Author: J. T. Filipek (aka Livasnaps)
E-Mail: jtfilipek@yahoo.com
Rating: PG-13 (maybe R in Section 7, but I'm fairly liberal about these
things)
Spoilers: (lots and lots of spoilers) Pilot, Squeeze, The Jersey Devil,
Fire, Beyond the Sea, Tooms, Duane Barry/Ascension/One Breath,
Irresistible, Anasazi/The Blessing Way/Paper Clip, Grotesque, Pusher,
Wetwired, Memento Mori, Gethsemane/Redux/Redux II, Detour,
Christmas Carol/Emily, Fight the Future, The Beginning, Triangle,
How the Ghosts Stole Christmas, Tithonus, 
S.R. 819, Two Fathers/One Son, The Unnatural, Biogenesis/Sixth
Extinction/Amor Fati, Millennium
Category: MSR
Summary: A week apart following the events of Millennium gives
Mulder and Scully a lot of time to think. They come to the decision
that a late Christmas is MUCH better than none at all.
Feedback: Pretty please with sugar on it. I'll be your best friend. I'll
clean your house. I'll cook you dinner. (But I won't watch your kids.
Sorry.)

Distribution: Anywhere as long as it's complete and is archived with
this heading intact.

Webpage: www.geocities.com/livaspage

DISCLAIMER: Is there really any doubt about who owns them? They
belong to Chris Carter, 1013 Productions, and Fox Television. Has
anyone ever really been sued for fanfic? I've read some where the
author should be sued, but not for copyright infringement.

Notes: The events in this story occur one week after the evens in
Millennium. The events in Sein und Zeit and Closure have not yet
occurred. Read on for my guesses as to what Moose and Squirrel got
each other for Christmas last year and what I made them get each
other for Christmas this year. I know it's past the holiday season, but
this one took me longer than I thought it would. Warning:
non-shippers turn back now!!! This one is not for you.

For my beloved Asti. You've awakened passion and love from a
long-dormant sleep. Brie loves you. Really.


Simple Gifts

'Tis a gift to be simple, 'tis a gift to be free.
'Tis a gift to come down where we ought to be.
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

Shaker Song, 17th Century


Part 1 of 7

Friday, January 7, 2000

Mulder's car
3:08 p.m.


Mulder jabbed impatiently at the *seek* button of the car radio.
Music--jazz, country, metal, hip hop. Talk--sports, Dr. Laura, political
stuff, traffic, public broadcasting fund drive. None of it was what he
wanted. None of it satisfied his mind or his soul. But still he punched
the button because the only other option was silence and he really
didn't want that. If it got too quiet, he might have to go inside his head
and there was too much going on in there for him to have much desire
to visit. One more defeat that was still too raw and tender.

Friday afternoon. It had been a long, frustrating week. And lonely.
Last Friday, New Year's Eve, seemed like a month ago. The memory
brought an ache to his heart. He'd kissed her--finally--as the clock
struck midnight and for a few too brief seconds, there had been
nothing in the world but the feel of her lips like satin against his, the
warmth of her breath on his cheek as she breathed through her nose.
Nothing else in the world. No hospital paging sounds. No people
walking back and forth. No television spewing the idiotic rantings of
Dick Clark--an X-File unto himself, the post-modern Dorian Grey.
Just Scully's mouth against his, his mind rejoicing all except one small
part that cursed the arm in the sling that came between them.

It had been a sweet kiss and he recalled the swift beating of his heart
as he tried to brace himself for any eventuality--fire, pestilence, nuclear
destruction, the roof falling in, a right hook to the jaw, although he
still thought his Scully would go for the left. Instead, they'd simply
parted and he opened his eyes quickly to see her reaction. Prepared for
a fist, instead he for once got his wish. She opened her eyes slowly and
smiled at him, her eyes fluttering just a bit.

"The world didn't end," he'd said, full of the wonder of the moment.

"No it didn't," she replied, the smile there just a second longer before
her face went inexplicably sad. He'd failed her again somehow and that
look he'd seen so often over the past couple of years was back. The
expression he'd do anything to dispel, but he didn't have a clue as to
how to do it. So much for the idea of a new beginning for them.

And suddenly, they were both aware of where they were and how
important it was to get away from there. It was a new year, a new
century, a new millennium. Enough of hospitals. They'd both been
there enough, had enough of sitting beside one another's beds, enough
of pacing dark, lonely waiting rooms. They moved at the same time, as
they often did, and he'd draped his good arm--the left one,
unfortunately--around her shoulder as they left the hospital. She didn't
flinch from contact, but walked just far enough away from him that the
gesture became something completely different than he had intended
as they made their way to her car in the almost deserted emergency
room parking lot.

With a pang, he'd removed his arm to walk to the passenger side of the
car and waited for her to unlock his side with the button in the handle.
At the sound of the lock, he popped the door open and slid quickly
inside, happy to note that no one had adjusted the seat since the last
time he'd ridden in her car. He turned his head to watch her slip behind
the wheel, briefly illuminated by the dome light before she slammed
the door shut. In the dark of the car, the halogen lamps of the parking
lot cast a bluish light that reflected wondrously in her eyes, making
them seem to glow with a strange luminescence. Wanting more than
anything to reach over and touch her, he couldn't even blame his injury
for his inability to do it. His right arm was the one farthest away from
her. It was cowardice, pure and simple, that caused his hesitancy. It
was fear of screwing things up even more than he already had that
wouldn't allow him to ask what he'd done, how he could fix things. He
felt behind him with his left hand for the seatbelt and he tried to twist
and pull it across his body to fasten it. She smiled indulgently at his
fumbling and leaned over to click it into place, and he was ridiculously
grateful for the smile, even at his own expense.

Scully backed out of the space, her hand on his headrest as she looked
behind her. Their eyes met momentarily and he felt one of her fingers
graze his scalp as her hand left the headrest to move to the gearshift
lever. She maneuvered through various city streets until she found the
onramp for 395 to Alexandria. The road was strangely empty and
Mulder supposed, it barely being twelve-fifteen, that everyone was
wherever it was they'd decided to ring in the new millennium. They
drove through the silent night, silent themselves, and he couldn't help
but stare down at her small hand resting on the gearshift lever. He
wanted to rest his on top of hers and the frustration of not being able
to, along with a throbbing in his shoulder that was increasing in
intensity, was making him restless and fidgety.

"How's your shoulder?" she asked, concern for him coloring her voice.

"Hurts some," he answered. "It'll be okay."

"It would hurt less if you'd just relax and let the shot they gave you at
the hospital kick in."

Her hand moved from the steering wheel to the back of his neck,
gently kneading the tight muscles there. It felt fantastic and he pressed
against her strong fingers, turning his head slowly back and forth as
she worked the muscles. He heard himself hum low in his throat with
delight as he slumped toward her so she wouldn't have to reach so far.
For the first time in weeks  he felt himself
relax, and he breathed deeply with it, inhaling her scent as an added
bonus. His mind drifted and all he could think about was her fingers
drifting upward from his neck, entwining in his hair as she rubbed at
the knots at the base of his skull. 

Carried off by whatever they'd given him for pain, it wasn't too big a
leap for him to imagine what those warm, capable fingers would feel
like working down the skin of his back, massaging the muscles right
above his ass. Then maybe she'd work her way back up, and scratch
her way back down. He could almost feel the gentle pressure of her
nails raking against his skin. The sensation of the familiar rush of
blood to his groin jolted him away from where those thoughts were
taking him. He really didn't want a woody at this point in time as he
didn't really think he possessed the wherewithal to conceal it. He
needed a distraction, but couldn't quite make himself straighten up and
pull away from the hand tugging lightly but insistently at his hair. A
distraction, something to let Mulder, Jr. know that this wasn't an
opportune time to spring into action.

"You didn't tell me, Scully. How was Christmas with the family?" His
voice was low with desire and he almost chuckled at the sound of it,
hoping that she didn't think he was trying out his new imitation of
Barry White.

She was silent for so long it made him wonder if she were going to
answer the question. Finally she spoke. "Okay, I guess. It was good to
have everybody together again, to see Charlie and Angela and the
kids, and Tara and Bill and Matthew and new baby. It was about on
par with any of the visits I've had with Bill over the past few years."
She seemed ill at ease with the memory and he wasn't surprised when
she changed the subject. "Do you have any food in your house?"

"Hmm?" He said, surprised that he'd zoned out a little. "Are you
hungry?"

She shook her head with a smile, and he was saddened to feel her pull
her hand back. She brought it to the steering wheel and negotiated the
off ramp and turns to head for his neighborhood. "For you," she
replied. "For tomorrow. You're inside for the day, resting. Doctor's
orders."

His brow knitted in confusion. "The doctor didn't say that."

"*Your* doctor did, Mulder," she insisted. "I mean it. You stay in bed
and take those pills tomorrow."

"I thought maybe you'd come over..." he began, but clammed up.

She glanced over at him, concerned. "Do you need me to? I could
cancel..."

 he cursed himself. Just because he didn't have a life didn't
mean she didn't. "No, I'll be fine. I've actually got some food for once
and if all else fails, Hunan Dynasty is on my speed dial. I'll just veg out
and watch the Bowl games. Probably wouldn't have gone anyplace
anyway with all the football." He smiled at her reassuringly. "Whatcha
doin'? Spending the day with your mother?"

She shook her head. "She's still in San Diego. Coming back on
Tuesday." 

Something in her tone caught his attention and he cast his eyes
sideways to look at her. It was the same as when she'd talked about
Christmas with the family. He wondered if something had happened
while she was in San Diego.  She'd
found Emily at this time two years ago and lost her again a scant few
days later. Christmas with her brother the asshole and the memory of
the only child she'd ever know. And she hadn't said a word about it
when she'd called him just a few minutes after midnight on Christmas. 

He'd been so glad to hear from her, had missed her to an almost
absurd degree. Although it was just nine o'clock in San Diego, he'd
been touched by the fact that she'd called to be the first (and only)
person to wish him a Merry Christmas. And, to his surprise, to ask him
to tell her a story. Had he been so thrilled that she'd thought to call
that he missed something important, something she needed?

She continued, seemingly unaware of his scrutiny. "I'm going to my
friend Ellen's house for brunch, then spending the day with her family."

"Ellen?" He was surprised. He hadn't heard Scully mention her friend
in years.

"Yeah, you remember. Her son Trent is my godson. Anyway, it's kind
of an annual tradition. We get together every New Year's Day. I bring
over Christmas presents for Trent and the other two kids. Ellen and I
sit around and pretend we still know one another and make vague
promises to get together more this year. If you need me to, I'm sure I
can cancel."

He listened closely, knowing from experience that her tone often
spoke more than her words. There was no sadness or regret in Scully's
voice. More like a weary resignation that he couldn't quite decipher,
didn't know how to respond to. "If you're looking for an excuse to
cancel, Scully, I'd love it if you came over. But don't cancel because of
me. I'll be fine."

Something in her demeanor told him that he hadn't responded as she'd
hoped, that he'd disappointed her yet again. "Oh, okay. As long as you
promise to stay in, I'll go to Ellen's." Her voice was back to *partner*
tone and he didn't want that.

They were just pulling up to the front of his building and he grasped
for a way to fix whatever had happened just now. "But you know, by
Sunday, I could have a relapse."

She pulled into an empty space in front of his door and turned to him
with a smile that made him sigh inwardly in relief, although he couldn't
quite interpret its meaning. "I'd better check on you then. I'll call you
Sunday morning to let you know when I'll be coming over."

He turned to look down at the seatbelt buckle at the same time she
turned to release it. Their eyes met and held and he was amazed when
Scully leaned forward to press her mouth against his. This kiss was
different, less hesitant, promising more than questioning. Not knowing
mentally what she meant by this gesture, his only option was to react
to it physically. He brought his left hand to weave into her hair,
holding her against him as he moved his mouth against hers, the way
he'd wanted to in the hospital. Her hand snaked down between them
and she pressed the button to loosen the seatbelt and she scooted
closer to him--as close as bucket seats, the gearshift column and the
sling holding his arm would allow her to get. Her mouth beneath his
yielded as she brought her hand around to caress his back and opened
her mouth to admit his beckoning tongue. She tasted incredible, like
something he'd never had but always known, and the little sounds she
was making sent shivers down his spine.

It was Scully who broke the kiss, but not abruptly. Instead, her face
hovered next to his, her lips mere centimeters away, smiling as if very
pleased with herself. "Happy New Year, Mulder." Her already throaty
voice was low and breathy, and Mulder, Jr. was threatening to start
paying serious attention again.

"Happy New Year, Scully," he answered and moved in for another
brief touch of his lips to hers. "Wanna come up and help me look for
reanimated corpses in the closets?"

He saw her eyes widen briefly. In shock? In dismay? And he cursed
himself for not being able to keep his mouth shut yet again. He had to
hand it to her for quick recovery as she gave him the patented Scully
smirk. But it was nothing like the smile she'd given him after their
kiss--a smile he'd do anything to see again.

"Sounds tempting. But I'd better get home and get some sleep if I have
any hope of surviving Ellen, Todd and three kids. The past few days
have been fairly eventful."

He nodded in resignation, glancing briefly at the wicked scratches on
the skin of her throat. Scully--his strong, logical, beautiful, rational
Scully--had nearly been beheaded by a dead man come back to life.
Always a deadly aim, she'd shot a reanimated corpse three times in the
head to save his and Frank Black's life. She'd killed, nearly been killed
by, a thing that everything inside her screamed could not exist. Then
calmly stated it had been an eventful few days after he had joked about
finding one in his closet. 


Why wasn't there some key, some map, to help him figure her out?


Maybe Ellen would try to fix her up again and Scully might meet
someone who actually deserved her. The thought made him physically
ill.

He looked over at her tired face, still trying to give him a smile. If she
was even half as tired as he was, she was exhausted. "Okay, I'll talk to
you on Sunday." He popped the door open and slipped out of the car,
pausing to lean down briefly. "Be careful driving home." He walked to
the door, touched to note that she'd waited until he was inside before
pulling away. She'd done it before in the past, but the gesture seemed
to mean something more in light of what had happened between them
over the past hour.

Saturday, New Year's Day, passed in a drug assisted haze where he
couldn't recall the final score of a single Bowl game, mainly because
he'd spent a good portion of the day recalling the feel of Scully's lips
against his, the taste of her, the scent of her. He wished the day by
quickly, so Sunday would come and he could talk to her, wanting to
make things better, yet scared that he wouldn't be able to. He
wondered where they would be emotionally and his eagerness to hear
her voice was mixed with apprehension. It was a not unpleasant
combination, he was surprised to find out--simultaneously sweet and
angsty.

She did call at just after ten on Sunday morning and his hopes were
cruelly dashed upon the rocks. She told him that Skinner had called
her and told her to fly out that same day for Boise.

"Scully," he said anxiously. His first thoughts were of her nearly
disastrous experience with the almost tragically inept Agent Ritter in
New York, when Kersh had sent her on a field assignment without
him. He'd come so close to losing her again.

Almost as if she could read his thoughts, she hastened to reassure him.
"Skinner says no field work. I'll just be in the morgue. Seems they've
found some kind of mass grave in a deserted area a couple hundred
miles north of Boise. Twenty-eight bodies so far and they're still
digging. They think that most or all of them are Mexican
nationals--illegals. They're not sure if it's a mass murder or serial
killing, but the Bureau's involved and they need an extra set of hands
to do autopsies."

"And Skinner volunteered you," he said, trying unsuccessfully to avoid
sounding petulant.

"You're on light duty this week," she replied. "Desk jockey stuff."

"And you're supposed to stay with me and make sure I follow orders,"
he said in a *you know the drill* tone of voice.

She chuckled, a sound he wished he could hear more. "Like I've been
real good at that for the past seven years. Come on, Mulder, this is
Skinner. He knows us, remember? He knows that if you found
anything even remotely interesting to investigate, you'd be able to talk
me into it so fast we'd be arguing about who was driving by the time
we got to the parking garage." Now it was his turn to laugh. "Really,
they need some help out there. It's just this week. Skinner said I could
come home on Friday, no matter where they are in the investigation."

Mulder sighed, accepting that any protests he might lodge were
useless. The AD had ordered it, so Scully was gone. It certainly didn't
matter to the Bureau that two of their agents were at a crucial stage in
what might become a personal relationship. In fact, they were
probably pretty far into breach of protocol-land as it was. "When do
you leave?" he asked quietly.

"A little before two," she replied. "I have just enough time to throw
some stuff together and get to the airport."

"Take comfortable shoes," he advised. "Sounds like you'll be on your
feet a lot." Twenty-eight bodies so far, she'd said. Knowing Scully,
she'd probably take most of the workload on herself.

"Yeah," she said sadly. "Mulder, I'll m..." Her voice trailed off.

"What?" he prompted softly.

"I'm sorry about today."

"Me too." He tucked the phone between his neck and should and
rubbed his forehead, feeling a headache of frustration coming on. "I
guess I'll have to handle my relapse on my own."

She didn't answer, but Mulder thought he could hear her smiling in the
silence. "Well, I better go."

"Okay," he replied. "Call me and let me know what's going on. Oh
wait, you said your mother was coming back from San Diego on
Tuesday. Does she need to be picked up at the airport?"

"No, she left her car in long-term parking. But thanks for offering."
That time, he knew he could hear her smile. "Talk to you soon." He
heard the soft click of her disconnect and wondered, not for the first
time, why they never ended a phone conversation with goodbye, like
normal people. He made a New Year's Resolution to work on that.

The week had been dismal at best. He sat at his desk and caught up on
every bit of paperwork he'd been putting off for the last few months.
He culled through the files so mercilessly that Scully would have been
amazed at how many he was willing to concede as not being genuine
X-Files. All the space in the file drawers made him grab old issues of
the *Inquisitor* to see if he could find anything for them to pursue. 

And sometimes he just sat at his desk, staring at the phone as if sheer
will alone would make it ring. He was worried when he hadn't heard
from her by Wednesday but successfully fought off the urge all day to
call her with a series of empty and meaningless organizational tasks. It
wasn't as easy later on at home with nothing to distract him from
thoughts of all the reasons she might have had not to call him. The
worst, and the one that popped into his head most often, was that
she'd reconsidered. That being away had made her think about things
and decide that they'd made a mistake, had just gotten foolishly carried
away. God knows, he'd given her plenty of reasons to believe that over
the years, but the idea that she might really believe it tore his heart in
two.

By eleven that night, he couldn't take it anymore. He needed to hear
her, even if it was to tell him that it wouldn't work. He called her cell
phone and she answered on the third ring. Surprisingly he found he'd
awakened her from sleep, despite the fact that it was two hours earlier
in Idaho.

"Scully," she said with a drowsy slur, a lot like she sounded mumbling
in dreams, when she fell asleep in the car on stakeouts.

"It's me. Listen, I'm sorry I woke you. Go back to sleep."

"No, wait," she interrupted before he could press the disconnect
button. "It's okay. Don't hang up." She immediately sounded more
alert.

"You sure?" he asked hesitantly. "You sound exhausted."

"I am," she conceded. "But the last few days have been so horrific. It's
good to hear your voice."

Her words warmed his heart and he relaxed a little, glad that she didn't
sound like she was going to voice regrets. "What's going on there?"

She sighed. "Thirty-seven bodies. I've done fourteen postmortems
since Monday and have six slated for tomorrow. It's like it will never
end. The local guy here is just overwhelmed. Things like this just don't
happen here. He just keeps saying it over and over."

He swallowed hard. Things like that shouldn't happen anywhere.
"Mass murderer?"

"Serial killer," she replied. "Looks like it's been going on for three or
four years. All female, Latinas, mid- to late teens. At least all the ones
that have been autopsied so far. From the most recent bodies, it looks
like he holds them for a few weeks. Evidence of long-term torture and
repeated rapes prior to death."

"Jesus, Scully," he said, grimacing at the thought. "Thirty-seven."

"Yeah," she whispered, her anguish evident. "They died horribly,
Mulder, and now it's like we're... It's like an assembly line." 

She sniffled softly and he wished for the thousandth time that week
that he was there with her. To hold her, to rub her tired feet and
shoulders. "I'm sorry," he said. "I wish there was something I could
do."

"I know," she said wearily. "I just have to make it through tomorrow,
then I can come home."

"Yeah," he said, smiling. "When will you get here?"

"Friday, mid-afternoon."

"Good," he said simply. "Now you need to rest. Try and get some
sleep, huh Scully?"

"Easier said than done," she said doubtfully. "The things we see,
Mulder."

"I know," he answered sadly. "But try, huh?" He could close his eyes
and picture her nodding. "Hurry home."

"Can't be soon enough." He waited for her to click off, the
conversation ended. But she surprised him. "Thanks for calling,
Mulder."

"Thanks for answering." Again, he waited for her to press the *end*
button, but she remained on the line, and he could hear her soft
breaths. He listened for a moment with a small smile tugging at his lips
and felt a New Year's Resolution Moment hit him. "Goodnight,
Scully."

"Goodnight." And with a click she was gone, leaving him with a
pleasant ache in his chest and a feeling that he might actually be able to
sleep.

Late on Thursday, Byers called to say that a guy they knew in
Wilmington had seen Alex Krycek in Philadelphia a few days before.
Mulder had asked the guys to put feelers out for Krycek when he
learned what the Ratboy had done to Skinner. Mulder needed that
control box for the nano-machines free floating in Skinner's
bloodstream. And maybe in the process, he could find out what
Krycek might know about what had been taken from Mulder's head.
But first he had to find him.

Mulder arranged to take one of his seemingly endless supply of
vacation days and drove to Wilmington to see the Gunmen's associate,
Vernon Glint. Glint was a NICAP member who said he'd seen the
picture the Gunmen had circulated on the Net. He said he'd seen
Krycek coming out of a seedy hotel in downtown Philadelphia, the
Bluebird, and that he looked like a man in a hurry. 

Mulder then drove to Philadelphia, found the hotel and discovered that
Krycek had checked out a few hours before, leaving no forwarding
address. A quick check of his room revealed nothing and Mulder
cursed himself for his timing. Krycek had a six-hour lead and there
was no telling where he'd gone or how he was traveling. 

Which was how he came to be driving down the I-95 just a little north
of Baltimore headed back to DC, punching the *seek* button on his
car radio. Nearly three-thirty. Scully should be home and he really
wanted to talk to her.

He pulled his cell phone from the breast pocket of his jacket and hit
the number one on his speed dial.


End Part 1 of 7
+++++

Simple Gifts -- Part 2 of 7
See Disclaimer in Part 1


Georgetown
2:58 p.m.

Scully felt the shoulder bag holding her laptop slide down her arm as
she fumbled with the key to her apartment door. A medium sized
suitcase and garment bag lay at her feet, and she clutched a small
carry-on bag in her left hand, her mail tucked under her arm. Would it
have really been such a big deal to divide the load and make two trips
from the car to her apartment? She finally managed to turn the key and
she kicked the suitcase and garment bag inside, swinging to drop the
laptop onto the chair near the door. She looked around in the dim light
and sighed with relief to be home. Walking through the apartment
kicking off her pumps as she went, she switched on a few lamps and
adjusted the thermostat up to try and diminish the chill of a place too
long unoccupied. She dropped the mail on the coffee table in front of
the couch and pulled off her trench coat, draping it over the back of
her armchair. She gratefully sank into the cushions of her sofa, feeling
the soft popping of several vertebrae relieved to be allowed to relax.
After a minute or two, the gun fastened to the back of her slacks
began to bite into her skin and she sat up long enough to unclip the
holster and place it on the coffee table. She scooted across the sofa
until her back pressed against the armrest and brought her feet up,
clasping her knees to her chest.

The week had been grueling and it appalled her that she couldn't recall
a week in recent memory that hadn't been. What did it say about her
life when autopsying the bodies of twenty-two teenaged girls in four
days was just something that happened the week after she'd killed a
man who had already been dead for months? A week where she had
almost been killed by someone that she, herself, had confirmed dead at
the scene of his murder at the hand of someone who had died a week
previously.

Scully shook her head to dispel thoughts she wasn't ready to think
about, might never be ready to think about. Closing her eyes, she
breathed deeply, exhaling completely before starting the process again.
She tried to clear her head but the same thought kept coming back.



And, amazingly, she felt her lips twitch into a smile at the thought.
More worlds than she could hold in her hand. Just a few years ago,
she would have denied the statement completely, but not anymore. For
so long, that idea had terrified her--enough so that she felt her only
option was complete denial of even the possibility that other worlds
might exist. 

Now, why not? Everything she'd seen, had experienced, could not be
explained by science. Why not other worlds? What was so great about
this one that it should be the only one? There was a man in Idaho
who'd raped, tortured and murdered thirty-seven girls. And there
would be more before they caught him. And how many others like him
were out there? No, this wasn't such a great world at all.

She was so very tired, way past exhausted, nearly to numb. The only
decent sleep she'd gotten in days was Wednesday, after she'd spoken
with Mulder. Mulder. Thoughts of him had filled the small nooks and
crannies of time during the odious week in Idaho. She found herself
thinking of him at the oddest moments. 

Pushing through the doors to the autopsy bay, she'd recall the feeling
of finding him restrained on that strange table in the Department of
Defense facility. The feeling of walking through the door and her first
thought being alarm that he'd gotten so thin that she could count his
ribs from across the room. That his breathing was so shallow she
wasn't even certain he was breathing at all until she touched his skin
and found it warm. That with his arms outstretched, his shoulders
looked like skin pulled taut over bone and nothing more. The feeling
of relief that flooded her when his eyes briefly fluttered open the first
time. The joy she'd felt when she heard him speak. *You help me.*

She thought of him when she'd stumble from the bitter cold Idaho
night into her hotel room and instantly turn on the television set. That
was something she never did at home, yet there in that anonymous
room--like so many others they'd stayed in--she needed the sound of
the television, a sound she'd always heard through the walls of the
cheap motels they'd stayed in. She'd stumble home from the morgue,
turn on the tv, and fall onto the bed nearest the television, remote in
hand looking for something she thought he'd watch so the sounds
would be right.

But mostly Scully had thought of him as she lay in bed in the darkness
of an unfamiliar room, unable to put away the horrors of her day.
There she'd be, between the scratchy, industrial grade sheets, mentally
craving sleep and her traitorous body refusing to comply. It was then
that her thoughts turned to Mulder. And how much she'd hurt him.
Again.

She could recall with perfect clarity watching his smile turn to
confusion and awkwardness in the seconds following their kiss in the
hospital. She could see him come to believe that he had done
something wrong, something she didn't want, hadn't enjoyed. And
even seeing that, knowing his thoughts and fears, she hadn't been able
to reassure him that nothing was further from the truth.

The kiss had been completely unexpected. But once begun, it had been
welcomed. His lips against hers had been so unbearably superb that
she'd been afraid to move, even toward him, for fear of breaking the
spell. His lips were soft and cushiony, as she'd always suspected, and
the tip of his nose had tickled her cheek a little. Warmth and chills had
hit her spine simultaneously and she couldn't believe he had finally
made the move she'd both hoped and feared that he would. And it had
been wonderful.

