FIC: Simultaneity (Caseyverse, gen, AU)
Title: Simultaneity
Author:
amalnahurriyeh/amalnahurriyeh
Fandom: The X-Files (Caseyverse)
Pairing/characters: gen; Mulder/Scully, Casey/Monica
Rating: PG-13 (rude language, grownups talking)
Warnings: None
Universe: Mulder-containing, in the AU where there are 2 Caseys rather than 1 at the end.
Angst Level: Moderate
Summary: "I think I want to believe that I am who I am."
Written for queer_fest 2012, for the prompt "Any Fandom with Alternate Universes, any characters, Character X learns that an alternate version of them is/was in a same-sex relationship and begins to question their sexuality."
For new readers: This fic takes place in the Caseyverse, which is the spin-off universe to my story Machines of Freedom. The basic plot of the Caseyverse is this: Mulder, Scully, and their friends (working out of a bunker in Stark, Montana) save the world from alien invasion on December 21, 2012. Mulder should have been killed by alien telepathy during the attack (don't blame me, alien telepathy is a Real Canon Thing I am dealing with here). However, their daughter, called Sadie in childhood and three years old at the time of the invasion, travels through time as a 26-year-old adult named Casey to save her father--and, incidentally, her brother, who her parents gave up for adoption because of reasons (AGAIN, CANON ERROR, NOT ME) before her birth. This story takes place in the universe where Casey saved Mulder, when the now-adult Casey he raised is preparing to do what needs to be done in order to prevent there being a hole in the universe at the point at which her alt-universe self went back in time. If you want to read the three most relevant pieces of story that fill in the blanks for this particular piece, they are: Dangerous, whose last scene is interstitial between the first and second scene of this; Memories Made, which is a story about Casey-Prime and her relationship with Monica Reyes, a canon character she becomes involved with during her time in Stark; and Back To The Future 2: Split, which sets up the internal-to-the-Caseyverse AU where there are two Caseys after this point, rather than the two Caseys merging into a single person with two memory-streams. Too complicated? YOU'RE RIGHT, SORRY. Don't worry--you can just read this, and probably follow along!
You know what's actually hard about writing this? Believing in straight!Casey. In my preferred version of the Caseyverse story, both Caseys are queer. A Casey who only dates men is confusing. I hope I've done straight!Casey justice here.
Also: Bryn Mawrtyr is actually the proper noun for an alumna of Bryn Mawr College. I know this because I'm related to a couple. BEST ALUM NOUN Y/N.
I don't speak any South Asian languages, and I haven't done fieldwork in the region, so thanks to this post for a bit of appropriate phrasing.
"You don't have to do this," Mulder said, his palm on top of the stack of notebooks.
"It's okay," Casey said, shaking her head.
"I'm not even sure it's a good idea, Casey," Scully said. "If you know too much about what the first Casey did--"
Casey huffed. "Mom. I'm going back in time to become her. Or merge with her. Or, I don't know, not break the space-time continuum. I'm pretty sure her diaries are the Wikipedia entry where I should start."
"She's different than you are," Mulder said, pushing them across. "Be ready for that."
"The ego on you," she said mock-scathingly, and turned the top notebook over in her hands.
***
When he got up for good, leaving Scully with her head under the duvet, Casey wasn't in her room. He sighed. She was obsessing--not that he could really fault her for it, but the time-travel process was physically grueling, and she should be getting her rest. He creaked down the stairs, guessing from the pervasiveness of the coffee smell that she'd been up a while. She was sitting at the kitchen table, whole carafe next to her, diaries spread about around her. She glanced up when he entered. "Dude, what the fuck?"
"Good morning to you too," he said, and headed to the sink for a glass of water.
"Weren't you going to tell me?"
"Honey, it's early. You're going to have to tell me which of the ten thousand surprising things in those diaries you're mad at me for concealing right now."
"The part where I'm sleeping with Aunt Monica."
He finished his water and put the glass back down in the sink. "Oh. That."
"Yes, that. Kind of important information, you know?"
He shrugged, got the Star Trek coffee mug Will had bought him for Christmas last year, and went to join her at the table. "Honestly, if I were going to pick a bit I thought you'd be mad about, it would be the Will stuff."
She poured him coffee and passed him the coconut creamer. "The Will stuff--I mean, it's heartbreaking, and remind me to call my brother, and I can't believe that you and Mom made it through any of that stuff without having nervous breakdowns--" He made a small noise suggesting that had not occurred, and she made an acknowledging hand gesture. "But I knew that it was going to exist, you know? I remember Stark enough to have a sense of meeting him."
