CadetDru--- Boredom
konichiwa, greetings and salutations, shalom, hola, hi, how are you....
I'm a fanfic writer. I desperately want my own TV series someday. 2010 at the latest. I write. I'm not affiliated with any fanfic sites like Gossamer or Ka'arpaaj or anything. They're cool and everything.
dude, someone visited who wasn't shoved my link! yay!!!! I'm way too happy over this....
You won't see my original work here. Sorry. I'm getting form rejection letters for that. And three contracts, thank you. If you still want to read my fanfic, scroll. Some poor people will have to pay good money to read my work. Count yourselves lucky, people*. Or just go to http://sershi.diaryland.com to see some excerpts of my soon-to-be-published-- knock wood-- cowritten novel.
This site was a gift from my fiance/cowriter. Aww. (A million thank you's, by the way) I'm going to use it for stories about my avatar, Mary Dru Corvus a.k.a. "the Goth" in my Milagro-inspired stories at www.geocities.com/cadetdru or the Philosophy Sphere if you search by the nick invisible_girl or something. Whatever man. Mary Dru is a Mary Sue character. It's obvious, no? She's a shipper (like me), telekinetic (not like me, -blank- it), and has somehow stumbled onto a way to cross into alternate realities. This is a slight mocking of my Mary Sue/"only I can put them together"/"and then everyone asked me for help" stories that I'm still writing. I'm weird. Deal. My stories are weird too. Feel free to put them down. I still haven't been flamed. COME ON, let's go already! Read this -blank- site!*
I'm between being a Mary Sue writer, and mocking them. Half considering making M.D. Corvus a red-head with violet eyes, but I'm not sure if this will fall into parody or otherwise. Like it matters. People* only come to this site when I give them this direct link and say: "GO!" Hence the lack of flaming, I guess. Plus this is a one-page wonder, so there's not much to flame about.
The World-As-Myth theory or Many Worlds theory-- a common one among writers-- states that every universe has been written by someone or something. I utilize this theory a lot.
Disclaimer et cetera: This site is constantly under construction. Thank you for your patience and feedback would be nice too. I'm not making any money whatsoever from this site. Don't sue, it's not worth it. I own my characters, which is basically Mary Dru(Sue, she responds to either) Corvus and her various side-kicks. Everyone else except my inferiority/superiority complex belongs to some PTB. My theory is take the honey and run, to quote a filk written for Mary Dru.
Twentieth Century Fox owns the X-files. I'm not getting any money from this. Or any of my writing, as of yet. Phillip Padgett's got nothing on me. I'm supposed to get five dollars for one story. Yeah. Cash. I'm a professional.
*(By "people" I of course mean the voices-- like Skittles who isn't even my voice-- in my head that have deluded me into thinking anyone comes to this worthless site. How pathetic is that?)
Other babblings: This is the number one site for "phillip padgett titian" on Google. And "cadet dru" but that's kind of "duh" I know.
The fact that I know this is somewhat disturbing. And my fiance did visit this site, with no prodding on my part about him. Yay.
I was browsing an off-shoot of spinnwebe, reading about sourcerunner-- domain names, .com, check em out-- and they mentioned Stephen Ratliff. And Marrissa Amber Flores Picard. Man, even I'm not that bad of a writer.
dude, someone visited who wasn't shoved my link! yay!!!! I'm way too happy over this....
You won't see my original work here. Sorry. I'm getting form rejection letters for that. And three contracts, thank you. If you still want to read my fanfic, scroll. Some poor people will have to pay good money to read my work. Count yourselves lucky, people*. Or just go to http://sershi.diaryland.com to see some excerpts of my soon-to-be-published-- knock wood-- cowritten novel.
This site was a gift from my fiance/cowriter. Aww. (A million thank you's, by the way) I'm going to use it for stories about my avatar, Mary Dru Corvus a.k.a. "the Goth" in my Milagro-inspired stories at www.geocities.com/cadetdru or the Philosophy Sphere if you search by the nick invisible_girl or something. Whatever man. Mary Dru is a Mary Sue character. It's obvious, no? She's a shipper (like me), telekinetic (not like me, -blank- it), and has somehow stumbled onto a way to cross into alternate realities. This is a slight mocking of my Mary Sue/"only I can put them together"/"and then everyone asked me for help" stories that I'm still writing. I'm weird. Deal. My stories are weird too. Feel free to put them down. I still haven't been flamed. COME ON, let's go already! Read this -blank- site!*
I'm between being a Mary Sue writer, and mocking them. Half considering making M.D. Corvus a red-head with violet eyes, but I'm not sure if this will fall into parody or otherwise. Like it matters. People* only come to this site when I give them this direct link and say: "GO!" Hence the lack of flaming, I guess. Plus this is a one-page wonder, so there's not much to flame about.
The World-As-Myth theory or Many Worlds theory-- a common one among writers-- states that every universe has been written by someone or something. I utilize this theory a lot.
Disclaimer et cetera: This site is constantly under construction. Thank you for your patience and feedback would be nice too. I'm not making any money whatsoever from this site. Don't sue, it's not worth it. I own my characters, which is basically Mary Dru(Sue, she responds to either) Corvus and her various side-kicks. Everyone else except my inferiority/superiority complex belongs to some PTB. My theory is take the honey and run, to quote a filk written for Mary Dru.
Twentieth Century Fox owns the X-files. I'm not getting any money from this. Or any of my writing, as of yet. Phillip Padgett's got nothing on me. I'm supposed to get five dollars for one story. Yeah. Cash. I'm a professional.
*(By "people" I of course mean the voices-- like Skittles who isn't even my voice-- in my head that have deluded me into thinking anyone comes to this worthless site. How pathetic is that?)
