
when her head had been abuzz with a weary sense of
displacement and freedom. [...]She'd noticed the size, the
strength of his arms as they wrapped around her, and was quite
certain that that slow and cradled way was entirely new for
them.

But immediately after the HFTW trilogy, this does feel a bit jarring to me. How Gravity Works felt like it was them tiptoeing out of their trenches and then HFTW was them getting strafed diving back into their trenches, wounded. Generally in KvsS7 I feel Khyber writes Mulder and Scully more realistically than canon. They have the kinds of issues that people who had been through what they've been through would have. It's like what Iolokus proposes to do, but done it in a way that - though far less shocking- is more grounded and realistic. So I don't like that Amnesia makes this jump from them going through something deeply invasive and disturbing in HFTW, to them laughing and play wrestling.

If there'd been indication that what they'd seen of each other's minds in HFTW was going to be a comfort to them and bring them together, I would understand, but the way WIEAYB ends, it seems as though Scully is all the more intent on self-containment at the cost of being open to further intimacy.

That said, Amnesia is by no means fluffy, and I do like the way their equanimity and joy at being intimate with each other in a healthy way is something they are very tentative and careful with, particularly Scully. They're not putting all of their weight on this. They're so close together and there's so much potency in the way they are bonded to each other that if it goes wrong...well, as I believe estella_c said in one of her past comments, that would be a risk too far.

When they're silent Mulder can feel her tense up-- four
years later, almost five, this is still what passes for
afterglow from Scully. He wants to be able kiss it out of her,
blast the thoughts out of that fine and ferocious mind. No,
not that, they've fucked each other's brains out before and
the thoughts always come back.

They've done it wrong before. Or, not wrong perhaps, but they've been intimate in an unhealthy way - trying to use sex as an opiate or a distraction. They know how to do it that way. They don't know how to do it this way, the healthy way, because they've never done it before. I do wonder exactly what the hell their past relationship has been like for Mulder though. It makes me upset with him that he seems to be relatively unscathed by it all. He respects Scully's reservations, and her fear, but he doesn't seem to feel much of that himself, and I wonder why that is.

As Scully turns away, she feels her heart growing and growing nine
times its normal size, threatening to break her chest.

For me, that last line really makes the whole fic. It's where I know that there's joy in what she has with Mulder, and that they really are doing it right this time. For all that it's been tamped down and reigned in and cut back, it's real, healthy, joyful love.

I've never actually read How the Grinch Stole Christmas, so I had to look it up to find out that, as I suspected, the last line is a reference. Why nine times its normal size, though? In How the Grinch Stole Christmas it was three times the normal size.

As a side note, I'm pretty sure I could read this as a non-KvsS7 post ep for Brand X and it would still seem in character - maybe more so.

Vapour Trail

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

Meh. It has some nice lines, but it doesn't do a lot for me. It's my least favorite KvsS7 instalment - Collapsar is second. (it's interesting the way these two fics both have names of stellar events/bodies for titles, and they're both about how Scully relates intimately to Mulder. Both are about the effect of gravity and friction on a body, but Collapsar is about the unstable, unsustainable nature of a body's reaction to gravity and friction, and Vapour Trail is about a body forging brightness and power and destination from gravity and friction.

So at least I like the titles.

But I don't like pillow talk and I don't like when Mulder and Scully have conversations about their relationship, and Khyber being a good writer isn't going to change that.

Mulder believes everything he says, but he'll say it
to get what he wants. There is always that slight twinge,
that Mulder says these things because he wants something,
and even if it's something that wants him back, I just
can't let him get away with it.

I think this is very true of Mulder's character, and very insightful, but it makes me sad. I like to imagine that he mostly grows out of this over time, especially during the summer he spends locked up while Scully's in Africa. I like to think he finally makes peace with and integrates the part of himself that is a petulant, self-involved twelve-year-old boy. (TSE:AF does kind of hint at it when DreamMulder is on the beach building a sand castle with the boy.) Though S7 doesn't necessarily bear out that bit of hinted character development, my headcanon does, so it makes me sad to read a fic in S7 where Scully still has to be thinking about what Mulder's inner twelve-year-old will decide is the right thing to say in the moment.

A couple of years ago, a little before Antarctica, he decided
he wanted me. At the time, I took the sex--wrenching, biting,
fearful doses of it-- because that was all I could handle, and
when he refused to let me pick and choose my entanglements I backed
away again.

Okay, hold the freaking phone- what does THAT mean? No, seriously, I have no idea what that means. Does it mean he was needy for sex? Pushy? Demanding? Does it mean he was jealous of other men? Does Scully even mean sex when she says 'entanglements' or does she mean work-related entanglements?

Whatever it means, I'm really not liking the implications.

Re: Vapour Trail

[estella-c.livejournal.com]

What you said is why I have nothing to say about the timeline. Really all I can do is enjoy the mess.

It's odd, or is it, that I love time-travel stuff so much. Maybe I perceive it as an escape from necessity.

Self-analysis over. Moving on.

RE: Vapour Trail

[bmerb.livejournal.com]

A couple of years ago, a little before Antarctica, he decided
he wanted me. At the time, I took the sex--wrenching, biting,
fearful doses of it-- because that was all I could handle, and
when he refused to let me pick and choose my entanglements I backed
away again.

How did I miss this? I must have missed whole paragraphs? Orthe version I read is missing chunks?

Discovery-ville!

[bmerb.livejournal.com]

Wow I read the stories from his waybacked site and read the discussions and there was a blip. A disconnect. The version posted on gossamer is DIFFERENT from the version on his site!!! Wha??? Like content and structure are both different! At least for vapor trails anyways. The gossamer version is straightforwardly linear while the version from his site isn't at all, skipping back and forth considerably and with some words changes, some entire sections changed. I may have to read his other stories on gossamer to compare now, but I thought no I like the version on Khyber's site better as it entirely lacks the mention of sex just before Antarctica. However I'd say that Scully saying she couldn't pick and choose her entanglements was related to how much emotional closeness she was open to, rather than the sex. Damn I wish I hadn't missed these discussions. *sigh*

Re: Discovery-ville!

[wendelah1]

Wow I read the stories from his waybacked site and read the discussions and there was a blip. A disconnect. The version posted on gossamer is DIFFERENT from the version on his site!!!

Wow. That is a discovery. I'm going to have to try to drag EC out of retirement to discuss this. Back later.

RE: Re: Discovery-ville!

[bmerb.livejournal.com]

Yessss!