Until he had made the end of the world comment and she'd been
unable to control her reaction to it. Mulder had misread that reaction
and thought it was because of what he'd done. But how could he not
misinterpret when she hadn't explained, couldn't explain? About
Christmas at Bill's house.

Bill had radiated mild hostility at her from the time he'd come to the
airport to pick up her mother and her. A mild, constant hostility that
wasn't voiced and was only partially relieved when Charlie and his
family were around. She knew she deserved some of Bill's animosity.
She hadn't exactly made any sincere overtures toward reconciling the
differences that had sprung up between them since her cancer, but then
neither had he. But he was taking things too far with his snide
comments and sneers and Scully found herself becoming more and
more angry with him.

The first day hadn't been too bad, with all the catching up. They'd sat
together drinking wine well into the evening, laughing and talking
about Christmases past. Charlie's family had driven down from Seattle
in a Winnebago, so when bedtime came they retired to the house in the
driveway and Bill had told Dana she and Mom would be in Missy's old
room. Not Dana's room, not even Dana and Missy's room. Just
Missy's. 

Her mother seemed not to have noticed Bill's jibe, but Dana saw her
hesitate slightly at the threshold of the bedroom that had been hers and
Melissa's in the house they'd lived in with an identical floor plan. She
knew it was difficult for her mother to go into the room and felt her
millionth pang of guilt for the fact that Missy would be here if not for
Dana. Neither she nor her mother spoke except to say goodnight
before turning off the lamp on the table between the twin beds.

The next day was busy with last minute shopping and cooking, and
late that afternoon the family gathered to set up and decorate the
Christmas tree. Like Ahab before him, Bill did not allow the tree to go
up before Christmas Eve and it was taken down on New Year's Day.
They snacked on hot hors d'oeuvres and spiced cider as they decked
the halls, finally sitting down to a light late dinner served by the light
of the tree. 

Dana looked around the table at the faces gathered there, watched
them talking and laughing and eating and felt a sudden twinge of
loneliness. These people who surrounded her were of her, she loved
them, yet she barely knew them and they didn't know her at all. Her
brothers gazed at their wives and children with something akin to awe,
and her mother beamed at all of them with such pride and love. They
had their children around them. But her only child--one she'd never
known she had--was represented by a coffin full of sand in a cemetery
not ten miles away. There'd been no body to place beneath the marker
that did not bear Scully's last name and with a first name that Scully
had not chosen. Two years ago. Emily would have been five this
Christmas, a year younger than Charlie's twins.

"Dana?" A voice broke into her sad reverie and Tara smiled at her
with sympathetic understanding. But not empathy. She hoped Tara
and Bill would never be able to feel empathy with her in that area.
"Bill says you always got to put the angel on the treetop when you
decorated the tree."

"Yeah," Bill answered sarcastically. "She was the only one small
enough for Dad to still be able to lift her up over his head when she
was a teenager."

"Funny, Bill," she replied without rancor, happy to find distraction,
even for a moment, from her thoughts. "I seem to recall one Christmas
when you tried to put the angel on and you jumped up against the tree.
How much did it cost 
Dad to replace the picture window when you drove the tree through
the glass?"

"Ooh," Charlie piped in with a grin directed at Bill. "Pop was so pissed
at you, Billy-boy! Get this," he said directing his story to everyone
around the table. "We're stationed at Great Lakes just north of
Chicago--perhaps the nastiest place on earth to be posted." Maggie,
Bill, and Dana nodded in agreement.. "It's Christmas Eve, blizzard
going on outside, wind blowing off Lake Michigan that would freeze
the bal..."

"Charlie," Angela warned, looking at the children.

Charlie reddened a little and nodded. "Anyway, it was really cold,
Christmas Eve, and Dad's gotta find someone to come and replace a
double pane picture window because gale force winds are invading the
living room thanks to Bill's 
stunt. Trying to put the angel on the tree just to spite Dana. So Dad's
on the phone turning six shades of red and snow's blowing in the hole
in the window. Like having a little slice of Antarctica right in our own
living room."

Everyone at the table joined in hearty laughter and Dana tried to force
a laugh as well. But she had that sudden feeling of apartness again.
She knew Antarctica, and what had happened in their living room so
many years ago didn't come close. She'd experienced Antarctica and
no one at the table knew about it, not even her mother. She'd never
told them about it. Or how she'd be there still if it hadn't been for
Mulder.

"Your father wasn't that mad," Maggie said, grinning at the memory.

"Mom," Bill protested. "He made me wash the car by hand every week
for six years to pay off the window. Have you ever hand-washed a car
in January in northern Illinois? Talk about brass monkeys. I had to
wash it the morning I left for the Naval Academy."

They'd continued to hash through old Christmas memories and stories
of childhoods long past, seeming not to notice that Dana contributed
almost nothing to the conversation. After dinner, they moved into the
living room to continue talking closer to the lights from the tree.
Finally, Bill proclaimed that it was time to honor the age-old Scully
tradition of singing carols. With some friendly prompting, Tara sat at
the spinet and everyone gathered around, eggnogs in hand, and began
to sing.

Dana, careful to stand next to the twins, smiled and moved her lips to
the familiar words, but no sound passed them. She never participated
in the caroling--hadn't since she was a child, but she was certain that
no one else knew that. It was why she always tried to stand next to the
kids, who sang so loudly themselves that they were oblivious to the
fact that Aunt Dana didn't sing along. For the most part, she was
usually content just to listen, relishing their mumbled words and
tenderly off-key voices, for these were the people she loved, who
loved her.

And she did love them with a love so longstanding that she knew it
must be a part of her cells. As she mouthed the words to the Jingle
Bells, she stole a glance at her mother who was holding Bill's new
daughter Lareena, born the day before Thanksgiving. With her
mother's attention on her only granddaughter, Dana felt free to just
look at her. She smiled watching Maggie bounce up and down,
making faces at Lareena as she sang softly to her. She'd always
thought her mother was beautiful, but here--with this child, with all the
children--she glowed. But on closer look, she saw that her mother's
rich, dark hair had more strands of silver and that, even in the joy of
her family, there was still a sadness to her eyes that Dana knew to be a
longing for those no longer with them. Dana knew it because she felt
it, too.

Her glance passed over the other members of her family. Bill, holding
Matty in his right arm, his left arm resting on Tara's shoulder and
looking down on her with such tenderness, she could scarcely believe
he was the same brother who used to give her a friendly punch in the
arm just because he could. Or the same brother she'd seen over the
past two days casting her looks of confusion and anger. Tara returned
his gaze with a quick glance away from the keyboard where she played
the piano not with great accuracy, but with great heart. She looked
serene and joyous, fulfilled in the motherhood that had come to her so
late in her marriage, after years of trying to the point that they'd almost
given up. 

And Charlie and Angela, standing wrapped in each other's arms, their
six year-old twins on either side of Dana, flanking her like bookends.
She touched the tops of their heads, loving the silky feel of their hair
beneath her fingers, matching heads with hair the color of cherry
wood--a combination of Charlie's carrot red and Angela's deep black.
Charlie, of all of them, was the sibling of her heart. The one who
shared with her the experience of being the younger. The younger
brother, the younger sister. The one who stood with her bearing the
brunt of Bill's bossiness. Melissa had never tolerated it, but to Bill the
*runts* were fair game. Dana had fought back as best she could, but
Charlie--gentle Charlie--just smiled and did what Bill told him to do,
so that maybe Bill would leave him alone to read in peace. Charlie,
diminutive and with his face forever in a book, had eventually become
a geologist and met the gorgeous, willowy Angela on a dig in
Wyoming. Fully four inches taller than Charlie, she still displayed the
good sense to pay attention to the quiet man with the carrot-colored
hair and had determined by the end of the dig to be his wife. They
were married three months later and welcomed the twins two weeks
after their first anniversary. Aaron and Zach--from A to Z because
they were the beginning and end of Angela and Charlie's children. At
six, the children were a handful and the lights of their parents' lives.

They'd moved from Jingle Bells, through the First Noel, and from
Tara's spirited introduction, Joy to the World would come next. Dana
bent her head forward a little, hoping that the hair falling into her face
would hide the tears that had spring to her eyes. She blinked them
away quickly as she heard her family begin the song, their voices sure
and cheery.



Dana looked up, startled.

"The Lord is come!" They sang in unison, their faces--all but
Dana's--split into wide, open grins. "Let earth receive her King!"

She shook her head. They couldn't have sung that. With a slightly
anxious expression, she looked around to see if anyone had noticed.
Only Charlie was looking at her and he gave her a smile that seemed
sad to her.

End of the world. She'd heard it plain as day, although she knew she
couldn't possibly have heard it. End of the world. How many more
Christmases would there be like this one? Was this the last? In her
heart, she could no longer deny what she'd seen, what she'd touched,
what Mulder had had and what they'd taken away from him. Even to
herself, whom she'd always been able to fool, she could no longer deny
what Mulder had contended for years. Plans were afoot--plans so
awful that they were beyond the scope of contemplation, so
unbelievable that their sheer inconceivability was what allowed them
to move forward unchecked. Unchecked save for her and Mulder. Had
they made even the slightest difference in the Plot or were they as
inconsequential as Don Quixote and the Sancho Panza tilting at
windmills?

The end of the world. When would it come? What was the timetable?
How would it be? Unbidden, her thoughts turned again, as they often
had for the past month, to the man who had been killed in Arizona, the
Roush employee found ripped apart in his own living room. They had
argued bitterly that day, she and Mulder. Especially over Mulder's
contention that an alien life form had gestated inside the man and burst
free at its birth. But Scully had not had a more rational explanation for
the man's gory death. Now, more than a year later, she was finding it
more and more difficult not to dwell on it. That she herself might have
suffered that same fate had Mulder not come to her with the vaccine.
He'd saved her in more ways than one, although he probably would
never be aware of any but the most obvious. He'd saved her life. Even
at his most self-deprecating, she couldn't imagine that he would not
realize that. But he'd also saved her from the awful irony, the final
most cruel joke, that she would die bearing the only life she'd ever
carried inside her to full term.

Dana looked at her family again and couldn't help the vision of them,
spread out grotesquely as the man in the crime scene photos had been,
bloody and torn open. And she couldn't suppress the shudder that
accompanied that vision. She stopped even pretending to sing as she
gazed at their faces, alight with Christmas bliss. They didn't know that
this could be the last Christmas like this and she envied them their
ignorance. At the same time she feared for it. They didn't know,
couldn't know, for only she could tell them and there was no way to
explain that they might possibly understand or believe. No one could
know except Mulder and she.

Suddenly the room seemed too small, too close and confining, and she
realized she was being smothered by her own thoughts. She slipped
away while everyone else was engrossed in a debate about whose turn
it was to pick the next song. A nearby doorway gave off to the kitchen
and back porch where her jacket hung on a peg by the door. Walking
out onto the porch, the late December night was warmer than it would
have been in Washington, but still cool enough that she was glad to
have the dark green suede to drape over her shoulders as she sat on
the porch steps. It was better outside, the quiet darkness soothing her
fevered thoughts somewhat. She pulled her jacket more tightly around
herself and took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of the suede. A good
smell, a comforting smell--almost as nice as black leather. It had been
a stretch on her G-Woman's salary to afford the jacket, but the color
was one of her favorites and the smell of the suede had finally clinched
the decision. Mulder had seemed to like it that night that they'd played
baseball.

Mulder. She'd tried to keep busy and occupied to keep her thoughts
from constantly returning to him. She'd been hesitant to make the trip
to San Diego because she didn't feel right about leaving him so soon
after all he'd been through. But he was officially back at work without
restrictions, so she couldn't really justify staying in Washington when
her family had plans to meet in San Diego.

Alone in the dark, however, it was easier to admit to herself that it
wasn't so much his health that concerned her, but the fact that she
missed him. She'd been away from him for what seemed an eternity
while she was in Africa, so scared that she wouldn't be able to help
him that she'd been able to put out of her head all that she had seen.
She knew the panic, the helplessness, of not knowing where he was
when he was taken from the hospital. Those feelings were still recent
enough that she often felt as if he might disappear if she didn't keep a
vigilant enough watch over him. Had he felt anything even close to
that while she was missing all those weeks? No wonder he hovered
over her when she got back. She wanted to hover over him.

Scully leaned her back against the porch rail and looked up at the sky.
A thin layer of wispy clouds blotted out all but the brightest stars. She
could still hear the piano, although not the voices anymore. But it was
enough to let her know what song they were singing. A slight breeze
stirred her hair and she slid her arms into the sleeves of the jacket to
ward off the cool air. She looked down at her feet and smiled at her
slippers, the ones Mulder had given her for Christmas last year. Black
slippers with little glow-in-the-dark alien heads--ala Whitley Streiber.
They almost always made her smile when she wore them at home.
Nobody had said anything about them since she'd arrived here. They
must not have noticed or Bill, at least, would have mentioned them,
more than likely disparagingly.

She recalled last Christmas and sitting on Mulder's couch wondering
what he possibly could have got her that was cylindrical. He'd folded
them up into a plastic tube, one alien head at each end, and wrapped
them in silly man fashion. She'd laughed out loud when she'd finally
gotten them unwrapped and immediately doffed her laced boots in
favor of the more comfortable footgear. Mulder, looking particularly
pleased with himself, had turned off the lights so that Scully could get
the full effect of their luminescence.

Mulder opened his present then. She'd been checking out one of the
on-line auction sites and saw for sale a copy of *Close Encounters of
the First Kind, the Special Edition* with the box autographed by
Steven Spielberg. On impulse, she bid on it, knowing it was the
perfect gift for Mulder. She'd been overbid twice, but she persevered
and finally got it. His mouth fell open in delighted amazement when he
saw what was beneath the red and gold foil wrapping.

"Scully," he said, his voice soft with wonder. "This is incredible. The
greatest movie ever made *and* autographed by Spielberg." He
turned the box over in his hand to examine the signature and the
cellophane wrapper crackled beneath his fingers. He looked back at
her and his eyes twinkled in a way she hadn't seen in a long time.
"Have you ever seen this movie?"

She nodded. "Once, a long time ago."

"You want to watch it now?" he asked eagerly. "I haven't seen it in a
couple of years."

"Pop the wrapper," she replied with a smile.

He looked at her, aghast. "Scully," he said. "I can't pop the wrapper
on this. It's a collector's item. It has to stay wrapped. We'll watch my
tape. My *other* tape." 

He bent over to dig through the videos in the cabinet beneath the
television, seeming to Scully to be careful about what he pulled out.
With a small triumphant "hah!" he grabbed one of the tapes and stood
up. He looked at the tape to make sure it was rewound then,
strangely, looked at his watch.

"This movie is long, like two-and-a-half hours," he said regretfully.
"You'll miss family roll call under the tree at six."

Scully looked at her own watch. He was right. The movie wouldn't be
over until after six and then there was travel time to her mother's
house. She shouldn't start a movie with him that she couldn't finish.
She glanced out the window for a moment and noted the snow falling
gently but steadily. Road conditions might be bad, too. 

But then she looked around Mulder's apartment and saw the red
striped stocking hanging from the shelving unit that held the aquarium
and the little white reindeer on the shelf, and something about these
small attempts to add holiday cheer to his life both tore at and warmed
her heart. Her feet in their cozy alien slippers curled in protest at the
thought of having to put her boots on again and her spine was settling
in quite comfortably against the worn leather of the sofa. And she
knew in that moment that there was nowhere in the world she'd rather
be than right here, sharing Mulder's favorite movie with him.

"I'll call them later and tell them to go on without me. Let's make some
tea and watch the movie."

His smile was worth whatever her family would dish out to her later
about missing roll call. "I've got some microwave popcorn, too."

"Bring it on," she replied and followed him into the kitchen.

They watched the movie, huddled together under the wool blanket he
kept on the back of the couch to ward off the chill that always seemed
to permeate Mulder's apartment in the winter. Scully was amazed at
how good a movie it was and it seemed that there was more to it than
the first time she'd watched it all those years ago. 

"Spielberg reedited it in 1980, I think," Mulder explained when she
asked him about it. "If you saw it in the theater the first time around,
the whole ending's different. I remember at the time not believing that
he could have made it better, but he did. Just a phenomenal movie."
His voice held something like reverence.

Scully nodded, understanding why he loved the movie so much. It was
about a man who wanted to believe, did believe, and was rewarded for
his belief. The message was one of hope that the truth was out there
and that it was good.

The movie was finished and they found themselves famished, even
after the microwave popcorn. They left the apartment and trudged
through the snow to Rose's Diner close to Mulder's apartment where
they gorged on blueberry pancakes and hot, strong coffee. She went
back upstairs long enough to grab her slippers, and said goodbye to
Mulder, the end of the longest, strangest Christmas Eve she'd ever
passed.

When she arrived at her mother's, Bill was predictably miffed but kept
it to himself as she'd joined them at the breakfast table. To avoid
further hurt feelings, Scully forced down some breakfast, although she
was still full from the meal she'd shared with Mulder. The kids were
delighted to have one more gift to open and feelings were seemingly
smoothed over.

Now, sitting on Bill's dark back porch, carols wafting to her as if from
someone else's dream, she longed for another Christmas like last
year's--haunted house and all. She missed Mulder and wanted to be
with him so she could give him this year's present--a glow-in-the-dark
universe for the ceiling of the bedroom she hadn't known he had until
the past year. Tara had put one up in Matty's room and Scully found
out where she got it and got one for Mulder. She'd have to wait until
she got back from San Diego on New Year's Day.

But she wished it were tonight. And that he'd tell her the story of
Maurice and Lida again. She could do without the house experience,
truth be told, but she wanted desperately to hear the story again, in the
same soft voice he'd used to tell it to her the first time.

She pulled her jacket more tightly around her and felt something in the
pocket below her left elbow. Her cell phone. She'd left it there earlier
that afternoon when she'd come back from shopping. Glancing at her
watch, she saw that it was three minutes after nine. Just after midnight
in Washington--Christmas Day. She pressed the *on* button and
dialed Mulder's number.

He answered on the second ring. "Scully?"

"Yeah," she chuckled in amazement and amusement. "How'd you
know?"

"Christmas wish," he said and his tone stirred something in her soul.
"Merry Christmas, Scully!"

"It's not Christmas here yet," she answered. "I called to wish you a
Merry Christmas, Mulder."

"You're the first to say it, you know." His voice was deep and
somewhat wistful. "So how is Christmas in sunny San Diego?"

"There's just something wrong with Christmas lights on palm trees and
cooking the turkey on the barbecue. And after last year, it's kind of
mundane." She wondered if he'd heard the sigh she'd tried so hard to
conceal.

"And that's a bad thing?" he kidded her.

She smiled to herself, feeling something akin to happy for the first time
in a long time. "Mulder?"

"Hmm?"

She paused, not sure she could ask for what she wanted, embarrassed
within her own mind that she might even need it.

"What, Scully?" he prompted gently, as if he could sense her
hesitancy.

"Would you tell me the story again? The one about Maurice and
Lida?"

"I thought you didn't believe in ghosts." His voice was warm and
lightly teasing.

"Technically Mulder," she said, rising to the banter. "I think they're
called *apparitions.*"

"Po-tay-toes, po-tah-toes," he said with a chuckle. They were both
quiet for several moments, and she listened to the sound of his
breathing. "Wanna hear a story, little girl?"

"Yeah," she replied, tucking the phone between her ear and shoulder
and pulling her knees up to her chest as she leaned against the porch
rail.

"Okay, settle in."

She did as she was told, shifting her behind a little and finding the
perfect spot between her shoulder blades for the post supporting the
railing. Eyes closed, she tilted her head back, her face toward the sky,
and waited for him to begin, counting on his eidetic memory to make
it just like before.

"Christmas, 1917. It was a time of dark, dark despair." His voice was
low, rough and silky at the same time, just as she remembered.
"American soldiers were dying at an ungodly rate in a war-torn
Europe while at home, a deadly strain of the flu virus attacked young
and old alike. Tragedy was a visitor on every doorstep."

He kept on with his story, his voice soft and soothing. To her delight,
he embellished his story here and there--adding details and providing
comments--confident in the fact that Scully wouldn't bolt in the middle
of it. It made her momentarily sad to think that she might have left him
last year and never heard the story.  she
admitted to herself.

"...never to spend another Christmas apart. And their spirits still haunt
the house at 1515 Larkspur Lane." He finished his story and a
comfortable silence hung between them, connecting them by an
invisible thread across thousands of miles.

"That was a good story, Mulder, and very well told," she said, just as
she had the previous year. This time, though, there wasn't any hint of
dismissal in her voice--no *but* followed by a rational explanation.
She hoped he heard that. "Think Maurice and Lida got anyone this
year?"

"Is that a concession that they almost got us last year?" Although
Mulder's tone was light, Scully didn't get the feeling that he was joking
anymore.

"I don't know that I'm ready to concede that fact. But you know, even
if it *did* happen, it's not the most bizarre thing that's ever happened
to us, Mulder."

"Yeah, I guess not," he admitted.

Scully shivered slightly, suddenly feeling as if she were being watched.
She turned her head toward the door to see her mother's face in the
small window. Scully caught her eye and nodded, unable to decipher
her mother's expression. She looked... Hurt? Angry? It seemed she'd
lost the ability to key into what her mother was thinking. She was
certain she was about to find out. Her mother turned and walked away
from the window.

"Hey, you okay?" Mulder asked and she realized she had stopped
participating in their conversation.

"Hmm, sorry," she said. "I think I was just getting serious signals to
rejoin the clan. I better get back to them."

"Yeah, I guess you should. Have a great Christmas," he said and she
could hear in his voice that he was trying hard for a cheery tone.
"Scully, I'm gl... It means a lot to me that you called."

"Me too."

They were both silent for a scant few seconds then with a soft click, he
was gone. It was just such a Mulder move that the thought that it was
rude didn't even cross her mind. She'd ended other of their phone calls
in the same way. Had they ever actually ended a phone conversation
with goodbye? Maybe with everything they'd been through, goodbye
was too scary a word.

She held the cell phone a moment longer before placing it back into
her pocket. When she turned to stand up, it was Bill's face in the door.
And there was absolutely no problem reading his expression. She
braced herself for an attack when she walked through the door.

He actually let her get her jacket off and hung on a hook before he
started. "Is it too much to ask that you spend Christmas Eve night
with your family?"

She sighed and moved past him to go back to the living room.  Entering the living room, she say her mother sitting
beside Charlie on the sofa. Tara, Angela and the kids were not in the
room. "Where is everyone?" she asked, trying her best to smile at her
mother and brother.

"Tara and Angela are putting the kids to bed," Bill replied, although
the question was obviously not directed toward him. "It might have
been nice if they'd been able to say goodnight to their Aunt Dana."

"Don't start, Bill," she replied wearily. "I was away for twenty
minutes."

"Try forty-five," Bill spat back and she looked at her watch. Going on
nine-fifty.

"So what?" she challenged, tired of his attitude--one that she'd put up
with for longer than she could remember.

"Yeah Bill," Charlie piped in taking his lifelong place with his sister
against Bill's tyranny. "So Dana was gone for forty-five minutes. It's
not the end of the world."

She swung her head to look at Charlie, unsuccessful in fighting off
images she'd had earlier.  She shuddered, but
neither Charlie nor Bill seemed to notice, facing one another. Her
mother, though, looked at her with an expression she could not
interpret. Why wasn't her mother saying something to make Bill stop?

"Charlie, you're not even in this so shut up, okay? It wasn't bad
enough that he... that Fox Mulder wrecked our Christmas last year,
but he's got to do it this year, too? That's who you were talking to,
wasn't it?" When she didn't answer, he continued his rant. "Damn it,
Dana. This time is supposed to be for family."

"Bill," she said angrily. "In case you haven't noticed, I'm here with the
family."

"Bullshit," he replied, matching her tone. "You're here but you're not
*with* the family. You've spent the past two days here moping, and
trying to get three words in a row out of you is like pulling teeth. Two
Christmases in a row you let him wreck things. No, make that three.
Two years ago he was here encouraging you in that... that..."

"Don't," her voice dropped, low and dangerous. "Don't you dare go
into that. For your information, Mulder did not encourage me. He
thought my trying to adopt Emily was a mistake, too. But the
difference is that he realized the choice was mine and he supported
that choice." Her voice fell to a whisper. "And he believed me, which
is more than I can say for any of you."

She looked around the room. Charlie's expression was one of
confusion. Nobody, it seemed, had told him about the events of two
years ago at Christmas. But then, why would Bill or her mother have
told him about Emily when they never really believed it? Her mother
refused to meet her eyes and hadn't said a word since Dana had
walked into the room. Bill obviously took her silence as tacit
agreement with what he was contending and Dana hoped and prayed
that wasn't true.

"He believed you," Bill sneered. "Well, from what I've heard, he'll
believe any asinine thing that comes down the pike. You know, I met
an FBI agent from the LA field office a few months ago. He was on
base for some kind of investigation. I asked him if he knew Mulder..."

Dana interrupted him. "And he told you that everybody calls him
Spooky Mulder. That he used to be a brilliant investigator, but that
he's pissing his career away chasing little green men and things that go
bump in the night. Hello! Bill! I've worked with Mulder for over seven
years. You think I've never heard that? You think there haven't been
assholes who call him Spooky to his face? They've never been very
subtle about it."

"Well did you know they call you Mrs. Spooky?" he said in a tone that
implied he'd just dropped momentous news.

She smiled and shook her head. "Let's see. I think the first time I heard
that was when Mulder and I had been working together about a
month. We get interdepartmental mail addressed to Mr. and Mrs.
Spooky. So what's the point?"

"No, Dana, that's my question to you. What's the point? What are you
doing there? The guy's obviously a nut case."

"Bill," she said trying to regain her composure. "I've been working on
the X-Files for nearly eight years. We're an actual division of the FBI.
They give us badges and guns. We investigate cases so difficult that
others have written them off as unexplainable. Eight years, Bill. This
isn't just some silly, frivolous... We do legitimate investigations and,
damn it, we save lives. Ask your buddy in the LA field office what his
solve rate is. During our last evaluation, they told Mulder and me that
ours is eighty-three percent. Eighty-three percent of cases that are
labeled unsolvable before we even get them. I do my job, Bill. A job I
chose to do and keep choosing every day I do it. In the meantime, I
don't really give a good goddam what other agents think of
me--especially those I've never met."

"You save lives," he said with a nasty smirk. "Is that what he was
calling you to do? Come back and save a few lives with him?"

 Save a few lives. If they only knew. She shook
her head to clear her thoughts.

"For your information, I called him," she sneered. "As if it's any of
your business. Who died and named you phone monitor?"

