Title: Identity Crisis (1/1)
Author: Alelou
Feedback: Alelou123@aol.com
Rating: PG-13 for language only
Category: V, H, UST
Archive:  Yes, but let me know.
Disclaimer: Chris Carter's & 1013's, not mine.

Summary: Sometimes it's the little things in life that
really make you lose it.  Scully's dark night of the
soul occurs when she can't wear high heels.

Author's Notes:  I've never been able to reconcile
myself to those freakin' high heels of hers.  So I decided 
to write a story about it and see if that helped.  It 
didn't, but I had fun anyway.  Thanks to MystPhile 
and Ambress for their excellent beta services.  

Part 1.  TRAGEDY STRIKES

I suppose it had to happen someday.  I always expected it to 
happen while I was chasing a suspect, running headlong 
through some field pock-marked with holes.

Instead, it happens as I simply step down off a curb and 
find it's further down than I expect.  My ankle gives way 
with a tremendous "thwang" and I flop right over and land, 
literally, in the gutter.

"Scully?" Mulder asks.

"Fuck!" I hiss.  It hurts.  After enduring a gunshot wound, 
an alien creature gestating in my body, a cancerous tumor, 
and various other painful indignities, you'd think a 
sprained ankle would be no big deal.  But it hurts like 
hell.

"You okay?" Mulder asks.

Is he hoping I'll tell him I'm fine?  "Not particularly."

"What's the matter?"  Is there a little edge of panic there?

"I just sprained my ankle."  I probe around just to make 
sure that's it.  Yeah, that's it.  Probably.  Shit, that 
hurts.

Mulder gets this carefully blank look on his face that tells 
me he's biting back some commentary that I would no 
doubt find unwelcome.  Probably some witty observation 
about my shoes, which are if possible even higher than 
usual today.  Fashion lately has given me even more of a 
boost than in the past.  Platforms are my friends.  

Or were.

"Let me help you up," he offers.

"Brilliant idea," I agree, letting him boost me up and help 
me brush some of the clinging gutter litter off of my suit.  
Thank God for this drought -- no mud.  I notice Mulder's 
eyes light up.  It's like copping a feel for him, I suppose.  
Too bad he never just asks.  Though depending on what 
mood I'm in he might just get shot, so I can hardly blame 
him.

"Hospital?" he asks.

"Home."

He eyes my already swelling ankle, which I have 
disentangled from its hulking platform shoe.  "Sure an
X-ray wouldn't be a good idea?"

"Home."

"Clinic on the way home?"

I stare him down.

"Okay, home," he agrees, in full retreat.

He helps me into the passenger seat without any further 
conversation.  I lean back, frazzled and irritated.  My 
ankle is throbbing.  And something important has changed.
I just don't realize yet what it is.

Part 2.  DESPERATE CONSEQUENCES

I hate this.

Have you ever tried to get by without using your ankle for 
any length of time?  Yeah, yeah, I know amputees and 
paraplegics do it all the time, but that doesn't mean they 
*want* to.

First of all, I can't drive.  It's my right ankle.  I can't 
put pressure on the accelerator or the brake.  I tried 
driving with my left foot but I kept instinctively using my 
right foot and screaming in agony.  Not good.  Now, you 
wouldn't necessarily think this is such a crisis.  I live in 
Georgetown; what's the big deal?  Have you ever tried 
getting on the Metro with crutches during rush hour?  Forget 
it.  Which leaves me with expensive taxi rides each day or a 
ride from Mulder  ... whose idea of punctuality is anywhere 
from an hour early to two hours late.

What's more, I can't do autopsies.  Autopsy tables don't 
allow you to sit -- for a very good reason, because it's 
pretty damned hard to sit while you're cutting, sawing, 
disemboweling, weighing -- you get the idea.  Yeah, there 
might be some adapted autopsy labs somewhere for people 
who can't stand, but I've never seen one.

I also can't go out in the field.  I can go out in *a* field 
-- slowly, laboriously, sweating with the extra effort.  But 
I can't do that and back up my partner.  So it's desk work 
for me.  

Mulder is taking the opportunity to go investigate local 
cases he knows I think are completely without merit.  He 
says, "Think of it this way, Scully, at least you're not 
missing anything."  I think he just wants any opportunity to 
stay away from me because I'm not the best of company at 
the moment.  And to add insult to injury, he's dumping his 
overdue paperwork in my lap.  He calls it "division of 
labor."  I don't know why Skinner's signing his 302s.  But 
then, I don't know why he ever signs them.  Maybe Mulder 
has something on him.

