“Watershed” by Rory D. Cottrell

"Watershed" by Rory D. Cottrell

******************************************************

"the heart of a skeptic and the mind of a child

put my life in a box and let my imagination run wild

pour the cement for my feet

the heart and the mind on a parallel course

never the two shall meet..."

--indigo girls

"you and me of the 10000 wars"

-----------------------

<beep>

"I can’t believe you had to work, today of all days! How could you do that to Mom--" <click>

<beep>

"Hi, Dana, it’s Charlie... ah, ... we missed you at the reception, but I guess you had to work... look, I understand, Mom does too. Nancy and I have to be back in Philidelphia tomorrow; Nancy’s mom has the kids. Bill, Kathy and the boys are going to stay with Mom for a few days. Missy called; planes are grounded up there... Give me a call, will ya’? I’ve really missed you. ‘Kay, bye." <click>

<beep>

"Dana, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bite your head off like that. Ah,... it’s about 6 pm now. I know your work is important, and I’m sorry. Look, we’re going to stay here with Mom for a few days, the boys have this week off. .... I hope your case goes well." <click>

<beep>

"Hi, sis. I’m still in Maine. The weather has been just terrible here, been snowed in for days. I called home... are you okay? I know you left for North Carolina right after the funeral... Dad understands if you couldn’t be there, don’t feel guilty about leaving, okay? I know how you get... Look, I’ll be at Mom’s by tomorrow night if this storm finally blows over. Let’s get together, okay? Bye." <click>

<beep>

"Dana, it’s your mother. How was North Carolina?... I was hoping to catch you at home, seeing that it’s after nine pm. You must have gone out. Well, give me a call when you get in, alright, honey? Love you." <click>

<beep>

"...."

<beep>

"Dana, it’s Mom again. Are you okay, honey? You haven’t returned any of my calls. Bill, Kathy, and boys are headed back to Albany tomorrow night. I thought we could all meet for dinner before they leave; you, me, your sister, your brother and his family. I know you’re busy with work and all,... well, just give me a call, dear. Love you." <click>

<beep>

"Dana, it’s Melissa. Pick up if you’re there. Please?... We’re worried about you. We all miss Dad, but--"

<SLAM>

<BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ....."

-------------------------

"i don’t know if it was real or in a dream

lately waking up i’m not sure where i’ve been..."

--indigo girls, "language or the kiss"

- - - -

It was after the automatic timers triggered she realized that a deep dusk had fallen on the living room. Head and neck draped across the back of the couch, as if hours were spent daily just staring at the ceiling, Dana Scully opened her eyes to do just that, ignoring the crick in her neck and the pounding headache that had threatened to invade her brain all day. Absently, she brought her hand up to look at her watch, despite the fact that somewhere in the back of her harried brain she knew that the timers were set for 4:30.

Finding her watch missing from her watch, she rubbed at the well worn spot above the wrist bone, missing the watch’s familiar weight, the way the plastic catch dug into the underside of her wrist.

Fireworks sliced through the nerves in her neck and legs, and it was only then that she remembered that her knees had been drawn up to her chest. Cramped and sore, she slowly stretched, all the while searching the couch and endtable for the missing watch.

Instead, she found the answering machine on the floor and an annoying dial tone blaring from under the chair.

Eyes burning and red from lack of sleep, she vowed never to do another literature search for Mulder over again. Nearly half a dozen cases sat in her in-box, in various stages of investigation, and another dozen or so that Mulder had asked her to flag down and modem to him at the hospital, much to the chagrin of the hospital staff.

Mounds of paperwork still sat on her desktop; out of some retro-chivalrous sense of fair play (or was it?), she decided to look over his reports as well. It was bad enough that between the two of them they had the highest accident rate/hospitalization record in the Bureau; he didn’t need a mountain of paperwork waiting for him when he got back when it was inevitable he would get chewed out for getting hurt yet again.