Other babblings: This is the number one site for "phillip padgett titian" on Google. And "cadet dru" but that's kind of "duh" I know.
The fact that I know this is somewhat disturbing. And my fiance did visit this site, with no prodding on my part about him. Yay.
I was browsing an off-shoot of spinnwebe, reading about sourcerunner-- domain names, .com, check em out-- and they mentioned Stephen Ratliff. And Marrissa Amber Flores Picard. Man, even I'm not that bad of a writer.
X-FILE: MARY DRU
A dark-haired young woman with blond highlights stayed up until six am, writing fanfic. She was the typical female sci-fi fan; quirky, obsessive, recently started a new semester of college. She turned off her computer. She barely remembered the story idea she'd gotten at 10:13 the night before. She pulled a notebook from her desk. The cover was covered in phone numbers, names, plot outlines, dates, and site addresses. She flipped through it. Her alarm clock went off.
It woke up her next-door neighbor, Agent Fox William Mulder. He'd been looking forward to sleeping away the whole three day weekend. He looked at his watch. It was six am on Saturday. So much for that plan. Mulder decided to go out for a jog, get some exercise. Then he could sleep away the weekend. He changed into a torn Knicks tee and sweat-pants.
He passed a sandy-blonde wearing all blue-grey clothing in the hall. "Agent Modem-- Mulder, right?" she grinned. "I'm Raven-chan, crusader of non-ecchi. Uh, I live in apartment 40. Got your mail yesterday. Hold on, I'll get it." She raced into the apartment where Corvus was writing. "Where's Mulder's mail?"
"Rave, I'm busy..." Raven's words sunk in. "By the door. I'll take it to him!"
"Breathe, Mary Dru." Raven handed her the envelopes.
Corvus nonchalantly walked into the hall. Mulder looked through it. "My roommate and I are new here. You work with the FBI, right? The landlord told us. Is it true about all the uh, fatalities in the building?" she said nervously.
Mulder nodded once. He walked down to the elevator. "Stay frosty!" Raven called from the doorway. "Should we tell him about ReBoot?"
"He wouldn't believe us."
"He believes everything."
"Not this."
"Naysayer!"
It woke up her next-door neighbor, Agent Fox William Mulder. He'd been looking forward to sleeping away the whole three day weekend. He looked at his watch. It was six am on Saturday. So much for that plan. Mulder decided to go out for a jog, get some exercise. Then he could sleep away the weekend. He changed into a torn Knicks tee and sweat-pants.
He passed a sandy-blonde wearing all blue-grey clothing in the hall. "Agent Modem-- Mulder, right?" she grinned. "I'm Raven-chan, crusader of non-ecchi. Uh, I live in apartment 40. Got your mail yesterday. Hold on, I'll get it." She raced into the apartment where Corvus was writing. "Where's Mulder's mail?"
"Rave, I'm busy..." Raven's words sunk in. "By the door. I'll take it to him!"
"Breathe, Mary Dru." Raven handed her the envelopes.
Corvus nonchalantly walked into the hall. Mulder looked through it. "My roommate and I are new here. You work with the FBI, right? The landlord told us. Is it true about all the uh, fatalities in the building?" she said nervously.
Mulder nodded once. He walked down to the elevator. "Stay frosty!" Raven called from the doorway. "Should we tell him about ReBoot?"
"He wouldn't believe us."
"He believes everything."
"Not this."
"Naysayer!"
One Last Work (archived at http://irisvonderbeck.de/Cadet%20Dru/one_last_work.htm for my ease and your enjoyment)
Mulder went through Padgett's apartment after his death.
He found one last work of the late Phillip Padgett.
I hate this. I hate not writing. GODS, do I hate this.
I need to write about her.
You were in jail, Phillip, maybe you should focus on that.
No. There is only her. And she loves him. DAMN IT!
The signs were there. My love, my passion, blinded me to the obviousness of the affection between them. The way their touch lingered. The way she would notice no one but him, compare them to him, hesitate if she knew he was waiting.
Damn him. How the hell could someone so beautiful-- so fatally prepossessing that my very breath dies in my throat if I merely dare to think of her--- love someone like Agent Mulder. Agent Mulder, another man who lives in his head. They're only friends.
That's what kills me. Imagine that. A beautiful goddess of a woman and this.... man who spend every waking-- and sleeping-- moment together, thinking of one another, or destroying everything else for the other. And they're only friends.
This absolutely kills me.... Kills me.
Mulder shuddered. "Psycho," he muttered to the memory of Padgett. "She doesn't...."
Mulder looked around. There was nothing else. A typewriter, a bed, minimal lights and furniture. This was Padgett's memory.
He could feel Padgett's ghost.
Scully didn't believe in ghosts.
Scully also didn't believe in psychic surgery.
Scully didn't believe in a lot of things.
Screwing her partner was high on the list.
"SHE DOESN'T LOVE ME!" Mulder screamed. "God, man, of course she didn't. She is my partner..."
"Mulder?" Scully was in the doorway. "Who are you talking to?"
"Padgett."
"Mulder, he's dead."
"He's here."
Scully walked into the apartment. "Mulder...."
A misty figure appeared between the two.
The amazingly average face of the late Phillip Padgett became clear, in several meanings of the word.
"Told you so," Mulder said, breathlessly.
Scully stared at Mulder through Padgett's ghostly form, and vice versa.
Padgett offered his heart to Scully, hope gleaming in his translucent eyes.
She didn't even notice.
She was staring at Mulder.
"What do you mean, 'told you so'?"
"Don't you see him?"
"See who?"
