FRAGILE AS GLASS 
Parts I, II, & III

Author: Foxie Meg

Rating: PG (just to be safe)

Summary: The Mulder-Scully dynamic as viewed from 
three different angles.

Disclaimer:  Not only are Mulder, Scully, and the
third party not mine, but neither are the stories
they use as allusions to their own.  Those stories 
belong to George MacDonald, Lily Buxton, and Phillip
Heseltine, and I owe much thanks to Tushka Bergen and
Jeremy Northam for bringing Lily and Phillip's story
to life for me.

***

FRAGILE AS GLASS I: Through a Glass Darkly


I don't understand her sometimes.  Most of the time, actually.  No, 
that's not true.  It's just that most of the time I don't understand 
*us*, as a couple.  I read a story once, in an old book that is now 
falling apart because it is much-loved.  

It is about a student, so passionate about his studies that his friends 
teased him for never coming around to party with them.  Then one day, 
his life changed.  One of his friends convinced him – against his will 
– to go into an antique shop with him, where he found an enchanted 
mirror.

He didn't know it was enchanted - of course (one never knows those 
things in the beginning) - but he was under its spell immediately, and 
bought it on the spot and took it home.

After awhile, he found the nature of the furniture he'd bought.  A 
beautiful woman would appear in his mirror each evening in the 
bewitching lavender glow of twilight and appear to move about in the 
room reflected in the glass.

He searched all up and down his room for her, but he could only see her 
in the mirror.  He wasn't sure she could see him at all.  She shuddered 
at the suit of armor he had standing in his corner, so he got rid of 
it, even though it was an heirloom that had been in his family for many 
generations.

She gazed with a sort of disappointed sadness at his couch, so he went 
out and bought all new furniture and decorated his apartment in ways 
that he thought would make her happy, then waited all day, never giving 
a second thought to the classes he was missing, for her to appear in 
the mirror, and to see what she thought of what he'd bought for her.

She loved the new furniture, her eyes lighting up and a delighted smile 
crossing her face.  Of course, it made his day – probably his whole 
life – and soon he was no longer a student.  He was a slave, an addict, 
of the woman in his mirror, not knowing and not caring when his 
professors failed him.

She cried often, and he thought he would die until he could correct 
whatever was upsetting her.  I don't remember the details clearly now, 
only that somehow she managed to communicate to him that she was a 
slave to the mirror, and would only be free if he could break it.

He raised a hammer to do just that, to grant her what she most wanted, 
but wavered when he discovered that if he freed her, he might never see 
her again.  His selfish need for her momentarily warred with his 
selfless love for her, but eventually the latter won out.

Not soon enough.

As he brought the hammer crashing down, the mirror wavered and 
disappeared and he was left only with the haunting echoes of her 
screams.

Sometimes I feel like that student.  Everything in my life has fallen 
by the wayside for the sake of the beautiful woman trapped on the other 
side of my mirror, woven inextricably into my life but separated from 
me by the same thing that connects her to me.

There is only a thin sheet of glass between us, but we cannot break 
through it.  It never occurred to me that she might also be a slave of 
this mirror... not until the time I demanded she leave me, as much for 
her own sake as mine.

My apartment can't accommodate a queen like her, so why does she insist 
on living in the version of it that lies on the other side of the 
mirror?  

She told me in no uncertain terms that she couldn't.  Or wouldn't.  
Whatever.

All I'm clear about is that I now know she's trapped on the other side 
of that mirror, and the hammer is raised over my head.  I wonder if I 
can manage the downstroke.

xXxXxXx

FRAGILE AS GLASS II: Different Sides of the Same Mirror


I feel like Lily Buxton.  No you probably aren't familiar with that 
name; I'm not sure it's historically accurate.  I do know her movie 
character was based on a real-life woman who lived during the 1920's.

In the movie, and in real life, Lily fell in love with a brilliant 
music critic named Phillip Heseltine who was just in his criticisms 
except of one composer – a Peter Warlock.  No one could understand why 
Phillip was so cruel and blind in his prejudice against Warlock, but 
Lily loved him for all he was and overlooked it somewhat, even defended 
him against Warlock's threats – which once included gassing Phillip's 
apartment.

Only after she agreed to marry Phillip did she discover that he and 
Peter were the same man, living drastically separate lives.  A split 
personality of the worst kind had been induced when Phillip was a young 
child and his stepfather, declaring him to be wasting his intelligence 
on music when he had no real talent for it anyway, burned his piano and 
his compositions in the front lawn.