Worst of all, I can't wear my pumps.  Okay, this is where 
things get really desperate.  Until this thing heals, I'm 
consigned to wearing flats!  Sneakers, actually -- my 
autopsy shoes.  Damned if I'm going to spend my hard-earned 
money on real flats.  So I look like a crippled commuter who 
forgot to bring her real shoes.  But the really 
disconcerting thing is that it doesn't matter, fashion-wise.  
Because nobody can see me.  I'm too far down.  Every once in 
awhile someone turns and peers down in surprise, the way you 
do when someone brings their kids to the office.

I can't take much more of this.

Part 3. A HEARTBREAKING SETBACK

Finally the day comes when I can put on one of my more 
modest pairs of pumps, drive my own car to work, and 
look forward to arguing with Mulder about a case that might 
actually be worth pursuing, even if I won't admit that to 
him.

Until I slide on one of those pencils Mulder is continually 
throwing up into the ceiling tiles, try to counterbalance, 
and "thwang" -- down I go again.

"Fuck!" I scream, at nobody, since nobody is down here 
yet.

And then I start to cry.  Bawl, really, like a four-year-old 
who tripped on the playground.  Borderline hysteria, 
possibly.  All the things I've suffered in my life, and this 
is what finally pitches me into a nervous breakdown.

Mulder comes in and finds me like this and is speechless.  
Well, for a moment.  Soon he's helping me up, pulling me 
into his arms, peering over me for injuries that are not 
apparent.  "Scully?  Scully?  What is it?  What's the 
matter?  What happened?"

I just point at my ankle and cry harder.

"Aw, jeez," he says.  He looks genuinely despondent.  
He's tired of stupid local cases, too.

"Come on, Scully.  You want me to take you home?"

"No, take me to the clinic." 

xxx

We wait the requisite hour and a half at the clinic.  
Somehow, even though I'm a doctor and I know better, I'm 
hoping they'll hand me some magical solution that will get 
me out in the field again before the week is out.  A shot of 
cortisone.  A fancy ankle brace.  Anything.

The doctor orders an x-ray and takes a history and tells me 
that I need to do everything I did before, only this time 
for longer.  Plus I need to start getting some physical 
therapy.  And no more high heels for at least six months.  
Maybe longer.  Yes, he really must insist.  My ankles aren't 
as young as they used to be; they can't just bounce back 
from an injury like this.

When I hobble out to Mulder he can instantly see that the 
news is bad.

"Scully?  What's wrong?"

"It should be better in about a week," I say.

He squints at me.  "So why do you look so miserable?"

"Just take me home," I say.

Part 4.  DESPONDENCY

I call in sick the next day.  I don't even want to get out 
of bed.  Around 11 in the morning I have to pee so I get up 
and shuffle to the bathroom with the damned crutches.

Afterwards I look in the mirror and see a woman who has a 
really bad case of bedhead and an expression that belongs in 
an Edward Hopper painting -- one of those really dismal 
late-night counter pieces.

I know it's not like me to stay home over something like 
this, but I just can't face another day.  I don't have my 
heels.  I can't click, click, click with authority through 
my life anymore.  My whole schtick is just going to hell.

I can't help wondering how I reached the point that my 
whole identity is connected to 5-inch heels, redder hair 
than I was born with, careful make-up and a push-up bra.  
This is what the self-assured little tomboy turned into?  
And what really kills me is that I'm not even doing it for 
fun.  What some women wear as the accoutrements of 
enticement, I put on like armor for battle.  Adaptive 
prosthetics for a body that is too short, too flat, too 
boring.

And too old.  It was so nice of the doctor at the clinic to 
point out that my ankles weren't as young as they used to 
be.  He was a little older than me, early forties at least, 
but it seemed to be giving him great joy, welcoming me to 
the club of middle age.

