Title: Secret Bird Author: Politic X Author Email: politicx@aol.com Rating: R Archive at Gossamer: DO NOT ARCHIVE Category: Story, Keywords/Pairings: Scully/Reyes Crossover Info: Spoilers: None Summary: Monica throws a party; Scully attends. A follow-up of sorts to Night Ride Across the Caucasus. Secret Bird by Politic X Part 1 Please see part 0 (template) for warnings and summary. 'Wait a minute, baby Stay with me a while Said you'd give me light, But you never told me about the fire...' -Nicks Prologue I want to go home. When I was a child, I lifted my arms to the sky and let the breeze wash me spotless. But I can't come unsoiled in this dirty town; I'm too stained. There's too much nicotine, grease, sweat and semen to wash away. And I cannot come clean. I escape to my best friend, Stephanie, when I can, because she lives in a small town between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, where the trees are thick and the grass is so green and wild and fragrant that I wish I could bottle the scent of it. I want to inhale that place and hold the sweet air in my lungs long enough to render me weightless, airborne, sky high. And when I go there, I never want to leave. But I do. I return to my city of vultures. I know joy must be here, or else this town wouldn't be home to anyone, but I can't find it. It's dusk right now in D.C. and it's my favorite time of day, when the world goes soft and the sky lambent. Dreams and love and happiness are in the air, in the smell of the Greek restaurant a block away, in the sound of laughter and shouting, in the subtle flirtations of the couple sitting on the worn stone steps of my building. I stand on the roof and look and listen. I know joy must be here, it must soundtrack the evening with car horns and street music, but when I lift my arms to the wind like I did when I was six, the breeze doesn't blow through me and it doesn't cleanse me and it doesn't carry my soul to heaven and back. And this place doesn't feel like home. I wish an extra wish this evening, as the layers of the sky grow darker above me. It's my secret wish, one that I just discovered recently, one that I try not to think about, one that I keep buried. I wish that Stephanie would go ahead and marry Raney and get it over with, and that we'd all go to Louisiana and live in her little cottage. It's always in a state of disrepair, but it sits on a piece of land so wide that it takes part of a day to walk it. There's no sound of car horns or street music, just cicadas and every kind of songbird you can imagine. My father once told me that a wish is a bird in your hand, and it can die or it can fly, whichever you choose. You can neglect it and watch it starve to death or you can smother it or even crush it. Or you can nurture it and set it free. I don't want this wish to die. I want it so badly that I see it when I close my eyes. The only thing similar to my dream home and this place is that it's dusk there, too. Raney's working on the piece-of-junk lawn mower, maybe. Stephanie's covering her Harley for the evening and she's probably singing or making some other soulful noise, because she's never quiet for long. And I'm preparing dinner. I watch them from the window for a while, until the broth of the pollo tizatlan is simmering, and then I move out of the heat of the kitchen and into the coolness of the mild November. I walk to the car that has just pulled into the long, dirt driveway, and wait in the dust for the ignition to turn off. Then my hands are opening the door, taking the baby and kissing his sweet, round head, and Stephanie is coming and pulling him from me. She knows just how to hold him because she had babies once. So I watch her carry William to Raney, and they make a big fuss over the little miracle. And I turn and look at the miracle's mother, and pull her into my arms and make her stay. I make her stay and see that life isn't a cold concrete city of soulless, faceless vulture people. Life isn't gray buildings, gray sidewalks, gray parking garages, gray cars, gray clothes or gray air. Life isn't false truths or empty searches or conspiracies or power. Life isn't this emotional wasteland. I make her stay and see what life is. I make her see that life is a growing child and that life is a family of friends standing on a dirt driveway at twilight in Louisiana or Mexico or wherever there's love, and I tell her that this is why we live. And I tell her how I once dreamt of this life from my rooftop in D.C. And when I share this secret with her, she shares her secret with me. I feel heavy