To make a long story short, Phillip and Peter did not know they were 
each other, but Lily kept tabs on both of them and was soon in love 
with the man she'd agreed to marry... and with the tortured, insecure 
musician that lived within him.  And they were both in love with her.

The final blow came when Phillip went to critique a composition that 
Lily had helped Peter write... and recognized it as his own.  He 
snapped, finally realizing he was both men... and having both men's 
memories of Lily and her "betrayal."

She found them in his apartment... arguing.  The personality would 
switch whenever they looked into a mirror... and they broke her heart, 
the mirror, and their heads at the same time when they stared at each 
other from different sides of the same mirror and then slammed their 
heads into it, trying to reconcile themselves to being the same person.

They were unsuccessful, and Phillip demanded that she choose either him 
or Peter.  Unable to decide which side of the same man she wanted, they 
argued and he demanded that she leave both of them all together.  Lily 
fell down the stairs, and when she regained consciousness, she rushed 
back into his apartment from where he had put her on the doorstep and 
found him locked in his room, the gas on and the windows closed, 
slumped over his typewriter.

She opened the window and went to him, but it was too late.  She 
glanced over his shoulder and found that Phillip had been writing a 
glowing critique of Peter's latest work.  The one she'd helped him 
write.

She slumped against the open window and cried for the death of the two 
men she'd loved.

I'm hoping I don't have to do that with Mulder any time soon, but he 
keeps pushing me away.  I sometimes wonder if I am Lily... or if I am 
the person on the other side of his mirror, touching him, but only to 
feel cold glass between our hands.

I wonder whose head will crack first, or most painfully, if we try to 
break through the mirror to complete the connection.

Who will die, and who will finally accept the other's genius.

Break hard the wishbone, baby.  Break hard.

xXxXxXx


FRAGILE AS GLASS III: Their Prismic Reflection



They think they see what the other is, what the other feels or needs.  

They are wrong.

She has a clearer view than he, for she at least knows the end of her 
story.  He has forgotten the most important part of his.

The student finds the mirror in the house of an evil man, sneaks 
uninvited into the party he is having and shatters it.

The princess – for she is indeed a future queen – is freed from her 
fever and therefore the control and abuses of the man who owns the 
mirror, and she runs to find her savior.

She finds him on a bridge, and he turns to her.  "I am free," she says, 
intending for him to see that she is giving him her freedom.  That she 
loves him.  He smiles.  Her freedom is enough for his happiness, and 
it's a good thing because he slumps forward into her arms and she sees 
too late that he has been fatally wounded by the owner of the mirror he 
broke.

I'm not sure, but I think there is a declaration of love in there 
somewhere.
 
How terribly saccharine sweet, wouldn't you say?

He is probably going to spend his entire life trying to break that 
mirror, which is only going to kill him and leave her with his shell.  

Both of their stories are frighteningly similar.  A mirror that shows 
something – someone – important on the other side.  A man who kills 
himself in order to set the woman he loves free from a prison he has 
contributed to if not created himself.  The woman left behind, set 
free, but wondering if she might have liked the prison better.  At 
least there he was her jailer.

So what does that show you about them?  That they're dysfunctional?  Oh 
even they know that.

They weren't to begin with.  He was not violent before he had to fight 
for her life.  Before her image on the other side of his mirror made 
him forget that he was a student who loved seeking truth.  Before she 
became his truth.

And she wanted only to be his friend, not to be the very air he 
breathed.

They are co-dependent now, and they will destroy each other.  But they 
do not see the entire big picture of blinding white light that they 
create.

They only see a prismed scattering of colored bars, never knowing that 
should they incorporate all those hues into the same shaft of light, 
they might be able to conquer the darkness they live in.

It is fortunate for me that they see only distorted pieces of the whole 
of their dynamic.  If they knew how powerful they really are together – 
if they truly had a mirror instead of a prism, perhaps – they would 
destroy me and everything I've worked for.

And I am such an artist, such a poet, that I would admit to that being 
my preferred demise.  Conquered by the only worthy adversary I've ever 
had.

But that won't happen, not as long as they can't see that they are 
being fractured by the prism they keep between them as defense against 
each other.  Against themselves.

They see only a prismic reflection, aided by the haze of smoke I am 
happy to throw over their mirrors.

For now they see through a glass darkly... and if all goes right, never 
face to face.

***

~Finis~