TITLE:  MODERN-DAY BONNIE & CLYDE
AUTHOR:  Blueswirl
EMAIL:  cleojones3@yahoo.com
DATE: 8/5/03

ARCHIVE:  Gossamer yes, anyone else please drop me a line first.
RATING: PG
CLASSIFICATION: V, R
SPOILERS: through "The Truth"
KEYWORDS: E-Muse Writer's Block "He Said/She Said" Challenge

DISCLAIMER:  The characters of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully belong to Chris
Carter and 1013 Prods. and Fox Inc. I'm just borrowing and mean no harm.

Challenge elements at end of story.


*  *  *


On the television, a gorgeous blonde in a silk camisole twists seductively
atop rumpled sheets, gazing coyly at her man from beneath lowered eyelashes.
He stands by the mirror, shirt open, a gun in his hand which he tosses on
the bureau before moving towards her.

Scully sits on the bed in a daze, watching the images flicker on the
television screen. She's supposed to be in the shower. She drove the last
leg today, a long one, and she's exhausted, so Mulder agreed to brave the
rain and pick up food from the diner across the street while she cleaned up.
Instead, she collapsed on the bed the minute he left, and now she's been
sucked in to the movie, romanticized images of life on the lam sprinkled
with the fairy dust of cinema magic.

The storm kicks up outside as the glamorous life of fugitives plays out on
the screen. Fancy cars, gorgeous clothes, perfect hair. Scully shifts back
against the headboard. She would laugh if she wasn't so tired. The clothes
that she's wearing came from a discount superstore, and the car they've been
driving lately has a big dent in the fender and no power steering. She can't
remember the last time she's had a haircut. It doesn't really matter,
because she puts it in a ponytail every day anyway.

The telephone rings. It's a wrong number, but the caller refuses to hang up.
Instead, she just keeps talking, and Scully lets her do it, listening
patiently as the woman rants about the fact that she's sure she has the
right number, and that there's no way she's reached some random motel in
Killeen, Texas. Scully just sits there and lets the woman go, eyes on the
television and saying nothing, simply waiting until the woman tires herself
out and disconnects.

Bonnie and Clyde make their way through Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, and New
Mexico, and Scully watches them go. She and Mulder have been to many of the
same places lately, but without exhibiting any of the hedonistic joy evident
on screen: the obsessive gun play, the delight in killing people. She knows
that the taking of a life is nothing to celebrate. She's seen the trigger
pulled too many times. She's pulled it herself. And she knows that the price
for each death is a little piece of your soul.

She wants to get up, wants to move, wants to shower and break the spell that
the television has cast, but she can't. Her limbs are heavy and her mind is
on strike. Instead she idly wonders how she got here, to this room, to this
place. Nine years of choices, decisions layered one atop another, some
looming large in her memory, others that she can now only dimly recall. If
someone said make a wish, she would wish for innocence.  At least, she
thinks she would. Sometimes she allows herself to think about simpler times,
about the way things were before. Before the FBI, before the X-Files. Before
Mulder. It seems like someone else's life, no more real to her now than the
images on the screen. The things that she's experienced have pretty much
guaranteed she'll never sleep the sleep of the innocent again. She's seen
too much. She knows too much.

The movie stops for a commercial, interrupting her reverie. Scully looks
around, feeling vaguely uneasy, defenseless and alone, wishing he'd hurry up
and get back. Something seems different about this motel, about this town,
although she's not sure why. It's not that this room is any different than
any of the others they've been in; maybe it's that it's so much the same.
The very sameness of their lives now has become a vortex that threatens to
swallow her whole. She cannot stand the ammonia-filled stench of another
dingy bathroom, cannot spend another night beneath another gaudy
flower-patterned bedspread. She feels, tonight, like she's close to letting
it all go, close to screaming. And that can't happen. She can't just unhook
her sanity and set it free. They have too much to do. The date is set.

