Disclaimers:Well,
everybody knows by now that they're not mine, right? Methos belongs
to R:P/D and Mulder and any phantasms he may see are Chris Carter's,
I think. I'm afraid that a certain amount of familiarity with XF may
be necessary for this story to make what little sense it is capable
of. Sorry. This story is--oh, I don't know. Is it slash or isn't it?
Tell me if you figure it out. Possible future slash discussed?
This was written for the Crossover Lyric Wheel: the crossover is with
X-Files (in case you haven't guessed yet (g)), and takes place whilst
Mulder is at Oxford and Adam Pierson is.... somewhere. Research at
the Bodleian, I think was the suggestion? The lyrics I received were
from 'The Mystic's Dream', Loreena McKennit, and are reproduced (without
permission, natch) at the bottom of this page.
Notes: Okay, Rhi, I got your Mulder. Now what the hell am I
supposed to do with him?! Quick, take him back, before Krycek notices
him. You know I have plans for the rat, and Skinner won't be happy
if Mulder barges his way into the story now.
Notes 2: The chips in this story are British. Hence, they're
bits of potato deep fried in oil and served hot and usually dripping
grease into layers of newsprint. Not the crunchy American variety
from a foil bag. In other words: fries, not crisps.
And without further ado....
In Cervisia, Futura
"A clouded dream on an earthly night hangs upon the crescent moon." The words spill lazily into the night air, and leave the silence heavy with their passing.
Methos contemplates the bottle in his hand, desultorily picking at the label. "Poetic," he replies at last.
His companion rolls onto his stomach and props his chin up in his hands. "Have you ever, Adam?" the American twang in his voice rubs comfortably against his friend's softer British.
"Ever?" Methos raises the bottle, catches the moonlight reflecting in its glass depths. "Hung upon the crescent moon? Yes."
A chip hits him square on the nose. "No, fool," Mulder accuses, glaring through his laughter. "Fallen in love with someone you're not even sure exists."
"So," Methos begins, letting the word hang lazily in the air. "What's this I hear about you and HerBitchiness and Arthur Conan Doyle?"
Mulder chokes on his beer, spewing liquid over the grass. Methos, grimacing, wipes his hand clean on Mulder's shirt. Mulder sets the bottle down carefully on the ground, staring disbelievingly at his friend. "Where the fuck did you hear about that, Adam?!"
Methos merely smirks in response.
"Didn't anybody ever warn you that trying to grasp hold of the future too soon will only bring you madness?"
"Not to date, nope. Do you really think anyone could tell if it did?" A cold chip bounces off Mulder's cheekbone; reflexively he catches it and pops it into his mouth. "Ugh," he complains, turning to face Methos. "The fries are cold."
Methos briefly contemplates an icy glare but gives it up as too much effort. "Of course they're cold, Yank. That's what happens to them five hours after you buy them, if they haven't been so lucky as to be even now worming their way through our respective digestive tracts."
Mulder pulls himself up and moves to join his friend, standing right at the edge of the cliff. "That was an image I could have done without, thanks."
"Green eyes, huh?"
"Yep." Mulder nods thoughtfully. "And... cheap suits."
"Hair gel."
"Leather."
Methos frowns. "Hair gel and leather?"
"No." Mulder cocks his head, considering. "Hair gel then leather."
"Ah," Methos nods wisely. "That, of course, makes all the difference."
"I know it has something to do with you, you know," Mulder warns, watching the stars weaving their patterns above.
"Hmmm?" Methos doesn't look up from the pile of label-scraps he's built on his knee.
"The lightning," Mulder confides. "It's you. I don't know how, but it's you. Because of you. Or... no. Not like that. Not that way around. You're because of the lightning. It... sustains you, somehow. Is that it, Adam?"
Methos reaches behind him and snags a bottle from the chillybin. "Here," he says, holding it out so that the icy condensation on the glass drips cool onto his friend's chest, "have another beer. You're not making sense any more."
Mulder jumps as the cool liquid seeps through his t-shirt, but reaches to take the bottle anyway. "Yes, I am," he returns good-naturedly. "You just don't want to admit it." He raises the bottle to his lips, takes a deep draught. "It doesn't matter. I'll figure it out myself, eventually."
Methos drops to the grass, spreadeagled, flying. "He won't be what he seems, you know. And when he changes, when you think at last his self has been revealed, still he won't be what he seems."
Mulder frowns. "How do you know?"
