Story 244: "Water's Edge" by Elizabeth Rowandale

[wendelah1]

I hope you all have been enjoying Fanfiction BINGO. We still need fics for several categories, including The Coffeeshop AU, Straight People Do Not Exist In This AU and "Their tongues battled for dominance." I don't know about the first two but there must be plenty of candidates for the latter.

This was nominated by elis_xf way back in January of last

Comments

[tri_sbr]

the whole thing (1/3)

There are lots of things I like about this story that aren't linked to a specific chapter or section. Since I may be the only one around here with a list of likes, here goes. (It's long.)

I love the way the author connects the first and second halves by weaving in references to the same things in both Books I&II and Book III, such as Mulder's fishtank (someone from the forensics lab helps Scully bring it to her apartment near the beginning; Scully tells Mulder his fishtank is in Christopher's room when he thinks absolutely none of his stuff is left), the touchstone comment from Mulder's letter and her recollection of that while Mulder is telling her about the vaccine, Scully being upset by not being able to remember which was Mulder's bad ear and then getting to ask him to remind her, Mulder's knicks t-shirt which she takes and sleeps with and then uses as a blanket for Christopher when she tries to return it to Mulder, box scores (Scully's internal monologue: I'm learning to read that little cube of numbers that gives you all the stats of a baseball game. What do you call it...the box scores. and then Mulder picking up Christopher and asking him if he wants to read the box scores while Scully finishes her work), the shooting range (one scene with Gannon at the beginning of Book II and then one near the end with Mulder when Scully is worried about the Maley hearing), the Scully snippets at the start of each chapter in Book II and the Mulder ones in Book III.

Along the same lines, there are bigger things from early on that get revisited later:
- Scully and Daniel's discussion about whether she still likes to see movies and her telling him how she and Mulder used to go see late shows while in the field; Mulder trying to use the memory of when they saw Little Women together to convince Scully it's really him when he reappears; Scully's later reference back to that conversation when she tells Mulder she wants someone who will follow her out of the theater when Beth dies (and he comes through on that promise by pushing her to let him be there for her as she is mourning Daniel).
- Scully's love of music (Daniel has the memory of watching young Dana listen to a favorite song and knowing he loved her and Mulder not being able to name any of her favorite songs and realizing that he never knew this part of her but that he wants to now).
- The chip! I did not guess that Mulder's motive for going deep undercover would have to do with Scully's chip, but once you know that, it makes a lot of sense. There are lots of references to the chip in Book II (comments on Scully's awareness of the chip, her explaining it to Daniel, and of course the case they are working on and in which she becomes the last (intended) victim). Of course she is mad as hell at Mulder for what he did, but he knew she would want the chip out if it could be done and she does want to be free of it (the chip messes with her sense of who she is and her sense of control that she values).