"But the relationship between the other Casey and Monica, that's surprising." The coffee was cold, and he still thought the coconut stuff was a scam, but he tolerated it.
"Yeah," she said. "I guess it's--it's the one moment where she didn't really feel like me."
"Is it the gay thing, or the age thing?"
She stared at her coffee cup for a long minute, turning it back and forth in her hand. She'd chosen the mug from St. Mary's; he wondered if it was an intentional or unconscious gesture to reconnect with her past selves, or if it had been the first one on the shelf. "The age thing is weird," she said, consideringly, "but not incomprehensible. I mean, from their perspective, it was an age difference of about 20 years, which is--I mean, it's a lot, but it's not out of control. And a small group of people trapped in constant contact with each other is bound to breed some unconventional relationships."
"So?"
She tapped her fingers on the table. "I think--I think I feel guilty feeling weird about the queer thing. I mean, I'm a 21st century Bryn Mawrtyr, I'm like contractually obligated to be pro-queer. It's obviously not that. And reading her talking about her relationships..." She picked up one of the journals and thumbed through it. "I think we approach romantic things similarly. Just, in general. The only difference is that all the people she's weirdly romantically entangled with are women."
"And that throws you." If they weren't in the middle of this, he would really like to microwave the coffee, but she'd stop talking if he moved.
"I think...I think I want to believe that I am who I am. That I've been shaped by my experiences and my social situation, but that there's a fundamental core of self that remains, and which directs me. And I guess I always put my sexual orientation into that box. But this suggests it doesn't belong there--that it's conditional."
"So we have scientific proof of the inherent bisexuality of human beings? Congrats, you should write it up."
She rolled her eyes. "I'm pretty sure all we have proof of is the inherent bisexuality of the Mulder genome, but anyway." She tilted her head back and watched the season. "You know the worst part? I am, apparently, such a fucking cliche."
He choke-laughed on his coffee.
"No, seriously!" she said, throwing up her hands dramatically. "Absent father, domineering, strong-personalitied mother, apparently I end up as a lesbian with a predeliction for relationships with authority figures and women older than me! Raised by stay-at-home doting father, mother more emotionally distant, and I end up interested in men! I mean, could I get more Freudian? It's depressing."
"Oh, honey," he said, and reached out to pat her cheek. When she looked back at him, her eyes were a little teary. "I know it's strange. I feel odd every time I think about it myself--knowing how different her world was, and how it made her. But you're wrong. There is a core of self that the two of you share. You're smart, and brave, and fearless in the face of disaster. That's why you're the same."
"She would have died for you, Daddy," she whispered, and he knew that she was saying she would, too.
He pulled his baby girl's head down onto his shoulder, and kissed her above the ear. "I know, honey. I know."
***
Casey clomped up the stairs. "Yo! Dude, are you ready?" She rounded the corner and stuck her head into their room.
Casey was sitting on her new bed. After some negotiation, they had collectively decided the new twins would share their old bedroom; it was large enough to put a second bed in, and since one Casey spent most of her time in Connecticut, they were able to work out the real estate problems sufficiently. The newly arrived Casey was formally not a degree candidate anywhere, and had decided to leave her dissertation research in the collapsed universe in which it was lost; she was working as a freelance translator, and saving up to move somewhere that wasn't Othma. (Her parents had emphasized, repeatedly, that they'd pay for her to live wherever she wanted to. "We have all this stupid money," Mulder said. "Crazy money." "I know," new-Casey had said. "I used to have it. I'm quitting the trustafarian lifestyle. New leaf.")
"I'm nearly done," she said, putting the cap back on the nail polish bottle and wiggling her newly purple toes. "Give it a minute to set. What's up?"
"Dad and Will are arguing about how much lighter fluid to use. If we don't get out there soon, someone's gonna lose an eyebrow."
"Are you really telling me our brother can't start a fire properly?"
"No, he can do that. He just can't win an argument with Dad."
"Oh, true." She stood up and slid on a pair of bata slippers, and poked at her new short haircut for a second in front of the mirror. The new Casey had cut her hair, mainly so people would be able to tell them apart, but also, as she explained, for science. "My hair is from another universe!" she had said, when Mama had discovered her in the bathroom of their apartment in New Haven with a pair of scissors. "The radioactive isotopes! The environmental pollutants! Hell, the chemical components of my shampoo! Come on, Mom. This could be awesome." Mama had sent the hair over to the Stark labs, but had made Casey wear a bandana over her head until they got her to a hair salon to fix her hack job.
Hair fixed, and slippers on, Casey walked to the door. On an impulse, Casey blocked her from leaving. "Hold on. Before we go downstairs, I need you to promise me something."
