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A Midnight Clear
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It took seven years and a stack of triplicate forms to have someone
declared legally dead, so Scully's life had merely been in limbo,
awaiting a final verdict. Always one to rush to judgment, her mother
had shown her a headstone with her name on it. "You don't know what
it was like for us," she'd said. "It's a miracle you're here."
She didn't feel like a miracle. She felt light, almost hollow. She
returned to the Hoover building as though a ghost, haunting her old
life, and the faces she passed reflected the eerie sensation back at
her.
"Agent Scully." Hank Higgens, the security guard at the door, gaped
openly. "I haven't seen you in months. I asked where you'd been off
to, and they told me you were... gone."
"Well, I'm back, thanks," she replied lightly as she fished out her
keys and then walked through the metal detector. "But just visiting
today."
She had one more round of doctor's hoops, both physical and
psychological, to jump through before they would let her back on
active duty. As for what would happen after that, it was up to
Mulder.
He, too, seemed to look on her as a benevolent entity from the other
side, a welcome one, but an unsettling curiosity nonetheless.
She found him in almost the exact same spot in which she'd left him
months before -- typing furiously amid piles of folders, a pencil
clutched between his teeth. "I could use your help," she said by way
of announcement.
Mulder's shoulders tensed and he swung around in the chair, looking
vaguely alarmed. "Scully," he said, relaxing a bit when he saw her
standing whole in front of him. "What are you doing here?"
"I was in the neighborhood. Tree shopping, actually, and I thought
you might be able to help me." She did not want to have the
conversation in the office, where anyone might be listening, nor in
her home, where she could still see Duane Barry through the window.
"Sure, of course," he answered, already scrambling to get his coat.
"It's close to quitting time anyway."
"What are you working on?" she asked as they waited by the elevator.
"Oh, nothing in particular," he replied, and scuffed at the floor
with his shoe.
Skinner had told her the truth, that Mulder was combing the abduction
literature for any connections to Skyland Mountain. She was home but
he was still stuck up there among the waving pines.
"You're starting Christmas early this year," he said as they exited
into the chilly evening air. "Looking for a tree already."
"Best to shop early before the good ones are all gone."
She wanted a big one this year, large enough to span the windows and
remove the smell of fresh paint in her living room. She had half a
mind to leave it up through Valentine's Day.
They took her car, the one that still had a quarter tank of gas left
from Before.
Mulder redirected the heating vents so that they all pointed at her.
"We had a cat for a few years when I was younger. Samantha brought
him home from school and by the time my father got home she'd named
the cat Fred and dressed him up in doll clothes. Fred *loved*
Christmas, especially the tree. In the middle of the night, he'd
mount that thing like it was a mechanical bull and then it was
midnight at the OK Kitty Coral."
"You mom must have loved that."
"Oh, that was just the start of things. He would shake the tree until
the ornaments fell off, and then play hockey with them around the
house. Sam loved that animal, but when he ran off and disappeared, I
don't think my parents looked too hard for him."
The Christmas tree lot was doing a rather slow business and Scully was
able to find a parking spot with no trouble at all. She inhaled
deeply, taking in the smell of pine and the sharp winter air.
The wind stood Mulder's hair on end as he squinted at her across the
roof of her car. "What do you say, Scully? Let's go bag us some big
Christmas game."
She walked directly past the wreaths and smaller trees to majestic
firs on the far side of the lot. Temporary spotlights were rigged up
on makeshift wooden poles, highlighting some of the more impressive
specimens. She circled, honing in on her prey.
"What do you think of this one?" he asked, hauling a seven footer to
its full height.
"Crooked at the top."
He laid it back down and they moved on. Scully reached in with one
gloved hand and wrapped her fingers around a sturdy trunk. Thick
branches tickled her nose as she pulled the tree upright. "What do
you think of this one?" she asked, craning her head back to see the
point.
"What's that?" Mulder teased from the other side. "I thought I heard
a tree talking to me."
"Very funny," she said, shaking it to help the branches descend. "How
does it look?"
"It's a little thin on this side."
Scully replaced the tree and dusted the loose needles from her hands.
They wandered deeper into the parking lot forest, edging away from the
other customers who kept to the lighted areas.
"Hey, Scully," he said. "Check this out. It's a Skinner tree." She
turned around to see him holding a tall tree with bare branches at the
top.
"Prune it back a little and it would be okay," she said.
"I'm going to tell him you said that." He put the tree down and
disappeared into the darkness.
"Mulder..."
"Hmm?"
"Speaking of Skinner... I talked to him earlier today."
"Oh, yeah?" His voice was growing farther away, so she crept closer
towards the sound.
"We talked about my coming back to work." She heard his footsteps
stop, but he didn't say anything. "I've passed the physicals so far
and I've met with my assigned counselor. I could be back on active
duty as soon as next week."
"That's... that's great, Scully."
She ducked around a tree but he had vanished again. "He told me I
wouldn't be able to come back to the X-files," she said, still
pursuing him. "He said...Mulder, where are you?"
"I'm right here," he replied quietly, pushing back some branches.
She blew her hair back out of her eyes. "He said they won't let us be
partnered again unless you complete the review process over what
happened. You haven't filed a final report..."
"There's nothing final to report. You know that."
"You haven't met with your EAP counselor."
He ducked her gaze. "Like that would make a difference anyway."
"It would mean that we could be partners again. We could maybe start
to put this all behind us and get back to the way things were."
"Things will never be the way they were," he shot back. "I can't
believe you don't see that."
"They're concerned about you, Mulder. They're afraid you haven't
moved past this case."