Her mind is just wandering now, skipping randomly from subject to subject
without warning. Scully thinks about growing up, moving from naval base to
naval base, each time having to start over again. New house, new schools,
new doctors, new neighbors, and her mother had to handle all of it. She
couldn't understand it, swore that it would never happen to her, that she'd
never live a life that had her following a man halfway around the globe and
back again. Her mother always warned her that one day she'd feel
differently. "Someday," she said, "you'll give your heart to someone, and
then the most important thing to you will become building a life with them,
wherever that may be."

She'd broken Mulder out of jail and they'd headed off, never looking back.
It was crazy, when you really stopped to think about it, which is why she
rarely does. People were probably saying that he'd lost his mind and taken
her along for the ride, and sometimes she thinks they might be right.
Because, really, what can they do? With the odds stacked against them the
way they are, how can they possibly make a difference? How can they possibly
change anything? It's the burden of knowing, she realizes.  To know and not
act -- down that road, madness lies.

The movie resumes, and Scully hears Warren Beatty as Clyde, explaining their
lack of a plan to Bonnie's family with a hint of shame in his voice. "At
this point, we ain't headed to nowhere. We're just runnin' from."

Maybe that's what we're doing, she thinks. We're just runnin' from.

Outside, it's pouring, the bottle-green sky really opened up now, heavy
drops drumming against the metal siding and drenching the parking lot. She
can hear thunder roaring over the noise of the television. Perhaps a tornado
is coming. Perhaps it will lift this motel right off of its foundation, and
spin them off to a land where the phrase "December 22, 2012" has no meaning.

She doesn't know what to think, these days. She doesn't know what to do. The
rules no longer apply; there's no one from whom she can seek guidance,
strength, or protection, no one besides Mulder, not on this earth. As for
God, she isn't sure what to think anymore, but part of her still wants to
believe in Him. Wants to believe that He played a part in saving her life
countless times, that He answered her prayers and brought Mulder back to
her. And so she prays to Him still, despite her fear that she's used up her
allotment of miracles, asking for His protection for their son.

Their son...

She gave him up.

The last few nights she's had a recurring dream about him. About William.
It always starts the same way, with her running through the woods, in the
dark, guided only by shafts of moonlight that filter in through the trees.
She hears him calling for her, plaintive wails mixed with an infant's
choking sobs, but no matter how fast she runs, she can't seem to get any
closer to him. She always falls at the same spot, tripping over a rock or a
branch, something she doesn't even see, tearing her pants and scraping her
shin when she hits the ground. Dirt on her hands as she picks herself up,
forcing herself to move faster, feet churning madly as blood drips down her
leg. And yet his cries grow ever more distant, tearing at her heart, until
she reaches the edge of a cliff, gaping black space stretching empty as far
and wide as she can see, his baby voice echoing both within the cavern and
somewhere beyond.

It is always then that she wakes to find her face streaked with silent
tears, her hands clenched into fists of helplessness and rage.

And she is stung by the same agonizing pain of sorrow and regret. It burns
inside her, a little ulcer of guilt eating away at her core. A gnawing sense
of panic and fear for him, for their son.

She gave him up.

Five years from now he'll be old enough to ask questions of his adoptive
parents. She wonders what they'll tell him. Sometimes she wonders if he
still remembers her a little, or if the image of her face, the sound of her
voice, has already faded into oblivion.

She mutes the television and opens the small suitcase that lies beside the
bed, tugging a plastic bag from the inner pocket. The bag is fastened with a
zip closure and she peels it open, pulling out a small square of folded blue
cloth. She lays it on the bed, carefully spreading it out. It's just a tee
shirt, a basic Carter's for infants top with three small snaps running from
the neck down across one shoulder. The last time he had worn this shirt was
when she'd put him to bed, the night before the woman from the agency came.
She'd bathed him, and dressed him, and fed him, and then sat with him in the
rocking chair, singing him little songs until he fell asleep, his delicate
eyelids finally fluttering shut.

The next morning, she packed up all his things, all his clothes and toys and
books, and gave them to the woman who was taking him away. She wanted him to
have them. She would have no need for them. But this shirt, this one, she
kept.

She runs her fingertips across the shirt, and in its softness she feels the
velvet of his baby skin. She closes her eyes and she can see him so clearly,
precious William, with her blue eyes, his father's brown hair, and a smile
that was all his own.