"Who died?" he repeated and his voice broke. "Our sister Melissa
died. You almost died--three times that we know about. How many
more times were there that you didn't tell us about? Like you ever tell
us about anything."

"You wouldn't believe the things I could tell you," she said defeatedly.

"You can't tell me why my sister died," Bill said through clenched
teeth. "Because of the choice you've made, the one you make every
day you continue on in that job. What I just don't understand is..."

"Anything, Bill," Dana said, interrupting him. "You don't understand
anything. I know you blame me for what happened to Melissa." She
looked over at her mother sitting on the end of the couch clutching the
armrest. "You blame me, too." She finally gave in and let the tears that
had threatened since the beginning of the conversation fall from her
eyes.

"Not you, Dana," Maggie spoke through a lump in her throat. "I don't
blame you, honey. But sometimes I can't help thinking that she'd still
be with us..." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "I just miss her so
much."

"And you don't think I blame myself, that I don't carry that blame
around every day? Melissa has a lot to do with what I do. I want to
see the people involved in what happened to Missy punished--for what
they did to her, for what they did to me, to us."

"To everyone except Mulder," Bill countered, bitterness dripping from
his voice. "He seems to come through all these things basically
unscathed."

"Mulder unscathed," she said with a caustic snort, almost as if to
herself. "I said it before, Bill. You don't know anything about
anything. I'm you sister and you don't know anything about my life.
What would possibly make you presume to know about Mulder's?
Now, if you'll excuse me, I think this conversation has gone as far as it
should. And maybe too far. I'm going upstairs."

"But we're leaving for Midnight Mass soon," Charlie protested,
shooting wicked glares at Bill who stood still as a statue. "Come on,
Dana." He strode across the room to catch her hand at the bottom of
the staircase. "Come to Mass with us, Daynee."

Smiling at his use of his childhood name for her, she shook her head.
"I can't, Charlie, not after that. It's better this way, really. Bill and I
need a breather from each other and this way, both Tara and Angela
can go to Mass with you. I'll be here with the kids." She squeezed his
hand and turned to climb the steps, letting him know that he couldn't
change her mind.

She sat on the bed in the room identical to the one she and Melissa
had shared in their early teens. They'd giggled and laughed and fought
and made up in a room just like this one. She'd first tried on one of
Missy's cast-off bras in this room. Missy had taught her how to use a
lip-liner at the vanity they shared. This was where they'd sneaked
peeks at each other's diaries. Dana had read her sister's and found it so
much more exciting than her own that she started to make up stories
for her own diary. Melissa had read the fabrications and told their
mother that Dana was up to things she shouldn't be up to. They'd
fought viciously about invading one another's privacy, but the anger
dissolved into hysterical laughter when they realized they both were
making up tall tales for the other's snooping pleasure. Neither one of
them were very good at staying mad for a long time, anyway.

How could they not understand her wish for justice for the life those
men had snuffed out when they killed Melissa? How else did they
think that she would ever be able to live with what had happened to
her sister instead of to her, Dana? If she didn't follow through and try
to stop this, for good and for all, Melissa's death would be more bitter
and meaningless than it already was.

She heard her family trudge out of the house about an hour later and
she finally left the room, going in to check on Matty and Lareena in
the nursery and Aaron and Zach temporarily crashed on the bed in Bill
and Tara's room. Everyone was calm and dry, and sleeping so sweetly,
she could almost believe that visions of sugarplums danced in their
heads.

Heading back to the bedroom, she hauled her suitcase from the closet
and began to pack her things. Years of traveling, often with little or no
notice, had made her an efficient packer and in just a few minutes, she
found herself zipping her suitcase and latching her cosmetic case. She
carried both pieces of luggage down the stairs and tucked them around
the entryway to the living room, so that they wouldn't be visible from
the front door. Pulling out the yellow pages, she found the number for
a cab company and asked that one be sent at one-thirty to Bill's
address. The family would certainly be home from Midnight Mass by
then. She called the airport and found that she couldn't get a flight
back to Washington before late afternoon and she took the opening
they offered her on the 2:58 flight. She'd stay the rest of this night at a
hotel near the airport. Not that she expected to get much sleep, but a
hotel beat the prospect of spending sixteen hours in an airport waiting
area.

After her flurry of activity, she found that she still had nearly an hour
before they were expected home and the time weighed heavily on her.
She knew that what she was doing was actually proving the points that
Bill was trying to make, but she just couldn't stay knowing how they
felt. She left a note for her mother, apologizing and trying as best as
she could to explain, although her best couldn't possibly be good
enough here.

Dana jumped at the sound of the key in the lock and quickly rose to
meet them at the door so that she could make her move before any of
them thought to stop her. She glanced at her watch--the cab should be
arriving any minute.

Bill opened the door to allow Maggie to enter first and she met her
mother's eyes for what seemed the first time that night. And Dana
knew her mother knew that she was leaving.

"The kids are all asleep," she said. "I just checked on them." But her
words did not stop either Angela or Tara from going up to see for
themselves. And to let the *blood* Scullys do whatever they were
going to do in that moment, for the air was thick with the emotions
between them.

Dana bit the bullet and retrieved her bags from the living room. She
saw her mother's eyes fill with tears, and felt her own eyes brimming
over. Bill and Charlie looked on--Bill with contempt and Charlie with
anxiety--as she spoke to their mother.

"I've gotta go, Mom. I can't stay here. It's just... too much."

"Dana, honey," her mother protested.

She shook her head. "No, I'm going. I've got a reservation and a cab
will be here in a few minutes." She felt tears running down her cheek
and rubbed them away quickly with the back of her hand. Pulling her
mother close to her in an embrace, she whispered. "I'm sorry, Mom. I
love you and I'm so sorry." She felt her mother's head nod against her
own and pulled away.

She reached for Charlie and hugged him as well. "Bye, Chuckles," she
whispered, using the nickname she'd given him after they saw the
Mary Tyler Moore episode about the death of Chuckles the Clown.
"Remember, you have the key to all the great mysteries of life."

"Yeah," he said with a melancholy smile. "*A little song, a little dance,
a little seltzer down your pants.*"

His words brought an unexpected smile to her face. "I love you,
Charlie. Kiss Angela and the kids for me. And tell the kids not to
worry, I left their goodies under the tree. Next year, baby brother."
She quickly hugged him again and turned to Bill, who turned his face
at her attempts to meet his eyes.

"You think I didn't love her, too? You think I don't wish every day
that it had been me instead of her?" Her head turned at the sound of
the cab outside tooting its horn. "I love you, too. And someday I hope
I can tell you how much. I'm sorry Bill, but I have to go home now.
Give my love to Tara and the kids." She grabbed her bags and headed
out to the waiting cab, confident that someone would shut the door
behind her.

So she'd arrived home early the morning of the twenty-sixth and
Mulder called her cell phone a few days later to tell her about the case
Skinner had given him. He seemed surprised to find that she wasn't
still in San Diego, but he didn't pry, and he seemed glad when she told
him she'd meet him at the scene.

And then life went into overdrive with the case and the necromancer
and the undead and Mulder's injuries and her own and Frank Black
and his daughter. Until that night in the hospital watching Dick Clark.
She'd been so relieved to see him walk through that door, his arm in a
sling but otherwise intact. She'd been scared by the amount of blood
on his shirt at the scene, but they found out that his lacerations,
although numerous, were mostly superficial and that his most serious
injury was a dislocated right shoulder. Not exactly a new experience
for Mulder. In fact, he had talked the med student on duty through the
procedure and suffered what most people found to be excruciating
with barely a whimper.

And then he kissed her, softly and tentatively and for those few
seconds, time slowed and stilled. Until he'd mentioned the end of the
world, and all that had happened and all that she'd thought about in
San Diego came back to her. And Mulder thought her reaction was
because of him.

He'd asked in the car about her trip to San Diego and she hadn't been
able to talk about it with him. Again. Hadn't been able to express her
sorrow, her fears. And as a consequence he'd misunderstood what she
was feeling. Scully had tried to make it better with another kiss
outside his building. And things might have gotten better if Mulder
hadn't been so cavalier with the comment about finding reanimated
corpses in his closet. But was he being cavalier? The circumstances of
that case had been easier for him to accept, was had most of what
they'd faced over the years. Did he understand, did he have any idea
what the events of the past few months had done to her? The very
foundations of her life--the things she knew, the things she
believed--were crumbling around her? Did he know what that felt like,
what it meant to her?

She rubbed her tired eyes, glad to be home, in a place where it didn't
matter if she smeared mascara halfway down her cheeks. Mulder did
know what it felt like to have his beliefs shattered. She'd watched him
experience it over and over--in the months following her remission
from cancer, during their removal from the X-Files in the wake of the
events in Dallas and Antarctica, in the weeks after Cancer Man told
Mulder that his life's work was fruitless, had always been fruitless.
Yes, Mulder knew how it felt to have his beliefs shattered. 

And each time it had torn her heart out to watch him, to see the defeat
in his eyes. Did he see the same thing when he looked at her? Yet
every time it had happened to Mulder, she'd pretended that nothing
was wrong--simply worked beside him and watched him hurt. Was
Mulder doing the same thing?

God, it was all so stupid--this *don't ask, don't tell* thing they'd built
around their emotions and feelings. If there'd ever been a valid reason
for it, surely everything that had happened to them and between them
canceled it out. Were they both so afraid of appearing weak in front of
the other that they'd hidden their fears from each other? The fears
certainly were justified. Their lives were terrifying and completely
unbelievable to anyone but each other. There was much to fear and of
all the people in the world, only she could understand Mulder's fears,
and only he could understand hers. Yet they kept them to themselves,
like dark gifts tightly wrapped in their hearts. And for what? For what?
If it had ever made sense, she could no longer remember why that
was.

Scully suddenly had an overwhelming urge, nearly an ache, to talk to
Mulder. To tell him what had happened in San Diego, to talk about
how incredibly horrible the case in Idaho had been, to hear his voice
and hope that one more time, it could be what held her soul together
strongly enough for her to keep functioning. Tired. Had she slept
soundly for even ten hours since Monday? She was just so damn
bone-weary that she wasn't certain she could reach for her cell phone,
or even press the buttons that would connect her with him. Taking a
deep breath, she tried to muster the last of her reserves to make the
call. Her fingers had just brushed the phone, when it chirped beneath
her fingers. She expelled the breath and felt her eyes sting with tears of
relief. Of course, he would know when she was due home.

"Scully," she said thickly as a single tear escaped and ran down her
cheek.

"Dana, it's Mom." A familiar voice drifted into Scully's ears. "I got
your message about having to go out of town. I was taking a chance
that you'd be home."

"Yeah," she said, her tone careful and cautious. "I just got in a couple
of minutes ago." She brushed away the tear on her face with a
trembling hand, struggling to swallow the lump that had sprung to her
throat with her disappointment that it wasn't Mulder, and feeling
instantly disloyal to her mother. "You get back okay on Tuesday?"

"Yeah," her mother answered. "The flight was crowded but on
schedule."

"That's good." Scully replied, feeling awkward and ill at ease with her
mother. She wanted to apologize for Christmas Eve but she wasn't
certain even of where to begin.

"Honey, do you think you could come over and see me?" Maggie
asked hesitantly.

A sudden pang of anxiety hit Dana's stomach and, coupled with her
exhaustion, it felt like a blow from a sledgehammer. She really didn't
want to have the inevitable conversation with her mother, not just yet.
"Mom," she said softly. "I just got back and I'm kind of tired. Can we
do this tomorrow?" She heard the disappointment in her mother's sigh.

"I was really hoping... I want to talk about what happened. And there
are some things I really need to give you," Maggie replied.

And truly, Scully wanted to make things right between her mother and
herself, knew that she had to for both their sakes. "Okay, Mom. I'm
going to wash up a little and change my clothes. Then I'll be over."

"Thanks honey," her mother replied, her relief evident in her voice. "I'll
see you in a little while. Bye, sweetheart."

"Bye, Mom." 

She pressed the disconnect button and pulled herself to a sitting
position using the back of the sofa for leverage. Dragging herself to a
stand, she headed for the bathroom where she washed her face and
retouched her makeup, trying to ignore the deep shadows below her
eyes. Maybe a little more concealer would diminish them somewhat.
She did what she could, but wasn't very convinced by the results. She
dressed in black jeans and one of Mulder's seemingly endless supply of
gray t-shirts, which she'd somehow ended up with over the years.
Grabbing a fleece jacket from her closet, she stopped by the coffee
table to retrieve her keys, bag and cell phone. Leaning forward to pick
them up, she became a little lightheaded and straightened quickly,
waiting for the spell to pass. It did, quickly enough, and she headed
for the door. The phone in her pocket rang, startling her somewhat.

"Scully," she said with an impatient sigh.

"It's me. I was hoping you'd be back by now."

She almost managed a smile. "Yeah, I got in about twenty minutes
ago. You sound mobile. Where are you?"

"In the car. I'm driving home from Philadelphia. Probably halfway
between Baltimore and DC."

'Did you find a case?" she asked, hoping he hadn't. She was so tired,
she couldn't imagine having to go right back to work.

"Nah," he replied. "Just running down a lead from the Gunmen. I'll fill
you in on it when I see you." With Mulder, that could mean anything,
but it was obvious that he didn't want to talk about it on the phone. He
was silent for a few seconds and she listened to the sound of his
breathing. "Did you finish out there?" His voice was low and dark with
concern.

"Yeah," she said, her eyes closing involuntarily at the memory.
"Finished my last postmortem just after midnight last night.
Twenty-two autopsies in three-and-a-half days."

"Scully," he admonished lightly, but nonetheless seriously. "That's too
much. You sound so tired. I hope I caught you on your way to bed
and if so, I'll hang up now."

"No, Mulder," she replied. "As a matter of fact, I was just on my way
out."

"Out?" he asked incredulously. "Out where?"

"My mother asked me to come over. She has some stuff she wants to
give me."

"Can't it wait till tomorrow?" he asked. "You need some rest."

"She says it's important," Scully answered with a sigh.

"So are you," he replied. "Listen, I could swing by your mother's on
my way back into town and drop the stuff off at your place. It's pretty
much on the way."

She smiled to herself. Pretty much on the way if he veered thirty miles
off his path and added an extra forty-five minutes to his trip. "Thanks,
Mulder, but it's okay. I'm fine and I kind of have to do this." She
paused and Mulder waited for her to continue, saying nothing. "When
I was in San Diego, there was kind of a discussion... Hell, there was a
fight, maybe even a blowout."

"I thought so," he said softly. "I couldn't figure out any other reason
for you to come back ahead of time."

"It was pretty bad," she admitted. "Things were said that shouldn't
have been, mostly between Bill and me, but Mom, too. And I think my
mother wants us to fix things."

"Whatever happened between you happened over two weeks ago. I
don't see how one more day's going to make that much difference."

"Maybe it's not for you to see," she answered more sharply than she
had intended. "It's for me to decide."

There was a moment of awkward silence between them until he
muttered, "Okay, fine." He paused and she was about to speak, to
apologize for her sharpness, when he continued. "No, damn it, it's not
fine. I'm not trying to make decisions for you. I just care what happens
to you."

"Mulder, I'll be..."

"Fine?" he said wryly. "Scully, I want you to think about how you feel
right now. If you knew for certain that I felt just like you do right
now, would you let me drive?"

"No," she whispered, knowing that she'd never let him behind the
wheel if he felt like she did.

"I just want you to be safe," he said and she felt tears spring to her
eyes. "Like I said, I can swing by her place and bring back whatever it
is she wants you to have."

She sighed, her heart heavy. "I don't think that's a good idea, Mulder."

"Why won't you ever let me help you?" There was no anger in his
voice, only bewilderment.

It was on the tip of her tongue to deny his question as being untrue,
but she hesitated. He'd helped her so many times over the course of
seven years, but how many of those times had been at her request, or
even with her full knowledge. "It's not that I don't want you to help
me," she replied, hoping to reassure him. "It's just that part of what
happened at Bill's house was..." She paused, not knowing--not
wanting to know--how to go on.

"Part of what happened was about me."

She didn't answer, knowing he would understand her silence.

"It doesn't take a huge leap to figure out what Bill was mad about. I'm
not exactly on his Christmas Card list. The gist was why do you
continue to stay with a raving lunatic."

"God, he was such an asshole," she said angrily, but immediately
dismissed the anger. "He doesn't understand. None of them do."

"Your mother included," Mulder said quietly.

"She didn't stop him," Scully replied, her voice thick with long unshed
tears. "She didn't disagree. That's why I don't think you should pick up
those things from her."

"Geez, Scully, I'm not going to move into her spare bedroom. I'm just
going to pick up a few things. Three to five minutes, max."

It sounded so tempting to her. Just a little sleep. A couple of hours
would make all the difference in how she felt. But she'd promised her
mother, and Maggie had said it was important. "I already told her I
was coming," she protested weakly.

"Scully, no matter how your mother feels about me, I know she wants
you to be safe, too. Listen, let me call her and explain things. Then if
she still thinks she has to talk to you today, I'll come down and take
you to her place."

"I think whatever Mom wants to talk to me about will take quite a
while."

"I'll go have coffee, go to a movie, something. You can call me when
you're ready to leave. Please, let me do this for you."

He certainly seemed to have all the bases covered. Longstanding habit
tugged at her, making her reluctant to let herself be taken care of.
When had the concern of others come to seem like a relinquishing of
her self-determination? Did she really believe that someone couldn't
care about her without trying to control her? She hoped that she didn't
believe that, but she was simply too drained to think it through.

"Okay."

"Yeah?" Mulder asked, seemingly surprised at her acquiescence.
"Okay then. You get some sleep and I'll be there later, either with the
stuff from your mother, or to take you to see her. I'll wake you up
when I get there."

She was already taking off her jacket and heading to the couch for a
nap, her body barely believing that her mind had allowed this. Neither
of them spoke as she gratefully kicked off her shoes, but neither of
them seemed ready to end the conversation, either. She reclined on the
sofa and pulled the afghan off the back, drawing it tightly around her.
A warm lassitude enveloped her almost immediately, and she finally
broke the silence. "Thanks, Mulder."

"You're welcome," he replied, his voice soft and honeyed. "Now go to
sleep."

"Halfway there," she said on a yawn and pressed the disconnect button
before she was too far gone to remember to do it.


End Part 2 of 7
+++++

Simple Gifts -- Part 3 of 7 
See Disclaimer in Part 1


I-95 just southwest of Baltimore
3:47 p.m.

Mulder smiled at the fuzzy, drowsy sound of her voice right before she
hung up. He couldn't believe she'd actually agreed to his suggestion.
She must be really exhausted. He sobered a little when he realized that
part of the deal was having to call her mother. It shouldn't be a
problem. He'd called Maggie a lot during the time when Scully was
missing. They'd spoken often and at length during that awful time
when they'd both been naive enough to believe that that was as bad as
things could get. That was before all the things that had happened to
Scully since, each seemingly worse than the one before. He hadn't
spoken to Maggie since they'd spent time together in the hospital in
New York when Scully had been shot. This wasn't going to be easy,
especially in light of what Scully had told him about the family
Christmas. But it had to be done and it wasn't going to get any easier.
He pushed Mrs. Scully's button on his speed dial.

"Hello?" Maggie answered.

"Mrs. Scully, it's Mu... It's Fox."

"Hello, Fox," she said without hesitation. He wished he knew her well
enough to read her tone. "Are you looking for Dana? I think she's
probably on her way here."

He grimaced slightly. "Well, that's what I was calling to tell you. She's
not on her way there."

"Oh? Why not?"

"I asked her not to go."

"You asked her not to," Maggie repeated.

"She's so tired, Mrs. Scully." He waited, but she didn't say anything.
Gap in the phone conversation. Maybe that's where Scully got it, that
ability to just listen--to wait for information to come to her rather than
to press for it. "You know she just got back into town. Did she tell
you anything about the case?"

"No," Maggie answered, her tone sounding sharp to his ears. "She
hardly ever tells me about her work. She just left a message on my
machine. She didn't even tell me where the two of you were going."

"It wasn't the two of us. It was just her," he explained. "I was on light
duty this week and she was sent on another assignment."

"They sent her on an assignment without you again?" she asked
tightly. Maggie had been livid when she found out that her daughter
had been shot by a fellow FBI agent--the only person more outraged
than he himself had been.

"She wasn't in the field, Mrs. Scully," he said, trying to offer the only
idea that had given him any comfort over the past week. "Have you
seen the news--the thing about the mass grave they found in Idaho?"

"It was all over the tv, the papers," Mrs. Scully replied. "Thirty-seven
bodies, from what I heard. You mean Dana...?"

"Yeah," he said on a sigh. "Some of the victims appeared to be
Mexican nationals, so the Bureau was working jointly with the local
authorities. The nearest town of any size... Their coroner just couldn't
deal with it, so they sent Dana out there to help him out." It felt
strange to call her *Dana,* even when talking about her with her
mother. "It was pretty bad, Mrs. Scully. She did twenty-two autopsies
between Monday and Thursday. It's hard to sleep when you see
something like that."

"Oh, Fox," she said sadly. "How could she do it?"

"Because she's the best there is," he replied with sincere admiration.
"But if she got ten hours of sleep in all that time, I'd be really
surprised. She's exhausted and I didn't think it was a good idea for her
to drive like that. I convinced her to let me check with you to see if I
might be able to pick up the stuff you wanted to give her. I'm already
in the car and not too far from you."

"I was hoping to talk to her, but if you don't think it's safe for her to
drive, I can't ask her do it."

"I told Dana that if you really had to talk to her, I'd go down and get
her and bring her to your house."

"No, Fox," Maggie replied. "If Dana needs rest, she needs rest. Come
on by. I've got everything in a bag waiting for her."

"Thank you," he said wondering if his voice reflected the relief he felt.
"I should be there within an hour."

"I'll be watching for you. Bye, Fox."

"Bye, Mrs. Scully."

It was after five when he finally pulled up at the curb in front of
Maggie's house. It had been years since he'd been there and he didn't
think he'd ever be able to go there--with or without Scully--that it
wouldn't remind him of the time she was missing. He'd visited often in
the months that Scully was gone, ostensibly to bring Maggie progress
reports on the status of the search for her daughter. But more often
just to be in the presence of the only other person in the world who
knew how much it hurt to be without Scully. Mrs. Scully would talk
to him, make him a meal--often the only food or conversation he'd had
in days. He recalled that time, as well as the day he'd pulled up in front
of the house to drop Mrs. Scully off after they'd seen the grave marker
she'd selected for her daughter. Mrs. Scully had seen it more than
Mulder had. After a brief initial glance, he turned away, unable to bear
to look at it anymore. He could not, would not, absolutely refused to
believe that she was dead. And blessedly, miraculously, she hadn't
been.

Mulder popped the door open and unfolded himself from behind the
steering wheel. He stretched to work out the kinks from the long drive
and moved his head back and forth resulting in several quite audible
pops. Nothing more he could do. There was just no getting around
approaching the house and ringing the doorbell.

Maggie answered almost at once, throwing the door open and greeting
him with a smile that Mulder didn't know how to interpret. Not the
warm welcoming smile she used to give him way back when, but still
one that felt genuine to him. Or maybe that was wishful thinking.

"Fox," she said. "Please come on in."

"Hi, Mrs. Scully. Took me a little longer than I thought to get here."
He stood awkwardly in the foyer, his hands folded in front of him,
bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet.

"You just never know what the traffic will be like," she said, seeming
as uncomfortable to him as he himself felt. "I made some coffee.
Would you like a cup?"

He felt anxious, as though she were simply being polite. "No, thanks,"
he said, fighting the urge to look away, down at his feet like a nervous
teenager. "I should get that stuff to Dana." Even without seeing her
face, he could feel her looking at him curiously.

"Dana's probably asleep right now, isn't she?"

"I hope so," he replied automatically. "She was almost there when I
hung up from talking with her."

"Then if you stay and have a cup of coffee with me, she'll be able to
get a little more sleep." She smiled at him reassuringly. "I wish you
would, Fox. I'd like to talk to you if you have a little time."

"Sure," he replied, trying not to be too reassured by her smile. He
wouldn't be lulled into a false sense of security about how Scully's
mother felt about him. But she was right--Scully would at least get a
little more sleep.

"Why don't you go into the living room and I'll bring the coffee in
there?"

He walked through the double doors to the living room, recalling the
feeling of finding Scully here--paranoid, crazed and pointing a gun at
him. Would she have shot him if Maggie hadn't stepped between
them? He hadn't believed then that she would shoot him, and he was
still certain of it now. She'd have fought it off, listened to that part in
her head that corresponded to the part of him that hadn't allowed him
to shoot her when Robert Modell had tried to *push* him into it.

Pacing the room, he found he was somehow too wound up to sit
down alone in Mrs. Scully's living room. A couple of pieces of
furniture seemed different--the sofa and an armchair. He drifted over,
just as he used to do when he'd visited her, to the large bookcase in
the corner of the room that she had decked with photographs. Many
of the pictures were ones she'd had on display before, but there were
other, newer ones in among them. Bill and the mythical Charlie with
their families. One of Melissa that he hadn't seen before, standing on a
pier in what appeared to him to be San Francisco. A fairly recent one
of Scully--about two years old, according to her hairstyle--at what
appeared to be a family barbecue. 

He smiled when he noted a gap in the group of pictures and wondered
if she'd kept them that way for all these years, or had rearranged them
knowing that he'd wander over to look at them like he used to do.
During one of the last times he'd visited Maggie during Scully's
abduction, he'd finally given into the temptation he'd fought off for so
long, and took a small brass-framed picture of Scully and slid it into
the pocket of his jacket. He'd seen the photo during his first visit and it
made him ache when he realized he didn't have a single picture of
Scully--other than the surveillance photo of her gagged in the trunk of
the car driven by Duane Barry when he'd taken her. For weeks, he'd
stared longingly at the picture on Maggie's shelf, wanting more than
anything to have a different image of her in case she was gone forever.
The night, weeks later, that he'd slipped it into his pocket was the
night he first admitted to himself that he loved her--enough to steal her
picture from her mother.

It was the picture she'd had taken for her graduation from medical
school. Her hair was longer and smoothly styled and she looked so
young and beautiful--so much like she had that first day she'd walked
into his office. Her eyes sparkled with her smile and she looked so
poised and confident and stunningly gorgeous. He'd kept his jacket on
during his visit with Mrs. Scully, but couldn't stop his fingers from
surreptitiously reaching into the pocket to touch the frame. He'd taken
it home later and was happy to be able to close the file containing the
grainy abduction photo and have something good to replace it with.
Staring at it for a very long time, he was stunned at how much he
missed her and by the gaping hole her absence had left in his heart.

That first night, he'd kept it standing upright on the coffee table next
to the sofa. But when he'd seen it upon awakening from another fitful
night's slumber, he felt ashamed that he had taken it. And somehow
disloyal to Scully, as if he'd accepted a good image, a happy image, as
his final memory of her. Like he was giving up. He'd opened the file
again and stared at the picture of his terrified partner until he could
feel and anger and rage banking in his heart like a carefully tended fire.
And with it came a grim determination to keep going, to search for her
for as long as it took.