Casey rolled her eyes. "What?"
"Promise me you won't sleep with Aunt Monica in our room. Some things are too weird."
"Oh my fucking God," Casey said, and tried to duck under her arm. Casey shifted to block her, but she kept forgetting that her alternate-universe-self was a rugger and had dropped ballet at age six in favor of ninjitsu, so she ended up being bodychecked back against the doorframe and thrown over her twin's shoulder. She protested the whole way down the stairs, including swearing as virulently as she could in Punjabi, but Casey simply set her down unceremoniously. "Come on, let's get outside before the rest of the guests arrive."
Out in the yard, Mulder and Will were still arguing over the grill, while Scully was putting the giant containers of potato salad and collard greens down on the picnic tables the girls had set up earlier. The tradition of the Annual Stark Insurgency Barbecue had lapsed when Casey was in her teens, but they'd decided to revive it in honor of the second Casey, who had never gotten to attend one. "You weren't social," she'd told her mother when they'd realized they weren't a shared experience, which had lead to a particularly long hug between mother and alternate-universe daughter. So everybody was flying and driving in--Aunt Isabel had cancelled a trip to the Nairobi office, Uncle John had picked up Aunt Monica at the airport yesterday, even Mo and Michelle had flown up from their condo in Florida to come. Casey was pleasantly nostalgic about it, and got the vibe that her twin was more anxious than anything.
"It'll be fun," she said, sotto voce, in Sinhala.
"No, it'll be weird," her twin replied. "They're twenty years older. I'm exactly the same."
"Not exactly," Casey said, and took her hand.
"Girls, what have we told you about speaking in secret languages?" Mama said, climbing the stairway and shaking her head. Casey, please go make sure your father and brother aren't being too stupid. Casey, you need to look presentable. Act surprised, but I'm fairly certain Isabel is going to offer you a job."
"Does it involve shooting people? Because the last time I worked for Isabel Yarborough, I had to shoot people." She fumbled with her pockets.
"It's unlikely, but not out the question. Stop looking for your cigarettes. You've quit. Get over it." Mama made shushing gestures with her hands. "Both of you. Go be useful."
"Yes, Mama," they said simultaneously.
This entry was originally posted at http://amalnahurriyeh.dreamwidth.org/53608.html. You can comment in either location. There are currently
comments at Dreamwidth.
Author:
amalnahurriyeh/amalnahurriyeh
Fandom: The X-Files (Caseyverse)
Pairing/characters: gen; Mulder/Scully, Casey/Monica
Rating: PG-13 (rude language, grownups talking)
Warnings: None
Universe: Mulder-containing, in the AU where there are 2 Caseys rather than 1 at the end.
Angst Level: Moderate
Summary: "I think I want to believe that I am who I am."
Written for queer_fest 2012, for the prompt "Any Fandom with Alternate Universes, any characters, Character X learns that an alternate version of them is/was in a same-sex relationship and begins to question their sexuality."
For new readers: This fic takes place in the Caseyverse, which is the spin-off universe to my story Machines of Freedom. The basic plot of the Caseyverse is this: Mulder, Scully, and their friends (working out of a bunker in Stark, Montana) save the world from alien invasion on December 21, 2012. Mulder should have been killed by alien telepathy during the attack (don't blame me, alien telepathy is a Real Canon Thing I am dealing with here). However, their daughter, called Sadie in childhood and three years old at the time of the invasion, travels through time as a 26-year-old adult named Casey to save her father--and, incidentally, her brother, who her parents gave up for adoption because of reasons (AGAIN, CANON ERROR, NOT ME) before her birth. This story takes place in the universe where Casey saved Mulder, when the now-adult Casey he raised is preparing to do what needs to be done in order to prevent there being a hole in the universe at the point at which her alt-universe self went back in time. If you want to read the three most relevant pieces of story that fill in the blanks for this particular piece, they are: Dangerous, whose last scene is interstitial between the first and second scene of this; Memories Made, which is a story about Casey-Prime and her relationship with Monica Reyes, a canon character she becomes involved with during her time in Stark; and Back To The Future 2: Split, which sets up the internal-to-the-Caseyverse AU where there are two Caseys after this point, rather than the two Caseys merging into a single person with two memory-streams. Too complicated? YOU'RE RIGHT, SORRY. Don't worry--you can just read this, and probably follow along!
You know what's actually hard about writing this? Believing in straight!Casey. In my preferred version of the Caseyverse story, both Caseys are queer. A Casey who only dates men is confusing. I hope I've done straight!Casey justice here.