and I know that it's my need that weighs so much. I don't want to need her. But I do, and I wonder why I want to take her away from here. I wonder why I want to hold her in my arms on a dirt driveway in Louisiana. I wonder why I want to promise her that when we tire of that place, we can move on. I can take her somewhere where the history is poured into clay, to a place where the land is long desert until it's broken by water or volcano or lush grass. It's a place where I can tell her a different story every night because the myth and lore around us are so rich that even the trees have tales. It's a place where I can sing Spanish lullabies to her child while she rocks him to sleep. It's the place where she's happy and unafraid, the place where she will let me lick her wounds and feed her love and nourish her soul back to health. It's home. I lock my wish away like I always do, but I won't continue keeping these thoughts to myself. I will not. I cannot. I cannot be Emily Dickinson and wrap them up in tidy little packages and pile them in my seclusion and cage my love like it's a secret bird, because I cannot cage my love like it's a secret. Because I cannot cage my love. ------------------ McCall sleeps, thick hair hanging over her face, one arm draped across the desk, the other dangling. A mini-recorder is positioned beside her head. Her partner in crime is intensely taking notes. Scam artists. They do this once or twice a week, swapping turns. 4.0, both of them. They're my best students. My favorites, too. I wipe down one side of the board and begin filling it with chalk marks again, talking fast. It's a rehash of methodology, and my students should be bored to tears. They should be bored to sleep, like McCall, but most of them are jotting everything down. I have to sigh. If they don't have it by now, they never will. The phone rings four times before I can find the asinine thing. It's so small I haven't figured out where the hell the mouthpiece is. "Dana Scully." Whatever happened to the cell phones of the '90s? What was wrong with them? Is eight ounces too much to carry? "Dana, hi, it's Monica." "Agent Reyes." I waste an evil eye on McCall. "I hope I didn't interrupt anything." "No, no." If I can't get McCall's attention, I'll get Sayer's. I stare at her, and she finally looks up. I make a slicing motion across my throat and point to her buddy. Sayer doesn't spook easily, but she glances at McCall nervously. "You're not in the middle of class?" I jerk Sayer to attention with some loud and rapid snapping of my fingers. One of her books clatters to the floor. McCall still sleeps, damn it. "I don't answer my cell phone when I'm in class," I lie. I enjoy being unavailable. "Oh. Are calls not allowed?" "I don't allow them." The students are most frightened of me when I'm calm, so I walk slowly and calmly up the aisle and stop at the ninth row. Sayer's trying to nudge her girlfriend awake, to no avail. "Can you hold for a moment?" "Sure." I press the hold button and lean close to McCall. "HEY!" She sits up, knocking her recorder over, almost falling out of the chair. I point to the door. "You, too," I say to Sayer. They're scrambling, gathering things, fumbling. "It's okay. I've got it," Sayer whispers to McCall. She grabs the recorder up off the floor and helps her taller friend - still clumsy with sleep -negotiate the steps. McCall's backpack hangs open on her shoulder. Sayer follows behind, zipping it as they walk. I flip Reyes on and walk back to my desk. "Sorry." "No problem. I know you're busy." Her words are rushed. "I was calling to see if you would be available - if you would be interested in coming to a party. At my place, a celebration type thing - for my loft. Saturday night." "Loft-warming?" I know there's a lilt in my voice, and I don't disguise it; Monica's nervous enough. "Yes. Saturday. There'll be a lot of people there. You won't know most of them, but you'll like them." I like the sound of this already. "Who will I know? Specifically?" It looks like all of my students have finished copying what's on the board. I glance at my watch and dismiss them with a wave of my hand. They're attentive when they want to be and scramble out. "Oh." Monica falters. "Well, you might not know anyone, actually." "Mm hmm." "Are you starting class?" "What?" Oh, the noise. "No." "You'll enjoy yourself, I'm sure of it. You'll like my friends." Her tone is cajoling. She doesn't need to talk me into it, but I'm not going to let her know that. "What time?" "It starts at nine. But any time you want to come is fine. Some