"The painting," Methos replies, reaching for a chip. "In ivy." Mulder tilts his head, puzzled. "It's growing," Methos elaborates patiently. "Changing. It doesn't stay the same." His sigh burns through his chest as he mutters, almost to himself, "Nobody ever does...."
"Adam?"
"Yuh?"
"Phoebe left."
"Have another beer."
"A tapeworm, Adam?" Mulder inquires idly, his tone lazily interested and just this side of outright laughter. "Really?"
Methos raises his head, the better to peer dubiously at the dim shape of his friend, lounging across the grass. "Tapeworms? Okay, Mulder, that's a tangent I'm far too sane to even attempt to follow."
Mulder laughs aloud. "Sane, Adam? Are you sure we're working from the same dictionary, here?"
Methos half-heartedly throws a chip. "Tapeworms," he reminds Mulder acidicly. "Believe me, you do not want to get into a discussion on sanity tonight. Relative or not. You'd lose."
"You know," Mulder muses, offering Methos a beer, "that sounds almost like a challenge."
"Broken is the horn of the crescent moon." Mulder drops his head back to lie on the grass, and waves one arm accusingly at the sky. "Smashed is the plume of the land. Fractured the cradle of the sea." He blinks once, slowly. "Clutched by the still of the night."
Methos throws a soggy chip over the cliff and watches as a bird dives after to catch it, a slightly darker patch of movement blurring against the night sky.
"Ah,
love, let us be true
To one another! for the world which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night."
A raucous birdcall joins with the rich tones of Methos' voice, carrying the dregs of the poem into the roaring surf far below. Turning his head, he contemplates his friend. "He'll break your heart," he says idly.
"Yeah," Mulder agrees, raising his beer bottle to his lips. "He will."
"Law enforcement." Methos shakes his head sadly. "What a waste." Another chip lands on his face and he grins. "Now, now," he intones. "Watch where you're dropping those things." Mulder lobs another. Methos snatches it out of the air and redirects it back at its source. Mulder ducks. Their laughter rings loud throughout the night air.
"Tapeworms," Methos demands abruptly, flipping the bottlecap in the general direction of the chillybin and returning to the conversation Mulder had diverted, "we can fight about occupations and related sanity later."
"Spoilsport," Mulder sighs, his full-lipped pout lasting all of thirty seconds before giving way to the humour glinting behind his eyes. "Let's see if I can remember how this goes: 'a blighted tapeworm must have inadvertently fertilised the world's heaviest sumo wrestler to produce an offspring as blind and dense as you'."
Methos frowns as he sips his beer, mentally racing through author after author, trying to place the quote. It did sound familiar....
"'Dryrot working its way through the library would retain more, and more useful , information than you've managed to acquire throughout your life'," Mulder adds helpfully, flashing a smile at his friend. "'A praying mantis still caught in the afterglow has more sense in what's left of his head than you would even recognise, should you be so misfortunate as to encounter such a concept'," he prompts, his smile now a grin.
"Oh," Methos' frown turns into a laugh of recognition. "So Boren's assistant was listening at the door. No wonder he glared so murderously in my direction during class last week."
Mulder grins. "Oh, yes, he was listening. Miss an oportunity to get back at Frankly Boring? He was taking notes, Adam. Was rather ticked when you switched to a language he couldn't follow, though."
Methos smiles, teeth flashing in a thoroughly oily grin. "That's Doctor Franklin James C Boren to you, Mister," he pronounces, voice superciliously condescending, "and I'll thank you to remember it. Yanks," he adds under his breath, his tone belying the obsequious bow he makes, "No manners, the lot of them. Barbarians."
Mulder stares for a moment, and then breaks into astonished laughter. "God, Adam," he manages between gales, "that was perfect."
Methos bows mockingly, his dignity barely dented by the chip that bounces off his cheekbone, thrown between Mulder's breathless spurts of laughter.
"Everybody does, Mulder." Methos sprawls on the grass, his eyes tracing the path the moon has taken, down drowning into the sea crashing ferociously against the shore so far below.
"I guess."
Methos shrugs, barely visible in the fading moonlight. Stars shine brighter above them, called out by the moon's last glow. "It happens. When it does, you cope with it. Wait long enough, and it'll happen again. And then they'll leave, too." He turns to his friend, eyes intent across the darkness between them. "It's life. You deal."
"It's only a fantasy, Adam. No harm there. He's not real."
"Yes, he is."
Mulder blinks. "I didn't think you'd drunk all that much beer, Adam."
Methos shrugs. "Irrelevant. You'll see. One day, you'll look up and there he'll be, in his cheap suit and hair gel and all over earnestness, and you'll see."