Also: Bryn Mawrtyr is actually the proper noun for an alumna of Bryn Mawr College. I know this because I'm related to a couple. BEST ALUM NOUN Y/N.
I don't speak any South Asian languages, and I haven't done fieldwork in the region, so thanks to this post for a bit of appropriate phrasing.
"You don't have to do this," Mulder said, his palm on top of the stack of notebooks.
"It's okay," Casey said, shaking her head.
"I'm not even sure it's a good idea, Casey," Scully said. "If you know too much about what the first Casey did--"
Casey huffed. "Mom. I'm going back in time to become her. Or merge with her. Or, I don't know, not break the space-time continuum. I'm pretty sure her diaries are the Wikipedia entry where I should start."
"She's different than you are," Mulder said, pushing them across. "Be ready for that."
"The ego on you," she said mock-scathingly, and turned the top notebook over in her hands.
***
When he got up for good, leaving Scully with her head under the duvet, Casey wasn't in her room. He sighed. She was obsessing--not that he could really fault her for it, but the time-travel process was physically grueling, and she should be getting her rest. He creaked down the stairs, guessing from the pervasiveness of the coffee smell that she'd been up a while. She was sitting at the kitchen table, whole carafe next to her, diaries spread about around her. She glanced up when he entered. "Dude, what the fuck?"
"Good morning to you too," he said, and headed to the sink for a glass of water.
"Weren't you going to tell me?"
"Honey, it's early. You're going to have to tell me which of the ten thousand surprising things in those diaries you're mad at me for concealing right now."
"The part where I'm sleeping with Aunt Monica."
He finished his water and put the glass back down in the sink. "Oh. That."
"Yes, that. Kind of important information, you know?"
He shrugged, got the Star Trek coffee mug Will had bought him for Christmas last year, and went to join her at the table. "Honestly, if I were going to pick a bit I thought you'd be mad about, it would be the Will stuff."
She poured him coffee and passed him the coconut creamer. "The Will stuff--I mean, it's heartbreaking, and remind me to call my brother, and I can't believe that you and Mom made it through any of that stuff without having nervous breakdowns--" He made a small noise suggesting that had not occurred, and she made an acknowledging hand gesture. "But I knew that it was going to exist, you know? I remember Stark enough to have a sense of meeting him."
"But the relationship between the other Casey and Monica, that's surprising." The coffee was cold, and he still thought the coconut stuff was a scam, but he tolerated it.
"Yeah," she said. "I guess it's--it's the one moment where she didn't really feel like me."
"Is it the gay thing, or the age thing?"
She stared at her coffee cup for a long minute, turning it back and forth in her hand. She'd chosen the mug from St. Mary's; he wondered if it was an intentional or unconscious gesture to reconnect with her past selves, or if it had been the first one on the shelf. "The age thing is weird," she said, consideringly, "but not incomprehensible. I mean, from their perspective, it was an age difference of about 20 years, which is--I mean, it's a lot, but it's not out of control. And a small group of people trapped in constant contact with each other is bound to breed some unconventional relationships."
"So?"
She tapped her fingers on the table. "I think--I think I feel guilty feeling weird about the queer thing. I mean, I'm a 21st century Bryn Mawrtyr, I'm like contractually obligated to be pro-queer. It's obviously not that. And reading her talking about her relationships..." She picked up one of the journals and thumbed through it. "I think we approach romantic things similarly. Just, in general. The only difference is that all the people she's weirdly romantically entangled with are women."
"And that throws you." If they weren't in the middle of this, he would really like to microwave the coffee, but she'd stop talking if he moved.
"I think...I think I want to believe that I am who I am. That I've been shaped by my experiences and my social situation, but that there's a fundamental core of self that remains, and which directs me. And I guess I always put my sexual orientation into that box. But this suggests it doesn't belong there--that it's conditional."
"So we have scientific proof of the inherent bisexuality of human beings? Congrats, you should write it up."
She rolled her eyes. "I'm pretty sure all we have proof of is the inherent bisexuality of the Mulder genome, but anyway." She tilted her head back and watched the season. "You know the worst part? I am, apparently, such a fucking cliche."
He choke-laughed on his coffee.
"No, seriously!" she said, throwing up her hands dramatically. "Absent father, domineering, strong-personalitied mother, apparently I end up as a lesbian with a predeliction for relationships with authority figures and women older than me! Raised by stay-at-home doting father, mother more emotionally distant, and I end up interested in men! I mean, could I get more Freudian? It's depressing."