Seeing the answering machine, on the floor and in general disarray, she remembered the other reason why she had spent most of her time in the office.

Taking a second to right the minor damage, she noticed the fallen bulb from the Christmas tree. It was lying on the table where the answering machine belonged.

A pang of guilt fought its way up her throat as she fingered the smathering of neglected needles that had accumulated under the tree. Swallowing the lump that had been slowly growing, she ignored the needles once again, as she had every night since returning from North Carolina.

Her head boomed with the chiming clock, acutely aware of little noises that before had seemed minor and unobtrusive. As she walked, tired and strained muscles in her legs and back begged for relief.

Aspirin. Aspirin would get rid of the aches and pains <not all of them, a smothered voice cried>. Rolling her head to work out the kinks, she stopped near the stove and reached to the cupboard above to pull down the bottle of ibuprofen. She took them dry, wincing as they went down her throat.

Stepping to the sink for a glass of water to chase the ibuprofen, she spotted the half-empty tumbler of scotch sitting on the edge of the sink. Next to it stood the bottle that she thought she would never open. Hoping a bit of booze would help her relax enough to fall asleep for once, she had opened the bottle of scotch. It had been intended as a gag gift from her housemates when she graduated from medical school, who said the day Saint Dana Katherine tied one on would be the day hell froze over.

Well, it was winter, and she felt like hell. Close enough.

--------------------------------

"there was a table set for six, and five were there

i stood outside and kept my eyes upon that empty chair..."

--indigo girls "language or the kiss"

- - - -

Luther Lee Boggs, dressed in the bright orange coveralls of the North Carolina prison system, the mass of curls on his head slicked back with sweat, sat in the armchair across from the couch, a dazed, if not haunted, look in his eye.

With the slightest hint of a southern drawl, his tongue rolled out the words like honey dripping from a knife:

His face morphed into Mulder's mannerisms, his expressions,

<You're the one that believed me.>

<Somewhere, beyond the sea...>

<Well, there's plenty of room in that cold, dark place for liars, Scully...>

Boggs' image was replaced by Lucas Henry, standing in the brewery, a feral lust in his ice blue eyes. He carried his animalistic look like a dark and heavy cloak. Clutching his side with one hand, he stopped to inspect where the blood freely ran down his fingers. He raised the axe with the other hand, ready to throw it if given the inclination to do so,..

Mulder, lying under the blood splattered white cross, desparately trying to remain conscious,...

Uncle Frank, letting the ashes catch in the wind,...

<Dana... we lost your dad... he had a massive coronary about an hour ago... he's gone...>

<Starbuck-->

It was Thanksgiving. The grandchildren were seated around the card table, in the middle of a secret bread ball war that no one was supposed to know about. The adults were laughing, eating, talking. Her father sat at the end of the table, passing the meat platter,--

And just as soon as her brother Charlie took the platter from her father’s hands, he vanished. Conversation continued, oblivious to the change. Her brothers still debated the intricacies of a no-huddle offense despite the lack of input that they surely expected from her father in the matter. Her mother chatted amicably with her son's wives, while Melissa playfully scolded the children as she picked up bread balls that had fallen around their table.

Her father's chair was empty, and no one else seemed to notice.

Chimes were ringing,...

"Dana--"

Scully barely registered the sound of the ringing telephone, or her

own distant, muffled voice over the tiny speaker telling the caller

that she was unable to answer the phone and to please leave a message. The message tape whirled as she pulled the comforter off her head.

"Dana, it's me again."

Scully groaned, hearing her sister's voice blaring over the speaker. Why she had the volume up so damn high was beyond her. She stuffed her ears with the nearest throw pillows to cushion the sound.

"Dana, pick up the phone, please. I know you're home. I called

your office, they said you went home at 2 o'clock this afternoon... Dana, pick up... Starbuck--"

Only a sibling would know just the right buttons to push; Melissa

knew hers to a tee. Scully's hand slammed down on the receiver faster than

she would have thought possible, considering her inebriated <though not quite enough, eh, Dana?> condition. She hissed into the phone, "Don't EVER call me that!"