But even then he hadn't been able to return the picture, to slip it back
into the place where he'd found it. Instead, he'd placed it in a drawer in
his desk, where he'd kept it for years--taking it out every so often, just
to look at it, just to remember what her smile looked like. He'd looked
at it a lot over the past year.

"I counted those pictures, Fox. I'm hoping the same number will be
there when I count them again later."

Her voice started him, interrupting his thoughts, and he turned quickly
hoping his expression didn't look as guilty as he felt. He strode across
the room to take the tray laden with coffee things from her hands. "I'll
empty my pockets before I leave." Maggie smiled and indicated a
space on the coffee table for Mulder to set the tray down. He waited
for her to sit before seating himself.

Maggie poured coffee into two mugs and handed one to him. "Just
black, right?" He nodded and took the cup she offered. She smiled
apologetically and passed him a plate with a sandwich cut into
quarters. "I was hoping to find something for you to eat. I just got
back Tuesday, and I haven't had a chance to do any real grocery
shopping. But still, you look like a peanut butter and jelly man to me."

He smiled with delight at her offer. Peanut butter and jelly, cut into
quarters like tiny tea sandwiches. He was surprised to find that she
hadn't removed the crusts. "Who doesn't like PB and J? One of the few
things I can make for myself that I can eat virtually without fear." He
bit into one quarter and realized that he was hungry--something that
hadn't happened in a long time. Had he eaten anything all day?

"You're too thin, Fox. Is something wrong?" she looked at him with
genuine concern.

"I'm okay now," he replied and took another bite of the sandwich,
hoping that a full mouth would keep him from having to answer
questions about his recent state of health.

"But there have been some problems?" she asked.

He nodded, not seeing the point in lying to her when she could see for
herself. He hoped she wouldn't ask for details.

"Is that why you were on light duty and Dana had to go to Idaho?"

"No, that was a separate thing. Dislocated my shoulder last week."

"You should still have your arm in a sling," she chided him gently, still
with a look of worry on her face.

"Took it off a couple days ago. It was..."

"Too constricting, gets in the way, too hot, itches. Generally a pain in
the ass." She noted his surprised look. "Four kids, two sons involved
in every sport that was ever invented. I've seen dislocated shoulders.
Your arm should be in a sling. You're thinking, what? Maybe Dana
won't notice?"

"Not likely, huh?" he said with a chuckle. "It's in the car. I'll put it on
before I go to see her."

Maggie smiled at him knowingly. "Five bucks at ten to one says that
she'll be able to tell that you haven't worn it all week."

"You don't think I can fool her, huh?"

"My daughter is not easily fooled," she replied, not without a great
deal of pride.

"No, she's not," Mulder replied, and suddenly felt inexplicably somber
and uneasy. Scully was not easily fooled--unlike her too often gullible
partner.

She seemed to pick up on his mood change and noted that he'd only
eaten three of the four sandwich sections she'd given him. "Fox, I don't
mean to pry..."

He saw her eyeing his plate and forced down the last quarter of the
sandwich in an unsuccessful bid to erase the worried look on her face.
His appetite was not yet back to normal, and he couldn't put away
near the gargantuan portions he could when she used to cook him
meals. "I had some medical problems a couple months ago," he said
quietly. "I'm getting better every day. Dana knows about them and
she's helping me keep an eye on things."

Maggie nodded, "Except when she's out of town and you don't take
care of yourself. If she hasn't slept well since she's been gone, I'd be
willing to bet that you haven't been eating regularly since then either."
She gave him a skeptical look that was almost identical to one in
Scully's rather impressive repertoire of doubtful expressions. "Well,
maybe that's part of the explanation."

Explanation? "For what?" he asked.

"For the way Dana was at Christmas," she answered. "That's what I
wanted to talk to you about. Did she tell you anything about
Christmas at Bill's house?"

He shrugged in a non-committal way, reluctant somehow to discuss
things she'd said to him, even with her mother. Not that he knew that
much to begin with.

She smiled at him in sad understanding. "Don't worry, Fox, I won't ask
you for details about your conversations with her. She told you that
she and Bill had a fight and that's why she left early, right?" He
nodded. "Did she tell you what the fight was about?" She paused.
"Never mind, I said I wouldn't ask for details. I'll tell you what
happened."

"Mrs. Scully," he interrupted, uncomfortable with the idea of his
mother sharing things with him that Scully might not actually want him
to know.

"I know you think that I'm telling you our family secrets. But you're in
this, Fox. And I think our failure to recognize that is part of what
happened on Christmas Eve. You're in this and it's not fair for
everyone but you to know what happened. And I'm pretty sure Dana
didn't tell you all the details."

He suddenly realized that he did want to know the details. Maggie was
right, he was in this. He was the one who'd had to watch the quiet and
subdued Scully who had returned early from San Diego and gone right
back to work. "We haven't had much time to talk," he said defensively.
"We had a... fairly demanding case right away when she got back.
That's where I hurt my shoulder. Then she got sent to Idaho."

Maggie nodded in understanding. "You know we got to San Diego on
the twenty-third. Bill picked us up at the airport. Maybe I should have
said something right away. Bill picked at Dana for little things right
from the start, but she didn't seem to take much notice. She was, I
don't know, preoccupied, I guess. Now I know she was probably
worried about you. I wish she'd have told us. But anyway, she didn't
react to anything he said to her and that seemed to make him even
more determined to get a rise out of her. I probably should have told
him to stop. But Fox, my kids are grownups. I just figured they'd have
to work out any problems between them on their own. So I didn't say
anything.

"By the time we got back to Bill's, Charlie and his family had arrived
in their Winnebago, and there was lots of catching up to do. So things
weren't so bad, at least until bedtime. You remember Bill's house in
San Diego?" Mulder nodded. "Our family was stationed on that base
when the kids were young and we lived in a house with an identical
floor plan to the one Bill's living in now. Three bedrooms upstairs, so
the boys shared a room and the girls shared one. Anyway, Bill put
Dana and me in the room that she and Melissa used to share when we
lived in the house like that. It seemed so sad and strange to be in that
room that used to be Melissa's. I miss her so much of the time, but it's
really bad at Christmas. It's been years now, but it just seemed worse
this year." He nodded in understanding. 

"It's Matty's room now. Tara put a whole bunch of glow-in-the-dark
stars on the ceiling. It was kind of eerie that first night. I woke up in
the middle of the night and was startled by those stars, then I rolled
over to face the other bed where Dana was sleeping and there were
those alien head slippers of hers. And they were glowing in the dark,
too."

"She wears the slippers?" he asked, surprised and unbelievably
pleased. He'd thought they were really cool when he found them in the
store while looking for a gift for her. But he never thought that she'd
actually wear them.

"A gift from you?" she asked and he nodded. "Fox, we have to talk
about gifts." She chuckled a little, then sobered. 

"I think I did better this year," he said, but not feeling too sure of it.

"You did fine last year," she said reassuringly. "Yes, she wears them.
And she washes them by hand even though the label says you can put
them in the machine because she wants to make sure they don't stop
glowing in the dark."

Embarrassing as it was, Mulder could feel himself grinning as he
looked down, adding hot coffee to the cooling liquid in his cup. She
liked the slippers.

"But just being back in that room, all I could think about was Melissa,
and then Ahab and all the Christmases we used to have. The next day
was Christmas Eve and we all pretty much went our separate ways.
You know, last minute shopping and things. That afternoon we all got
back together and worked on trimming the tree. Dana helped right
along with everyone else, not saying much but joining in. We have a
Scully traditional lineup for Christmas Eve. We trim the tree, we eat
some dinner, then we gather round and sing carols. I was keeping an
eye on her and Dana just got quieter and quieter all through dinner.
She smiled, she spoke when spoken to, but it was like she wasn't really
there. Then we gathered around for the singing. Of course, Dana
never joins in on the singing but..."

"She doesn't sing with you?" he asked, surprised. He sometimes heard
her absently humming carols in the office in the weeks before
Christmas and he loved the low, slightly off-key sound of it. When she
did it, he had to concentrate on not looking at her. Sometimes out of
the corner of his eye, he'd see her bobbing her head slightly in time
with the song. She'd stop if he caught her, but he liked catching her,
too. It made her smile and blush just a little, like he'd caught her at
some secret activity.

"No," Maggie answered. "She hasn't for years, not since she was a
kid--twelve, thirteen maybe. That year at Christmas, she was just
getting over a pretty bad case of bronchitis. So while we were singing,
Billy made fun of her and said she sounded like a dying cow, which for
some reason he found astonishingly funny. Then Bill--my husband
Bill--joined in and said *more like a dying cow in a hailstorm.* Well,
that was it. If it had just been her brother teasing her... She was just at
that age where young girls can get hurt by a glance. She had braces,
and chubby apple cheeks, and red hair, and about a million freckles.
Sounding like a dying cow in a hailstorm was just one more thing to
add to the list of things she already didn't like about herself. If it had
just been Billy, it would have gone in one ear and out the other. But
her father said it, too, and I think that really hurt her. He didn't mean
to be cruel, he was just joking, but it was the wrong joke at the wrong
time. She never said anything about it, just stopped singing and never
sang with us again, although she did move her lips and pretend. She
still tries to fake it."

"I think she has a nice voice," he said quietly, almost to himself, and
his lips tugged in a small smile at the memory of her singing to him.

"You've heard Dana sing?" she asked and he nodded. "We never heard
her sing again. Not even with the radio in the car. I've always
wondered if she even sings to herself when she's alone. I hope she
does."

Mulder half expected Maggie to ask how he'd come to hear Dana sing,
but to his relief, she didn't. Mothmen in Florida wasn't something he
wanted to try to explain to Scully's mother.

"So we were all gathered around the piano. Tara was playing,
everybody was singing--or pretending to. I was holding the baby and
singing to her. I glanced around for a second and saw Dana just
standing there, not even pretending to sing, with the damnedest look
on her face. She'd been acting strange all night, so I just went back to
paying attention to the baby. And when I looked up again, she was
gone."

She twisted her hands together as if they were cold and looked away
from him. "God, Fox, I just didn't think. Suddenly I was just so tired
of how she'd been over the past couple of days. Hell, the past couple
of years. And I got mad--mad about her moods, about her *need* to
abandon her family right in the middle of the Christmas Eve thing. So I
went to go look for her and looked out the back door and saw her
sitting on the porch. Just sitting there in the dark with that
ever-present cell phone pressed to her ear. And I knew she was talking
to you."

"Who else would ruin your family's Christmas?" he said sardonically.

"No, Fox, that's not how I knew," she replied with a quiet
despondency. "I knew it by the look on her face. I just stood there for
a while watching her through the window. She didn't even know I was
there. She was just sitting on the porch, her knees drawn up, the
phone propped up against her shoulder. Not saying a word."

"I was telling her a story."

"It must have been a good story, Fox. She had her head tilted back
and she was smiling. A smile like I hadn't seen from her in years.
Maybe ever. And she looked so pretty, sitting there in the moonlight.
It was almost like I was seeing her for the first time, like she was so
beautiful that she couldn't possibly have come from the likes of Ahab
and me."

Mulder felt a pang in his heart that he hadn't been allowed to see that
smile. But at the same time, he was elated that he had been able to
bring it to her. She had let him see a smile like that one night, in
exchange for something as simple as baseball, and he'd do anything to
see it again.

Maggie took a deep and shaky breath. "This is where the hard part
starts. I stood there watching her, seeing how lovely she was, and I
could literally feel myself filling with anger. Just pure rage. At her...
and at you."

He nodded his understanding and placed his cup on the tray, readying
himself to leave.

She placed a hand on his forearm. "No, please stay. Let me finish
explaining. Please, Fox?"

He did not reply, but stayed in his place on the sofa, sitting straight
backed and not allowing himself to relax against the cushions.

"I'm so ashamed of this," she said softly, lowering her head. "But I
stood there getting angrier and angrier that she'd spent the last two
days creeping around, looking like it took every bit of strength she had
just to stay in the same room with us. But for you, she could smile.
Not just smile, she glowed. And instead of being glad that
someone--that you--could bring a smile to her face, I was resentful
that it was you and not us, not her family. And I thought of last
Christmas when she chose to be with you instead of us. And the dinner
party she left because you called. And all the canceled lunches and
movie plans." Her voice was getting shakier as the tears that brimmed
in her eyes spilled over. "And the fact that I learned that my daughter
had an inoperable brain tumor from you. She told you first. Fox, I'm
so ashamed, I'm so sorry, but right at that moment, I hated you."

He swallowed hard and closed his eyes against the blinding pain of
holding back tears. This wonderful, strong, resilient woman--who'd
kept him alive and sane while Scully was missing--had hated him. And
for so many good reasons he could use both hands and feet and still
run out of digits before he ran out of reasons. Yet he was here in her
living room, drinking her coffee and eating food she had prepared for
him. How could she? What did it mean?

Maggie continued. "Bill came along, looking for both of us, I guess.
Dana had already seen me looking at her and hung up from talking
with you. I went back to the living room and she came in and he
started right in on her. I could hear him in the next room. About how
she should be spending Christmas Eve with her family. She tried... I
think she was really trying to avoid an argument. She ignored him and
came into the living room where Charlie and I were. And he just
wouldn't let up. And I just couldn't seem to make myself stop him
because I was mad, too." She pulled a handkerchief from the sleeve of
her blouse and dabbed at a tear that sneaked down her face. "He was
yelling about you, about her job. Charlie tried to intercede and Bill
told him to shut up and stay out of it. Bill told her he'd met an agent
from the Los Angeles field office and he..."

"Told him about Mr. and Mrs. Spooky," Mulder finished for her and
she nodded. "Word gets around. I guess working with me has pretty
much finished any high career aspirations she had with the Bureau."

"Fox..." she began.

But he kept on talking. "That's why they sent her on that case in New
York last year. One last chance to save her career."

"And look where it got her!" Maggie exclaimed in disgust. "Fox, Dana
doesn't consider her career ruined. Bill always says that when he talks
to me about her, and I guess I believed it because she never talks
about her work with me so I just didn't know how she felt about it.
But I heard her that night. She's proud of the work you two do and set
Bill straight on that one right away. She told him that you have an
eighty-three percent solve rate on cases and that she doesn't give a
damn who calls her Mrs. Spooky. Because you two do good work and
you save lives."

"She told you that?" he asked, astonished. "She could do so much
better than me. I told her once that she'd be Director someday. And
she could have been if she'd have transferred out when I said it."

"What makes you think she wants to be? She'd never trade in a chance
to save lives for a title. And she'd never trade you in for one either.
She let us know in no uncertain terms that she's where she chooses to
be." She paused and cleared her throat, as if a lump had formed there
that was difficult to talk around. "I should have seen it coming. I
would never have let him say it if I'd known he was going to."

"What?" he asked suspiciously.

"I should have known he wasn't thinking when he brought up Emily,"
she said miserably.

Mulder took a shaky breath, rubbing his fingers across his forehead.
"He brought up Emily on Christmas Eve? He brought up her dead
daughter on the anniversary of the day she found her?"

"I should have stopped him. But he never believed that the child was
Dana's daughter."

"I don't suppose it mattered to him that she believed it," he said coldly.
"But that's not what caused the blowup, was it?"

She shook her head sadly. "No, no it wasn't. She hung on pretty well
through that. But then, then... He basically blamed her for Melissa's
death. Said that Melissa was dead because of the choices Dana made.
It stopped her cold, Fox. He'd never said anything like that to her
before and I was stunned."

"Fucker," he whispered under his breath. He could feel his heart
constricting in pain and rage. "I know he's your son and you love him,
Mrs. Scully. But if he was here right now I'd kick his ass all the way
back to San Diego. How the hell could he say something like that to
her?"

Tears spilled from her luminous blue eyes, so like Scully's. "Fox, I
know it hasn't been your experience with him, but Bill is a good man.
Really. He's a good husband and a good father. And I really believe
that he wants to be a good brother and protect Dana, but she won't let
him. Since my husband died, I know Bill sees himself as the head of
the family."

But Mulder's fury would not be appeased. "And as head of the family,
it's his job to destroy her," he said bitterly.

"Fox," she said gently. "You know yourself that sometimes people say
angry, hurtful things before they even think about them." 

Her words brought him up short. How many times had he himself
blurted out things that he knew had hurt her as soon as he said them?
How many times just in the past year?

"Besides," she continued softly. "There's plenty of blame to spread
around. After Bill said those things, she turned to me and asked if I
blamed her for Missy's death. I don't know what came over me, but I
started to say I couldn't help thinking that she'd still be here if... I
stopped myself but it was too late. She knew what I was going to
say."

He felt his own eyes fill with tears at how that must have hurt her.
Knew her pain from the blame his father had always placed on him for
losing his sister. "Mrs. Scully, you should have put the blame where it
belongs. Do you have any idea how guilty she feels about Melissa?
How much she blames herself?"

She nodded looking down at her hands clenched together in her lap.
"Let me finish, Fox. After that, she went upstairs and the rest of us
went to Midnight Mass. She wouldn't go with us, said she'd stay there
with the kids. By the time we got back, she had her things packed and
had called a cab. She insisted on leaving, and I couldn't blame her for
it. I wanted to apologize for everything and I know Bill did, too. But
she wouldn't have listened. She just hugged us all and left. I watched
her face and all I could think of was how beautiful she'd looked before,
out on the porch talking to you. And it tore my heart out that I'd taken
that away from her. I took that away from her. She wasn't beautiful
when she left."

"She's always beautiful," he insisted and Maggie graced him with an
indulgent smile that was heartbreaking in its sorrow.

"After she left, I went upstairs and found a note from her on my
pillow. To answer your question Fox, no I didn't know how much she
blames herself. I really didn't know until I read her note. We Scullys
always had plenty of love, but none of us talk about emotions very
much. It's just not our way. I knew she was heartbroken about
Melissa's death. They'd just started to get close again when Melissa
was killed. But she never talked about the guilt. She was too ashamed
to, I guess. Maybe too afraid of upsetting me more than I already was.

"But I sat there in that room and read her note and she apologized for
the fact that it was Melissa and not her who'd died. Dana thought...
thinks I'd rather have had it be her who was killed instead of Melissa.
She apologized and promised to keep at it until everyone responsible
for what happened to Melissa was brought to justice. Said that it was
the only way she could live with what had happened to her sister."

He nodded his understanding, knowing that about Scully, knowing
that about himself.

"I did a lot of thinking that night, Fox, and in the next few days. It
broke my heart to think that Dana believed I would rather have had
her die than Melissa. I can't imagine my life without Dana. And I
thought a lot about Melissa, too. About how I hadn't come to grips
with her death because there were so many things between us when
she died. For so many years, I disapproved of the way she lived and
the things she believed. When Dana was abducted, it took me weeks
to track her down. I didn't have any idea where she was or what she
was doing and when I finally got ahold of her to tell her about her
sister, I just *had* to blast her for how irresponsible she was, always
had been. If she hadn't loved Dana so much, I don't think she'd have
come home at all after the way I talked to her. I wasn't even sure she
was coming home until I saw her in the hospital standing next to you
doing that aura thing or whatever they call that New Age crap she was
so into. And even then, even when she'd come home to be with Dana
and me, I still got so angry at her when she started spouting that spirit
communication stuff. But she stayed around after Dana got better and
she and I started trying to work things out. But there was still so much
that was unresolved when she died. And I think that I've never
resolved those things. That my own guilt about Melissa made me
unable to see the truth. Made me blame Dana somewhat. But mostly,
Fox, I blamed you--for Melissa, for everything that's happened to
Dana."

He swallowed hard, alarmed to find himself shaking with grief. "I'm
sorry, Mrs. Scully. I'm so sorry." He wanted to leave, just get away
from all the hurt he felt, the hurt he'd caused. But he couldn't,
wouldn't, until she was finished. Maggie Scully had earned the right to
vent her rage at him and he wouldn't deny her the chance. He lowered
his head in submission and waited for her to continue and was amazed
to feel her hand on his, gently squeezing.

"No, Fox, no. Listen to me." She reached over and raised his head
with two fingers beneath his chin. "I was wrong. I was wrong to blame
you or Dana." 

Shaking his head, he tried to avert his gaze, unable to bear the
kindness of her eyes, the compassion there. He found, though, that he
couldn't look away from eyes that were so like Scully's--vivid blue and
almost breathtakingly full of strength and simple humanity. She
dropped her hand when she saw that he wouldn't look away.

"My daughter was murdered. It's an awful thing but thousands and
thousands of parents have had to live through the murder of their
children. The man who shot her, the men who ordered him to kill
Dana... They wouldn't have done it if you and she hadn't been trying to
keep them from doing something wrong, something bad. Something
so bad that they'd murder over it. You were trying to stop them?" He
nodded. "Then you were doing what both of you took an oath to do.
You swore to protect us--just like my husband did when he joined the
Navy. Just like my son did. *Those men* killed Melissa. Not you and
not Dana. I wanted to tell her that. I wanted to tell you that.

"I did so much thinking in San Diego. I realized Dana does what she
does... She does it because she truly believes it is the right thing to do.
But I think she also does it as her way of coping with what happened
to Melissa. She wants justice for what happened to her sister."

"We both do," he said quietly.

Maggie nodded. "And your sister, and your father, and Dana and you.
So much has happened to all of us. I thought a lot about what Dana
does, as much as I know about it. I know she doesn't tell me a lot of
things because she doesn't want me to worry about her. Though I can't
see how the real thing could be more dangerous than what I imagine."

Mulder closed his eyes in a moment of anguish. He could never tell
Maggie that her imagination couldn't come anyplace close to their
reality. Or that he was glad that it couldn't and afraid for it, too.

"But the fact of the matter is," she continued, "that no matter what I
imagine or believe or want for her, Dana is doing what she's doing.
And she's doing it for justice. I have to believe that's why she joined
the FBI. Even if all these things hadn't happened to us, I think Dana
would have wanted justice against anyone who would do the things
that those men have done. She's going to keep on doing what she
does. If I didn't believe it after all that's happened, she didn't leave me
any doubt after I'd read her note. She's coping with Melissa's death in
the best and most honorable way. I wish she wouldn't. I'm scared to
death for her. But I'm proud of her, too."

Mulder smiled and swallowed back the lump that was forming in his
throat. "I should have brought her here," he said regretfully. "It would
mean so much for her to hear you say that."

"She will, Fox," she reassured him. "I plan on telling her that a lot
from now on. But I needed to talk to you, too. To apologize to you
for what I was feeling about you."

"You don't have to apologize," he interrupted.

"I do," she insisted. "You were in my thoughts a lot, too. I didn't
think, Fox. I forgot to think about the fact that I still have a daughter
because of you. You're the one who never believed she was dead
when she was missing, refused to believe she would die even when
everyone else--even her sister and I--thought she should be removed
from the respirator. Missy told me you stayed with her all that last
night, when they made me go and rest. She said you sat there and
talked to Dana all night. We'd been there for days, just waiting for her
to die. That's the difference. We were saying goodbye, giving her
permission to go. You were asking her to stay and she did."

In fact, he'd begged her to stay--many times in that long and awful
night when it didn't seem like anything he was doing was making a
difference. When nothing about her condition indicated that he had
been right to stay with her rather than kill some of the men responsible
for what had been done to her. "I'd like to think that I had something
to do with it," he said wistfully. "But I think it's more likely that she
just came out of the coma because she's incredibly strong and I was...
we were lucky enough that it just wasn't her time yet."

"I think you're wrong," she replied simply. "But even if you aren't,
you're still the reason she's here. That thing you brought to the
hospital and had them insert in her neck. You don't get something like
that at Radio Shack. What did you have to do to get it, Fox?" She
paused and he looked away, hoping not to have to explain something
so completely unbelievable. "Don't worry, it was a rhetorical question.
I know that I'm even less likely to hear about what you do from you
than from Dana. The point is, you did whatever you had to do to get
what would save her life."

"They didn't prove that the chip was responsible," he said, not
understanding his own need to deny what he knew to be true. "It
could have been the radical treatment the doctor was giving her. Hell,
it could have been the Rosaries everyone was saying for her."

"Do you believe it was the treatment or the prayers?" she asked
challengingly and he did not reply. "I didn't think so. But even if it
was, it doesn't change the fact that *you* did something and Bill and I
just waited for her to die. And I believe that what you did saved her
life. How many other times that she didn't tell me about? How about
Antarctica?"

He stared at her, his brow knit in concern and confusion. "She told me
she wasn't going to tell you. Made me promise not to say anything."

"She didn't tell me," Maggie said sadly. "I found out from Mr. Skinner.
I was trying to get in touch with Dana and when I couldn't reach either
one of you, I called him. He tried not to tell me but I pretty much
browbeat him until he couldn't take it anymore.

He chuckled, acutely aware of how good it felt to laugh a bit. "You
browbeat Skinner? I wish I could've seen that."

"Scully women have always been gifted with the power of
persuasion--even those of us who married into it. You think it's harder
dealing with an ex-Marine than a Navy captain? Piece of cake," she
gave him a little smirk, then grew serious. "He told me--finally--that
Dana had been taken again and that you had left a hospital bed to go
and get her."

"I was okay. I didn't need to stay in the hospital," he said, almost
defensively. "I had to go get her. The man who told me how to find
her, he wouldn't have given that information to anyone but me. And I
couldn't let her be gone again..." His voice drifted away.

"You've saved her, Fox. How many other times that I don't know
about? You've earned your place in her life."

He shook his head. "Probably about as many times as she's saved me.
I'm alive because of her."

Maggie shrugged. "Then she's earned her place in your life, too."

Her words gave him an inexplicable chill. 

"What I'm trying to say is... I don't know if I can explain this right.
Dana is doing what she wants to do, what she's chosen to do--maybe
even what she needs to do. She chose the Bureau well before she
knew you. She was assigned to work with you and I imagine it
wouldn't have been that hard to get a transfer but she never did. She's
still there, with you, seven years later. There's a great deal I don't
know about my daughter, but one thing I am sure of is that she would
never have put so much time and energy and sacrifice into something
that she doesn't believe in. And I think she'd have done this even
without everything that happened to her, because she believes it's
right. God forbid, if anything ever happened to you Fox, I think she'd
still keep on."

She stopped to swallow and look at him in frustration. "What I'm
trying to say is, thank you for Dana's life and..."

She was thanking *him* for Scully's life? When it never would have
been in danger without him?

His face must have given him away, for she turned to him and spoke
before he could. "She. chose. this." She spoke each word distinctly,
her hands raised for emphasis. "That's what she was trying to tell us on
Christmas Eve. I think she's been trying to say that for a long time but
none of us got the message, including you it seems. Well, I've got it
now. I can hate it, I can wish it weren't true. But I have to live with
the fact that it's her choice. The way she lives is up to her, just like the
way Melissa lived was up to her. I don't want the same regrets with
Dana that I have with Missy.