"Oh, honey," he said, and reached out to pat her cheek. When she looked back at him, her eyes were a little teary. "I know it's strange. I feel odd every time I think about it myself--knowing how different her world was, and how it made her. But you're wrong. There is a core of self that the two of you share. You're smart, and brave, and fearless in the face of disaster. That's why you're the same."
"She would have died for you, Daddy," she whispered, and he knew that she was saying she would, too.
He pulled his baby girl's head down onto his shoulder, and kissed her above the ear. "I know, honey. I know."
***
Casey clomped up the stairs. "Yo! Dude, are you ready?" She rounded the corner and stuck her head into their room.
Casey was sitting on her new bed. After some negotiation, they had collectively decided the new twins would share their old bedroom; it was large enough to put a second bed in, and since one Casey spent most of her time in Connecticut, they were able to work out the real estate problems sufficiently. The newly arrived Casey was formally not a degree candidate anywhere, and had decided to leave her dissertation research in the collapsed universe in which it was lost; she was working as a freelance translator, and saving up to move somewhere that wasn't Othma. (Her parents had emphasized, repeatedly, that they'd pay for her to live wherever she wanted to. "We have all this stupid money," Mulder said. "Crazy money." "I know," new-Casey had said. "I used to have it. I'm quitting the trustafarian lifestyle. New leaf.")
"I'm nearly done," she said, putting the cap back on the nail polish bottle and wiggling her newly purple toes. "Give it a minute to set. What's up?"
"Dad and Will are arguing about how much lighter fluid to use. If we don't get out there soon, someone's gonna lose an eyebrow."
"Are you really telling me our brother can't start a fire properly?"
"No, he can do that. He just can't win an argument with Dad."
"Oh, true." She stood up and slid on a pair of bata slippers, and poked at her new short haircut for a second in front of the mirror. The new Casey had cut her hair, mainly so people would be able to tell them apart, but also, as she explained, for science. "My hair is from another universe!" she had said, when Mama had discovered her in the bathroom of their apartment in New Haven with a pair of scissors. "The radioactive isotopes! The environmental pollutants! Hell, the chemical components of my shampoo! Come on, Mom. This could be awesome." Mama had sent the hair over to the Stark labs, but had made Casey wear a bandana over her head until they got her to a hair salon to fix her hack job.
Hair fixed, and slippers on, Casey walked to the door. On an impulse, Casey blocked her from leaving. "Hold on. Before we go downstairs, I need you to promise me something."
Casey rolled her eyes. "What?"
"Promise me you won't sleep with Aunt Monica in our room. Some things are too weird."
"Oh my fucking God," Casey said, and tried to duck under her arm. Casey shifted to block her, but she kept forgetting that her alternate-universe-self was a rugger and had dropped ballet at age six in favor of ninjitsu, so she ended up being bodychecked back against the doorframe and thrown over her twin's shoulder. She protested the whole way down the stairs, including swearing as virulently as she could in Punjabi, but Casey simply set her down unceremoniously. "Come on, let's get outside before the rest of the guests arrive."
Out in the yard, Mulder and Will were still arguing over the grill, while Scully was putting the giant containers of potato salad and collard greens down on the picnic tables the girls had set up earlier. The tradition of the Annual Stark Insurgency Barbecue had lapsed when Casey was in her teens, but they'd decided to revive it in honor of the second Casey, who had never gotten to attend one. "You weren't social," she'd told her mother when they'd realized they weren't a shared experience, which had lead to a particularly long hug between mother and alternate-universe daughter. So everybody was flying and driving in--Aunt Isabel had cancelled a trip to the Nairobi office, Uncle John had picked up Aunt Monica at the airport yesterday, even Mo and Michelle had flown up from their condo in Florida to come. Casey was pleasantly nostalgic about it, and got the vibe that her twin was more anxious than anything.
"It'll be fun," she said, sotto voce, in Sinhala.
"No, it'll be weird," her twin replied. "They're twenty years older. I'm exactly the same."
"Not exactly," Casey said, and took her hand.
"Girls, what have we told you about speaking in secret languages?" Mama said, climbing the stairway and shaking her head. Casey, please go make sure your father and brother aren't being too stupid. Casey, you need to look presentable. Act surprised, but I'm fairly certain Isabel is going to offer you a job."
"Does it involve shooting people? Because the last time I worked for Isabel Yarborough, I had to shoot people." She fumbled with her pockets.
"It's unlikely, but not out the question. Stop looking for your cigarettes. You've quit. Get over it." Mama made shushing gestures with her hands. "Both of you. Go be useful."
"Yes, Mama," they said simultaneously.
This entry was originally posted at http://amalnahurriyeh.dreamwidth.org/53608.html. You can comment in either location. There are currently
comments at Dreamwidth.