Seven years ago I had urgently wished to look older, to 
look more my age.  Somehow I hadn't counted on the 
bloom of youth fading so quickly.  Now I look at myself 
and I see a woman who looks older than her years.  I look 
older than my partner, I sometimes think, even though he's 
four years older.  You'd think I smoked.  Sometimes I wish 
I did smoke.  Is it the effect of San Diego sunbathing?  
Ova-ripening radiation treatments?  The synthetic hormones 
that keep me on an approximation of a normal thirty-
something woman's monthly cycle?  Burns on a bridge I don't 
remember?  Antarctic frostbite?  Too many french fries in 
tawdry little diners in Nowhere, USA?  Extended celibacy?  
All of the above?  

I try to remind myself that I have absolutely no control 
over most of these items.  Scullys are taught from a young 
age not to waste tears on things that can't be helped.  So, 
your dad is at sea when you're born, have a school play, go 
to the prom.  So, you have to change schools twelve times.  
So, some bully beat you up.  Get over it, kid.  Life is 
short, war is hell, and somehow, somewhere, there are 
people worse off than you.  

Hell, I know that part better than most -- I get to cut 
these less fortunates open pretty regularly.

As I run a damp comb through my hair I try to buck up, 
reflexively.  It's not like I'm a paraplegic, for God's 
sake.  There's got to be something about my life I can 
control, if only going forward.  I suppose I could snitch 
fewer of Mulder's french fries.  Just as I could probably do 
something about the extended celibacy if I wanted to.  
Snitch something other than french fries off his plate, as 
it were.

But I'd have to take off my armor.  Mulder, I think, 
understands more than anyone that my armor and I are very 
good friends.  He's seen me without it countless times, in 
hospitals, in alien spaceships (if he's to be believed), in 
tacky little motel rooms, at crime scenes where I'm the 
victim -- but he's always waited, respectfully, for me to 
get back into it.  He never leers at me or cracks double 
entendres until I'm safely suited up.  

Of course, I also know that the double entendres are his own 
armor.  We both like protective coverings.

I stare in the mirror at hair that's still defying gravity 
in all the wrong ways, at my unimpressive breasts barely 
denting the old t-shirt I fell asleep in, and think, what's 
the point?  If Mulder loves me, and I'd guess that he does, 
it's in the way a man loves his old wife -- because she's 
been around for so long, not because she makes him hot. 

And I decided some time ago that I wasn't dragging anyone
else into this insanity.  Why give more fodder to the bad
guys?  Never mind the trauma of having to explain that
I can't have children, or even worse, why.  Or how about
this chip you'd be marrying into, buddy?  And after my 
adventures with Ed Jerse and the Texas vampire sheriff,
I'm not too keen on casual flings, either. 

There's really nothing left for me to look forward to but my 
job and my dogged, increasingly pathetic attempts at 
maintaining my dignity.  

Which I just don't have the energy for today.  So I go back 
to bed.

Part 5.  INTERVENTION

There's a limit to my ability to stay in bed sleeping even 
while deeply depressed, so I'm sitting on the sofa eating a 
bowl of cereal for dinner and watching people across the 
world who are worse off than I am when Mulder knocks on 
the door.

Crap.

"Just come in," I yell, since I know he has the key and I 
can't be bothered to get over there.  Plus, if I stay on the 
sofa in this nice dim light he may never get a good look at 
me.

"Scully?"

"Yeah, what is it, Mulder?"

He comes in slowly, possibly having some trouble picking 
his way in through the room, which is bathed in no more 
than the staccato blue light of the television.

"What ya doin?" he asks, casually.

"Watching tv," I reply.

He sighs, obviously realizing that this could be a long 
interrogation.  To my great annoyance he comes right up to 
me and peers in my face.

"Not feeling so hot?" he asks.

"Nope," I say.  I put what's left of my cereal on the coffee 
table and scrunch back as far as I can.

"What's the matter?"

I just shrug.  "Did you need something?"

"My partner," he says mournfully, and sits down next to 
me.

I sigh.  "Can't a person take a sick day once in awhile?" I 
ask.

"Yeah, but you never do, in my experience," he says.  
"What's up?"

"I just didn't feel like dealing with this thing today," I 
say, gesturing to the ankle.

"Why not?"

"What do you mean, why not?  I just didn't."

"It's a sprained ankle."

I shrug.  No denying that one.

"Why does a sprained ankle seem to have you more rattled 
than an incurable tumor in your head?  I don't get it," he 
says.

"You better fucking believe I got rattled by that tumor," I 
say.  His eyes widen at the f-word passing my usually so-
correct lips.