of my friends who have kids will get there right at nine and stay a couple of hours; some will show up at 11 and stay until 2 or 3. So, if you want to meet people like you, come early. If you want to meet people like me, come late." "People like you?" I arch my eyebrow. The right one, the one that arches highest. "Night owls." "And because I have a child, I automatically belong to the dull and boring set who has to be in bed by midnight. Is that it?" I'm not giving her time to answer. "If I want to meet other boring parents, I need to come early? But if I want to meet people like you, who I assume are a more vivacious and entertaining lot -" "No." Monica chuckles. I sniff. "What, then? Hippies? Is it a bunch of whale-song-singing hippies I'm going to meet? Is that the kind of evening I'm in for?" "Ah!" She laughs some words I can't understand. "No, no." "Oh. Folk-tale-telling FBI agents?" Monica's laughter fills the receiver for a moment, flooding me with warmth, then she sighs. "Afraid not. I'm the only whale-song-singing, folk-tale- telling FBI hippy I know." "Oh well." I can sigh, too, and I can do it louder, and I do. "I guess you're the only person like you who'll be there." She snickers. "I'm more than a hippy agent, Dana." "Mm hmm. Well, maybe one day you'll prove it to me." I'm looking at my nails, thinking about an outfit, nail polish, shoes. "I'll have to get you away from work to do that." Monica's voice is so sultry that she snaps me to attention as easily as I snapped my student. There's a pulse beating deep down in me, in a place that's normally very quiet. "Is it even possible? To get you away from work?" Monica teases. She obviously doesn't know who she's playing with. Or what. "I'm seduced away from it occasionally." Monica doesn't miss a beat. "Yeah? How occasionally? Once a week? Saturday nights, maybe?" Damn. I can't think of a clever response. "'Cause all I've ever seen of you is work. All work and no play makes Dana a lonely girl." "You saw me Saturday." "Not nearly enough." My mouth goes dry. Monica seems to be much better at this flirting game than I am. "At least it was memorable. You tell me a fascinating story then have a seizure. Was that to keep me interested?" She's laughing. "Seizure? I was just light- headed." "No. Something was wrong. It was more than just your concern over me and whether or not I was leaving." "I told you, it was real - I'd lost you once already. It was a powerful feeling of loss." Monica had attempted to explain it to me at the time, but I didn't hear half of what she'd said. I had been concentrating on her hand, holding mine, and wondering if I could/should/would kiss her. I decided that I could but shouldn't, so I didn't. "Did you think I was going to rush off to the mountains if the men in the village didn't love me?" "Something like that." "Wouldn't happen." I'm nonchalant and I pick a piece of lint off my suit to prove it to myself. "Anyway, I think you're more like Irina than I am." I'm fascinated by that folk tale she told me last week. I want to know what it means to her. "Running? Outcast?" If a smirk was a sound, it would be the sound she makes. "Not me." "I don't know, Monica." My heart's in my throat. "I can see you fleeing to the Caucasus, waiting for love to find you." "Yeah? Well, I might just surprise you. It might be that I'm the princess witch herself, casting a spell." Casting a spell, indeed. "So." My voice cracks like a teenage boy's. "What would a lowly peasant wear to a party at the castle?" "If the peasant was Irina, I think she could wear anything. She was the most beautiful woman in all the village, you know." What's she telling me? Am I her Irina? I remember that she'd referred to me as beautiful and fierce last Saturday. I like that description - the fierce part, anyway. "And what about the princess? Some lovely gown?" "Oh, no, no. I think the princess was probably a hippy. So she'd probably wear hippy clothes." I laugh. "A hippy princess witch? I suppose she was fond of whale song?" "I think there was probably more to her than that," she says primly. "You'll have to prove it to me one day." "I'll have to get you away from work to do that." "I imagine you could seduce me away from it." My heart's beating irregularly and I'm afraid I'm making a fool of myself. "Look, my battery's about to die." Another lie. "I'll see you Saturday. Thanks, Monica." I click the phone off before I become a bigger fool. "Date?" Sayer's returned, and is sitting alone in the auditorium, in the front row, finishing her note taking. (Continued in part 2)