"PADGETT?!" Mulder screamed, exasperated with his partner's skepticism.
Padgett cupped his bleeding heart in both hands. "Take it," he softly pleaded with Scully.
"Mulder, the only people here are you and me," Scully gently rebuked her partner.
"Please take it," Padgett continued, undaunted by her lack of response. "I don't need it. It's yours. Forever."
"Scully," Mulder began.
"TAKE IT!" Padgett cried.
Scully almost heard him.
"Scully, he's begging you to take his heart."
"That's sick, Mulder."
Pulling together every fiber of his ectoplasmic metaphysical essence, Padgett thrust his still beating, still bleeding ghostly heart into the heart of Scully.
She blinked.
"Well?"
"Well what?"
"Well, um, uh, you know how he said that you were in love...."
"He was insane, Mulder."
The same dejected look in the face of rejection simultaneously crossed Padgett and Mulder.
"He loved you."
"Listen to him, he knows that of which he speaks," Padgett said desperately.
Yet another bleeding heart had appeared in his hands.
Scully shook her head. "A man would have to be insane for loving me. Or seeing ghosts."
"You cannot possibly mean that," Padgett said, losing his hope.
"You don't mean that," Mulder said, gaining his smug control over Scully that pushed her to get the tattoo on her back.
"Don't tell me what I mean and don't mean, Mulder...." Scully said, angrily. "You know, you were right."
Mulder smiled languidly. "About what?"
"That I don't love you."
Phillip half-smiled.
Mulder's face fell from smug happiness into the very pits of despair.
It's amazing the kind of power love has.
Power to hurt, to heal, to mend, to break.
Mend a broken heart, or rip it into shreds.
All with a few words from a loved one.
A meaningless action, and worlds can fall.
Hearts can be broken with a simple roll of the eyes or empty phrase.
"You don't?" Mulder repeated. He shook his head. "Good. Good. Um.... good."
"Good," Scully said.
"MORONS. Knavish fools! Think ye that thou can bury thine obvious lusts under a web of deception and lies?!" Padgett threw his heart at the wall.
An actual heart hit the wall.
Scully stared at it with disbelieving eyes.
The heart shattered into a million blood-stained shards of glass.
"What was that?!" Scully murmured.
"Padgett's broken heart, I guess," Mulder said, also disbelievingly.
"You weren't kidding."
"Nope."
"There is a ghost here."
"Yep."
Scully paused a moment before her next statement. "Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why me? Why him? Why the hell did he say I was already in love?"
"Ask him."
"He's dead, Mulder." Scully was grasping for straws of the normal, sane, real world.
She'd left that world behind long ago.
"That doesn't seem to be stopping him from ruining his security deposit," Mulder quipped.
Scully glared daggers at Mulder, through the ghost of Padgett that she still could not see.
"What?"
"Don't make jokes."
"I use humor as defense mechanism."
Scully crouched to examine the heart.
Carefully, with suddenly trembling hands, Scully picked up one of the shards of glass.
She pricked her finger. A single drop of her blod fell, and mingled with the mass amount that had materialized when the heart had shattered.
Tears flooded her eyes. She blinked them back.
Mulder crouched next to her. "Well?"
"I can't explain this."
"You never can." Scully rolled her eyes, clenched her jaw, and shrugged. Mulder merely smiled. "How does it feel to BE an X-file again?"
"I hate it."
Padgett had eavesdropped on the two enough to know what an X-file was. "Why wouldn't you take my heart? My love? I wanted little in return. You said yourself that you don't love him. So why couldn't you love me?"
He moved between the two of them.
Mulder consciously ignored the spirit.
Scully did it subconsciously.
She refused to believe in the unbelievable.
That's why she'd been assigned to the X-files.
That's why she couldn't see the shade of the man who was pleading for an explanation.
That's why she shuddered as Padgett gently stroked her Titian hair.
The cold touch seeped through her scalp, to her brain.
With a gasp, she saw him.
Scully pulled away from the transparent Padgett, and his red-stained broken glass heart with its painful edges.
She clutched at her crucifix.
"Mulder... I see him."
"Good. Then we're both nuts."
"MULDER!"
"Do you love him?" Padgett said, breathlessly.
Scully gulped.
"Do you?" he quietly pushed.
"Uhm."
"Scully, the nice ghost asked you a question."
Scully elbowed Mulder accidentally-on-purpose as she stood.
She gulped again.
"Uhm....."
She didn't want to think about how she felt.
Yes, she cared for Mulder. She trusted him above anyone else.
On the other hand, he was a self-righteous porn-watching egomaniac who was still chasing aliens looking for his engimatic Truth while falling for every Bambi, Diana, and Phoebe who came his way.
He was self-destructive, and liked to make other people crash and burn with him.
He was condescending.
He constantly ditched her.
Then why did she love him.
"Yes," she breathed softly. "I guess I do."
Padgett winced in pain from that simple, heartfelt statement.
Mulder leaned back on the floor. He was grinning like the cat who ate the canary.
Scully continued talking, the words falling from her lips. "I'm never going to go out with him or anything.... You and I had more of a real date than Mulder and I ever will."
Mulder sucked in his breath, as if mortally wounded.
Padgett grinned like the canary who ate the cat.
"And now you're dead......."
She paused.
"I'm sorry," she mumbled as she walked out.
Even Scully didn't know who she was apologizing to or why.
Scully went to Mulder's apartment. She felt safe there. That-- in and of itself-- was irrational, considering everything. What if Padgett wasn't the only ghost?
That was ridiculous.
So was Padgett's return.
So was Padgett.
He'd observed everything about her, things even she didn't know.
