From: Anne Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative Subject: NEW: The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face (1/1) Date: 15 May 1996 17:56:16 GMT This is a short piece of nonsense that crossed my mind when I wondered whether Scully had ever gone overseas to see her father when he had shoreleave. Usual disclaimers apply ... they're not mine, never were, never will be ... Anne (menolly@dial.pipex.com) ________________________________________________________ The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face ... It was cold again. The antiquated heating system seemed unable to cope with an Oxford winter and he wondered, not for the first time, what the English would make of a New England winter when they seemed barely able to cope with their own. He blew on his hands and got up, leaving the essay he was working on, and walked across the room to switch on the kettle and try to find a clean cup somewhere in the mess that his scout refused to touch. The coffee made, he padded slowly back across the room, cradling the hot cup carefully, and absently looked out of the window. A flash of copper caught his gaze and held it. He put the cup on the desk, coffee dripping unnoticed as he watched the young girl chase across the quad lawn, laughing at the older man who walked a little more sedately on the path around the lawn. The hood of her jacket had slipped back, allowing her hair to spill free in a vibrant contrast to the snow lying on the ground and framing the buildings. Sitting at the desk, looking through the gothic arches that an architect in a fit of whimsy had designed for the windows, he looked for his binoculars and, failing to find them, picked up his camera to watch a little more closely. Somehow the energy of the girl was invigorating, and infectious. He laughed to himself as he saw her pick up a handful of snow and fling it at her companion. Moving the camera he watched the snowball break apart in a flurry on the man's coat and noted subconsciously that it seemed military. The man appeared to be her father. The girl ... he looked again ... was definitely a girl. Short, maybe fourteen years old. Almost the same age as ... he stopped that train of thought before it began to destroy him again, his gaze flicking momentarily to a photograph of a dark-haired child that sat on his desk. The girl outside ran back to her father, her breath visible in short puffs of frozen air as she tucked her arm into his and laughed up at him. He continued to watch through the camera as they crossed the quad and turned to enter the arch leading out of college. Abruptly the girl stopped and looked back, gesturing, perhaps pointing to the startling beauty of the sandstone buildings trimmed with snow in the late afternoon sun, glowing with a red gold that echoed her hair. Her father said something that made her laugh again, just as her gaze swept past his room. He clicked the shutter on the camera in a reflex action as she seemed to look straight at him, a smile on her face, her hair a copper gold halo in the dying sun, framed in the darkness of the arch. She turned with her father and left, slipping away into the darkness. He sighed, unsure why he sighed, and returned his attention to his essay and the results of an experiment with Siamese fighting fish. He always felt rather sorry for the fish, teased with imagined and actual threats they couldn't substantiate. Two weeks later, at home for the Christmas holidays, his photographs arrived in mail from the developing lab and that afternoon in Oxford returned to him in force as he looked at her face. The peace of that brief moment returned to him and he felt a tranquility long forgotten. He tucked the photograph into the book he was reading that day, and it lay undisturbed for 15 years until Dana Scully, waiting yet again in her partner's apartment for him to finish packing for another assignment, flipped open his copy of Moby Dick, looking for her own peace and finding the photograph. She looked at it for a moment, then looked again, her voice cracking as she called his name. "Mulder ..." _____________________________________________________ Author's trivia notes: (i) A 'scout' is an Oxford college cleaning lady - they come round at an unearthly hour and empty your trash and (usually) clean up generally, including washing any coffee cups and so on ... but my scout had a tendency not to wash up cups and so on for students she thought needed to learn to pick up after themselves :) (ii) there actually is an experiment with Siamese fighting fish on the Oxford psychology (PPP) course, testing to see what colours the fish react to and perceive as a threat.