"It got you on the phone, didn't it?"

"What do you want?" Scully asked viciously. Her head started to hurt, and her eyes fell on the very visible, and very empty, bottle of scotch on the endtable. She groaned to herself.

"That's a fine way to greet someone."

"I have a headache. What do you want?"

"Well, I wanted to have a late lunch with you this afternoon, but you weren't at the office when I called. I've been leaving messages all week. Where the hell have you been?"

"Working."

"Not this afternoon, apparently. When I was trying to track you down, they connected me to your ASAC's office. He said that you were sent home on medical leave. What's this about?"

Scully silently fumed, remembering her "chat" with her ASAC and the EAP office that morning. Both felt that the "--trauma of shooting and essentially killing a suspect in a federal kidnapping case, and the associated emotions with the near-fatal shooting of your partner warrents a bit of leave time for recovery", and a none-too-subtle mention of her father’s passing, which irritated her to no end. She was told to go home, get some rest, and make an appointment with EAP if she felt it necessary.

"I'm on vacation."

"Not willingly... Dana, talk to me. Does any of this have to do with Dad--"

"NO!" She regretted it the moment the word left her mouth. It was something she didn’t want to believe. "My partner was shot last week." Maybe blunt shock would get her sister off the subject.

"I'm sorry, we didn't know-- Look, Dana, Mom and I are worried about you. It's not like you to, well, to... clam up this way. Dad wouldn't

want--"

"Who are you to say what Dad would want?!" she yelled.

If it would have accomplished anything, she would have thrown the phone out the window, but that would only send both Melissa and her mother barreling through her door, demanding explanations. She didn't want to deal with them, or any of it at all.

Sighing, Scully forced herself to calm down, thoughts sloshing through her head like a bad rollercoaster ride. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say that."

"Yes, you did."

Scully could almost imagine Melissa’s expression; Melissa had never really gotten along with their father, not like she had, or thought she had.

"Yes, you did," Melissa said again. "Dana, we all cared for him,

most of all you. You were his baby. If he picked favorites, it would have

been you, and we all know it. Pat, Bill, me, Mom, you. We all miss him.

It's okay to miss him...I know why you couldn't stay for the reception, even

if you won’t admit it to yourself. You couldn't say good-bye."

"That's not true," Scully blurted out, hearing the choked sob emerge

from her throat. She did not want to cry, not now, and willed the tears to

remain at bay. If they started now, she knew they would not stop.

Melissa's voice was soft, soothing, almost hypnotic. Scully envied

that talent in her sister.

"Remember when the dog died?" Melissa asked. "Bill and Charlie had this elaborate funeral planned, but you wouldn't come near the field. I

remember, you had this look on your face-- I don’t know how to describe it, but it said everything. There was no way any of us could get you to help bury him. Dad had to carry you home, remember?"

Frankly, no, she did not. She remembered the day they found Galley

lying peacefully on his blankets in the pantry. His once shiny black coat

was now rumpled tufts of fur. When he did not greet them at the door as they arrived home from school, they all knew something was wrong.

He was much older than any of the children, having belonged to their mother before she married. Galley would wait at the door for them as they trotted home from school, played patiently with impatient children that did not understand dogs did not necessarily like to get dressed up in old clothes. He had even watched over their cribs, all night long sometimes, when non-family members were in the house.

She remembered the emptiness she felt when she didn’t have his familar warmth at the foot of her bed when she slept, or hear his jingling tags as he patroled the house late at night.

But not a funeral, definately not a funeral.

"Dana, are you all right?" Melissa's voice lost it's hypnotic

quality, now urgent and pleading.

"I'm fine," she slurred. Melancholy took the forced edge from her

voice, letting her tongue feel thick. "Just sorta phased out there for a

minute."

"Sorta?" Scully could hear the lecture brewing in her sister's tone,

and realized that she should have hung up when she had the chance.