He probably didn't even know why Scully was in love with....
With....
'Don't think it', she told herself. 'If you don't think it, then it's not true.'
Lies.
She'd learned to lie from him.
She'd never needed to lie before him.
Damn him.
Of course, according to her church's dogma, he was already damned for not believing.
That struck Scully as both funny and sad.
Kind of like the bizarre symbiotic relationship that she and Mulder had developed.
Scully was laughing and crying when Mulder came into the apartment. She was sitting on his couch. "You okay?" he said tenderly. She shook her head. "Need something? Coffee? Tea? Prozak? Valium?"
"Sanity."
"I don't have that."
Scully sniffled and smiled. "I know." Mulder sat next to her. "We're so co-dependent, you and I. I have to be the skeptic, you have to be the believer.... Exept for that while when we switched. We've always been like this. Since our first case."
Mulder opened his mouth to speak.
Scully hurried on, before he could protest. "And Padgett realized that. It's sad. Love costing someone's life."
"Padgett?"
"And mine."
They were speaking at right angles to one another, intewrsecting in words and emotions, but not in thought.
Mulder held out his hand.
Scully took it.
They leaned closer.
A red glass heart shattered on the wall behind them.
"We seem to have upset your friend Casper. Either that, or that bee has been reincarnated."
"Another death in this building," Scully said, moving away from the slowly sliding and dripping shards of glass.
The legacy of Phillip Padgett: many manifestations of his broken heart.
Indirectly, it was Mulder's fault.
Mulder was loved by Scully, the woman who Padgett who had so adored.
The woman for whom Padgett had died, to save her.
In death, Padgett achieved what Mulder had tried so vainly to do in life.
Be her savior.
Padgett-- the ghost of him, at least-- watched as Mulder and Scully silently removed all traces of the blood and glass.
"Does this qualify as a poltergiest?" Scully asked, pausing on her way to the kitchen to get a clean towel.
"Think so."
"So this is a case?"
"Yeah."
Scully smiled bittersweetly.
She'd given up her career and the respect of most of the agents who knew her by running around with Spooky, shaking her fist at the sky and scrambling to find the truth with him.
She wasn't the first.
There had been Fowley before her. And now.
There was Krycek interspersed between the other times.
Many people had been drawn to Mulder.
Not as many had been drawn to Scully.
None of them had been as eloquent or insightful as Padgett.
Scully felt a twinge of guilt.
Padgett was dead.
He'd saved her from himself.
And now he was dead.
It was sad.
He'd sacrificed himself for her.
Maybe in another time, another place... Another life, even, she and Padgett might have...
No. There would've been another Mulder.
She knew it.
She didn't know how or why, but she did.
She loved Mulder-- obviously-- but it was symbiotic, that kind of "opposites attract" in yin-yang sort of way.
Whatever that meant.
They were like day and night. Love and hate, dark and light, serious and silly, morbid and cheerful.
They needed one another.
When they were apart for any significant amount, they'd start acting like the other to fill that void.
It was pathetic.
They'd never said those three little words to one another.
Well, Mulder had...
Did he mean it?
Scully contemplated that.
Yes, she decided. Mulder did love her.
Not like he loved oh, say, Fowley or Krycek.
Scully was the rational part of him.
No, it wasn't that cut and dry.
She was a part of him.
That's the clearest she could think of it.
It wasn't easy to explain, even to herself.
"Scully?" Mulder said.
"Hmm?"
"I'm going to call Skinner and tell him that we got a new case."
"I'll call him. You scream 'X-file' too often." Scully got out her cell phone.
Mulder continued the lopsided conversation as Scully waited for Holly to connect her. "And none of the villagers will come running when there really is one? Hmm. That'd make me the Fox who cried Alien."
Scully nodded. Skinner wasn't in his office. "We're going to have to do this on our own."
"Kay. Shall we interview the spirit?"
"You do it."
"You."
"You."
"You."
As Mulder and Scully continued their juvenile, clumsy bickering/flirting, Padgett mused over his ghostliness.
Why was he here?
Unresolved business?
Scully.
It had to be her.
He wanted her to be happy...
...even if that meant her being with that utter moron, Mulder.
She had said that would never happen, but she was so obviously in love with him.
Padgett had observed the gazing looks the two subconsciously exchanged.
He saw the touches that lasted a moment too long; Mulder's possessiveness of his partner.
It was painfully obvious.
But they were in denial.
They'd never be together.
That's why they were both so sad.
A simple kiss was forbidden to them, seemingly by the fates.
Padgett didn't mind that...
...but he wanted her to be happy.
If she felt better, so would he.
If she didn't, neither would he.
Padgett honestly loved her, that was the root of all these problems.
She could never return for three simple reasons:
1: Mulder.
2: she was perfection itself.
3: he was dead.
Other than those minor details, they had the typical one-sided relationship.
He was here-- as a ghost, no less-- to help her achieve her happiness.
Which she seemed in no hurry to do.
She was seemingly content with helping Mulder clean up Padgett's glass heart and plan the X-file investigation.
Content is not happy. It's a poor substitute.
What if she was happy, being nothing more than Mulder's pet skeptic?
No.
Nonononononono.
She wasn't happy with him.
And Padgett wasn't thinking-- or whatever it is that ghosts do-- that because he was in love with the beautiful and haunting Dana Scully himself.
Of course not.
And he certainly wasn't jealous of Mulder, who-- despite his whole-hearted obssessive and pathological dedication to his work-- had a better social life than Padgett had had in life, AND Scully.
No, no, of course not.
Padgett was better than that.
No, he really wasn't.
Jealousy and love and anger and betrayal and all other base human emotions still surged through him.