"Okay, of course you did," he allows, quickly.  "But Scully, 
for all of that, you still didn't stay home over it."

"I didn't have time to sit and mope over it, I was going to 
be dead soon."

He winces like I just hit him.  Then he cocks his head at 
me.  "So the less time something is going to affect you, the 
more you get depressed about it?  This takes about a week 
to heal, so you spend -- what, one sick day?  Next time you 
get a hangnail, you gonna take a week off?"

I sigh.  "This isn't just one week.  There are also weeks of 
physical therapy."

"You've been through that before," he says.

"And I can't wear high heels for six months," I say.

He blinks.  It's the blink that signals Mulder is 
processing.  Still, my brilliant partner seems to be having 
trouble with this one.  "You're depressed because you can't 
wear high heels?"

"Do me a favor, Mulder,"  I say.  "Put this bowl in the sink 
for me, and go home."

He gets up and puts the bowl in the sink.  Then he comes 
back and sits down next to me.

"You know, I've never understood how you can even walk 
in those things."

I shrug.

"Plus I kind of had the impression that you liked an excuse 
to buy new shoes," he says.

"Not these kind of shoes," I say darkly.

"Flat shoes."

"Yep."

"So it's the height thing?"

I don't answer.  When it comes right down to it, this has to 
be the shallowest foible I've come up with in all the years 
he's known me.

"You know, they've done studies on height," he says.  
"Low height is actually devastating for adolescent boys, did 
you know that?  Didn't show that much of an effect on 
girls, though."

"The FBI is a boy's playground," I say.

"Yeah," he agrees, pensively.  

I sigh and make some attempt to smooth my hair back.  I 
never took a shower today, and the afternoon wallow had 
obliterated any help from that wet comb in the morning.

"I guess I don't help matters," he says.

"How's that?"

He gestures at himself.  "Well, you know.  The contrast.  I 
mean, sometimes I feel like I must be giving you a sore 
neck."

I smile.  "You're not the one I'm worried about.  It's 
everybody else.  It's hard enough getting taken seriously as 
a woman."

"Scully, anyone who listens to you for five minutes takes 
you seriously."

"Yeah, but those five minutes can be a real bitch," I say.

"Actually," he says, tentatively.  "I've sometimes wondered 
if those shoes work against that a little."

At my puzzled look, he adds, with some nervousness, "Those 
shoes you wear, they're so -- I mean, some people would even 
call them --"

"Fuck me shoes?"

"Yeah."

"Well, they're not.  They're 'look me in the eye' shoes as 
far as I'm concerned."

He sighs.  "And now you can't wear them."

"Right."

"And you're depressed."

"Right.  But I'll get over it," I add.  "I always do."  

Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful to Mulder for coming 
over and letting me share my pathetic sense of disability 
with him.  I feel much better for having talked to someone.  
But at this point I would normally get up and move around 
in a silent signal that it was time for him to leave.  
That's not so easily done with this ankle, so I sit there, 
trying to think of something to say that will have the same 
effect.

"You know," he says, " I have a fantasy about this -- I 
never told you this, did I?"  

"I very much doubt it," I say.

"I have this fantasy that for some reason we're together 
even though we're not working on a case, and you're 
barefoot, and you're wearing a t-shirt with no bra, and a 
pair of jeans, and your hair is all messed up, and you 
haven't got any make-up on."

"This is your fantasy?"

"Well, there's more to it than that, but I thought you might 
like to know.  Because, you know, you're sitting there just 
like in my fantasy.  Except in my fantasy you're just 
relaxed, not depressed.  And of course you're happy to see 
me, not sitting there trying to figure out some way to get 
me out the door."

"Oh, Mulder," I say, stricken.

"It's all right, I gotta go,"  he says, quickly, getting up.  
"You need help with anything before I hit the road?"

"No, I'm fine -- Mulder?"

"Yeah," he says, not really looking me in the eye.

"Thanks for coming over to cheer me up."

"Anytime," he says, leaning down and planting a quick kiss 
on my forehead.  "Feel better."  Then he practically sprints 
for the door.

I shuffle off to the bathroom after he leaves and look in 
the mirror.  Yeah, the hair is a major mess.  My face is 
shiny and pale without make-up.  Nothing has changed from 
this morning.

And yet somehow I feel beautiful and sexy and young.

THE END