"I have to accept the choice that she's made. It's so difficult, Fox, to
know that she's choosing something so dangerous, something that's
already cost her so much. But if she has to choose that, I want you to
know that I'm glad it's you who's beside her in it. It's the only thing
that's ever given me any comfort in all of this. You've shown over and
over that you'll do whatever is necessary to protect her. You've earned
your place in her life and a better place in mine. I'm so sorry about my
resentment, Fox. I owe you her life, many times over. Bill will have to
believe whatever he believes, but never doubt that I understand what
you've done and what we owe you. And how much a part of Dana's
life you are."

He wanted to thank her, to say something to let her know how
monumentally her words had touched him, but he was rendered
speechless--barely able to absorb what she was saying to him. The
concept that she was forgiving him nearly blotted out the concept that
she was expressing gratitude to him for protecting a life that was more
vital to him than his own. He felt suddenly restless, needing to get
away to ponder what all of this might mean.

Maggie seemed to sense his uneasiness. "I know you want to get to
Dana's house," she smiled, trying to ease his discomfort. "I've got the
things I wanted her to have right here." She reached into the space
between the sofa and an end table and pulled out a large paper
shopping bag with looped string handles. "These are her Christmas
presents I brought back from San Diego. I guess it's up to her what
she does with them."

She pulled another, smaller canvas bag from the space. "This other
bag... I realized so many things after Dana left, Fox. Things I wish I'd
realized before I let things get to where they are. Another thing I
figured out is that I've never let Melissa go. I was just so full of regret
for what we never got to say, for the closeness we were never quite
able to achieve. I buried her, but I never let her go. And I realized that
if I didn't let go of my dead daughter, I was going to lose the one I had
left. For years, since Missy died, I've had all of her things in boxes in
my basement. I never went through them because that would mean
putting her away in my heart and I just couldn't do it.

"Well that's what I've been doing since I got back on Tuesday. Going
through Missy's things, saving some things, giving away things that
other people might be able to use. And it surprised me. It felt kind of...
I don't know. I don't want to say *good.* It wasn't that. It hurt to do
it, but at the same time it felt like something she would have wanted
me to do a long time ago. I just went through her things and
remembered. So many of the things didn't hold any memories for me,
but still they were things that at one time or another, she'd taken to
herself as something she wanted or needed. They were small keys to
who she was. And some of them told me things about her that I never
guessed. Things I wish I had known years ago." She grabbed the
canvas bag and brought it to her knee.

"Tucked away in a corner of a steamer trunk, I found what I think she
intended to be Christmas presents for all of us, if she'd lived till
Christmas. And a manila envelope addressed to Dana and me. The
thing I really needed to give her is in that envelope. It's in the bag
along with Melissa's Christmas present to her and one for you, Fox."

"A present for me?" He was surprised, amazed really. He hadn't
known Melissa Scully well. Aside from the time Scully was in a coma,
he'd only met her a few times when she came down to the office to
drag Scully away for lunch. Melissa wasn't unpleasant, nor was he.
They smiled, they made small talk. She was Scully's sister, but hardly
someone he'd expect a Christmas present from.

Maggie nodded. "I think it will all be clearer when Dana reads what's
inside the envelope."

"What is it?"

"I can't tell you before my daughter knows," she said simply. "It
wouldn't be right. Let her read it first and then she'll tell you."

"Will she?" he asked quietly.

"Yeah, I think she will," Maggie replied, her brow knit in confusion.
"Is there some reason you think she wouldn't?"

He had a sudden, overwhelming urge to spit everything out--how he
felt about her, how he'd always felt, how he'd hurt her, how she
confused him, how scared he was sometimes that he'd finally say or do
the thing that would be the last straw and she'd decide to leave him
forever. Tell her all these things and beg her to help him figure her out.

But he tried to bite back the urge, knowing somehow that that was not
how he should learn the things about her that he needed to know. Still,
he couldn't ignore her question and it would be so good talk to
someone about this. "We've had some problems for..." For how long?
He couldn't even pinpoint the time when the possibility of her leaving
started being the most frightening prospect of his life. "Especially since
the thing in Dallas, where we were reassigned. I've made so many
mistakes, so many..." He paused, looking for the right word.
"Monumental errors in judgment."

"Everyone makes mistakes, Fox. We're only human."

He winced briefly at the irony of her statement. "I think I've made
more than my share and some that have hurt her--hurt us--badly. I
almost died because of those errors in judgment--errors that hurt her.
But she still saved me."

"Of course she did." Maggie's tone reflected slight disdain at his
astonishment. "She always will. Dana is the most forgiving person I've
ever known. She always has been. I'm counting on that myself."

"But I've never apologized," he said quietly. "It's like... I want to but
I'm afraid that if I bring those things up, she'll remember all over why
she should just get out."

Maggie nodded in understanding, "Maybe she will remember. And
maybe she'll tell you how she feels about those *errors in judgment* as
you call them. And then maybe you'll tell her why you made the
decisions you made. And maybe you'll both know something new
about each other that you didn't know before. All that might happen if
you apologized. But you know what, Fox? She'd forgive you if you
didn't apologize, probably already has, because that's her nature. Quick
to forgive everyone but herself. Sound familiar?" She arched her
eyebrows in a rather eerie mirror image of Scully's own soaring
eyebrow.

"I'm not that quick to forgive," he said abruptly.

"Aren't you? she challenged. "Has Dana been perfect through all of
this?"

"Yes," he whispered without hesitation.

"Has she? Fox, I know my daughter. I know that she keeps things
inside her, that there are times that you don't have the first idea what
she's thinking or feeling. That's not something she made up just for
you. She's always been that way. Sometimes it would make me crazy.
I always knew when she was sad or hurt or upset at me about
something, but so much of the time I didn't know what it was about.
She'd go all quiet on me, sometimes for days at a time, and I just
couldn't get it out of her what was wrong. Probing her about it usually
just made it worse. But it was like she had to process it through, look
at it from different angles. I think... I think she's always been able to
see peoples' motivations, even as a kid. And it was like, after she'd
worked it out in her own mind--figured out what had happened and
why--she'd be okay again and all would be forgiven. She never
explained, she just forgave. But sometimes I didn't know what I was
being forgiven for because she wouldn't say what had hurt her--or
what made her sad or what scared her. And sometimes it hurt me that
she wouldn't let me know, wouldn't let me in so I could help her.
Doesn't that hurt you, too?"

Mulder didn't answer. He didn't have to.

"But you forgive her for that," she said. "You accept it and forgive it.
You're so amazed that she's still with you. Well, maybe she's amazed
that you're still with her, too. Maybe the fact that you are still here
means to her that you're the one she can tell those things to. I don't
know. I only know that I want her to be able to say them to someone."

"I want her to be able to say them to me," he said before he thought
about the fact that that might not be an admission he should be making
to her mother.

"She already does. Dana tells you more than she tells anyone else, and
maybe even more than you realize because sometimes it's hard to hear
what she says. But you already know that because you can hear a lot
of the things she says in what she doesn't say. And that was part of the
resentment, too, Fox. I think I felt that as her mother, she should tell
me a lot of the things she tells you. But that's just not right. I can't
expect her to tell me about things I can't possibly understand. Of all
the people in the world, you're the only one who could understand
what's happened to her, what she's afraid of. What you're both afraid
of. I see that same fear in both your eyes."

He didn't even bother to deny it. "But I can't make her less afraid," he
countered.

"If there's something to be afraid of--and I've felt that from Dana for a
long time--maybe you're not supposed to make her less afraid. I think
the reason for fear is to keep you alert and aware. It's good sometimes
to be afraid. But it's hard, too. Sometimes it helps to have someone to
be afraid with. When Melissa was in the hospital and you and Dana
were gone, I was so afraid that she was going to die. And there was
no one to share that fear with until you sent Mr. Hosteen to us. He
didn't make me less afraid. He never told me anything but the truth,
never gave me false hope. But he was there with me and he was afraid
with me. He was a remarkable man, Fox." Mulder nodded. "But the
point is, you and Dana have each other to be afraid with. And really,
only each other. And it doesn't seem to me that either of you wants
anyone else."

Anyone else? Mulder couldn't remember a time when serious
consideration of anyone who wasn't Scully came into his mind. Of
course, he noticed other women and found them attractive. It was a
hetero male thing. But pursuit hadn't entered his mind in a long time,
some part of him knowing on sight that none of the women he saw
could possibly measure up to the only woman he needed in his life--on
whatever basis she wanted.

He was startled from his reverie when Maggie continued. "So if you
can share the fear why not the joy, too? Listen to me," she said
urgently. "You can't be afraid all the time, neither of you. There has to
be some joy in there, otherwise you forget what you're fighting for.
But joy doesn't always just happen. Sometimes you have to make it,
and you've got to because everyone needs joy sometimes. And if
you're strong enough to share the fear, you've both earned the right to
share the joy."

"Most of the time it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot to make joy
out of," he replied quietly.

"Then you better take it when it comes." She pointed to the manila
envelope in the canvas bag. "I think this will help both of you. I know
it helped me. And I know Dana will share it with you because she'll
know what it means to you, too. Because you're a part of this and you
have been for a long time."

Maggie stood up and Mulder automatically followed suit, sensing that
she felt it was time for him to leave. And he was eager to go, to see
Scully, to bring her a message from her sister. He felt a surge of
excitement for her, imagining what it would be like if someone gave
him a message from Samantha.

They walked together into the foyer, Mulder carrying the bags in his
left hand. Maggie turned to face him, placing her hand on his arm.
"Fox, Dana's father and I were married for a long time. But you know
what? It wasn't long enough. You don't know how many times I've
wished for just one more day. I still miss him so much. The only things
that get me through it sometimes are the memories. You've got to
make some good memories, Fox--both of you--because you're going
to need them later on. And we don't get all the time in the world.
There's nobody who should know that better than the two of you. And
no matter how much time you get, it's never enough."

He nodded gratefully, understanding the blessing she was giving him,
the gift. Seemingly unable to speak, he set the bags gently on the floor
and stepped forward to hug her, not knowing how else to express his
gratitude. 

She returned his embrace then pulled away, wiping a tear from her
cheek with her finger. "I want my daughter to be able to smile like she
did on Christmas Eve. And I want it to happen as often as
possible--for her and for you--'cause wait'll you see her. My baby girl
is a knockout!"

"Yes she is," he replied sincerely. He opened the door and started to
step out, but paused and turned. "Thank you, Mrs. Scully."

She gave him a watery smile. "Thank you, Fox. Now drive carefully,
okay?"

He was already making his way down the sidewalk, but raised his hand
in acknowledgement. He opened the front passenger door of his car
parked at the curb and placed the bags inside before going around to
the driver's side. His hands gripping the steering wheel, he drew a deep
breath and exhaled it shakily. He shivered a little, then started the car.
About to shift into gear to pull away, he hesitated and reached behind
him for the seatbelt, clicking it securely into place.

He needed to be careful. He had a message for Scully from her sister.


End Part 3 of 7
+++++

Simple Gifts -- Part 4 of 7 
See Disclaimer in Part 1


Georgetown
7:26 p.m.


Scully came awake slowly with a deep yawn and a stretch. As her eyes
came open gradually, she was glad that she'd turned on a few lamps
when she got home because it was completely dark outside. The
luminous hands on her wristwatch glowed in the dim light, indicating
that it was almost seven-thirty and that she'd slept nearly four hours.
She stretched again and swung her legs over the side of the couch, just
to test the waters, and found things much improved. The throbbing
ache in her temples that that plagued her for days was gone. And she
didn't seem to be feeling the constant chills she had felt the whole time
she was in Idaho. And surprisingly, amazingly, she felt hungry for the
first time in almost a week.

She rubbed the back of her neck, scratching her scalp a little as part of
the process. Seven-thirty. She'd have thought Mulder would have
arrived by now. Knowing it was useless, she still felt a twinge of
anxiety. She tried to dismiss it--he wasn't really late--and worrying
about Fox Mulder was a great way to train for an early heart attack.
He was probably just driving around to give her a little more time to
sleep. She smiled at the image of him circling the block, checking her
window for signs of movement and, on impulse, she went to look out
the window. His car was nowhere in sight.

As long as she was up, she decided to check the kitchen to see if there
was anything she could stand to eat. Hungry though she was, it was
still difficult to overcome the images her mind carried of the past few
days. She, of all people, knew that there was evil in the world. But
there was something different about the calculated evil of the men she
and Mulder were up against and the mindless, almost helpless, evil she
had seen visited upon the girls she'd autopsied. The latter evil was,
strangely, more frightening to her than what the Consortium posed.
Those men were always present, always to be watched for. The
mindless, helpless ones stayed hidden for so long, people seemed to
forget that they could come out of nowhere. The randomness of the
horror was what was so awful to her--not just because of the horror
but because it was an affront to her sense of order and rightness. She
had a hard time wrapping her imagination around the idea that such
horrors could be conceived, even by the sickest of minds. Maybe that's
why Mulder was the profiler and she wasn't. He could imagine it.
Trouble was, he could imagine it too well.

Wondering again where he was, she put a kettle of water on the stove
for tea. She missed him and the accompanying pang she felt no longer
even surprised her. She'd been able to admit to herself at the end of the
first day in Idaho that she missed him. It was just after she'd overheard
a comment between two other agents about Mr. and Mrs. Spooky
taking separate vacations that the realization hit. She didn't resent the
agents' caustic remarks nearly as much as the fact that Mr. and Mrs.
Spooky *were* taking separate vacations. 

Field work, autopsy work--it didn't matter. It didn't feel right to be
working there without him. The hastily assembled FBI team for this
operation was a good one, but she couldn't help thinking that Mulder
would have been the better choice as a profiler. Another part of her,
though, was glad that he hadn't been assigned to the case. He'd been
through far too much lately and he always put way too much of
himself into profiling. Of course, Skinner would have been aware of
that, too. But there were so many times when she'd tried to brief other
members of the team about things she'd discovered in the autopsies,
having to explain over and over things that Mulder would have known
without asking. Although he'd never actually participated in the
*slicing and dicing* as he called it, Mulder had gleaned a great deal of
knowledge in the science of forensic pathology during the years of
their partnership. And what he didn't understand, he took at her word,
not requiring lengthy explanations.

But aside from her frustration with the pace of the investigation, she
just missed him. Just missed having him there--someone who would
understand the nearly mind-numbing horror of the case. Thirty-seven
girls whose lives from start to finish had been filled with pain and most
of whom would probably never be identified. Coming from lives of
abject poverty, their families had decided to do whatever it took to
improve their lot by coming to America. Instead, their daughters were
taken by a madman and, in most cases, they were too frightened even
to report them missing. There would be few, if any, identifications by
dental records for these girls came from families where dentist visits
were a luxury beyond imagining. No, these girls would be buried
unnamed, grieved from afar by families who would never be sure what
had happened to them. Sometimes in the midst of it all, Scully had felt
such anger and helplessness that it felt like she would explode with it.
But she couldn't. She had to hold it together because there were
always more until it seemed like it would never end.

It would have been good to have Mulder to talk to about it. But
would she have talked to him? She could have, though, and maybe
that was enough. No, not anymore. For a long time it had been enough
knowing that she could speak with him if she wanted to, if she'd been
able to make herself do it. But that had changed the morning she'd
gone to his apartment to tell him of Diana's death and had learned of
Albert Hosteen's first. She'd told him of her fears about not knowing
what to believe or who to trust. And he hadn't shrugged off her fears
or begged for her belief or her trust. He simply told her that when he
felt that way, she was his touchstone--how he measured what was real
and genuine. And since that time, though they'd never spoken of it
again--so typical for them--he'd shown her in subtle ways the truth of
his statement. They were different together now.

She wanted to believe that if he were here right now, she would tell
him about the case and what she'd felt. And that she'd missed him. She
could say that. What would be so hard about that? Maybe he'd missed
her, too, and that wasn't a scary thought at all. She smiled as she
promised herself that she'd tell him she missed him if he was wearing
the gray suit with the black and burgundy tie when he got to her
house. 

 

Had he made the same kind of deal with himself that night? It made
her grin to think so, and kick herself for bringing liverwurst and root
beer. Liverwurst and root beer? Eww! What had she been thinking?
No wonder he wouldn't let her call him Fox. But the thought of calling
him Fox caused her nose to wrinkle more than the idea of liverwurst
and root beer. No, he was Mulder, now and forevermore. And she felt
a little sorry for people who only got to know the Fox of him and not
the Mulder.

She heard the key in the lock and set her cup on the counter to meet
him at the door. Brushing away a tear she hadn't realized she'd shed,
she smiled watching how slowly and noiselessly he opened the door.
She pulled the door open so quickly that he was startled into dropping
the bags.

They stood and looked at one another for a moment, neither of them
speaking. He was wearing jeans and his black leather jacket--his day
off apparel--and his expression was one of uncertainty.

"I missed you," she whispered finally. The suit thing had been a stupid
game anyway. The leather jacket was way better than the gray suit.
And the smile he gave her in return made her wonder why she hadn't
told him she missed him before. She reached for the bags, setting them
inside the door, and backed away slightly to allow him to enter.

"You, too," he answered, smiling at her almost shyly, and stepped
hesitantly over the threshold to her apartment.

How strange after all these years to feel butterflies at seeing him and
to be fairly certain that he was feeling them, too. Strange and
awkward in a vaguely pleasant way. Vaguely pleasant yet mildly
annoying to the practical side of her that was trying to tell the
butterflies that it was just Mulder. And for once, she had no qualms
about telling that side of her to shut up because right now, just Mulder
was all she needed. And just to piss that practical side off, she threw
caution to the wind and stepped forward to take him into her arms.
For no better reason than just because she missed him.

Mulder apparently thought it was a good idea, too, as she felt his arms
wrap around her in return, lifting her up just a little to nuzzle his face
in her neck. Now that's something new, she thought as she felt herself
shiver slightly.

"Sorry, I should have knocked. I thought... I was hoping you'd still be
asleep." His voice was honey and smoke as his breath warmed her
neck.

"Woke up a few minutes ago," she replied, turning her head a little
hoping to encourage him to keep breathing because it felt so singularly
wonderful on her skin, but still trying to find some way to keep her
face in contact with the leather of his jacket. She chuckled inwardly,
remembering how the nuns at school dances had always reminded her
and her high school classmates to leave enough room for the Holy
Spirit between them and the boys they were dancing with. If nuns only
knew what this felt like, they'd realize they were fighting a losing
battle. This was much better than it had ever been in high school. To
finally be in Mulder's arms...

Arms. As in plural. "Mulder?"

"Hmm?" His voice caused a gentle vibration against the skin of her
neck. She could definitely lose her train of thought here.

"Where's your sling?" She felt him tense slightly in her arms as he
loosened his grip to allow her to slide back to firm footing on the
floor.

"I left it in the car," he replied, and she could see his self-annoyance at
the fact that he'd forgotten to put it on. He looked at her closely and
she could almost see the wheels turning in his head. "You've lost
weight. You haven't been eating."

She shook her head at the feeble attempt. "Mulder, don't try to divert
me when I'm about to nag you for your own good. You know your
arm should still be in a sling." She stepped behind him to help him with
his jacket, both of them being careful of his still sore right shoulder.
Throwing the jacket over the back of an armchair, she led him to the
sofa and sat beside him.

"I wore it till Wednesday," he said defensively.

She nodded, her lips pressed together to avoid laughing at him. "Five
days out of two to four weeks. But that probably is a personal best for
you. Why'd you quit wearing it this time?"

"The usual," he answered with a grin. "Plus, I kept hitting my arm with
the file cabinet drawers. I mean, how smart is it for them to stick your
arm out in front of you where it gets in the way all the time?"

"You hit it with file drawers?" she asked and he nodded. "As in more
than once?"

"I spent the week cleaning out the file cabinets, getting rid of files that
didn't belong there," he said sheepishly.

"You culled the files?" Her tone was mildly disbelieving. "What did
you get rid of? Three, four files?"

"Try a drawer and a half," he replied smugly. "At this point in time, we
have one and one-half empty drawers." He smiled with pride at his
accomplishment.

She looked at him skeptically. "We've been through a lot together, but
now you're starting to scare me. The real Mulder would never throw
away a drawer and a half of files. Let me draw a little blood. I want to
do a quick blood typing just to be on the safe side."

He laughed and she loved the low, rumbling sound of it. "You'll know
it's the real me when you see the stack of files I want to reopen, and
some of the new stuff I've found for us to work on." She watched his
grin fade as he brought his hand up to brush his fingers against her
cheek. "I wasn't kidding before, Scully. I was pretty sure you'd have a
hard time sleeping, but I thought you'd still eat. You've lost a lot of
weight."

"Not even ten pounds," she countered. "Besides you aren't exactly Mr.
Hale and Well-Fed yourself."

He smiled at her indulgently. "Scully, don't try to divert me when I'm
nagging you for your own good." She smiled, allowing him points for
being able to use her own words against her so soon after she'd
uttered them. "You don't have ten pounds to spare." 

She thanked him with her eyes for not finishing his thought about how
she hadn't really gained back all the weight she'd lost when she'd had
cancer. She knew how scared he had been during her illness--she
herself had been scared. Now he respected her need not to talk about
that time and maybe that respect stemmed from his own need to put it
behind them. She still had regular appointments with her oncologist
and Mulder never asked her about them, which she hoped meant that
he trusted her to tell him if her emission ended.

"What's the deal, Scully?" he asked, his tone worried. "So bad you
couldn't eat?"

Hesitating only a second, she nodded unable to suppress the sudden
shudder that wracked her body. He slid closer, bringing his hand up to
her neck in response to her shaking. He understood. Mulder had been
involved in cases so bad he couldn't eat. Anyone else in her life--those
who were left in her life--would have admonished that she should have
forced herself to eat. Mulder understood the very real fact that
sometimes you just couldn't. 

His hand at her neck was warm and strong, his touch her undoing. She
took a deep, shaky breath. "No time to eat and even less desire," she
said with a heavy sigh. "It was ugly right from the start." 

She told him how she'd arrived in early evening and was picked up at
the airport by a county sheriff's deputy who brought directly to the
crime scene "The gravesite was all lit up with klieg lights brought up
from Boise. Looked like a high school football field for a homecoming
game." She shuddered again at the imagery.

"The team started drifting in. They were coming from all over. But
they'd set up a big tent thing on site and we were all there by about
nine o'clock and the ASAC filled us in on the situation and what had
been discovered to that point. Thirty bodies and not much else except
a high probability that there would be more."

She felt Mulder's thumb rubbing light circles over the muscles at the
base of her skull. How long had he been doing that, increasing the
pressure slightly with each leisurely pass over the knots in her upper
neck? Did he even realize he was doing it? His attention was focused
on her, his eyes never leaving her face. She was afraid to move in case
the he interpreted her movement as a signal for him to stop.

"They finished the preliminary meeting at about eleven, which my
body thought of as one in the morning. Too late to eat and I was so
tired. But I couldn't sleep thinking about the fact that there were thirty
bodies waiting to be autopsied. Thirty so far. The county morgue
couldn't even hold them all. They had some stashed at the local
hospital and some left in the care of the three local morticians. They
got mobile refrigeration equipment to us by Tuesday, so we could
keep them together near the morgue. It was strange to walk through
when they were getting the mobile unit set up and transferring the
bodies--surreal, like walking through a war zone or a place that had
been devastated by some kind of awful act of nature--earthquake,
tornado."

Scully didn't know how it had happened, but she found that she had
turned slightly away from Mulder. She knew it was a subconscious
movement, but she wished her subconscious had been a bit clearer
about what it meant. Had she turned away because it was easier to talk
to him when she couldn't see him looking at her? Or was it to quietly
urge him to use his other hand to soothe the muscles on the other side
of her neck? He seemed to have guessed the latter as she felt his
fingers work their way lightly over her skin, both hands now working
her protesting muscles. But maybe he guessed the former, too,
accepting her need, conscious or not, to look away from him. He said
nothing, merely waited for her to continue.

"By Monday morning when we started the autopsies, they'd found
thirty-three bodies. So the local guy and I got to work. His name was
Seth--Seth Easley. He was a nice enough guy and did what he could.
But he was just a coroner in a rural county out west. So few
questionable deaths happen in places like that that being coroner is
almost an honorary title. No way was he ready for what we got. Hell,
no way was I ready. Nobody should be ready for what was waiting for
us. First we had to make some kind of guess as to which bodies were
those most recently killed and work chronologically backwards from
there, as best as we could determine. The most recent victims would
be most likely to have usable trace evidence and they needed more
evidence fast for the investigation."

"No, Scully," Mulder said softly from somewhere close behind her
right ear. "Not the investigation. You. What happened to you?"

He was using the index and middle fingers of each hand to make
walking motions from her shoulders up the column of tendons on
either side of her neck. Slow movements with a pressure that was
gentle but that she seemed to feel deep within her tissue, breaking up
the knots and easing them away.  she
thought to herself as she tentatively moved her head back and forth to
test the loosened muscles.

"We started the autopsies mid-morning on Monday, after discussing
how to proceed. That first day, between us, we got nine of the bodies
autopsied. Sometimes I have a hard time doing an autopsy first thing
in the morning, so I usually don't eat."

"Even after all the years you've been doing it? Wow, I just assumed it
would get easier and easier." His voice was low and even, soothing
her simultaneously with the work of his hands, nearly mesmerizing her.

"It's something you get used to, I think, but it doesn't get any easier,"
she whispered, as if to herself. "I don't think it's supposed to get
easier." 

"Hmm," he replied. "I guess you're right, it shouldn't."

"I thought nine was a lot," she continued. "Considering the fact that I
had to pretty much talk Seth through the first couple he did--how to
gather evidence according to Bureau lab standards, new techniques
that he might not have had reason to know about. He was just
overwhelmed, but doing the best he could. I thought we were doing
okay but the ASAC came by at the end of the day and said we needed
to work them faster if possible."

Mulder gave a disgusted snort. "Couldn't they get you some help?"

She shook her head. "Only two autopsy bays. There wouldn't have
been room for another pathologist. On Tuesday, they sent up a couple
of surgical residents from the university hospital in Boise to close for
us. We'd finish the postmortem, they'd take them to a corner of the
room and stitch them up. It did save some time and we worked faster.
But early afternoon on Tuesday, it started to feel like someone had
inserted glowing coals between my shoulder blades." Her voice
dropped to a whisper. "Just this white hot pain that seemed to shoot
all the way down my back."

Scully felt his hand move to rest on her shoulders as his thumbs
unerringly found the spot where the pain had been the most intense.
She arched into the pressure and he stopped, his hands gently bringing
her shoulders into better alignment. He then resumed the tempered
circling motions of his thumbs. She luxuriated in the feeling, not saying
anything for several minutes, but feeling as if she could breathe in and
fill her lungs all the way--something she hadn't felt in many days.
Mulder didn't urge her to continue, he just kept rubbing the shoulders
she didn't realize were still so sore.