"Dana, have you been drinking?"

"What about it?"

The question-- the accusation, annoyed her. She didn't understand

why it should bother her at all. Almost thirty and worried about getting

caught with her hands in the proverbial cookie jar. It didn't matter that she was an agent with the FBI, or had a medical degree, and was more than capable of taking care of herself, and had since the age of eighteen. Around her family, it was as if she were still a little girl, who never got into trouble except for the occassional scolding over soiled school clothes and too much roughhousing with the boys.

Around everyone... except her father.

He never said or did anything that said he disapproved of his

children's actions or decisions. Which made it all the more infuriating

when...

"Dana?"

"What?" How long had she been quiet?

"I'm coming over. You shouldn't be alone right now."

Scully closed her eyes, shook her head. She recognized that tone of

voice, in both her mother and herself, and knew protests would be flatly

turned down. "No, no, no. It's late." She went to look at her watch,

which was still not on her wrist, and almost started to cry. "What time is

it anyway?"

"Nine-thirty."

"It'll be eleven before you get here. Don't."

"Dana, you're upset and... you're drunk. Two things that you

usually are not. Besides, who would you rather come over, me or Mom? She's worried about you. And you know how Mom gets when she's worried."

Scully felt as if she was seven years old again, nursing a sprained

wrist after falling out of the tree her mother specifically told her not to

climb. Melissa had found her in the closet, hiding, and without so much as a word of future blackmail, brought her an ice bag to take down the swelling so no one would notice.

Curling into a fetal position, knees drawn tightly to her chest, she

instinctively pulled the afghan over her head, nestled the phone as if

holding onto it for dear life.

"Don’t tell Mom," she sobbed, feeling small and vulnerable.

"Dana, she’d understand. She lives for this sort of thing. Anything to coddle her babies."

"No, please, Melissa. It’s not fair to her. I don’t want her to know how--" The words caught in her throat. Hot tears fought their way under closed eyelids.

"How much this is bothering you? I’d be worried if it didn’t... I’ll see you in an hour, okay?"

"Okay."

--------------------------------

"there was steam on the windows from the kitchen

laughter like a language i once spoke with ease

but i’m made mute by the virtue of decision

i choose most of your life goes on without me..."

--indigo girls "language or the kiss"

- - - -

They were sitting in a small cafe outside of Baltimore, as was their custom every Thursday. Even when she lived in College Park, he had made a concerted effort to visit his youngest daughter on a weekly basis. The Naval Academy in Annapolis could survive without him for an hour or two. He had done the same for all of his children when time and distance permitted.

Whatever his motivation, to make up for lost time when he was out on manuevers when they were children or as he claimed, to get away from the snot-nosed prima donna’s who wouldn’t know a main stay from a yardarm, Dana did not care. For one hour, he was all hers; no competing with brothers and sister for attention, no need to worry about being called away on some emergency.

Realizing that she was playing with the remnants of her soup and salad, she put down her fork before she could impale the last shreds of lettuce. But, it was not before her father noticed the anxiousness in her hands.

"It’s a good thing your patients are already dead, Starbuck. With hands that jittery, I wouldn’t want to be on your operating table.

Scully laughed in spite of herself, wrapping fingers around one another to steady them. She had not been this nervous taking her medical boards. Compared to this, the boards were a breeze.

"Dad, ... the recruiter from Quantico dropped by again yesterday."

It was as if a dark curtain fell between them as the coals of an argument two years old were raked over once again. The spring of her fourth year of medical school, a professor in pathology had told a friend about his remarkable student. A week later, a recruiter from Quantico came knocking on her door.

The first time, she turned him down. The residency at Johns Hopkins had been too good to pass up; a lot of favors had been cashed, a lot of strings pulled. She was happy at Hopkins, but after working in conjunction with the Baltimore M.E. office in recent months, the FBI did not seem like the back-burner, top-of-the-bookshelf idea it had been two years previous.