The shirt still smells like him, a little bit, and she's quick to put it
back into the bag although she knows, despite her efforts, that the scent
will fade with time. Shirt into the bag, bag into the pocket, suitcase back
down on the floor. And then her face is crushed against the starched cotton
pillowcase, a lump in her throat that she can't dislodge no matter how hard
she tries.

When Mulder comes in she sits up fast, feeling exposed, caught in the act.
It's her cheeks that are wet, even though he's the one who's been out in the
downpour. She suspects that he knows what she's been thinking about, but he
doesn't ask, and she loves him for that.

"Great day for a walk," Mulder says, handing her a white paper bag stuffed
so full it won't close, and two styrofoam cups with raindrops balancing on
the lids. The baseball cap he's wearing is wet enough to look brown instead
of red, and he throws it on the floor, hangs his soaked jacket on the back
of the chair.

"Thanks," she says. It's all she can manage at the moment, with the weight
of his gaze on her as she leans over to put the cups on the nightstand. As a
child, he had learned to read moods instantly; he would have had to, in the
kind of house he'd grown up in. She knows that he's reading hers now.

She opens the bag as he kicks off his shoes. The smell of the food in the
greasy paper sack brings back sudden, unexpected memories of long-ago
stakeouts. "What'd you get?" she asks, although her stomach is churning, her
appetite lost.

"Sandwiches," he says. "One roast beef, one turkey, and some mashed
potatoes." His jeans are soaked from the knees down and he peels them off,
tossing them to the side, grabbing a pair of gray sweats from his bag and
pulling them on. "We can share 'em if you want."

She shrugs, pushing the bag towards the center of the bed. "I'm not that
hungry right now."

He nods, tugging his shirt off over his head before flopping down beside
her. She doesn't have to see his face to know that he's as tired as she is.
The exhaustion rolls off him in waves.

"Me neither," he says.

She slides over so that she's laying next to him, and he slips an arm around
her shoulders, pulls her into the nook that lies between his arm and his
chest. Weariness has crept deep into her bones.

"I'm glad you're back," she says. He pulls her a little closer, and she lets
her eyes drift shut.

Suddenly, she remembers she had forgotten to turn off the television. She
looks up, and it's still playing mutely in the background. Mulder's watching
it, silently, drinking through a straw stuck into one of the styrofoam cups.

"You know," he says, "the real Bonnie wasn't willowy, finely-cheekboned, and
platinum. She was just a tiny freckled red-head with a fiery temper."

She raises an eyebrow, fixing him with a look. "And your point?"

His lips turn up in a hint of a smile. "No point," he says. "Just making an
observation."

She grabs the remote and turns off the movie. She's already seen it, she
knows how it ends.

Badly.

This time last year she was alone. Now, they are together again. Nothing
else matters.

Except William...

She closes her eyes, and does her best not to dream.


*  *  *


CHALLENGE ELEMENTS INCLUDED (with tense changes in a few cases):

1.  The last few nights she had a recurring dream (or nightmare) about
___________.
2.  Her mother always warned her that ___________.
4.  The telephone rang.  It was a wrong number but the caller refused to
hang up.  Instead, she ______.
5.  Something seemed different __________.
6.  The last time he had worn this ______ was when _________.
7.  If someone said make a wish, she would wish for __________.
8.  As for God, ___________.
9.  People were probably saying __________.
10.  This time last year she was __________.
11.  Five years from now he'll be ________.
13.  Outside, it was _______.  (Make the weather do something, for example,
by playing off the inside atmosphere.  Choose a season.)
14.  Suddenly, she remembered she had forgotten to _________. (Say anything
but "breathe"!)
15.  On the television (or radio or CD player), _______ was _______.
16.  She suspected that_________.
17.  The smell of _______ brought back ________.
18.  As a child, he had learned __________.


Thanks to Bone for making Writers Block so much fun, even for the slow
people <g>, and to Lisa for kick-ass beta.

Feedback is always treasured at cleojones3@yahoo.com.