She finally spoke. "Somewhere along the line my feet went from
aching to numb. And my hands--the saws and cutters, and scalpels. In
an autopsy, your hands are constantly pulling or pushing or cutting
something. After a while, they just started hurting constantly. And you
have to wash them all the time. The soap dries out your skin and it
was so cold and dry there."

His hands moved from her shoulders to her upper arms and, still silent,
he turned her to face him. She felt his hands slide down to reach for
hers, placid and still in her lap. She tried to pull away, embarrassed by
the state of her hands, but he held firmly, squeezing her fingers and
gently caressing the weathered skin of her knuckles with his thumb.
She hadn't noticed that her hands were so cold until they were
enveloped in his much warmer, much larger ones. Unable to make
herself look at his face, she simply watched his hands as he transferred
both her small hands into one of his. She followed the path of his free
hand as he reached over to the coffee table and opened the flap of her
purse. Curious but not alarmed, she watched him rummage through it,
finally emerging with a tube of hand cream. She looked up as he
brought the tube to his eye level to read the label. His thumb flipped
the lid open and he brought it to his nose to inhale the scent.

"You always use the same hand lotion," he said, setting her hands on
his leg just above the knee. "I'd be able to pick you out blindfolded in a
crowded room just by this scent." He squirted a generous amount into
his palm. Holding his hands together, he warmed the lotion between
them, then rubbed them together, spreading a layer across the
underside of his hands.

Mulder took her right hand in both of his, moving them over her skin
to distribute the lotion. She gasped when he threaded his fingers
through hers, and she felt the pads rub the cream into the webbing. His
fingers moved in and joined his palm to hers and she found herself
squeezing back before she even knew it, relishing the connection
between them. She smiled up at him and found him looking at her with
such tender concern that it made her heart race wildly in her chest. 

He added more lotion to her hand, her thirsty skin having quickly
absorbed it, and began a slow and languorous massage of her hand
starting at the fleshy part of her palm just above where her hand met
her wrist, one hand moving up to her pinky finger and the other
working on her thumb. His skin glided effortlessly over hers, warming
it and causing it to tingle from the stimulation of the tiny blood vessels
beneath it. She wanted to weep with how exquisite it felt after days
and days of an ache that was so constant and deep that she'd almost
started to think that it was a part of her. He began again at the bottom
of her hand and worked toward the ring and index fingers, his
movements firm and slow. It almost seemed, though, that the motions
were unconscious as his eyes were riveted to hers.

"Physically, it was one of the most grueling things I've ever done," she
said and he nodded encouraging her to continue. "But I think I could
have handled the work, if not for... Damn it, Mulder, it was just so
wrong. Thirty-seven teenage girls, illegal aliens. Their entire lives
probably consisted of poverty and fear, and then they were dead
before they got a chance to see that it could be better. And the way
they died... Strangulation, slow poisoning, burned, tortured. It was
like that bastard just tried out every hideous thing he'd ever heard of.
They kept bringing me bodies and each one where there was enough
left of the remains to determine a cause of death... each one was more
horrible than the previous one. And all I could think of was how
scared they must have been, waiting and probably praying to die. I'm a
pathologist, Mulder. I'm supposed to be detached enough to do
autopsies..." She stopped to swallow, trying to ease the burn to her
throat from the tears she was trying so hard to fight. She looked down
and saw that he had finished working on her right hand and moved to
her left without her noticing it.

"Scully," he said on a sigh. "You could never detach yourself from
something like that, not you. But you'd still expect yourself to.
Sometimes you ask too much of yourself." 

She nodded, acknowledging the truth of his statement. "When I
decided to go into pathology... Nobody understood why I did it--not
my family, not my friends. My father was appalled. I guess he
expected me to go into a field of medicine where I actually had
returning patients. My classmates thought I was *settling*--that I
really wanted to be a surgeon but didn't have the guts to face the
*good old boys network* that surgery is. And who knows? Maybe
that was part of it."

"Come on," he said skeptically. "You know that's not true. If you look
up the word *guts* in the dictionary, your picture is there. You're the
bravest person I've ever known. If you'd wanted to be a surgeon, you'd
be a surgeon."

The tears she'd been fighting finally won the battle and brimmed over
her eyes onto her cheeks. He didn't hesitate, but dropped her hands to
gather her into his arms and she went gratefully. With her face pressed
firmly against his chest, she wondered at his words. How could she be
the bravest person he'd ever known when she was afraid so much of
the time? Yet she knew by his tone that the words were true to him.

"So what made you choose pathology?" he asked, and she marveled at
the fact that she could hear his voice leave his mouth, and feel the
vibration of it as it rang through his body.

"You know," she said softly, "not one person in my life back then
asked that question, not like that. Everyone asked why are you doing
this? And it was like they left off the last two works--*to me*--but I
still heard them. They acted like I was doing something to them
instead of making a choice for me. So instead of answering them, I
usually just went on the defensive. I chose pathology. I didn't settle for
it and I didn't set out to shock or disappoint people. We all had to take
a class in forensic pathology and I knew--I think maybe from the first
day--that that was what I was supposed to do. The professor, Dr.
Carmani, said on that first day that an autopsy is the victim's final
chance to say what happened to him and that the pathologist is the
victim's voice, his last chance for justice. Those words have stayed
with me and I try to think of them every time I do an autopsy and I try
to give them the dignity after death that they didn't get while they were
dying. I want them to have... They deserve to have my attention and
my thoroughness and to be treated like valued individuals. They
deserve it and so do their loved ones."

She shuddered and felt his arms tighten around her. "But those girls,
they just shuttled them in one right after another--an assembly line
right out of Henry Ford's worst nightmare. They weren't treated with
dignity. I passed them off to the medical students before I was even
finished. I couldn't take the time to listen to their voices, but they'd still
come to me. Later, when I'd be trying to fall asleep I could hear them
talking, telling me about their horrible lives and even worse deaths.
And I'd hear their families, weeping with the agony of never knowing
what happened to them." 

She pulled away slightly to see his face. "It made me hurt for them
because I know what that's like, that uncertainty. I know from
watching you. And I missed you because I knew you'd understand if I
just told you. I promised myself that night after you phoned that I'd
tell you about it and about Christmas at Bill's so you'd know why I
was the way I was when I got back."

"You mother told me about Christmas," he said quietly, his head
resting easily on hers and his mouth near her ear.

"My mother?" she repeated, feeling slightly fuzzy headed and unable
to understand. She pulled away slightly to look at him, to clear her
head. And somehow, looking at him did nothing to clear her head at
all.

"Yeah," he answered. "That's where I've been till now. We talked for a
long time and she told me about what happened on Christmas Eve.
She's pretty anxious to apologize for it."

"She doesn't need to apologize," Scully insisted. "I should be the one
to apologize. But I can't because she'd expect an explanation and I
can't give her one."

"What do you have to apologize for?" he asked, his expression
confused.

"The whole thing was a mistake right from the start. I shouldn't even
have gone. I didn't want to." She sighed deeply. "I mean, I wanted to
see my family but I didn't want to be there. I was..."

"You were worried about me," he finished for her. He must have seen
her perplexed look because he continued. "You mother figured it out
once she got a look at the new emaciated version of Fox Mulder. You
don't have to worry about me, Scully. I'm f..."

"Don't," she interrupted as unexpected and inexplicable tears rushed to
her eyes. "Not fine, Mulder. Please don't be fine."

He brought his hand up to lightly caress her cheek. "You're right. How
'bout we both retire fine? You saw the test results--the blood work,
the CAT scans, the EEG. They all said everything's okay, right? That's
what you told me." He gave her a look that was slightly anxious.

"Yeah," she reassured him, reaching up to touch his face as he had
hers. "You tested normal. But Mulder, we don't know what they did
to you. What they took out of you--or put into you." Her fingers
found their way to the scar at the base of her neck. "You can't expect
me not to worry. Has telling you not to ever stopped you from
worrying about me? We're supposed to worry about each other."

He nodded and smiled at her--the smile with all the teeth--and Scully
was struck by how incredibly handsome he was. She'd always known
it, of course, had been aware of his attractiveness from their very first
meeting. But it was different now, after all these years and everything
that had happened. Always attractive, now his face--older and more
knowing, as was her own--was one that was beloved to her. And she
knew the smiles he gave were for her. Very few others ever got them.

And the one he was giving her now caused her pulse to quicken.
Unable, unwilling to resist, she used the hand still resting on his
slightly stubbled cheek to urge his face toward hers. Finding no
resistance, she felt him move closer and their lips met for the first time
in a week. A week that felt like a year. 

And the third time was the charm. His mouth was warm and
welcoming over hers and she felt his fingers move into her hair as he
held her head close to his and his other arm wrap around her waist to
draw her nearer. Her own arms wound around his neck as she simply
let the feelings wash over her. He felt so good and he tasted so
*damn* good. And suddenly she couldn't think of a single reason for
all the years they had denied themselves this. She tightened her grip
and sought control of the kiss, wanting more than anything to show
him what she'd never yet been able to say. He made a small groaning
noise that sent a shiver down her spine and she intensified her effort to
see if she could get him to make that sound again.

To her delight, he did but that sound was followed quickly by the
simultaneous growling of their stomachs, each of them loud enough to
be audible to the other. They both started to laugh, their mouths still
fused, and she was filled suddenly with a feeling of all-encompassing
joy. They broke apart slightly, their foreheads still resting against one
another.

"Am I to assume that means you're hungry?" he asked, his voice, low
and breathless, adding to her own breathlessness.

"Ravenous, actually," she whispered back. "You, too?"

He nodded and with their foreheads pressed together, it made her nod
with him. "Got anything here?"

"Nope," she replied. "I haven't been shopping in weeks. My kitchen
looks frighteningly like yours. Oh, except for the science projects you
keep in your refrigerator. Of course, I didn't check the vegetable bin.
No telling what's growing in there. I have saltines, pasta, and rice."

Mulder gave her a look like the one he'd given her when she told him
about the tofutti rice dreamsicle. "Yikes," he said with a shudder.
"You wanna call out for something?"

She wrinkled her nose. Delivery food was pizza or Chinese and she
couldn't stand the idea of either of those. "I don't think I can handle
the kind of food that people bring to you. I must have some soup or
something out there."

This time it was his nose that wrinkled. "You need some real food."
He was quiet for a moment, then smiled. "I know just what we need.
I'll go get it, but it'll take a while. It's in my neighborhood, but I'll go
get it and bring it back."

"That means you'll be gone almost an hour," she protested. Not only
did she not want to wait that long to eat, she didn't want him gone that
long.

"I'll be as fast as I can. Just nibble on some saltines to take the edge
off. This'll be worth the wait, I promise." He looked at her
enthusiastically.

"What about you? You're hungry, too."

"I'm okay," he replied. "Your mom gave me a peanut butter and jelly
sandwich."

"My mom gave you a sandwich?"

He nodded. "She thinks I'm too thin. We talked for a long time,
Scully. I'll tell you about it when I get back. In the meantime, I have
what she wanted you to see. She says it's from Melissa." He moved
away slightly and touched her face.

"Melissa?" she asked, a shiver passing down her spine at his touch and
his words.

"Yeah," he said standing up to cross the room where the bags still
stood by the door. "Your mom said she was going through some of
her things and found these."

He returned to the couch and pulled the manila envelope from the
canvas bag. Taking it from him, Scully looked down to see her sister's
familiar flowery handwriting--Mom and Dana.

"Do you know what this is?" she asked, looking up to meet his eyes.

"No," he said, shaking his head. "Your mother wouldn't tell me. She
said you should know about it first."

She turned the envelope over in her hands. The flap was not sealed
shut, just held in place by the metal clasp. But she had absolutely no
doubt that Mulder had not even considered reading the contents. She
folded the clasp to the upright position and opened the envelope. As
she started to remove the contents, she felt his hand cover hers.

"Wait," he said. "I'm gonna go. I'll go get us something to eat and that
should give you enough time to read this."

"No," she interrupted. "Stay. You should see it, too."

He shook his head. "Your mom said you first. I'll be back and we can
talk about it if you want to." He moved to stand and she followed. But
he stopped her, taking her hand in his and pressing it to his lips. "Just
stay. I can find the door. I'll be back in a little while."

Scully watched him walk to the door, where he turned and gave her a
little wave. She smiled at him and he left. She heard the lock snick into
place behind him and looked down at the envelope in her lap.


End Part 4 of 7
+++++ 

Simple Gifts -- Part 5 of 7 
See Disclaimer in Part 1

Mulder's car
9:28 p.m.

Mulder looked down at the speedometer, trying to stick to the posted
speed limit. He was fighting back an urge to floor the gas pedal and
get to Alexandria and back to Georgetown, and Scully, as quickly as
possible. But he also wanted to give her enough time to read and
digest whatever it was her mother had sent her. He was admittedly
curious about the contents of the envelope, and was pretty sure she'd
share it with him. Almost certain.

She'd already shared so much with him that evening. It had nearly
floored him that she'd told him so much about how she was feeling
while she was in Idaho. It had made him ache for her and with her, but
at the same time the fact that she was letting him know her heart filled
him with both awe and gratitude. He'd loved her for so long, and so
many times had silently begged her in his heart to give him a glimpse
into hers. And for so long it seemed as if it would never happen, as if
every time there was a chance, he'd say or do something stupid that
hurt her or scared her. Or else, shit just happened--as it did so often in
their lives.

But tonight he'd just listened, lulled by the low softness of her voice as
she gave him her pain and her life. He hadn't been able to keep himself
from touching her and was amazed--and a little apprehensive--when
she hadn't moved away. But his apprehension vanished as she
encouraged him to continue, allowing herself to let him help her feel
better. 

Touching her, he found, was exquisite torture. He couldn't remember
a time since he'd known her that his hands hadn't wanted to roam her
skin and, once allowed, they'd longed to touch her everywhere. But
somehow he'd found the strength to keep them in control, to make
them do what she needed rather than what he wanted. And in doing
so, he found a need within himself that he'd long since given up hope
of indulging--a need to give her what she needed. He'd given up hope
that she would ever allow that.

Well, maybe he hadn't completely given up hope. He had watched the
video, after all--twice. One evening a few months back, he'd found
himself at the video store. Surrounded by tens of thousands of videos,
he hadn't been able to find a single one that interested him enough to
rent it. Not in the mood for his usual choices--porn, sci-fi or action
adventure--he drifted over to a rack he'd never really paid much
attention to in the past. Special Interest. There he found
documentaries--historical, nature films--public service videos, how-to
for home and autos, videos about various medical conditions. He'd
never even been aware that things like this were available. He was
about to reach for a video about Hiroshima when another title caught
his eye. *Fundamentals Of Therapeutic Massage.* He shrugged his
shoulders and grabbed it, not even bothering to read the blurb on the
box.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he was pretty sure he'd been
expecting something like soft-core porn that was trying to be
educational, but the film surprised him. It really was a video about
therapeutic massage. The woman performing the massage
demonstration talked about the process as she went along, using the
proper names for the muscles and carefully explaining why she was
doing what she was doing and the benefits derived from it. The person
receiving the massage was carefully draped with a sheet, showing
nothing revealing, and the therapist only uncovered the area she was
working on.

As he watched, his mind wandered--as it often did--to Scully and he
wondered what it would be like to touch her like that, to try and ease
some of the tension she was so obviously and so often under. It was a
few weeks after the evening they'd played baseball and the first time in
months and months that it didn't seem totally beyond the realm of the
possible that he'd ever be able to touch her like that. They'd slowly
been working their way back to each other after the awful way he'd
treated her that night at the Lone Gunmen's place when his complete
and utter stupidity should have cost him everything--should have cost
him her. Somehow in the midst of disaster--both personal and
professional--they'd been reassigned to the X-Files, and though it had
been painfully awkward at first, they'd been working their way back.

So he'd watched the video twice just to be sure he'd know what to do
if, by some miracle, he would ever get the chance to rub Scully's neck.
And he got the chance. And though feeling her muscles loosen and
relax beneath his hands was a wondrous experience, it was nothing
compared to the feeling of listening to the strings of her heart loosen
as she spoke to him. She'd given him her emotions, her life, and he
was awed by the gift.

Then, even more miraculously, she'd let him give her comfort. She'd
allowed him to hold her without her walking away, had let him see
into her eyes deeper than he'd ever been. There was so much there, he
wondered if he'd ever be able to see everything. But suddenly his eyes
were closed because she was kissing him--the kiss he'd been trying for
on New Year's Eve. The one he'd wanted for years.

And to his delight, he hadn't imagined it nearly as fabulous as it really
was. Kissing Scully was an all-sensory experience--the feeling of her in
his arms, the silky texture of her hair beneath his fingers, her taste, her
scent, the soft throaty noises she made. He'd reveled mindlessly in it,
just letting it wash over him--until he felt his stomach growl with
hunger. 

He was mortified, until he realized that she was making growling
noises herself. And as much as he didn't want to let her go, he wanted
more for her to eat something, worried at her thinness. It was time to
feed this phenomenal woman.

Finally, he reached his destination and pulled into the parking lot of
Rose's Diner. It was just a couple blocks from his apartment and a
favorite place to eat. He'd taken Scully there for breakfast early
Christmas morning a year ago when they'd eaten so many blueberry
pancakes he thought they'd explode. He'd taken her that morning and
several times since then and she seemed to like it. Rose served good
hearty food. Comfort food. Food like Rose's chicken and dumplings,
so much like Sophie's.

Sophie had been the Mulder family's cook when he was a kid. His
mother took care of their home because his father had said he didn't
want some stranger poking through their things. Now, of course,
Mulder knew it was because his father had things to hide. But Bill
Mulder did allow them to have a cook, probably because his wife was,
perhaps, the worst cook of her entire generation and had absolutely no
interest in remedying the situation. 

So Sophie had been with them for as long has he could remember--up
until he left for college in England. She lived in the apartment over
their garage, but there was no doubt in the whole Mulder family that
she owned their kitchen. She did all the shopping and cleaning and
meal preparation and his mother gave her a wide berth, only visiting
the kitchen to discuss weekly meals and schedules, as closely as she
knew schedules. His father was away a great deal of the time and his
mother's social obligations often kept her away from home for dinner
during the week. But Sophie also had to be prepared to make and
serve large meals often on very short notice, for sometimes his father
would show up unannounced with three or four other men in tow
expecting them all to be fed and fed well. A task that she performed
without batting an eye.

But for the most part, she'd cooked for him and Samantha. And just
for him after Samantha had been taken. During that sad, strange time
when none of the Mulders seemed to speak to one another, it was
often just he and Sophie for dinner and she'd make them a big
steaming pot of chicken and dumplings with cornbread on the side.
Then she'd sit down with him at the small table in the kitchen and talk
to him while they ate. She'd ask about his day, his schoolwork.
Sometimes she'd tell him about her childhood in Mississippi and make
growing up poor and black in the segregated south sound more like an
adventure than a travesty.

After Samantha was gone, sometimes he felt as if he were invisible. He
could drift through rooms where his mother and father were screaming
at one another and they never stopped, never acknowledged that he
was even there. So sure of his invisibility was he that he sometimes
would try walking right between them and it never made any
difference in the pitch or volume or vehemence of the arguments. And
it frightened him to be that nonexistent.

At those times, it was only because of Sophie that he believed he was
real and able to be seen. She always knew when they couldn't see him.
Or when his father would finally remember he had a son--a son who
hadn't been able to protect his own sister--and scream at him or smack
him or belittle him. She always knew and was always ready with a hug
and a brownie or an attentive ear if he felt like talking. But she never
pushed. She knew when he needed to be quiet, too, and she'd just let
him stand beside her while she made the chicken and dumplings she
knew would help him feel better. And together they'd pinch off the
dough she'd made for the dumplings into the boiling water where the
chicken was stewing. And the warm steamy smell and the
mindlessness of the task would soothe him as he stood beside the only
person in the world who actually seemed to care about him.

She passed away during his third year in the Bureau. Although she no
longer worked for his family, he'd kept in touch with her after
returning from England, visiting her in the assisted living center in
Boston where she'd taken up residence while he was away. His life had
pretty much always been lonely and he needed the visits with Sophie
as much as she did. He'd bring groceries to her small apartment and
she'd make him his favorite meal and they'd talk for hours. When she
died, he'd taken care of everything making sure she had the kind of
funeral she deserved and he was heartened to see how many friends
she had. He still missed her and the comfort and love she'd always
given so freely.

One day he'd gone to Rose's Diner and saw chicken and dumplings on
the menu and felt a craving for them that he hadn't known in years.
Although he was certain that he'd be disappointed because nobody
could make them like his Sophie had, he ordered them anyway and
was pleasantly surprised. They were close to Sophie's and he'd made a
point of telling Rose how good they were. They'd struck up a
conversation about home cooking and how nobody seemed to do it
much anymore and Mulder found himself coming back again and again
for good food and conversation.

As always, the door jingled as he entered. This late in the evening, the
diner was nearly empty--just a few hearty souls sharing coffee in
booths in the back. Rose was behind the counter, filling the sugar
dispensers and humming to herself. She looked up at the sound of the
door and greeted him with a smile.

"FBI Guy!" she called out as he approached the counter to sit in front
of her. "Haven't seen you in a while. From the looks of things, nobody
who makes food has seen you in a while." She eyed him critically and
waved him to a stool to sit down.

"Jesus, Rosie!" he exclaimed. "Lay off. You're the third person today
to tell me I'm too thin."

She rolled her eyes. "Don't you investigative types call that a clue?
You could use some fattin' up, Mulder, so I guess you come to the
right place. You got that chicken and dumplin' look about you." 

"Ah, Rosie, you must be psychic." 

Without asking, she pulled out a mug and poured Mulder a cup of
coffee. "So where's that pretty redhead you been bringin' in here? How
come you're here on a Friday night and not with her?"

"Actually, that pretty redhead needs fattin' up as much as I do, so I
thought I'd take her some of those chicken and dumplings. Can you
make me up a pretty good sized container and some cornbread if
you've got it?"

"If I've got it," she snorted. "Have you ever known me not to have
cornbread? You should have brought her in, Mulder."

"She's had a tough week," he said simply. "I just wanted her to stay
home and rest."

"You gonna take care of her, right?" Rosie gave him a knowing grin.

"I hope so, Rosie," he said, before he was aware of the double
entendre she made. Strangely, it made him blush--something he
thought he'd gotten over years ago.

"Don't doubt it, Slim." She laughed at the arch look he gave her. "I
seen her looking at you. She's crazy about you."

He chuckled and shook his head. "She's my partner, Rosie. We work
together."

"And that means...?" She looked at him skeptically. "It means these
*crazy 'bout ya* looks you two give each other are purely
professional? Not buyin' it, Mulder. You are smitten, son, and last time
you two were in here, I watched that girl checkin' out your ass when
you went to the men's room. And she was smilin' like she liked what
she saw. 'Course your pants fit you better then."

He gave her a warning look that she didn't seem to take too seriously.
"I get the message, so knock it off. And don't toy with me. Scully does
not check out my ass."

"Just because I'm old now don't mean I didn't check me out some
asses back in the day." She threw her head back with laughter. "I
know the look, Mulder. When she gives it to you and when you give it
to her. Now why don't you sit here and drink your coffee while I go
back and get you some food to take to your lady? I made some pie
today, thinkin' I might see you in the next couple of days. Sweet
potato pie, fresh this afternoon. Want a piece while you wait?"

Rosie's sweet potato pie--nirvana with a fork. "Want to save my
appetite to eat with Scully. But why don't you put in a couple of slices
and we'll have it for desert."

"You got it," she said as she walked back into the kitchen.

Mulder reached over the counter and grabbed the pot to refill his
coffee cup. Rosie said Scully checked out his ass! Not even the
realization that he was sitting alone at the counter grinning like an
idiot could wipe the idiotic grin from his face. *And she was smilin'
like she liked what she saw.*

It was strange to think that Scully might find him physically attractive.
He'd wondered off and on over the years if she ever thought of him
that way, but he didn't dare dwell on the idea for a lot of reasons--the
biggest of which was, what if she didn't? But the idea that she might...
To hear someone else say it... It filled him with... with something he
couldn't name, but that made him grin like an idiot.

He'd been attracted to Scully from the start, although she definitely
was not his usual *type.* When she first walked into his office, he'd
thought she was cute in a fresh-faced, head cheerleader kind of way.
She'd dispelled the *cheerleader* notion in his mind before she'd
spoken a hundred words to him. Smart, self-assured and quick witted,
by the end of their brief initial meeting, she'd gone from cute to pretty
in his mind. 

Mulder couldn't pinpoint as easily when she'd gone from pretty to
beautiful. Whenever it was, it must also have been the moment he'd
fallen ass over ax handle in love with her. And now he wondered how
he ever could have thought of her as anything but beautiful--in all her
incarnations, and through whatever shade of red she and Andre, her
stylist, decided on over the years. She was lovely in dowdy suits and
bad hairstyles and drop-dead gorgeous in sleek black and hair so
smooth and shiny it was all he could do not to run his hands through
it. Fathomless blue eyes and lips he'd wanted to run his tongue along
from the first time he'd seen them. No doubt about it, she could never
be anything but beautiful to him. He could look at her for hours at a
time if she'd just let him.

Her physical beauty, though, had little to do with who she was, but
was more like a reward for who she was. He loved that she was
beautiful, but he didn't love her because she was beautiful. Her face
was lovely to look at, but it was her expressions that he lived for. You
could look at Scully's face and see the intelligence, the compassion,
the determination. There was so much that was good in her--her
integrity, her loyalty and strength, that quirky dry sense of humor.
How could he not love her? But it wasn't blind love for he knew she
could also be opinionated, closed off, stubborn and self-righteous. But
the thing was, he loved those qualities, too. Sometimes he stood in
awe of her, sometimes she frustrated him beyond even his own
imagining, sometimes he loved her so fiercely it felt like his heart
couldn't hold it all. And sometimes she hurt him--she'd done it both by
accident and on purpose. She made him feel all those things. She made
him feel everything. She made him feel--something he hadn't done in
so long that until she came along, he thought he'd lost the capacity for
it. How could he not love her?

He looked up at the sound of the door to the kitchen swinging open
and Rosie coming back carrying a large brown paper bag. He walked
beside her on the other side of the counter toward the cash register,
reaching into his back pocket for his wallet. He felt the sag of the
denim as it drooped across his butt. Damn! He was too skinny. If by
some chance Scully actually was scoping out his ass, there was hardly
anything there to look at. Maybe he should have Rosie mix up a
milkshake or something. It probably wasn't realistic to expect to gain
weight by the time he got back to Scully's.

"There ya go, Mulder," Rosie said with a smile. "Enough food to feed
a small regiment. Should help fatten the two of you up. Here, take this
candy bar, too, and eat it on the way." She handed him a Butterfinger
from the display case beneath the register and he slipped it into the
pocket of his jacket.

