Story 247: "Salvador" by Eleanor G

[wendelah1]

This is a brand new nomination. I haven't read it, but I remember reading "Undying" a long while back and liking it a lot. I just read her post-ep for "Deep Throat." I liked it. Then I read her post-ep for "Conduit." I liked it, too.

Summary: Five missing women, all Salvadoran immigrants. A mass grave on the slope of a volcano, the bodies burned beyond recognition. What's the connection? An anonymous tip sends Mulder and Scully on a dangerous search for the truth. R for violence, gore, disturbing subject matter, and sex. X-File, Mytharc, Angst, MSR. 212 K.

The nomination post is always open for your suggestions. I look forward to your thoughts on "Salvador." Don't forget to send feedback to the author.


Read Salvador. The link is to her old geocities site where more of her fic can be found. This can also be read at Gossamer and Fugues Fiction Archive.

Comments

[tri-sbr.livejournal.com]

So, upfront, this is the kind of story that makes me wish I remembered the mytharc / conspiracy stuff better than I do. Most of the time, I am fine living in blissful ignorance :) From my murky memory, though, Salvador seems to fit right into the late season 7, post amor fati, pre requiem x-files world, while taking us farther down the mytharc path (and with better possibilities for subsequent events) than the show did. It seems like you could read this story as an insert into canon (and see William as what the aliens want from M&S) or you could read this as diverging from canon (and be left to imagine what happens next).

I like this Mulder and Scully; they are the Mulder and Scully in my head. Mulder remains ruthless in his pursuit of the truth, but there is a weariness about him and a sense of resignation to the idea that he is at the mercy of those who dangle leads in front of him. I liked the line when he is about to leave for Miami to meet Leda Mendez: "And he gets ready to jump through one more hoop."

Scully is totally Scully. She is ready to plow down to El Salvador, despite the dangers of this mission to her in particular, with the hope of learning something about what has been done to her. While down there, without Mulder, she plays his role with the others of the group (as usual):
"I'd be very interested to hear *your* interpretation of the evidence, Agent Dunlap," Scully says blandly.
....
She pauses, marveling at her own words. She can almost hear Mulder giving this same speech a hundred times over the years. I sound more like him every year, Scully thinks. Does he think he sounds more like me? Whose quest am I on anyway - his or mine?
Is there even a difference any more?
She is tough and no-nonsense on the outside, but we get glimpses of the internal worries she has about Mulder (how scared she feels as she remembers him being locked up in biogenesis when the artifact was affecting his mind and in amor fati when she found him strapped to the table having undergone some brain procedure) and how vulnerable she feels because of what has happened to her - toward the end, she tells Mulder "I'm just so tired of not being able to trust my memory," she says at last. "I hate having these...these gaps."

This story was also really sad, but in an understated way. There are strong parallels between the Mulder family and the Mendez family, with the fathers sacrificing one child and the remaining sibling spending a lifetime (along with their personal happiness) searching. Mulder might easily have become Leda, totally isolated and caring about nothing except the search for her/his sister. Except that Scully comes into his life and pulls him back from that extreme. We also have the words of Emilio Vasquez talking about his lost sister Irma to Mulder: "My mother knew she wasn't coming back all along. We argued about that. She thinks Irma was taken by angels. Can you believe that?" He looks at Mulder with wet eyes and breaks down. "Oh God, she is so fucking ignorant. Angels." Poor Mulder on so many levels. This echoes his own mother's refusal to acknowledge what really happened to Samantha and it also kind of pokes a stick at Mulder's new belief that Samantha was saved by walk-ins (or whatever that crap in Closure was).

The ending! Wow. I totally didn't remember that Iphi was Marita (or, Marita was Iphi). I just went back and re-read the prologue and I guess that should have helped. I always was terrible at paying attention to those first few minutes of the show, before the opening credits, where you get some clues to help you with the rest of the episode; I was always just impatient to get to Mulder and Scully. :) But, seriously, though, this was a great idea, to bring Marita into it this way. And, chalk up another parallel, not just between Marita and Samantha, but between Marita and Scully; both are victims but they are dealing with it in completely different ways. Am I interpreting correctly if I say that Marita had the report sent to Mulder and to Leda basically in order to find her father and kill him?

[wendelah1]

This is a great review. I don't have much to add. I think EleanorG captures post "all things" season seven Mulder and Scully very well. There's only one false characterization note in the story and that comes early on.

He looks a little embarrassed. "A. Nonymous. The e-mail couldn't be traced."

Here we go again, Scully thinks. Are things ever going to change? "Goddammit, Mulder - "


Would season seven I'm finally getting some Scully really give Mulder that hard a time? I don't think so. That sounds more like early season Scully to me.

"Yeah, I know. I know," he answers, placating. "But the evidence is here, Scully. We're onto something important. I know it."

Duh. But that's a minor quibble, and there's much clunkier dialogue in the series itself.

Like you, I loved seeing Marita with a genuine role to play in the mytharc. I think EleanorG did a better job of writing this character than 1013. I also liked the parallels between the Mulder and Mendez families. It was very satisfying to have Marita as a survivor, and for her to kill her own father for what he did to her and so many others. Revenge is sweet!

This echoes his own mother's refusal to acknowledge what really happened to Samantha and it also kind of pokes a stick at Mulder's new belief that Samantha was saved by walk-ins (or whatever that crap in Closure was).

It does! I didn't like the closure in "Closure" (hence my fix-it fic) and I think Samantha especially got a raw deal, though no one has it any worse than poor Leda. She loses everything by the end, and there's no one left to help put her back together. I agree with EC that killing off Octavio was a mistake. It would have been more satisfying for him to have lived so he could go back to Leda. That's an unnecessary death in my humble opinion, and structurally unbalances the story, too.

Otherwise, I thought it was an excellent, casefile-mytharc story, with a real sense of place, and good original characters. Other than stated above, I don't see the need for cuts or changes. I thought the writing was well above average. Unlike EC, I did want to keep reading and see how the story played out. I think I read it in a single evening. And I'm happy to keep reading the rest of her fanfic.

[estella-c.livejournal.com]

See, when you can read something like this in a single evening it makes you a sweeter person.

I didn't like "Closure" either. Silly little ghosties.

I stick with my desire for brevity. Hmm. This story could actually be cannibalized to make several shorter pieces. The backstory for Marita is very strong. And the parallels all over with Mulder's past--I'm thinking a kind of circular structure. Maybe messing with time. I really have a feeling that the this-happened-and-then-that-happened approach was wrong.

So all we have to do is contact Elinor and give her my arrogant, mean advice. But I hear betas do that to their victims all the time.

You know--I'm being serious here, which it's sometimes necessary to say--there are differences between the responses of someone new to a specific fanfic and someone who has been reading it twenty years. A certain impatience sets in. But I don't want, truly, to spoil anyone's pleasure.