Jealousy.
Love.
Anger.
Betrayal.
Fear.
What did Padgett have to fear? He was dead. Dead-dead-deader than dead. Really, truly, beyond any human concept of physical pain....
Which still left psychological.
If anything happened to Scully....
If anything happened to Scully because of him.....
That'd kill him.
Again.
He needed to do something.
Anything.
Writing was the first thing that came to mind.
He couldn't write...
He was hovering a few inches off the floor of Mulder's apartment. The only thing he couldn't pass through was Scully.
So much for his brilliant career as a literal literary ghost writer.
Scully was staring at Padgett.
He waved to her.
She swallowed her disbelief. "Mulder, maybe we should go to the office or... somewhere."
"You want to leave the scintillating company of this dead guy?"
"Yes."
"Cool." Mulder dropped the towel he was holding. "Later, Phillip."
Padgett watched in shock as Scully and Mulder left.
He would follow.
He'd beat them there, where ever "there" might be.
If he could just get the hang of his new ghostly powers.
He had the "throw a bleeding glass heart" thing down.
That was fairly cool, but there had to be other powers.
Something good....
Teleportation would be cool, for starters.
Something hit Padgett.
Light.
Pain.
Bleeding.
A deep wound opened in space/time, just in front of him.
Blood filled the room, dripped from the walls, taking over the apartment, flooding it with its liquid, its essence....
....and Padgett was in the Lone Gunmen's head-quarters.
They didn't even notice him at first.
Langly saw him first.
He dismissed it as a side-effect of Frohike's latest recipe.
Besides, Mulder and Scully were at the door. Frohike and Byers were engrossed in their work, so Langly had to get the door.
Phillip floated around, passing through the Lone Gunmen's computers. Byers thought he saw something, but didn't want to jump to conclusions.
"He beat us here! He's an alien!"
"Mulder...."
"He's the ghost of an alien."
"Mulder..."
"He's the ghost of an alien psychic surgeon."
"MULDER!"
"Yeah, Scully?"
Scully collapsed into a chair, and buried her head in her hands. "Nothing."
"What are you guys talking abou--- who the hell is that?"
"Frohike, meet Phillip Padgett."
"He's see-through."
"That's because he's dead," Scully said hoarsely.
"Oh."
The Gunmen blinked.
"Uh.... why's he here?"
"Agent Scully," Padgett said.
"OH!"
"Why is there a ghost here?" Frohike said once more.
"I want to make Scully happy."
"Anyone else disturbed by this."
"Tell me this is just a bad trip."
"Nope. It's real."
"Yeah, you're a real authority on reality, Mulder."
As the Lone Gunmen and Mulder debated reality, metaphysics, and the latest episode of Star Trek; Scully sighed in her chair.
She stared at Padgett.
He stared back at her.
She mouthed a simple query.
Why?
He smiled in response.
She didn't want to be the object of anyone's affection and worship, especially not Casper the friendly Ghost Writer.
He was gazing at her.
He was floating towards her.
"Why him?"
"I don't..." Her voice cracked. "I don't know what you're talking about... I don't know why you're here... I don't know how you're here. I don't know anything.... Not any more." Scully was having her very first complete nervous breakdown. "I used to know a little... Gods, how can you be here?"
"I loved you... but you loved him. Agent Mulder."
The LGM's attention had been grabbed by that simple little statement.
They huddled around the hovering ghost.
"I don't," Scully protested.
"I'm a writer--- or I was. I can tell. The signs were there. You love him."
Scully closed her eyes. She didn't want to keep correcting the ghost.
Scully was tired.
Tired of correcting Padgett.
Tired of chasing monsters.
Tired of correcting people in general.
Tired of running all over the country, chasing the Truth.
Tired.
Sick and tired.
Dead tired.
"Why do you love him?" Padgett asked.
"I keep telling you...." Scully ran her hands through her hair. How coudl she explain something she herself didn't even know? She sighed, "He has cool hair."
"That's it?"
"And he's...uhm...."
"Yes?"
"I don't know! Just leave me alone!"
Padgett nodded.
A wound appeared in the fiber of the universe in front of him. A fissure that would take him forward to a time when Scully would need his help....
Agent Scully and Agent Doggett walked into their office, to be greeted by the apparation of a very average man. "Padgett..."
"Why?" Padgett said again.
Scully blinked. A ghost of a smile crossed her face. "Because he was my soul-mate. He completed me," she said, ironically.
Doggett saw and heard nothing.
Padgett nodded.
His curiosity was satisfied now, and he'd helped her....
He disappeared, done now. His last work had been finished.
the end.
He found one last work of the late Phillip Padgett.
I hate this. I hate not writing. GODS, do I hate this.
I need to write about her.
You were in jail, Phillip, maybe you should focus on that.
No. There is only her. And she loves him. DAMN IT!
The signs were there. My love, my passion, blinded me to the obviousness of the affection between them. The way their touch lingered. The way she would notice no one but him, compare them to him, hesitate if she knew he was waiting.
Damn him. How the hell could someone so beautiful-- so fatally prepossessing that my very breath dies in my throat if I merely dare to think of her--- love someone like Agent Mulder. Agent Mulder, another man who lives in his head. They're only friends.
That's what kills me. Imagine that. A beautiful goddess of a woman and this.... man who spend every waking-- and sleeping-- moment together, thinking of one another, or destroying everything else for the other. And they're only friends.
This absolutely kills me.... Kills me.
Mulder shuddered. "Psycho," he muttered to the memory of Padgett. "She doesn't...."
Mulder looked around. There was nothing else. A typewriter, a bed, minimal lights and furniture. This was Padgett's memory.
