TITLE: No Prince Charming AUTHOR: Susanne Barringer EMAIL: sbarringer@usa.net ARCHIVE: Anywhere okay with these headers attached. CATEGORY: V KEYWORDS: Mulder/Scully UST SUMMARY: Sometimes perfection isn't all it's cracked up to be. RATING: PG SPOILERS: Nothing specific DISCLAIMER: Not my characters. Just borrowed from Chris Carter, 1013, and Fox. No infringement intended. Thank you to Sue and Alanna for beta-reading. ________ No Prince Charming by Susanne Barringer He's no Prince Charming. It would be absurd to love a man who is so flawed. I mean really flawed. Not just leaving the toilet seat up or biting his fingernails. I mean flaws that run so deep they're indistinguishable from the soul. Flaws that are mirrored in every word, every action, every decision the man makes. He certainly doesn't have a reputation for being perfect. I wonder if people realize how far away from it he truly is. Enough to drive me insane. Disappearing without a word, slamming the door when he's angry, acting like a spoiled child when things don't go his way. And so much more. The man is a walking nightmare of psychotic insecurity and obsessive overconfidence, a true paradox. He makes no sense. No sense at all. One day I think he loves me. He looks at me with a torrent of tenderness and passion, like some kind of romantic hero out of an adolescent flight of fancy. Add a white steed or a loincloth and he'd be every woman's fantasy. The perfect man. The promise of the perfect lover. Next day he's ditching me to pursue some crazy dream. Monsters or ghosts or beings from the stars. Nothing's more important than evidence, experience, anything to prove that he's right. A personified oxymoron, this man. Never consistent, never predictable. Flawed. Beautiful. Women watch him, follow him with their eyes. Their desire stakes a claim on him, wishing for his attention, hoping to turn his head. His tunnel vision bypasses every one of them every time. I see in their eyes what they think of him. They imagine him perfect-- perfect in their world, perfect in their bed, making them come perfectly over and over again. Even I know better than that, though not from experience. Can't they see the flaws? I face them everyday, every minute, coping with the craziness, the obsession, the fabulous wonder of it all. I envy those women who can look him over, molest him with their eyes in a way that I never can. The glass slipper never fits. He is flawed. He is not my Prince Charming. I have tried to convince myself of that since the first day I laid eyes on him. It was easier then, when his lunacy and paranoia dominated my perception of him. When I hadn't learned to dig deep beneath the self-assurance and arrogance to find the small child, the man barely alive, carefully concealed under the surface of perfect insanity. I have since come to understand that, despite my denials, he must be my fated Prince, flaws and all. If that makes me cursed, so be it. I'll swim and dive and romp in the curse. To love the less than perfect man can only be the truest kind of love. He passed imperfect a long time ago. I passed idealism right about the same time. The man is obsessive about work, about his X-Files, about record keeping. He is sloppy about everything else. His suits never quite fit right. There's always that slight sag in the rear, the shoulders a bit too broad, the hem that never falls where it should. His apartment is some kind of organized whirlwind of memories and newspaper clippings and empty sunflower-seed shells. He can't remember a birthday or holiday to save his life, but he knows practically every X-File by heart. Some would say his priorities are in the wrong place, but I have never found that to be true. He has a heart of gold when it comes right down to it, opening it up to those who are most persecuted, most vulnerable. Perhaps he sees himself in them, tormented and so incredibly defenseless. Still the twelve- year-old boy who lost everything in one tragic night and has spent a lifetime trying to get at least some of it back. He is driven by the hope of recapturing the infinitely lost, trying to recover the past, thinking that Samantha is still waiting for him to rescue her. That is the flaw that most envelops him, the one that can never be repaired. It is, in the end, what is least resistible. And so, my resistance fades by the month, the year. No Prince Charming, but somehow mine. I am drawn to him by the promise of what could be but has yet to come. There is no shining armor or lavish castle with this man. His brand of love brings much less, yet so much more. True faith and trust, loyalty, connection. I have nothing concrete to show for it, not a thing, yet I would give up all I have for just a little more of it, for just the smallest taste of the happily ever after that is owed to us. Our enemies vanquished, the dragons slain, the wicked stepmother dead and buried. That is what we live for, he and I, no more, no less. As far as fairy tales go, we have hardly begun. END ____________ feedback to: sbarringer@usa.net All my fanfic available at: http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Dreamworld/2442