Her parents had been less than pleased that she had even considered the F.B.I. as an option, their opinions of the Bureau hold backs from the era of McCarthyism. Early in his career, William Scully served in the JAG office, and was witness to the trouncing within the military. As an English teacher, her mother did not like having her lesson plans dictated to her by bureaucrats that had probably never read the books they were banning.

Though the Bureau had changed drastically from the ever present watchdog under Hoover, first impressions were hard to squash.

A long, too-silent pause hovered between them.

Unable to meet her father’s eyes, Dana Scully stared at her folded hands and said, "Dad, ... I’ve decided to join."

Her father said nothing, did nothing other than silently fold his napkin across his empty plate. He called for the check and stared out the window.

"I’d be working at Quantico, Dad. Navy jurisdiction..." That didn’t seem to appease him, allay any of the fear or anger, or whatever he was feeling but refused to show or admit.

Scully leaned back in the booth, deflated and defeated. She had expected a fight and received none. The utter lack of response yielded a harder blow than any sort of reprimand she had concocted in her mind.

"Dad, say something. Anything."

He turned towards her, rounded features blanching as an etheral glow surrounded him. His lips moved, but no words emerged.

Startled, Scully backed out of the booth, stumbling as she passed a vacant chair nearby. Losing her balance, she fell against a cold body. Turning to apologize, eyes still focused on the ground, she noticed the white canvas sneakers, the wide orange pantleg. Instinctively she backed away.

Luther Lee Boggs, dressed in the bright orange coveralls of the North Carolina prison system, the mass of curls on his head slicked back with sweat, stood in the narrow hallway that led to the gas chamber. Hands and ankles shackled, his head tilted to one side and stoop-shouldered, he shuffled his way closer and closer.

"Did you get my message, Starbuck?"

Sucking in air as if surfacing from a dark and watery tomb, Scully barely heard the answering machine as she fought to control her breathing and the pounding in her head.

"... please leave a message after the tone."

"Hey, Scully, pick up if you’re there."

It took a few seconds to untangle her limbs from the confines of the afghan twisted around her torso. Her arms ached, her head throbbed, and for the briefest of moments she wondered why her answering machine was so popular all of the sudden.

Fumbling with the phone and its tiny buttons as bloodshot eyes refused to focus, she managed to press TALK finally and bring the receiver to her ear.

"Yeah?"

"Scully?"

"Who else would you call in the middle of the night, Mulder?" Sitting up was a chore, as vertigo threatened to take all of the contents of her stomach and empty it on the floor.

"It’s not the middle of the night, Scully. It’s only 10 p.m."

10 p.m.? An half-hour, thirty lousy minutes? She wasn’t sure if she was angry at him for waking her from the first real sleep in nearly a week, or grateful for interupting what would eventually turn into another restless night of bad dreams.

"I lost my watch." It sounded lame, but fast thinking just did not seem likely. "What’s up?"

"I’m bustin’ outta this place, Copper. One more dish of lime jello, and I may go psychotic. Could you, ah, pick me up tomorrow at the airport. I have a bit of a mobility problem."

Stifling a yawn, she looked for her watch, again. There was a time when she would be just hitting her stride at about 10 p.m., with at least another five hours before exhaustion forced her to call it quits.

She was just so tired. So very tired.

She started to yawn as she answered. "What time tomorrow?"

"There’s a ten o’clock to D.C. Should get there around eleven," he replied hurriedly, as if it was an afterthought. "Hey, Scully, ... have you been drinking?"

"What?! Is it tatooed on my forehead?! I’ve said, what-- ten words to you?"

"Actually, I was just fishing, and it looks like I caught one. Let’s just say I have a sixth sense about these things."

"So, what gave it away? It took my sister a good ten minutes to figure that out."

"One, you didn’t have a smart remark when I told you I was being discharged, and I gave you a wonderful set up that you blatantly ignored. And two, you have now said a total of forty-two words to me, over half of which were slurred."