He could feel Padgett's ghost.
Scully didn't believe in ghosts.
Scully also didn't believe in psychic surgery.
Scully didn't believe in a lot of things.
Screwing her partner was high on the list.
"SHE DOESN'T LOVE ME!" Mulder screamed. "God, man, of course she didn't. She is my partner..."
"Mulder?" Scully was in the doorway. "Who are you talking to?"
"Padgett."
"Mulder, he's dead."
"He's here."
Scully walked into the apartment. "Mulder...."
A misty figure appeared between the two.
The amazingly average face of the late Phillip Padgett became clear, in several meanings of the word.
"Told you so," Mulder said, breathlessly.
Scully stared at Mulder through Padgett's ghostly form, and vice versa.
Padgett offered his heart to Scully, hope gleaming in his translucent eyes.
She didn't even notice.
She was staring at Mulder.
"What do you mean, 'told you so'?"
"Don't you see him?"
"See who?"
"PADGETT?!" Mulder screamed, exasperated with his partner's skepticism.
Padgett cupped his bleeding heart in both hands. "Take it," he softly pleaded with Scully.
"Mulder, the only people here are you and me," Scully gently rebuked her partner.
"Please take it," Padgett continued, undaunted by her lack of response. "I don't need it. It's yours. Forever."
"Scully," Mulder began.
"TAKE IT!" Padgett cried.
Scully almost heard him.
"Scully, he's begging you to take his heart."
"That's sick, Mulder."
Pulling together every fiber of his ectoplasmic metaphysical essence, Padgett thrust his still beating, still bleeding ghostly heart into the heart of Scully.
She blinked.
"Well?"
"Well what?"
"Well, um, uh, you know how he said that you were in love...."
"He was insane, Mulder."
The same dejected look in the face of rejection simultaneously crossed Padgett and Mulder.
"He loved you."
"Listen to him, he knows that of which he speaks," Padgett said desperately.
Yet another bleeding heart had appeared in his hands.
Scully shook her head. "A man would have to be insane for loving me. Or seeing ghosts."
"You cannot possibly mean that," Padgett said, losing his hope.
"You don't mean that," Mulder said, gaining his smug control over Scully that pushed her to get the tattoo on her back.
"Don't tell me what I mean and don't mean, Mulder...." Scully said, angrily. "You know, you were right."
Mulder smiled languidly. "About what?"
"That I don't love you."
Phillip half-smiled.
Mulder's face fell from smug happiness into the very pits of despair.
It's amazing the kind of power love has.
Power to hurt, to heal, to mend, to break.
Mend a broken heart, or rip it into shreds.
All with a few words from a loved one.
A meaningless action, and worlds can fall.
Hearts can be broken with a simple roll of the eyes or empty phrase.
"You don't?" Mulder repeated. He shook his head. "Good. Good. Um.... good."
"Good," Scully said.
"MORONS. Knavish fools! Think ye that thou can bury thine obvious lusts under a web of deception and lies?!" Padgett threw his heart at the wall.
An actual heart hit the wall.
Scully stared at it with disbelieving eyes.
The heart shattered into a million blood-stained shards of glass.
"What was that?!" Scully murmured.
"Padgett's broken heart, I guess," Mulder said, also disbelievingly.
"You weren't kidding."
"Nope."
"There is a ghost here."
"Yep."
Scully paused a moment before her next statement. "Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why me? Why him? Why the hell did he say I was already in love?"
"Ask him."
"He's dead, Mulder." Scully was grasping for straws of the normal, sane, real world.
She'd left that world behind long ago.
"That doesn't seem to be stopping him from ruining his security deposit," Mulder quipped.
Scully glared daggers at Mulder, through the ghost of Padgett that she still could not see.
"What?"
"Don't make jokes."
"I use humor as defense mechanism."
Scully crouched to examine the heart.
Carefully, with suddenly trembling hands, Scully picked up one of the shards of glass.
She pricked her finger. A single drop of her blod fell, and mingled with the mass amount that had materialized when the heart had shattered.
Tears flooded her eyes. She blinked them back.
Mulder crouched next to her. "Well?"
"I can't explain this."
"You never can." Scully rolled her eyes, clenched her jaw, and shrugged. Mulder merely smiled. "How does it feel to BE an X-file again?"
"I hate it."
Padgett had eavesdropped on the two enough to know what an X-file was. "Why wouldn't you take my heart? My love? I wanted little in return. You said yourself that you don't love him. So why couldn't you love me?"
He moved between the two of them.
Mulder consciously ignored the spirit.
Scully did it subconsciously.
She refused to believe in the unbelievable.
That's why she'd been assigned to the X-files.
That's why she couldn't see the shade of the man who was pleading for an explanation.
That's why she shuddered as Padgett gently stroked her Titian hair.
The cold touch seeped through her scalp, to her brain.
With a gasp, she saw him.
Scully pulled away from the transparent Padgett, and his red-stained broken glass heart with its painful edges.
She clutched at her crucifix.
"Mulder... I see him."
"Good. Then we're both nuts."
"MULDER!"
"Do you love him?" Padgett said, breathlessly.
Scully gulped.
"Do you?" he quietly pushed.
"Uhm."
"Scully, the nice ghost asked you a question."
Scully elbowed Mulder accidentally-on-purpose as she stood.
She gulped again.
"Uhm....."
She didn't want to think about how she felt.
Yes, she cared for Mulder. She trusted him above anyone else.
On the other hand, he was a self-righteous porn-watching egomaniac who was still chasing aliens looking for his engimatic Truth while falling for every Bambi, Diana, and Phoebe who came his way.