"Yeah," Mulder rolls onto his back and looks up at his friend, silhouetted fuzzy against the night sky. "Right. 'I had a dream, which was not all a dream'...."
Methos leans into the shivers that run down his spine in concert with his friend's words. "There are better poems you could have chosen to illustrate that, Fox."
Mulder opens one eye and aims a chip at the shape looming indistinct above him. "Don't call me that."
Methos smiles as he catches the chip. "You will see, one day. He'll walk into your life and where will your fantasies take you then, my fine feathered Fox?" Carelessly, he pops the chip into his mouth. "Ugh. Cold."
Mulder frowns and throws another chip. "I said, don't call me that. And you can't have it both ways, Adam. Either he's real and so is the lightning, or it's all in my head.
"And foxes don't have feathers."
"Fine." Methos drops stone-like to the ground, spreading his arms wide on the dew-damp grass. "Have it your way. He's a phantasm, your green-eyed leather-clad heart-breaker. Just remember, when his lips touch your skin at the last and the creaky smell of worn leather rolls over you, that nothing is ever as it seems."
"Dawn borne in on ageless light."
"Hmm?" Mulder raises his head to stare befuddled at the outline of his friend, sharp against the dawn's first rays.
"Nothing," Methos murmurs absently, eyes fixed on a star washing slowly out of sight. "Just a thought."
"All for the love of you," Mulder murmurs softly, addressing his half-glimpsed green-eyed future, drawn tall and somehow corporeal against the spectacular backdrop of the rising sun. "All for love of you...."
Beside him, Methos breaks into song. "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do--" A soggy ball of newsprint hits him in the face, muffling but not stopping his performance. "I'm half crazy--"
"--All for the love of you!" Mulder joins in on the final line, breathless laughter spilling out with the words. Methos rolls over to face him, dislodging the chip paper. Grease drips down his nose.
"Life's too short," he informs his friend seriously.
Mulder looks away, up at last of the stars. "Maybe," he agrees at length. Reaching out his hand, he traces a finger over the sharp line of Methos' cheekbone. "And maybe not."
Some explanations? Sort of. More or less. Ah, if you want to know something just ask (g):
Excerpt from "Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold
Line from "Darkness" by Byron. If you're wondering why it was not exactly a good poem for Mulder to have quoted, go to http://www.emule.c om/poetry/dispoem.cgi?poem=3666 and read.
You know, I hate Byron. Why am I quoting Byron? Tell you what: go read http://www. geocities.com/Paris/LeftBank/9824/hollow.html instead - it has nothing to do with the story above, but I actually like this poem.... and I do have another story in progress with this as a base.
Me, tease? Would I do that?
'In Cervisia, Futura' = 'In Beer, (there is the) Future', according to some of the fine folks of Rhiannon's Eyrie. Thanks, mates!
Arthur Conan Doyle: According to my sources on XF canon, Phoebe made a comment about having sex on top of his tomb...
The lightning: Yeah, I'm aware Methos told MacLeod he hadn't faced another immortal in two hundred years. He also told Joe 'Why would I tell the truth?'....
The song at the end: I believe it's called A Bicycle Built for Two? I have no idea who sang it, well, except my father but somehow I doubt he was responsible for its creation. ;-)
Thanks due to the fine folks at Rhi's Eyrie for the name of the idiot professor (Franklin James C. Boren to you). And thanks to Laure Nar for help with the insults (weg). As per Lyric Wheel rules, not beta'd. Well, except for the insults. Does that count?
I'm not entirely sure any of this makes sense. If it does, please let me know at tarshaan@moonlit-eyrie.com!
Thanks to HonorH for the song; I used several lines in the story. You may have noticed (g).
"The
Mystic's Dream" Loreena McKennitt |
|
| A
clouded dream on an earthly night Hangs upon the crescent moon A voiceless song in an ageless light Sings at the coming dawn Birds in flight are calling there Where the heart moves the stones It's there that my heart is longing All for the love of you A painting hangs on an ivy wall Nestled in the emerald moss The eyes declare a truce of trust And then it draws me far away |
Where
deep in the desert twilight Sand melts in pools of the sky When darkness lays her crimson cloak Your lamps will call me home And so it's there my homage's due Clutched by the still of the night And now I feel you move Every breath is full So it's there my homage's due Clutched by the still of the night Even the distance feels so near All for the love of you |
Make tarsh
happy! tell her what you think of her story at tarshaan@moonlit-eyrie.
com.
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