He gave her a twenty and waved her hand away when she tried to give
him his change. 

"Tell Scully hi from me," Rose said, coming around the counter to
walk with Mulder to the door. "This'll make you both warm and
comfy. Things are always better when you're all warm and comfy.
Now get going and bring her in next time."

"Will do, Rosie. See you soon."

He found that he couldn't be as patient on the way home with the
smell of their dinner wafting up from the empty seat beside him and a
picture of Scully waiting for him floating in his mind. Taking short
cuts, breaking speed limits, he made considerably better time on the
return trip. 


End Part 5 of 7
+++++
+++++

Simple Gifts -- Part 6a of 7
See Disclaimer in Part 1


Scully's Apartment
10:44 p.m.

He knocked once before using his own key to let himself into her
apartment so she wouldn't have to get up. As he entered, he saw that
she was pacing the floor in front of the couch talking on the phone.
Had to be her mother. And he could see a tear glistening on her cheek
in the glow of the lamp next to the sofa.

She walked over to him and put her hand on the receiver. "I'll be done
in a sec," she whispered, giving him a watery smile.

"No, keep talking," he answered back. "I'll just go in and heat this up a
little for us. Go sit down and I'll bring it in." She nodded and reached
out to squeeze his hand before going back to the couch--a gesture that
brought a smile to his face. As she walked away from him, he noticed
that she was wearing a t-shirt of his--a gesture that widened the smile
already there and caused a pleasant stirring in his loins. God, she
looked hot in his clothes! Picturing his wardrobe, he started to wonder
what else he could bring her to wear. No doubt about it, the Knicks
shirt. That blue with her hair and eyes? It could kill him even to
imagine it. He shook his head to clear his thoughts and went to heat
up their food.

Her kitchen, as always, was spotless and he set the bag on the counter
to unpack it. The container of chicken and dumplings was still slightly
warm and he pulled it out and dug around in the cupboards until he
found a saucepan. Dumping the contents, he set the burner to low and
looked in the bag to find the cornbread. He found it, wrapped in
plastic wrap and ready for a few quick seconds in the microwave. Also
in the bag, to his surprise and delight, were an entire sweet potato pie
and a can of whipped cream--the squirting kind. He picked up the can
and found the note taped to the side. *Hey, Slim, I heard this stuff ain't
just for pie anymore.* He chuckled to himself and crumbled the note,
shoving it deep inside the pocket of his jeans. Rosie, apparently, had a
lot more confidence in him than he had in himself. But he had to
admit, he liked the idea of the whipped cream. It made him think of
the Knicks shirt again. Crumpled up on the floor.



He stirred the mixture on the stove as it heated so that the dumplings
didn't stick to the pan and when it started to bubble, he gave the
cornbread a quick heat through. Just as he was bringing everything
into the living room, he saw her place the phone on the coffee table.
Although her face was stained with tear tracks, she didn't look upset
but, rather, gave him an expectant look and he saw her nose twitch
slightly as she tried to guess what he was bringing her.

"Rosie's chicken and dumplings! You're amazing, Mulder. I didn't even
know I wanted that till you brought it in. And cornbread. This is the
only thing I can imagine eating now." Her voice was shaky, her tone
indecipherable to him.

"She said to tell you hi," he said, trying unsuccessfully to sound
nonchalant. Finally, he gave up trying. "You okay?"

"Yeah, I think so," she said quietly. "Mulder, this stuff..." She
indicated a small sheaf of papers spread out on the coffee table.

He shook his head. "Put it aside for a bit. Let's just eat first."

Scully nodded in agreement and gathered everything together to clear
a space on the table for Mulder to put the tray. They sat side by side,
knees touching, and ate from bowls resting on plates on their laps. He
almost forgot his own meal, just watching her attack hers. Slurping
dumplings, mopping up gravy with her cornbread, making the
occasional appreciative grunt, Scully was doing some seriously
impressive scarfing. She'd told him she was ravenous and he searched
his mind for just one other time when he'd seen her eat with such
gusto. Well, there was that rib place in Wisconsin where, between
them, they'd performed a major eating initiative on a rather sizeable
plate of ribs. 

He remembered wiping the barbecue sauce from her face with his
napkin and now, as then, she had a tendency to wear her food on the
rare occasions that she ate like a linebacker, evidenced by the dribble
of gravy at the corner of her mouth. This time, though, he ventured to
do what he'd wanted to do then and swiped at the gravy with his
thumb. "You dribbled," he said, noting her curious glance.

"Hmm," she replied looking from his thumb to his face. Her expression
told him that she was waiting to see what he would do with the gravy
he'd removed. The right thing to do--the safe thing to do--would be to
wipe his thumb on his napkin and continue eating. He rejected it
immediately and brought his thumb to his mouth, licking the sauce off.
Her smile told him he'd made the right decision. Was he imagining it
or did he really catch just the slightest taste of her on his skin?

Scully took the tray of empty dishes back to the kitchen and Mulder
looked across at the sheaf of papers she'd placed beside her as they
ate. It surprised him how little he was tempted to reach for them, to
try and catch a glimpse of their contents. He found that he wasn't as
curious about what they said as he was about whether Scully would
choose to tell him. He still felt fairly sure that she would, although he
could feel some part of himself trying to steel himself just in case she
decided not to.

She saw him looking at the papers when came back bearing two
sweating glasses of ice water, handing his to him before she sat down.
"Love Rose's chicken and dumplings, but she sure doesn't go light on
the salt." She drank deeply from her glass and placed it on the table
before them.

"You could've read them, Mulder," she said, picking up the pages
she'd lain face down on the sofa.

He shook his head. "I don't make a habit of reading your personal
stuff."

She looked at him doubtfully. "You read what I wrote in the hospital
in Allentown," she challenged.

"You wrote that to me," he countered. "And besides, I stopped
when..."

She looked at him curiously. "When what?"

"Nothing," he said quietly. "Look, it was a long time ago. W... you got
through that."

They both sat quietly for what seemed a long time, staring at their
hands folded placidly in their laps.

Mulder had almost given up hope that either of them would speak
again when he spied her hand approaching him and he watched it
come to rest on his with a gentle caress to his thumb. "Why the hell do
we keep doing this, Mulder?" Her voice was so quiet he had to strain
to hear it. "Things have happened to us, earth shattering things, and
we never talk about them. We're blessed enough to make it through
them, and then we act like they never happened. I had cancer, Mulder,
and *we* got through it. I got through it and you got through it. But
damn it, we could have gotten through it together."

She drew his hand over to hold it between both of hers on her lap, her
top hand rubbing gentle circles over his. "I know I was mostly to
blame for that. I pushed you away and shut you out. I knew I was
doing it at the time, but it just didn't seem like I could stop it. That
was wrong and I'm sorry. But I didn't know what you were thinking or
feeling then, either."

How could he begin to describe what he'd been feeling? He hated even
thinking about that time, let alone talking about it. But she was right.
How long could they keep avoiding talking about these life-altering
events? And why had they decided they needed to avoid them in the
first place? Well, if he expected her to give him her heart, he would
have to be willing to share his own.

He thought about the night that he found her book on the bedside
table in the hospital in Allentown. He closed his eyes briefly and could
picture a whole page of it, word for word. Sometimes it sucked to be
eidetic. He could see all the words in her pretty, precise, Catholic
school handwriting--her neat and orderly-written goodbye to him.

"I stopped reading when I..." He swallowed hard trying to force down
the lump in his throat. "I stopped reading because it scared the piss out
of me, Scully. You were going to leave that for me to have after you
died. Reading it there, beside that empty hospital bed, it was too much
like the real thing. It started to feel like you were already gone. And
you know, I could picture it. That's what was really scary. I sat there
holding that book, running the whole scenario in my mind. You know,
like one of those daydream-y things you get sometimes. In my
thoughts, I could see you getting thinner and sicker until they finally
had to put you in the hospital. And I could picture your mom and me
sitting by your bed. I didn't know Bill then, but I wouldn't have
pictured him anyway. But I pictured your mom and me, each of us
holding one of your hands. Then I pictured the heart monitor going off
and I could hear the beep--droning on endlessly until I reached over
and turned it off. I could see me standing there just in sheer disbelief
that you were gone. And I could see me bending over to kiss you
goodbye, and leaving your room, and riding the elevator and even
getting to the door of the hospital. But I couldn't see any farther than
that. There was absolutely nothing after that. I simply could not
imagine the rest of my life without you. And that terrified me. I was so
scared I could hardly breathe."

He took a deep and shaky breath. "That's how I felt. Like my heart
was being ripped out. And... you want to know how else I felt?"
Looking down at her, he could see the tears brimming in her eyes as
she nodded. 

"At the same time it was ripping my heart out, it was pissing me off."
He hesitated, unsure how to proceed, and he felt her squeeze his hand
in reassurance. "The things you wrote, Scully... they were beautiful.
Things I never knew you thought, things I never would have guessed
that you felt. But I was stealing them from you. You hadn't given them
to me and the only way I could have them was if you died. They were
beautiful words, but they were still goodbye. They were the words of
someone laying down to die. You were going to go gentle into that
good night and leave me with beautiful words. And it pissed me off
and ripped my heart out and I went down to wait for you by Penny's
room because I wanted to know why I couldn't have those words until
you were dead. And I wanted to know why you were just rolling over.

"I had it all planned out. I was going to tell you what I'd found at
Lombard and you were going to get dressed and we were going to go
there and take care of business. I actually thought that. Until you came
out of Penny's room. Your back was to me and when you turned
around... I could see it. You were sick. I got hit with one hell of a
dose of reality. All I had was a vial of your ova, not even viable
because I'd been carrying them around in my fucking pocket. A vial
from a place that was surely swept clean of any evidence within an
hour after they'd discovered me there. I had nothing. And you were
sick and nothing I'd done or found could change that."

Mulder could recall it all with perfect clarity--every word, every
second, every agonizing breath of that encounter. His conscious mind
had played it over and over again during the time she was sick. And
his subconscious mind still showed it to him occasionally in dreams.
"And you stood there and told me that those words weren't for me
after all, that you were going to throw them away. And that hurt,
Scully, that you were going to throw away the words you wrote to
me. That if I hadn't stolen them, I would never have gotten them. That
hurt. Hell, it still does. But it didn't hurt as much as the realization that
you were sick, dying. Then you were spouting some bullshit about
living with cancer and proving things to your family. And I knew
then... I just knew that I had to play it however you had to play it. If
you had to deny it, so did I because I had no other hope to give you. I
was so afraid during that time that when... when the end came, you'd
just bolt and you wouldn't let me be with you. I hoped... I hoped that
if I went along with it the way you wanted it, you'd let me stay. So
you came back to work and I watched there be less of you with every
day that passed and it didn't seem like there was anything I could do
but watch because I... because I didn't know what else to do. I
couldn't find the answers. Not once during the whole damn thing did I
ever know what to do." He fell silent on a sigh.

"Not true, Mulder," Scully protested, shaking her head. "You did all I
could let you do. And so much more. When the time came, when the
answer was there, you found it. And you brought it to me and let me
decide." 

He started to speak, but she placed her fingertips gently against his
lips, not allowing him to interrupt her. 

"Don't even start, Mulder. I know you. I know what you're going to
say. Yes, it was at the very last minute. If you'd just found it sooner...
That's what you were going to say, wasn't it?" He nodded, not really
needing to. "I told you. I *know* you."

Her voice was low and gentle, and her words stirred something in his
chest. She knew him. Scully knew him and knew she knew him. The
thought brought a rush of emotions so overwhelming that he almost
missed her speaking again.

"Do you think it matters to me now that it was at the last minute?" she
asked. "Do you think it ever mattered? It was this side of the line,
Mulder, and three years later I'm still here. See?" She took the hand
that was clasped in both of hers and brought it to her face so that her
cheek rested in his palm.

The touch of her skin against his palm jolted him momentarily into the
now and sent him reeling off again almost immediately. He was feeling
too much, more than his underused heart knew how to cope with.
Scully knew him and knew she knew him. The only person in the
whole world who did, who knew him. Truly his one in five billion.
Scully knew him and she was still there. Despite him and despite her,
despite the Bureau and the mutants and freaks and psychos, and
despite Them--she was still there.

He caressed her cheek once with his thumb before sliding his hand
back to thread his fingers through her hair. Pulling her against him, he
enfolded her with his other arm. Her hands were pressed against his
chest and she rested her head on them and it felt as if he were wrapped
all the way around her.

"I'm so glad you're still here," he whispered into her hair as he nuzzled
it with his nose. "I don't know where I'd be if you weren't. You're the
best thing in my life, Scully. The only light there is."

Cocooned, swaddled in Mulder, Scully felt his words stir individual
strands of hair as they simultaneously entered her ears and touched her
soul. She was the best thing in his life. Tears sprang to her eyes at the
thought. In his life full of pain and loss and deceits and lies and
manipulation, she was a light for him--his only light. And even though
she'd doubted nearly every theory he'd ever proffered, argued with
him, pulled him back at times when his only instinct was to hurtle
forward, tried to keep him out of her heart, he still made his way back
to her light. Because even as she was doing those things, she was
protecting him, defending him, covering his back, doctoring his
wounds, soothing him when she could, loving him.

Loving him. The realization struck her with something akin to the
feeling of entering a well-heated building on a bitingly cold winter day.
Suffused in warmth.

She loved Mulder.

She was fairly certain that thought had come to her in dreams, the
good ones, the warm ones. But she'd never before consciously
admitted it and it elicited a small gasp from her.  He
must have heard or sensed her gasp for she felt his arms around her
loosen, as if to pull away.

In turn, Scully moved her arms from between them, twining them
around his waist, holding him there--partly because it just felt so
damned good to be enveloped in him. But mostly because she wasn't
ready yet to face him, to look at him with eyes that loved him. She
needed to process this strange new idea, to play with it in her mind, to
test its truth as she, seemingly, was born to do. He didn't seem to mind
that she didn't want to let go quite yet and she felt his nose resume its
nuzzling in her hair, making her shiver just a little.

 Her mind kept repeating it over and over as if she
were learning a strange, new language. After just a few times, it felt
right--like the longstanding truth it was--and she was amazed at how
easy it was to accept it. And how good it was. She loved Mulder.

 her rational side countered in that snotty tone she'd always
hated. 

And the answer was surprisingly simple.  Huddled inside
the warmth of him, her heart felt warm, too. For the first time since...
since... She could call up no point of reference for this feeling. Had her
heart never before felt this? If so, this heat burned away any former
feelings she'd ever had, and even the memories of them. There was
absolutely no doubt that what she was feeling right now was past
friendly, *way* past partnerly, and heading for the sublime.

 Another realization came
to her, bringing with it a feeling that was a strange mixture of elation
and regret. Mulder loved her. Just like he'd said in his hallway the
week after she'd found him in the DOD facility. 
Just like he'd said in the hospital in Florida when she'd scoffed and
dismissed him.  Just like he'd said before the
bee and the side trip to Antarctica.  

He'd told her over and over again and she'd never said it once. Many
more times than that, he'd shown it to her. And he kept trying to tell
her, warily and hesitantly, risking her scorn and desertion, without
once ever receiving a verbal glimpse into her heart in return. Yet he'd
never given up. And he'd just done it again. 

Suddenly she was aware of his apprehension. His breathing no longer
matched hers. There was a tension in his arms as he held her,
becoming worse the longer she remained silent within them. He'd put
his heart out there one more time and she hadn't responded. It was
time for her to start giving, too, to take the leap he had taken over and
over. No walking away. The thought brought the return of the
butterflies she'd felt earlier when he'd first arrived at her apartment.
Excitement, fear, joy, adrenaline all coursed through her at the same
time--a powerful cocktail that left her somewhat lightheaded and
breathless.

She relaxed her hold on his waist and felt his hands glide down her
arms as she pulled away just enough to see his face. And what she saw
there amazed her. To anyone looking at Mulder--anyone except her--it
would seem as if his face were completely impassive. But it was his
eyes that were playing out his every thought and emotion, almost like
one of his slide shows. He looked at her and she could see the love
that had been there for so long, but that she'd never allowed herself to
see before. A gentle look that no one but her ever saw--because if was
for her alone. And she could see his anxiety at her silence and the
potential for regret in the creases of his forehead as he wondered
whether he'd said too much again. And it she ached to have caused
that.

"I'm sorry Mulder," she said and she felt him suddenly make as if to
move away from her.  "No, no, no," she said, pulling him
close again. "That's not what I meant. I mean, all those times you tried
to tell me--you *did* tell me--and I.. My turn now, Mulder." She
snaked her arm up between them to touch his face and wondered
whether his skin was abnormally warm or her fingers were abnormally
cold. But the contrast was electric, amazing. Almost as amazing as
watching his eyes change color right before her from their usual hazel
to a deep mossy green. She knew of his chameleon-like eyes, of
course, but had she ever actually witnessed the transformation?
Knowing full well that there was a scientific reason for it, for once she
opted for magic. How could she possibly not...

"Love you, Mulder." The words came out even as she thought them,
whispered but not tentative in the least, and in the saying of them,
elation won out over regret. She'd said it and it wasn't difficult in the
least. She could feel the smile breaking out on her face as this
newfound emotion took hold of her. Elation.

He wanted to smile, but he was holding himself back. She could see it
in the twinkle that was building in his eyes, but he couldn't quite let
himself do it. "Say it again," he said, softly but urgently. "Please. It's
the only way I'll know for sure that I'm not delusional. That it's not
just another *gotcha big time* here."

His plea tugged at her heart and she thought of all the things that had
happened in his life that could make him doubt even his own ears, his
perceptions. Well, not this time. This time there could be no room for
doubt. She reached up to cup his face between her hands and locked
her eyes to his. "Never about this. I said I love you, Mulder."

And Scully saw it happen. She watched his face and saw him believe.
It was the same expression she'd seen as she drifted in and out of
consciousness on that ice field in Antarctica, when his faith had been
reborn at the sight of something she hadn't seen--again. This time,
though, the look was aimed at her and she was made aware, one more
time, of what a powerful thing Mulder's belief could be. It had to be to
sustain him for as long as it had.

But she had little time to contemplate his belief before his mouth
descended on hers and solidified her own belief. His kiss this time was
different from any of the too few they'd shared thus far--resolute and
certain, yet incredibly tender. A declaration of intent. For the first
time, he didn't doubt that he could give her what was in his heart
without fear of rejection because she'd told him she loved him and he
believed her. He pulled away slightly to trail tiny wet kisses over her
face, her eyelids, her forehead, until he reached her ear where his
warm breath and lips sent delicious chills down her spine. "So much,
Scully," he whispered. "Love you so much."

And she was rocked to her very core at how it felt to hear those words
from him and allow herself to believe them. Rocked by something she
hadn't felt since childhood and never thought she'd feel again--sheer,
undiluted bliss that seemed almost like a separate physical entity
sharing her body. It felt like laughter, like balloons and cotton candy
and roller coasters with big high drops and loop-the-loops. Did he feel
it, too?

Her answer was written on his face, plastered there, painted with neon
colors. She thought she'd seen him smile before, seen him chuckle,
seen him laugh. But nothing she'd ever seen had matched this. His
teeth, his eyes, that fabulous mouth, his cheeks, his nose--hell, even his
ears were in on this Muldergrin. She was absolutely dazzled by him
and completely awed that it was she who'd brought him this amazing
expression.

But just as suddenly as it came, she watched it fade and found herself
bereft at its loss. He smiled still, but she saw the change in his
eyes--not in their color this time, but in their light. Scully had seen the
look too many times not to know it for what it was. Confusion,
uncertainty.

"What?" she whispered, still gently smiling at him, but somewhat
anxious just the same.

He winced slightly and gave a self-conscious snort. "I don't have the
first..." He lowered his eyes briefly but brought them right back to
hers. This was obviously something he found difficult to say and she
wondered if she really wanted to hear it. "I'm afraid I'm going to say
something stupid here and completely blow this whole thing like I did
on New Year's Eve." The words came out of him in a rush--the verbal
equivalent of pulling a Band-Aid off in one quick swipe. It hurts less if
it's fast.

She sighed with relief and risked a small chuckle. This was something
she could dispel right here as she'd already promised herself she
would. "You didn't blow it on New Year's Eve, Mulder. Okay, maybe
the undead in the closet thing was too much, but it was pretty much
blown by that time anyway."

"It was the end of the world thing, wasn't it? That was the stupid thing
that time."

Scully nodded. "But it wasn't you, Mulder, it was me. And Christmas
and all the things that have been going on for so long. All the things I
never told you."

He looked at her curiously, but not in accusation. "Can you tell me
now?" His tone was still and even, completely without challenge or
demand. It said to her that he would accept it if she couldn't tell him,
that the choice was hers.

But could she? She almost wished he had demanded that she tell him,
or at least asked her to. For given the decision, she found that it was
more difficult to make than she had hoped it would be. She loved this
man. She'd admitted it to herself and to him. Why should it still be so
difficult to tell him her fears? It wasn't as if he wouldn't understand.
Mulder knew fear, had borne it for longer than any one man should
have to carry such a load. And he alone could comprehend what she
feared. 

She wanted to tell someone, wanted it badly. And if not him, who?
Karen the Bureau psychologist? Oh yeah, she could just picture that!
 Who except Mulder wouldn't have
the psych ward preparing a room for her if she said something like
that?

Taking a deep, trembling breath, she closed her eyes and willed herself
to speak. "You said before that I'm the bravest person you know." He
nodded in confirmation. "And it meant so much to hear you say that.
But it's just not true, Mulder. So much of the time..." She realized that
her head was bowed, her eyes squeezed shut and she made herself
look up at him. If she was going to share this with him, he'd earned the
right to see it in her eyes. "So much of the time I'm afraid, terrified.
Sometimes it's all I can think about. I'm afraid for the world, for my
family, for you, for me." She hesitated and her voice dropped to a
whisper. "For us."

"Scully..." he whispered and she watched his eyes fill with tears.

"No," she said with a shake of her head. "I need to say this, please.
And you need to know this. It could be dangerous if you don't know
this, if you don't know how afraid I am. I'm not brave at all, Mulder.
Sometimes I worry that I won't be there when you're counting on me."
She lowered her face, hating that she'd had to make that confession.
But he needed to know and she needed to admit it, having carried it
around for so long.

"You know, Scully, that may be the only thing in my whole life that I
*never* worry about," he said simply, dropping his head to speak the
words softly near her ear. "You've saved my ass so many times. No
matter what kind of stupid shit I get myself into, you're right there to
pull me out, kicking the ass of anyone who gets in the way--even when
it's me getting in the way. You're the one who cares enough about me
to save me, even from myself. That's as much a fact to me as Napier's
constant is to you." 

He stroked her hair, rubbing his fingers gently over her scalp, and she
couldn't help resting the crown of her head against his shoulder. But
even the play of his fingers in her hair couldn't soothe her rushing
thoughts. How could she be feeling so many different things at once?
His words warmed her to her very soul and she wanted to be able just
to bask in them. She had his trust, his love, completely and it filled so
much of her. Except that small part that questioned how wise it was
for him to trust her like that, when she was afraid so much of the time.

And when he spoke again, it was almost as if he'd read her mind.
"Being afraid doesn't mean that you're not brave. In fact, I think being
brave means knowing what there is to be afraid of and still choosing to
face it, to try and do something about it. Like you've always done,
Scully. Like you keep doing. Like you help me do when I'm afraid."
He tilted her face up to his and she saw love and admiration shining in
his eyes, gold-flecked now in the light of the lamp beside the sofa.
"You'll never be able to convince me that you're not the bravest person
I know, so you might as well stop trying."

And for the first time, she felt a shift in the feel of the fear that had
dwelled within her for so long. That seemed sometimes to have such a
tight grip around her throat that she could barely breathe. Of course
she was afraid. There was much to fear. Mulder was afraid, too,
though he rarely seemed to be. Any rational human being facing what
they had experienced would be afraid. Their fears didn't reflect their
weakness but rather, their humanity. Maybe if it was all right to have
the fears, she could begin to allow herself to see what they were.

Scully shifted away, loathe to leave the warmth of his arms, yet
needing a little space to clear her head. She was going to tell him
something that she'd never really allowed herself to think through
because even beginning to examine the fears had always led to more of
them. She turned on the sofa and bent her knees to sit cross-legged
beside him. Grabbing the hand nearest her in both of hers, she found
herself reluctant to abandon all contact with him when she'd waited so
long to be able to have it openly between them. Surprising her, he
turned, mimicking her seating, somehow managing to maneuver his
much longer legs into the same position she had assumed, his knees
touching hers. He brought both of her hands to rest on his knees,
covering them with his own, and they leaned slightly toward each
other, as if there were others around for them to keep secrets from.

And she whispered as though that were true. "It's been there for a long
time even though I tried to deny it, even to myself, for so long. But I
couldn't anymore, not after Africa. Right at this very minute, Mulder,
they have the ability to bring about the end of the world. The end of
the fucking world. That's what I'm afraid of. One of the things.
Sometimes it's the first thing I think about when I wake up in the
morning. What if today is the day? Other times it's just a random
thought here or there throughout the day. And it's other things, too.
It's not only because I've been gone that I don't have any food in the
house. I don't... I don't buy very much stuff anymore. Because what if
it's the end of the world and I have a refrigerator full of food? Is that
why you don't buy food?"

He gave a small shrug and she knew that she'd hit upon a truth about
him. Silent, his attention focused on her words, he regarded her
seriously and waited for her to continue. And, to her surprise, she
found that she was eager to because she wanted to give these truths to
him and he wanted to hear them. Her mind flashed briefly to the words
she'd written to him so long ago in Allentown. *I feel these words as if
their meaning were weight being lifted from me, knowing that you will
read them and share my burden as I have come to trust no other.* A
truth she knew in dying that she'd cast aside when that danger was no
longer immediate. But the fact was, he would willingly share the
burden of any fear she had--of all the fears she had. He would have
shared them then and he certainly would now.

Scully swallowed hard against the lump forming in her throat.
"Holidays are the worst. Kurtzweill said it would happen during a
holiday when people were away from their homes. For a long time, I
tried to tell myself that we didn't know for sure that he was telling the
truth. But they killed him, Mulder. They killed him because he talked
to you and the little bit he told you turned out to be right on the
money. I still tried to believe that it wasn't true, though. But after
Africa, I couldn't deny it to myself anymore. I saw it. I saw the ship
and touched it and I suddenly knew that it was true. I understood what
it all meant. They could end the world and I was nearly half a world
away from you. And all I could think about was getting back. I just
left everything and got on the next plane. Because nothing I'd found
could help you and..." She stopped, jolted by the realization that came
to her mind.

"And what, Scully?" he prompted her gently--as close to a demand as
he would allow himself to get. His hands over hers were warm and she
felt his fingers curl to grasp them. She shifted her own hands so that
their fingers intertwined, and her palm rested against his. "What?"