He was self-destructive, and liked to make other people crash and burn with him.
He was condescending.
He constantly ditched her.
Then why did she love him.
"Yes," she breathed softly. "I guess I do."
Padgett winced in pain from that simple, heartfelt statement.
Mulder leaned back on the floor. He was grinning like the cat who ate the canary.
Scully continued talking, the words falling from her lips. "I'm never going to go out with him or anything.... You and I had more of a real date than Mulder and I ever will."
Mulder sucked in his breath, as if mortally wounded.
Padgett grinned like the canary who ate the cat.
"And now you're dead......."
She paused.
"I'm sorry," she mumbled as she walked out.
Even Scully didn't know who she was apologizing to or why.
Scully went to Mulder's apartment. She felt safe there. That-- in and of itself-- was irrational, considering everything. What if Padgett wasn't the only ghost?
That was ridiculous.
So was Padgett's return.
So was Padgett.
He'd observed everything about her, things even she didn't know.
He probably didn't even know why Scully was in love with....
With....
'Don't think it', she told herself. 'If you don't think it, then it's not true.'
Lies.
She'd learned to lie from him.
She'd never needed to lie before him.
Damn him.
Of course, according to her church's dogma, he was already damned for not believing.
That struck Scully as both funny and sad.
Kind of like the bizarre symbiotic relationship that she and Mulder had developed.
Scully was laughing and crying when Mulder came into the apartment. She was sitting on his couch. "You okay?" he said tenderly. She shook her head. "Need something? Coffee? Tea? Prozak? Valium?"
"Sanity."
"I don't have that."
Scully sniffled and smiled. "I know." Mulder sat next to her. "We're so co-dependent, you and I. I have to be the skeptic, you have to be the believer.... Exept for that while when we switched. We've always been like this. Since our first case."
Mulder opened his mouth to speak.
Scully hurried on, before he could protest. "And Padgett realized that. It's sad. Love costing someone's life."
"Padgett?"
"And mine."
They were speaking at right angles to one another, intewrsecting in words and emotions, but not in thought.
Mulder held out his hand.
Scully took it.
They leaned closer.
A red glass heart shattered on the wall behind them.
"We seem to have upset your friend Casper. Either that, or that bee has been reincarnated."
"Another death in this building," Scully said, moving away from the slowly sliding and dripping shards of glass.
The legacy of Phillip Padgett: many manifestations of his broken heart.
Indirectly, it was Mulder's fault.
Mulder was loved by Scully, the woman who Padgett who had so adored.
The woman for whom Padgett had died, to save her.
In death, Padgett achieved what Mulder had tried so vainly to do in life.
Be her savior.
Padgett-- the ghost of him, at least-- watched as Mulder and Scully silently removed all traces of the blood and glass.
"Does this qualify as a poltergiest?" Scully asked, pausing on her way to the kitchen to get a clean towel.
"Think so."
"So this is a case?"
"Yeah."
Scully smiled bittersweetly.
She'd given up her career and the respect of most of the agents who knew her by running around with Spooky, shaking her fist at the sky and scrambling to find the truth with him.
She wasn't the first.
There had been Fowley before her. And now.
There was Krycek interspersed between the other times.
Many people had been drawn to Mulder.
Not as many had been drawn to Scully.
None of them had been as eloquent or insightful as Padgett.
Scully felt a twinge of guilt.
Padgett was dead.
He'd saved her from himself.
And now he was dead.
It was sad.
He'd sacrificed himself for her.
Maybe in another time, another place... Another life, even, she and Padgett might have...
No. There would've been another Mulder.
She knew it.
She didn't know how or why, but she did.
She loved Mulder-- obviously-- but it was symbiotic, that kind of "opposites attract" in yin-yang sort of way.
Whatever that meant.
They were like day and night. Love and hate, dark and light, serious and silly, morbid and cheerful.
They needed one another.
When they were apart for any significant amount, they'd start acting like the other to fill that void.
It was pathetic.
They'd never said those three little words to one another.
Well, Mulder had...
Did he mean it?
Scully contemplated that.
Yes, she decided. Mulder did love her.
Not like he loved oh, say, Fowley or Krycek.
Scully was the rational part of him.
No, it wasn't that cut and dry.
She was a part of him.
That's the clearest she could think of it.
It wasn't easy to explain, even to herself.
"Scully?" Mulder said.
"Hmm?"
"I'm going to call Skinner and tell him that we got a new case."
"I'll call him. You scream 'X-file' too often." Scully got out her cell phone.
Mulder continued the lopsided conversation as Scully waited for Holly to connect her. "And none of the villagers will come running when there really is one? Hmm. That'd make me the Fox who cried Alien."
Scully nodded. Skinner wasn't in his office. "We're going to have to do this on our own."
"Kay. Shall we interview the spirit?"
"You do it."
"You."
"You."
"You."
As Mulder and Scully continued their juvenile, clumsy bickering/flirting, Padgett mused over his ghostliness.
Why was he here?
Unresolved business?
Scully.
It had to be her.
He wanted her to be happy...
...even if that meant her being with that utter moron, Mulder.
She had said that would never happen, but she was so obviously in love with him.
Padgett had observed the gazing looks the two subconsciously exchanged.
He saw the touches that lasted a moment too long; Mulder's possessiveness of his partner.
It was painfully obvious.
But they were in denial.
They'd never be together.
That's why they were both so sad.
A simple kiss was forbidden to them, seemingly by the fates.
Padgett didn't mind that...
...but he wanted her to be happy.
If she felt better, so would he.
If she didn't, neither would he.
Padgett honestly loved her, that was the root of all these problems.
She could never return for three simple reasons:
1: Mulder.