"Your case," he said. "You can't even own it. What did your EAP
counselor have to say about that? You think, what? That you'll come
back to the X-files and we'll just pretend you were never abducted?
This is the most significant development we've had, our biggest lead,
and you're not only refusing to investigate, you've turned a blind eye
completely."
Here she'd been thinking he was trying to protect her from coming back
to work. In truth he was protecting her case. His case. Whatever.
"Maybe they're right," she said hoarsely. "Maybe we shouldn't be
working together."
She turned away into the trees, wending through the dark in search of
an escape. She heard him following her.
"Scully, wait. Wait a second."
She didn't slow down until she'd reached the lighted area of the
parking lot again. "What?" she asked, folding her arms around
herself.
"Sit down a second." He took her by the elbow and gestured toward a
nearby bench.
She shook him off but followed him to the bench anyway. "You don't
want me investigating my own case," she said, "and you didn't even
have the guts to tell me."
"I don't think you want to investigate it. That's a big difference."
"From what I understand, you've been doing little else for months now,
Mulder, and have gotten nowhere. This big lead you speak of, where is
it? There've been no arrests. You have no suspects. If we had
something tangible, I'd say let's go for it. I'd be right there with
you, knocking down doors and demanding answers."
He rose up slightly and pulled out his wallet. Inside was a folded
piece of paper, which he handed to her.
"What's this?"
"Your mother had this filed but I intercepted it. It wouldn't have
gone through anyway."
Scully unfolded the paper and tilted it toward the light. It was an
application to have her legally deceased. Under cause of death, it
read "homicide," and Duane Barry was the stated killer. Suspected
manner of death was blank.
"It was a bunch of lies," Mulder said, his hands shoved deep in his
pockets.
"It's irrelevant now." She folded it back up and tried to hand it
back to him, but he wouldn't accept it. She shrugged and ripped it in
half.
"You see?" He turned to her. "That's your answer to everything."
"And your answer is to keep carrying it around forever. That's
somehow more productive? There's nothing useful here, Mulder." She
stood up, casting a shadow over him. "I want to come back. I want to
find out what happened to me. But I can't spend the rest of my life
caught in that one moment."
She gave the torn paper back to him and left him sitting there. When
he caught up with her, she had found the perfect tree: seven feet,
strong, full branches and a beautiful point at the top.
"You know, I never really got the connection between dragging a fir
tree inside the house and the birth of Jesus Christ. It's not like
there were pine trees present at the Nativity scene. You'd be better
off decorating a bale of hay or maybe a palm tree."
"The tree is a symbol of life," she said without looking at him.
With the help of an attendant, they got the tree tied to the roof of
her car. "If you let me pick up my car," Mulder said, "I can come
back with you and help you get it into the house."
"No need." She could find a neighbor to help her.
"Just drop me back at work then," he said as she slammed her car door.
"Of course."
When they reached the Hoover, he unbuckled his seatbelt but did not
exit the car. "Scully, it's not that I don't want you back. It's
what I've wanted for months, more than anything."
But she had returned with no real information, no tinder to stoke his
fire. It must be such a disappointment.
"I'm here," she said. "I'm back. What happened, Mulder, I want to
understand it just as much as you do, but I have no memories, no way
to process this part of my past. It's empty and there's nothing there
for me now. I have no choice but to go forward. If you can't go with
me, then I'll go alone. I can't be both a partner and a case file to
you. I can't and I won't."
"And I can't declare it closed."
She sighed and pressed the button to unlock the car doors.
"Goodnight, Mulder."
She left him on the curb, his coat flaring in the wind, as he watched
her drive away. Kindly Luke Flannigan next door helped her wrestle
the tree into her apartment and get it centered in the stand. She
spent the whole evening dragging a chair around and stringing up the
lights. It was close to midnight when she placed the last ornament on
its branch.
She turned off the lamps to admire her handiwork, and the room glowed
with soft colored lights, the tree twinkling at her in a merry array
of tinsel, silver globes and red-nosed reindeer. She jumped at a
quiet knock on her door.
Mulder stood outside in the hall, and she hesitated a moment before
deciding to risk her Christmas spirit by letting him inside.
He hung back at the door for a long minute and it occurred to her that
he probably hadn't been to her house since it was last a crime scene.
"The tree looks great," he said with open admiration.
"What do you want, Mulder?"
"I know it's late, but I saw your tree on."
"It's very late."
"But not too late, I don't think." He reached inside his coat and
pulled out a folder. "Here."
She flipped open the cover.
"It's my final report," he said. "I thought you might like to read it
and see if there's anything you want to add."
Duane Barry's picture rattled her, but she made herself look. She
scanned through all the details, from her blood in the trunk to
decision to terminate her life support at the hospital.
She skipped to the end, where the case was marked "unsolved, pending
further investigation."
He was watching her for a reaction, waiting for her to object, she
knew. She drew a long breath and met his gaze.
"It looks complete to me. For now."
He smiled broadly. "See there? I signed at the end."
"Like Christmas come early," she said, deadpan. She handed the report
back to him. "Can I offer you some eggnog, Mulder?"
He made a face. "That stuff is disgusting. No, thanks. I should get
going anyway. Merry Christmas, Scully."
She shut the door behind him and leaned against it, alone once more
with her tree. "Merry Christmas," she said.
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Thanks to Amanda for proofing!
Feedback makes the best holiday present! syn_tax6@yahoo
The XF timeline gets hopelessly confused around the time of Scully's
return. One could write them in quarantine after Firewalker or
recovering from Donnie Pfaster. This is just one of many possible
imaginings, and I thank you for taking the time to read it.
(
geocities.com/xmas_files)