She hrumphed loudly, he laughed. "So, Dana Scully, tanked, and I’m not there to see it. Life is just not fair."

"Yeah, well, life’s a bitch."

"Pessimism, another drunken trait. Funny, I never pictured you a morose drunk. In fact, I’m having a hard time picturing this at all."

"Learn something new everyday, don't you, Mulder. The truth is out there, you know."

"I don't think I like this truth, Scully. Want to talk about it? I’ll even waive my hourly fee."

"No, I don’t."

She didn’t... did she?

No, she couldn’t talk to him, not if she wanted to maintain a professional distance in their relationship. A modicrum of privacy; she did not want nor need to have him inside her head. She didn’t want anyone inside her head, and right now, she’d pay anything to get out herself.

"Scully?"

"What?" <Wake up, Dana!>

"You really are out of it, aren’t you." It was more a statement than a question. "How much have you had to drink?"

She shrugged as she sat forward, holding her head with her free hand, a little annoyed with all the questions. Why couldn’t everyone just leave her the hell alone?

"Some scotch."

"How much?"

"You remember that bottle above the fridge," she said, picking up the very same bottle, upturning it with an odd sense of overdramatization. She didn’t remember draining the bottle; that itself upset her. The tumbler on the table was still half full.

"The graduation present, right?" She didn’t finish her answer. During the interim, it must have dawned on him. She thought she could hear him sigh in exasperation. <Smart guy, Mulder.>

"Oh, Scully. Why?"

"Irish Catholic peragotive to get smashed for no apparent reason." She dropped the bottle on the end table, and picked up the tumbler.

"Scully, you don’t drink."

Swirling the amber liquid, she closed her eyes in disgust. Even the thought of one more sip made her stomach turn. She pushed the glass as far away as possible, leaned back and stared at the ceiling. "Your point, Mulder?"

"You’re gonna have one helluva hangover tomorrow. Pray for a slow work day."

Scully almost laughed. "Nope. No work for me. Got the official ‘medical leave’ boot from EAP. I’m free as a bird."

"Why did you get the boot?"

"Apparantly, I flunked my after-shooting interview with EAP."

"But you didn’t kill Lucas Henry. You said he fell through the catwalk."

"Not THAT after-shooting interview."

"Oh... Scully-- can you talk to someone? How about your mother--"

She didn’t let him finish his suggestion. "NO! I--" She took a deep breath, squelching in her mind all the protests, all the pleas. "I’m fine, really. I needed a vacation anyway. No time like the present. Besides, you shouldn’t be walking on that leg for at least another two weeks, and there is no way I’m playing Jeeves every time you want a cup of coffee."

He was laughing softly, probably thinking up a smart remark of his own to tide the silence.

The line was quiet for several minutes. She didn’t notice, lost in a world all her own, separate from the Bureau, her family, Mulder and the pain. Eyes blissfully closed with little reminder of how tired she was.

He had started talking again, and she had to ask him to repeat it.

"Why did he call you Starbuck?"

--------------------------------

"when we last talked we were lying on our backs

looking up at the sky, looking through the ceiling

i used to lie like that alone out on the driveway

trying to read the greek upon the stars,

the alphabet of feelings..."

--indigo girls "language or the kiss"

--------

"Scully, if this is too personal--"

She shook her head, realizing that he couldn’t see her. The defensive urge not to talk about her father seemed to be disappear entirely. <When did that happen?> she thought idly to herself. All week long she had been adamant about avoiding the subject; had nearly lost her temper in the EAP office when they brought up her father.

<Mulder, or your dad?>

<You’re talking to yourself in the third person.>

**"Talking to yourself is a sign of senility, Dana sweatheart--" her father’s voice echoed. "You’re too young to be senile, so you must be doing something else out here, when it’s late and little girls are supposed to be sleeping. So, what are doing out here? Stargazing?"

"I’m reading to Galley," a stubborn four year old voice piped. "Mopy Dick."