2: she was perfection itself.
3: he was dead.
Other than those minor details, they had the typical one-sided relationship.
He was here-- as a ghost, no less-- to help her achieve her happiness.
Which she seemed in no hurry to do.
She was seemingly content with helping Mulder clean up Padgett's glass heart and plan the X-file investigation.
Content is not happy. It's a poor substitute.
What if she was happy, being nothing more than Mulder's pet skeptic?
No.
Nonononononono.
She wasn't happy with him.
And Padgett wasn't thinking-- or whatever it is that ghosts do-- that because he was in love with the beautiful and haunting Dana Scully himself.
Of course not.
And he certainly wasn't jealous of Mulder, who-- despite his whole-hearted obssessive and pathological dedication to his work-- had a better social life than Padgett had had in life, AND Scully.
No, no, of course not.
Padgett was better than that.
No, he really wasn't.
Jealousy and love and anger and betrayal and all other base human emotions still surged through him.
Jealousy.
Love.
Anger.
Betrayal.
Fear.
What did Padgett have to fear? He was dead. Dead-dead-deader than dead. Really, truly, beyond any human concept of physical pain....
Which still left psychological.
If anything happened to Scully....
If anything happened to Scully because of him.....
That'd kill him.
Again.
He needed to do something.
Anything.
Writing was the first thing that came to mind.
He couldn't write...
He was hovering a few inches off the floor of Mulder's apartment. The only thing he couldn't pass through was Scully.
So much for his brilliant career as a literal literary ghost writer.
Scully was staring at Padgett.
He waved to her.
She swallowed her disbelief. "Mulder, maybe we should go to the office or... somewhere."
"You want to leave the scintillating company of this dead guy?"
"Yes."
"Cool." Mulder dropped the towel he was holding. "Later, Phillip."
Padgett watched in shock as Scully and Mulder left.
He would follow.
He'd beat them there, where ever "there" might be.
If he could just get the hang of his new ghostly powers.
He had the "throw a bleeding glass heart" thing down.
That was fairly cool, but there had to be other powers.
Something good....
Teleportation would be cool, for starters.
Something hit Padgett.
Light.
Pain.
Bleeding.
A deep wound opened in space/time, just in front of him.
Blood filled the room, dripped from the walls, taking over the apartment, flooding it with its liquid, its essence....
....and Padgett was in the Lone Gunmen's head-quarters.
They didn't even notice him at first.
Langly saw him first.
He dismissed it as a side-effect of Frohike's latest recipe.
Besides, Mulder and Scully were at the door. Frohike and Byers were engrossed in their work, so Langly had to get the door.
Phillip floated around, passing through the Lone Gunmen's computers. Byers thought he saw something, but didn't want to jump to conclusions.
"He beat us here! He's an alien!"
"Mulder...."
"He's the ghost of an alien."
"Mulder..."
"He's the ghost of an alien psychic surgeon."
"MULDER!"
"Yeah, Scully?"
Scully collapsed into a chair, and buried her head in her hands. "Nothing."
"What are you guys talking abou--- who the hell is that?"
"Frohike, meet Phillip Padgett."
"He's see-through."
"That's because he's dead," Scully said hoarsely.
"Oh."
The Gunmen blinked.
"Uh.... why's he here?"
"Agent Scully," Padgett said.
"OH!"
"Why is there a ghost here?" Frohike said once more.
"I want to make Scully happy."
"Anyone else disturbed by this."
"Tell me this is just a bad trip."
"Nope. It's real."
"Yeah, you're a real authority on reality, Mulder."
As the Lone Gunmen and Mulder debated reality, metaphysics, and the latest episode of Star Trek; Scully sighed in her chair.
She stared at Padgett.
He stared back at her.
She mouthed a simple query.
Why?
He smiled in response.
She didn't want to be the object of anyone's affection and worship, especially not Casper the friendly Ghost Writer.
He was gazing at her.
He was floating towards her.
"Why him?"
"I don't..." Her voice cracked. "I don't know what you're talking about... I don't know why you're here... I don't know how you're here. I don't know anything.... Not any more." Scully was having her very first complete nervous breakdown. "I used to know a little... Gods, how can you be here?"
"I loved you... but you loved him. Agent Mulder."
The LGM's attention had been grabbed by that simple little statement.
They huddled around the hovering ghost.
"I don't," Scully protested.
"I'm a writer--- or I was. I can tell. The signs were there. You love him."
Scully closed her eyes. She didn't want to keep correcting the ghost.
Scully was tired.
Tired of correcting Padgett.
Tired of chasing monsters.
Tired of correcting people in general.
Tired of running all over the country, chasing the Truth.
Tired.
Sick and tired.
Dead tired.
"Why do you love him?" Padgett asked.
"I keep telling you...." Scully ran her hands through her hair. How coudl she explain something she herself didn't even know? She sighed, "He has cool hair."
"That's it?"
"And he's...uhm...."
"Yes?"
"I don't know! Just leave me alone!"
Padgett nodded.
A wound appeared in the fiber of the universe in front of him. A fissure that would take him forward to a time when Scully would need his help....
Agent Scully and Agent Doggett walked into their office, to be greeted by the apparation of a very average man. "Padgett..."
"Why?" Padgett said again.
Scully blinked. A ghost of a smile crossed her face. "Because he was my soul-mate. He completed me," she said, ironically.
Doggett saw and heard nothing.
Padgett nodded.
His curiosity was satisfied now, and he'd helped her....
He disappeared, done now. His last work had been finished.
the end.
Text © 2001, Drusilla Rain. All rights reserved. Do not steal, under penalty of blue-tanking.
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