Subject: NEW: What You Can Carry (1/1) Date: Sun, 28 Nov 1999 20:58:48 -0800 From: Maureen O'Brien Organization: Ceann Coradh Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative TITLE: Accept Surrender AUTHOR: Maureen S. O'Brien EMAIL: mobrien@dnaco.net DISTRIBUTION: Anywhere. Really. You don't even have to ask me! SPOILER: None. RATING: PG SUMMARY: Sometimes urban legends are true. DISCLAIMER: CC owns the X-Files, and the core idea for the story's been public domain for several thousand years. AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is what I thought Brandon's story "The Canvas Bag" was going to be about. I could only see one way you could stuff everything that's important to you into a ditty bag. ====================================================================== I'd heard the story before, but it had been told too many times about too many different clever women in conquered cities. I still collected it, of course -- I am conscientious about such things -- but the story always came from a friend of a friend of a friend, not someone who was there. "I was there," he said. He was a convicted war criminal, one of the worst. I had requested permission to interview him before he was executed. Most of the ones who get caught have refused me an interview. The ones who want to talk usually spend most of their time excusing themselves, or trying to convince me that they are heroes misunderstood. This one was different. He wanted to lay it all out for me, names and dates and technical details, as if he was submitting a resume. I asked him why, once. He said he'd wanted to be a history professor someday, after he retired from service to the State. He could have been lying -- he was professional at that -- or he could have believed his own stories, as old storytellers often do. But so far, every piece of information he gave me has proven to be scrupulously true. "I was there," he said. "It really happened. I remember it like it was yesterday." He stopped for a moment. "She came out that day under a truce flag -- one of his shirts tied to a stick. She didn't come close enough for anyone to grab her. And we would have. It would have brought Mulder out like a shot." He smirks a little. "Then what happened?" "She said she wanted to ask us our terms. I remember that some of the men laughed, because she acted like she had a choice. Some of the other guys told them not to be so stupid. I mean, who wants to go in after somebody in a hole like that? They might have been running out of food and ammo, but they might have been pretending. You can make some pretty good bombs with household cleaning products." He shrugged. "I just went after the smoking man. It was his decision. "He was insane by then," he told me manner-of-factly. "He thought he could control the voices, but he was wrong. The drugs had too many side effects, and he couldn't just will himself to health. I was offered a chance to join that part of the program, you know." He seemed to want a response. "I didn't know that." "I told him I didn't need telepathy to know what people were thinking." He smiled slightly, but his eyes looked into the distance. "That amused him. And I was a good assassin, which is always useful. They let me stay unmodified. I kept my mind on business the rest of that day. Then I went home, drank a bottle of vodka, and shook." He refocused on my face. "You never heard that." If I hadn't had a recorder going, I wouldn't have believed I had. "So the smoking man came out where she could see him, and he brought some of the others from the program, too. They all stood there listening the way they always did, and the smoking man smiled to see her out there all alone. He said he only wanted Mulder. She could go home; she could see her family again; she could live her life. Or they could kill her. He didn't care which. But Scully was the only one who could walk out of there. "I expected her to tell him where to go. All the guys who'd seen them operate before -- we all just looked at each other, because we couldn't even think what we were thinking. But then she seemed to shrink a size, and asked, 'How much can I take with me?' "I couldn't believe it. Everything they'd gone through, and she's asking how much stuff she can carry out. Women. "'Anything you can carry,' he said. Like he was giving her a gift. "'I'll have to consult with Mulder,' she said, and went back inside, but we all knew that was it. Negotiations were done. "So then she came back out, with that shirt on a stick in her hand. 'We accept,' she said. 'Give us a few minutes.' "'Ten minutes,' said the smoking man. It didn't take ten minutes, though. They came out together, still holding that dumb flag. "She was wearing one of those backpack frames, but Mulder was sitting where the pack should have been. Holding the flag. He'd lost a lot of weight, but then, so had she. He towered over her. She was bent over like an old babushka, and her face was so red I thought she'd have a heart attack. But she kept putting one foot in front of another, and she didn't even grunt. All you could hear was the pack straps rubbing against her shoulders, a few little clinks from...the keys in Mulder's pocket, probably, hitting against the packframe, and the sound of her footsteps against the gravel. And her breath. She was puffing, while Mulder seemed to be holding his. She plodded into our camp and she plodded right back out. I don't know how she did it, but she did." "Why didn't you shoot her?" "We were under orders not to fire unless fired upon. Very strict orders. He really wanted Mulder. And of course, by that time we were both too afraid and too pissed off to take the initiative." He laughed. "All that listening, and they still couldn't tell what was going through her head. The smoking man just stared at her, and so did the people from his program. I think they could feel how much pain she was in, and they kept thinking she would stop or drop him. But she kept going. She just kept going. They didn't stop staring at her until she'd almost gotten past our camp and had almost gotten to the trees. Mulder started singing, then, and that woke them up. They told us to fire, but Mulder and Scully got to cover first. They were as good as gone. Next time I saw them was in Minneapolis, and you know how that turned out." He gestured around him, and I nodded. "So what did Mulder sing?" I asked. "Some kind of taunt?" Somewhere in my mind, I could almost hear him. Something along the lines of 'Olly olly oxen free!' He shrugged. "It was a joke for Scully. 'I cannot be without you, matter of fact,'" he sang, his old man's voice still more tuneful than Mulder's ever had been. "'I'm on your back.'" That song would take me years to track down. I smiled. "Typical Mulder -- though you'd know better than I." "Typical Scully," he answered. "Typical both of them." He looked into the distance again. "I never knew anyone who would have done that for me. But then, there was nobody I would've done it for." And again he sang the chorus of that forgotten song. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Maureen S. O'Brien mobrien@dnaco.net http://www.dnaco.net/~mobrien/fanfic/