"That’s _Moby Dick_, sweatheart." He sat down beside her, dwarfing her easily with his size. He pulled her into his lap, and wrapped his arms around her. "It’s cold out here. Why aren’t you wearing a jacket?"

"It wasn’t cold when I went," she replied. "And I’m not cold."

"Well, you don’t want to catch the sniffles now, do you?"

"But I’m reading to Galley."

"Since when do you read by yourself?"

"Since now. See, Galley likes the story." At that, the dog climbed into his lap as well, displacing Dana to his knee. She tried to push the dog out of her father’s lap, only to be richly rewarded with a face full of licks. "See? We’ve been playing all day, and I’m going to read him a story before he goes to bed. Just like you do."

"I want to hear this. Why don’t you read it to me."

She opened to the middle of the old leather tome sitting in her lap. "’There was a whale named Mopy Dick, and he lived in the sea, and Captain Ahab went away for a long time to chase the whale and--"

"Okay, okay, you can read. I believe you."

She was quiet for a time, silently staring at the stars above them. It was a quiet, autumn night. Brisk and cool. The night time sky was full of sprinkles of light.

"You’re going away again, Daddy?" she asked, saddened.

Her father squeezed her tight with his one arm, dropping kisses on her forehead. "I’m afraid so. But I’ll be back soon."

"Captain Ahab didn’t come back."

"I’ll always come back for you, sweatie. Always. Who would I get to help me fish in the summer, or build things in the shed?"

"Okay," she replied, only slightly convinced.

Her father shooed the dog away, and lifted his daughter high above his head. "I promise, I will never leave you. You are the best first mate a sailor could ever ask for. Okay, Starbuck?"**

"Scully? You still there? Are you okay?" Mulder asked again.

Waking as if from a dream, she shook her head and yawned. "Huh?"

"_Moby Dick_. You were telling me it was your favorite book as a child."

"I was?" <This is why you don’t drink, Dana.>

As if reading her mind, Mulder chimed in with, "Lude drunkeness will do that to you... You miss him, don't you?"

She sighed heavily, almost on the verge of tears. "Yeah."

No one spoke, until Mulder himself started to yawn.

"Feeling better?" he asked.

"A little, thanks."

"What did I do?"

"Nothing."

"Riiigght."

"Precisely."

Mulder sighed as if confused and too tired to fight about it anymore. She could just picture him thumping the phone against his forehead to accompany the soft thudding noise she heard. The thought made her laugh.

"That’s a sound I haven’t heard in a long time," he said.

Scully yawned. For the first time in what seemed like ages, exhaustion that was not work or habit induced began to seep to her core, bringing her to the edge of blessed sleep.

"Tell me a story, Mulder," she asked sleepily.

"How about an abridged version of _Moby Dick_."

Around 11 o’clock, Melissa used her mother’s set of keys to let herself into her sister’s apartment after her knocks went unanswered. Shaking the sleet and rain from her overcoat and hair, she stepped into the kitchen proper, set her umbrella into the sink to dry.

The only light on in the apartment came from the living room, the faint incandenscence illuminating the area around the table on which it stood.

There was a buzzing sound coming from the living room. It sounded like a phone off its ringer. She didn’t see her sister.

"Dana?"

Melissa placed her purse on the kitchen table and searched for the source of the buzzing. She found her sister lying on the couch, phone held limply in her hand, head half buried by a pillow. An afghan trailed on the floor.

Grabbing a wool blanket from the closet, she draped it over her sister, took the pillow off her face, and pried the phone from her fingers to place it in its charger.

Dana stirred, drawing her arms and legs closer to her body. Melissa knelt down by the side of the couch, brushed bangs away from Dana’s face. "Go back to sleep, Dana. And don’t dream."

End

--------

"still you held your arms open for the prodigal daughter;

i see my eyes in your eyes through my eyes,

still waters..."

indigo girls "you and me of the 10,000 wars"