"And I... I couldn't stand the possibility of the world ending and not
being with you when it did."

She heard him issue a noise something like a sigh, something like a
moan. He moved quickly, placing his outside foot on the floor, and
pulling and turning her until she was nestled resting on her side against
his chest. One of his arms clasped her tightly at the waist, the other
pressing her head against his heart. 

"I know," he whispered and she could feel him shudder at the thought,
pulling her even closer. And for the first time, she allowed herself to
accept without question the comfort being near him brought her and
found that it gave her the strength to keep going, as it always had.

"Then when I got back here, they'd only let me see you for a few
minutes, but it wasn't you. I couldn't see you in your eyes. It was like a
shell of you and then they even took that away. I didn't know what to
do. I didn't know how to find you. I didn't know the meaning of
anything I'd seen. I just felt so damned... useless. And afraid." She
issued a shudder of her own and this time it was she who tightened
their embrace. "I don't know what I'd have done if I hadn't been able
to find you," she whispered.

"Then you were back and we were *us* again, like we used to be.
Only better somehow." She pulled away slightly to offer him a hesitant
smile, and was glad to see agreement in the smile he gave back to her.

"Those weeks after you were back, when we knew for sure that you
were getting better, I loved those weeks. Even the work felt new and
fresh, like we were a team again."

He nodded in accord. "I hadn't felt that for a long time. It was..." He
paused as if uncertain whether or not to continue.

"What?"

"It was almost worth what happened to me to get that back."

"No," she relied immediately and with vehemence. "They could have
killed you and nothing would have been worth that. But during those
weeks, I was so glad that you and I were better. There were so many
times I wondered if we'd ever be there again, and I missed us." A small
catch crept into her voice, although she didn't feel near tears. "And
everything was okay when we were working. Most of the time I didn't
think about it. It was when I was by myself--at the end of the day,
early in the morning, stuck in traffic--that the fear would come back,
but I could usually push it back when it got too bad. Years of practice.
Then pretty soon Thanksgiving was coming. A holiday where a lot of
people are away from home. Thinking about it now, I don't believe it
was even a conscious thing, not then. You wouldn't come with me to
my mother's house for Thanksgiving." And suddenly they were just
there, an onslaught of tears completely without warning.

"What?" Mulder asked, a mixture of deep concern and confusion on
his face, apparently as alarmed as she was by the sudden appearance of
her tears. "What's wrong?"

She shuddered again and felt his arms tighten around her in response,
and she burrowed in against him. "I was mad, Mulder. I know, I ask
you every year and every year you don't feel like you belong there.
This year, though, it made me so mad, especially after everything we'd
been through. But now that I think about it, maybe it wasn't anger so
much as fear. What if Thanksgiving had been the day? My mother's
house is forty miles away from you. We don't know how this might
happen. We don't have a clue. What if... if all hell had broken loose
that day? If it all fell apart at once, there'd be utter panic and chaos.
Forty miles would be like... Even assuming we lived through the
beginning, how would we ever have found each other? If it had
happened while I was in San Diego, we'd never have found one
another again." 

"I'd have found you." His voice was solid and certain and, once more,
she found herself slightly envious of his ability to believe. 

Scully felt the cold hand of fear trying to break into the newfound
warmth in her heart. She pulled away a little, needing to see his face.
"How? We need a plan, Mulder. Some way to find each other if..."

"Scully," he interrupted, pressing his fingers softly against her lips.
"We can't live like that, trying to make plans for any eventuality. For
me, if we did that... It would be like we were accepting that there's
nothing we can do about this. And I refuse to believe that."

Of course he refused to believe that. He was Mulder--as steadfast in
disbelief as he was in belief. "Planning doesn't mean accepting. It
means being ready. We... *I* need to be ready, Mulder. I need to
know how to find you. Because I couldn't find you last time. And as
afraid as I am that the world is going to end..." She paused and took a
deep breath, biting back the tears that threatened yet again. "I'm even
more afraid of it ending and not being with you when it does."

This time it was Mulder who cried, shedding tears without shame.
"Okay then, we'll make a plan. But never doubt that I'll find you, no
matter what it takes." He was silent for a moment. "Is this what...?
Your mother told me about Christmas. Did this...?" She understood
the question he didn't quite seem able to form.

She sighed deeply. "Christmas was so many things. I just shouldn't
have gone and I knew it at the time. But it didn't seem like there was
any way around it. I was worried about you--I guess on more levels
than I even knew about. I missed you, too, and I hated the idea that
you were back here all by yourself. And when I got to San Diego, it
was other things, too. Bill ragged on me constantly. When we were all
together, I just felt so separated from them. Because of what I know,
what they won't know until it happens because they wouldn't believe
me even if I could find some way to explain it to them." He nodded, a
look of empathy on his face.

"They were all sitting around, swapping stories and laughing, and all I
could think about was... They didn't know it might be the last
Christmas Eve like that because it could have happened the very next
day. Or next Memorial Day or Fourth of July or Labor Day could be
the end of the world. I'd look at them, my family, and I could picture
them in my mind, like..." She paused as she felt her throat swelling
with emotion. She took a deep breath and swallowed hard, knowing
well the tricks of holding tears at bay. "Like that man from Rousch.
They were singing Christmas carols and I was envisioning the end of
the world. They sang *Joy to the World* and *I* heard end of the
world. I swear, that's what I heard them sing, but they were acting like
nothing had happened, so I knew I just imagined it. I was so scared."

"That's when you called me," he said quietly.

She nodded. "I just slipped away. I had to get out of the house, so I
snuck through the kitchen and grabbed my coat to go out on the porch
for some fresh air. I didn't think they'd even realize that I was gone,
but Mom did. But, you know, I went back in not caring what they
thought. I needed to talk to you, and it was the first time I hadn't been
afraid since the last time I talked to you. So, I went back in knowing
that Bill would go ballistic on me, but that didn't matter. And he did,
and I was doing okay with it, all the standard bullshit about you and
my job and what a waste I'd made of my life. I was even okay when he
brought up Emily." 

She felt his arms tighten around her, and saw just a shadow of doubt
cross his face. "No, I really was okay." She looked deeply into his
eyes, wanting to show him that what she said was true. "It didn't
matter what he thought about Emily because I know the truth about
her and so do you. That's all that matters. I was okay--holding my own
in the whole thing--until he said that Melissa would still be here if not
for me." A rogue tear escaped her eye and rolled down her cheek, but
her voice remained strong.

Mulder couldn't conceal his rage from her. His eyes flashed with it and
she could see his jaw clench. "Your brother must have gotten every
stray asshole chromosome in your family's entire gene pool," he said
bitterly.

"Now there's a theory I can believe in," she said with a laugh that felt
unbelievable good to her. "My brother does have a tendency to be..."
She paused, searching for the right word.

"A dickhead?" he offered helpfully.

"That works," she replied. She felt the grin on her face widen briefly
but then grew serious again soon enough. "But I know why he feels
the way he does, Mulder, I understand it. Melissa *was* killed
because of choices I made. But he was wrong believing that she'd still
be here, even if I hadn't chosen as I did. He was wrong but neither of
us knew it at the time."

"What do you mean?" he asked a perplexed look crossing his face.

Scully disentangled herself from his warmth with even more reluctance
than she'd felt before. Sitting up, she turned to face the coffee table,
feeling his scrutiny of her every movement. She reached for the sheaf
of papers that had somehow ended up back on the coffee table after
they ate.

"You haven't even asked me about this, Mulder," she said, somewhat
in awe of his self-control. "Weren't you curious about what's here?"

"Not as curious as I was about whether you'd tell me about it if I didn't
ask. If you'd tell me about it just because you want to." 

His response made her heart swell with love for letting her decide, but
at the same time with a melancholy feeling she couldn't quite identify.
"Did you think I wouldn't tell you?"

"Honest?"

"I thought this was about honesty."

He nodded, his eyes apologizing for his question. "I don't know how
to explain. Right now, I know you'll tell me. But before, when your
mom gave me the envelope, when I was bringing it here... Most of me
was sure then, too. But part of me... I was trying to prepare myself in
case you couldn't tell me, didn't want to. In case this became another
one of those earthshaking things that we never talk about."

How could she fault him for trying to prepare himself for something
that had happened over and over between them? Maybe what was
happening here would mean that they wouldn't feel this need to keep
so much to themselves. She wondered how difficult it would prove to
both of them to reveal the things they'd always kept hidden.

She scooted back beside him, looking down at the papers she held in
two trembling hands. "Mulder, Melissa left this envelope for Mom and
me because she knew she was going to die."

"She predicted her own death?" She had to smile a bit at Mulder's
expression. Even in the midst of this, he couldn't help his finely-tuned
professional interest in the strange and unusual.

"No," she replied. "There's a letter from her inside, along with some
other things. I'd rather you didn't read the letter. There are personal
things in it to my mother and me. Stuff that should just remain
between us. But I'll tell you what she said and show you this other
stuff."

Mulder watched Scully spread out some papers on the coffee table
before them and he eased forward to get a better look. But he found
he couldn't stop watching her. Hunched side by side over the table, he
took in her profile, finally able to do so without worrying that she'd
catch him doing it. She looked down at the papers and he watched her
eyes move back and forth, though she'd certainly had time to read
them several times while he was gone. Her eyelids fluttered in a
movement only a little more obvious than the slight quivering of her
chin. Would anyone but him even have seen these things, known what
they meant?

He'd seen enough medical records in his years of investigating to know
with a mere glance what the papers were that she'd laid out. Melissa's
name and date of birth were at the top of each of them.

"Missy wrote the letter a couple of weeks before she was killed. She'd
just found out... Her doctor had just told her she was entering the final
stages of ovarian cancer."

"Cancer? She had cancer?"

"Yeah," she replied sadly. "At the very best, she had six months--more
likely half that. She'd already been treated with chemo and radiation in
California. She didn't want us to know what was happening. That's
why she disappeared from our lives for so long. But it didn't work and
she refused to take another course of treatment. She talked to other
women who'd had the treatment and read about the survival rates and
thought she'd do just as well with alternative medicine. That was just
like her. But I understand why she'd decide to do that. The treatments
are horrible." Her voice drifted away and he could see by her
expression that she was recalling her own experiences with
chemotherapy and radiation.

Would Scully refuse treatment if her own cancer returned? He decided
not to ask a question he might not be able to stand the answer to.
Instead, he asked, "How do you feel about all this, Scully?"

She shrugged her shoulders forlornly. "One way I look at it, this
doesn't change anything.. My sister was killed ahead of her time when
it was me that they were after. But in another way, it changes how I
see everything. I talked to Mom and she said... She said that after she
read Melissa's letter... She said it proved to her again how merciful
God is. She believes that, Mulder. Merciful!" She spat the word out as
if it were poison.

"You don't believe that God is merciful?"

"I don't know what I believe about God anymore." Her voice was
small and weary, not just tired but weary to her soul. And it made him
ache in some vague location that he'd never be able to physically
identify if she asked him to.

They'd had debates, quarrels, arguments, knock down drag outs over
the existence of God through their years together. Some that they'd
glossed over in their usual style, some that had hurt one or the other,
some that had hurt them both, as they each clung to beliefs that were
incomprehensible to the other.

But the fact was, although he didn't fully comprehend her belief in
something she couldn't see after all he'd shown her that she didn't
believe, he suspected he needed her faith as much as she did. The rare
times that she doubted tore at his heart because what little faith he
could allow himself came only from her. How could he completely
disbelieve something she so firmly believed in? Her existence, her
continued presence in his life, was what kept open for him the
possibility of a higher power out there somewhere. Sometimes when
he let himself think about it, he could come up with no other
reasonable explanation for this one good thing in his life. Her faith, so
much a part of her, hedged his bet for him. If there was a heaven after
all this, she'd find a way to get him in, not to make him spend eternity
without her. Her God couldn't possibly deny that request from Scully,
not after all she'd given--all she'd had taken from her--in her quest to
do the right thing. He could spout his theories, voice his doubts
because in the end, his Scully would convince her God that his poor,
worthless ass was worth saving. And maybe it was worth saving
because, with Scully, he was trying to do the right thing, too.

"Maybe..." He fumbled for the right words, not sure how to speak in
terms he'd never used in reference to himself, but wanting to show that
he understood the belief. "Maybe God was merciful, at least to your
mother."

She laughed bitterly. "Is this some newfound belief, Mulder, or have
we done it so long that we just automatically assume opposite
viewpoints?"

Mulder chose to ignore the small but insistent pang her question
caused. "I don't know that God doesn't exist. Maybe he or she or
whatever actually does exist, but only for some people. Maybe God
exists but just sits back and watches. Maybe there is a vengeful God
out there and I'll burn in hell for the life I've led. I just don't know.
Maybe it was God's hand or just the way everything turned out, but I
can see the mercy in it."

She looked at him with something like a desperate curiosity, as if
hoping he could give her an explanation that that would hold open the
door that was slowly swinging shut on her faith. And maybe he could.

"I can see the mercy in it," he repeated. "If you'd been home that night,
if they'd killed you instead of Melissa, your mother would have buried
two daughters within the space of only a few months. I don't mean to
be unfeeling here, you know that." She nodded. "But God or fate or
just dumb luck took the daughter who was going to be dead anyway.
Your mother still has a daughter, Scully. You're still here for her.
Don't you think that was merciful for her? Don't you think she thanks
her God for that every day?" 

He watched her luminous blue eyes mist over and marveled as a single
tear slid down her face. He'd never seen anyone but Scully who cried
like that, with one perfect, flawless tear. Like she'd shed when Modell
made him point a gun at her. Like she'd shed as he held her in that
empty hospital corridor in Allentown. Or in his hallway when he'd
begged her not to leave him. Or the single tear that had fallen on his
face, like rain on desert sand, when she'd found him after the smoking
bastard had taken what he wanted and left him to die. How could she
look so beautiful when she cried when everyone else looked so awful?

"Your mom thanks her God for you every day, Scully. I know she
does. I only hope she thanks her God for you from me, too." She
smiled at him then and it lit his heart as her rare and gorgeous smiles
always had.

"Sometimes you're such a sap," she said, her voice thick and throaty
with emotion, a smile twitching at the corners of her mouth. "I love
that about you." She lowered her head a little and he knew that it was
because she was blushing. And she jumped back to the topic just in
time to save him from being sappy again. "Okay, I can see how Mom
would see what happened as merciful. I just wish it felt that way to
me. Somehow it almost... it almost seems worse that they killed her
when she only had a few months to live. There's so much we should
have gotten the chance to say and time was so precious."

"It's always precious," he countered. "Or it should be. How do you
know you would ever have gotten the chance to say those things?
Melissa wrote you a letter. Maybe she wasn't planning on telling you
at all. Maybe she didn't want to be treated differently just because she
was dying and maybe that runs in the family." He gave her a weak
smile and got the *eyebrow thing* in return which, in truth, was
almost as good as a smile. "Scully, you never would have had enough
time with her and there always would be things left unsaid. Melissa
wasn't afraid of death, you know that. She believed it was just another
phase in the order of things and that she'd be back. Hell, maybe she
already is. There's mercy if you let it be merciful, sweetheart. We both
know what the last months of her life would have been like."

"Either in unbearable pain or so doped up that it wouldn't have been
her anyway," she said sadly.

He nodded. "And I think she would have been more afraid of that than
of dying."

"Yeah, maybe," she conceded. "But does that really change the fact
that she died because of choices I made?"

"No," he answered. "We make choices every day that we can't
possibly know the consequences of. Maybe Melissa did die because of
choices you made, but you couldn't have known that when you made
the choices. And even though she was killed it doesn't mean the
choices you made were wrong. Because in the years between then and
now, you've saved lives, too. Lots of 'em. Was there just one choice
that you think doomed Melissa? Even if you could, what would you
do differently?"

"I don't know," she admitted.

"Of course you don't," he replied with quiet understanding. "Because
there isn't one single thing that was the deciding factor in what
happened to your sister. The world isn't cause and effect, Scully. It's
cause and cause and cause and cause and effect. It's all tied together.
A billion different things could have happened that might have
changed it, or maybe not. What if the murderer's gun had exploded in
his hand when he was doing a little target practice? What if
Cancerman had been hit by a bus bending over to pick up his pack of
cigarettes before he had a chance to give the order? What if Melissa
had been stopped for speeding on her way to your house or run out of
gas?"

"None of those things happened," she protested. "But my choices did.
This isn't some intellectual game here, Mulder. This is my sister we're
talking about. And who are you to talk? We could say all those same
things about *your* sister and the guilt you wear like a second skin
about what happened to her."

He felt his heart constrict in a pain that still surprised him even though
he'd carried it for more than a quarter of a century. He watched her
face register her alarm at what she'd said and he could see her mouth
starting to form an apology. Shaking his head, he placed a finger
against her lips. "No, don't apologize. God knows you have reason to
believe that. But it's not the same as it was when we first met, back
when you first came to me. I don't think it's about the guilt anymore. It
was when we first met. But since then... all the things we've learned
have shown that there was never anything I could have done about it.
Now I just want to know what happened. That's the difference, Scully.
You *know* what happened to your sister. Horrible as it was, you
know. I just want to know."

"Do you?" she asked quietly.

And he comprehended the meaning behind her gentle inquiry. Even if
the fate of Samantha ended up to be the same as Melissa's? "Yeah, I
think so. Yeah. I've thought about the possibility that Samantha is
dead. How could I not at least consider that? All the facts speak to
that. But none of them speak to me and I can't stop looking until I find
the thing that speaks to me. They've lied to me so many times about
her, knowing that I'd run down whatever trail they said she was at the
end of. And I did, and so did you. And they know I'll keep doing it,
and we both know it, too. I hate that they have that kind of power
over me--over us, because you've never left me alone in this. I hate
that they know that I have to follow any lead they feed me. If I could
just find out what happened to her, whatever it is, they couldn't hold it
over us anymore. And..." He swallowed hard, suppressing a small
shudder. "And I still think that when we find out what happened to
her, we'll find out what happened to you, too. We've gotta know and
somebody's gotta pay." He waited, giving her time to voice the denial
that he hoped was no longer there. She didn't disappoint him, instead
simply nodded without a word.

"We have to find out what happened to you, and to Samantha, or
everything that's happened to us will have been for nothing. And we're
going to find out. You know, that used to be all that mattered." He
touched his fingertips briefly to her face, and his heart leapt at the chill
his touch caused her. "But now I want more. For so long I've known
that having you in my life is essential, and you've been in my life and
it's meant everything, even when it didn't seem like it to you. But I
don't think I realized until I talked to your mother this afternoon that I
want 
more. I want you in my life and happy. I want to be with you in my life
and I want us both to be happy."

"Mom told me some of what you talked about," she said softly.

"That's good. Your mother is a remarkable woman, Scully. She helped
me see a lot of things. One of the things she said was that we don't
take the joy when it comes our way. She says when you don't have
joy, you forget what you're fighting for and I think she's right. I think
maybe that's the key. We've spent so much time denying what we feel,
trying to keep our focus on the work, that the focus has become the
focus. We're fighting so hard to keep fighting that we forget what
we're fighting for. Isn't that what you were trying to tell me in the
elevator that morning, when I first started hearing things? That you
didn't know why you were still doing what you were doing? Why I
was doing it?"

"I was so tired then, Mulder..." she began.

"I know," he interrupted her gently. "We both were. And that had to
be part of their plan, too. To keep us off balance so much that even
when we were in balance, we'd spend all our time and energy
wondering when the rug was going to be pulled out from under us
again. So afraid of it that we lost the times when there could have
been joy, things that could pull us together. They've taken our joy and
I want it back."

"Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die, eh Mulder?" She was
attempting to tease him, as if to draw him away from the subject, as
they'd both done so many times in the past. But he could see by her
expression that she knew it wouldn't work.

"That's not what I'm saying and you know it," he said, refusing to take
the bait. "What I'm saying is, what would be so wrong with us being
happy sometimes? That's not what's going to cause the end of the
world. I'm tired, Scully. I'm tired of being consumed by the fear and
the focus and I'm tired of seeing you consumed by them, too. Our lives
are like endless penance and we didn't do anything wrong, except
maybe what we've done to each other in all this. And I think we've
paid for that in spades. I don't want more than anyone else has, but I'm
tired of always expecting less. I just..." His voice faltered a little. "I
just want to see you smile sometimes, Scully. Like the night we played
baseball."

And he got his wish as he watched her recall that evening so long ago
and a watery grin emerged from her tears. "I accepted the gift," she
whispered, almost as if to herself.

"What?" he asked, confused.

Scully closed her eyes briefly and he saw the tears shimmering on her
eyelashes. When she opened her eyes again, they locked to his and her
smile became wistful. "In the letter, Missy told me that life is full of
gifts and that it's okay to accept them because they belong to us. She
said that sometimes the best gifts are right in front of us and we don't
see them because they're so close. I'm pretty sure she meant you,
Mulder." She smiled at him, almost shyly. "She liked you a lot."

He grinned back at her and sent out a quick thanks to Melissa's
soul--wherever it was. "And your mother told me that sometimes
people have to make their own joy, and I'm pretty sure she was talking
about us. Looks like a couple of people who love us are trying pretty
hard to tell us something. And I, for one, want to believe. But that's
just the kind of guy I am."

"Even I want to believe in that one," she replied. "Melissa used to love
presents. I could never figure out if she liked getting or giving more.
Her gifts were always special. She usually made them herself. I guess I
never told you, but she was an artist. She used to do caricatures--you
know, at Renaissance festivals, fairs, parties, things like that. She did
her serious work in lots of media, but she earned her living doing
caricatures. My dad kept wondering when she was going to get a real
job, but she actually made pretty good money at it. So she'd make
things for all of us, things that sometimes seemed bizarre when you
opened them but the more you thought about them, you realized that
she'd given you the perfect gift. She just *knew* things about people,
Mulder, and she loved to give presents. She knew she wasn't going to
make it until Christmas and she left presents for us. For the whole
family. And for you, which I have to admit surprised me a little."

"I know. Your mom told me and it surprised me, too. Did you open
yours?" He smiled but not without a twinge of apprehension, for he
wondered what else Melissa had known about him. He recalled how
she came to his apartment that night to tell him Scully was going to
die, to beg him to see her one more time to say goodbye, and how
Melissa had read him like a book after knowing him only a few days.

"No," she said with a shake of her head. "I wanted to wait for you.
Want to?"

"Why not?" he replied, curiosity winning out over apprehension. He
watched her reach into the canvas bag that Maggie had given him and
pull out two boxes exactly the same size and shape. They were
wrapped in ribbons and bright foil Christmas wrap, unfaded in the
years they'd spent in the steamer trunk. 

Scully looked at the tags and handed him the one with the gold and
white paper, while the one she held seemed to be various shades of
gray and brown, which told him it was some combination of green and
red. Had she wrapped them that way on purpose? Could Melissa tell
he was colorblind? Did it show in his aura? He examined the box,
unwilling to shake it in case it was breakable. It was rectangular and
not very deep and from its size and what Scully told him, he imagined
it was a picture of some sort. And since the boxes were the same size
and shape, hers must be a picture, too.

"Who's first?" he asked and he felt a stirring in his heart like he hadn't
felt since he and Scully exchanged Christmas presents the year before.
Surprises were fun when they were from loved ones.

"Together," she said, eyeing her own gift with guarded excitement,
then raising her eyes to meet his once more. 

It's different for her, he thought. A present from her sister, so long
dead. A communication she'd never expected, a final message. A
present that was also a gift. She looked at him expectantly and he saw
that, indeed, she wasn't going to start opening until he did. So he made
an initial tear in the wrapping paper and they were both off, heads
bowed, attention on the boxes in their laps.

The wrapping gone, he lifted the lid of his box and pushed aside the
tissue paper Melissa had used to protect the contents. As he'd guessed,
it was a picture--a caricature as Scully had told him about--in a
beautiful weathered wood frame, which he suspected that she made as
well. He lifted the frame and brought it before him, amazed and
charmed by what he saw. It was Scully and... him, he was sure. In the
picture, Scully had a big head, as is common in caricatures. The facial
features were remarkably accurate and drawn with love, for this gentle
rendering of Scully was gorgeous, not crude or cruel as some
caricatures seem. She was dressed in a white lab coat with a
stethoscope in her ears, holding the other end to the chest of a fox--a
grinning fox, also with a big head, who looked surprisingly like
Mulder. The fox even had an FBI identification badge clipped to a
collar around his neck and his grin showed both elation and adoration.
The caption below the picture read, *She hears your heart.* The
picture was signed and dated in the lower right hand corner.

 He closed his eyes for a moment, savoring the
sensation, the realization of one of the few real truths in his life. She'd
heard his heart for a long time--even Melissa knew it. And tonight,
she'd actually acknowledged it.

Scully wanted to see the picture Missy had given Mulder, but she
found she couldn't look away from her own. The frame was made of
ornate silver filigree with mother-of-pearl inlays that must have taken
her months to make. It was absolutely stunning, as so much of
Melissa's work had been, and it warmed her heart to think that her
sister had loved her enough to put so much into her gift. It warmed
her heart, but not as much as what the frame contained. She'd always
loved her sister's caricatures for they showed so much of what made
her Melissa--her talent, her humor, her innate understanding of people.
But this one made her heart beat faster, for it pleased her inordinately
but at the same time, it scared her a little, too. 

This caricature was of her and Mulder. In it, she was sitting in an
overstuffed chair, comfortable and old-fashioned looking, with an
expression Scully could only classify as serene, content. In love. She'd
drawn Mulder as a fox, curled up on her lap, gazing up at her as Scully
stroked his fur. She loved the picture and she found that forgotten
how talented Missy . Scully was especially intrigued by the drawing of
Mulder, wondering how her sister had managed to give the fox
Mulder's distinctive features without making it look grotesque or silly.
The expression on the face of the fox *Mulder* was the same one
she'd finally allowed herself to see that evening. Allowed herself to see
and name for what it was. Melissa had seen it years ago.

The scary part, though, was the caption. *He calms your fears.* How
strange, years after she was supposed to receive it, to get her gift on
this particular night. This night when she could finally admit to the
truth of that statement. Received a year ago, even six months ago, this
gift would have broken Scully's heart. It would have seemed like a
hoax too cruel for her sister to commit, for a year ago she was gripped
by fear--like hands that not only clenched around her heart but also
covered her eyes, rendering her blind to any escape from it. Fear not
only for the world, but also for them--as partners or friends. Fear that
what they once had was damaged beyond repair. Mulder had found
her at the end of the earth, yet at that time they seemed lost to one
another even when in the same room. A year ago she would not have
been able to stand the sight of Melissa's gift.

Instead she'd received it this night, the night that she realized that, with
him, her fears were calmed. Not gone, for there was much to fear. But
not nearly so overwhelming, so weighty because he was here to help
carry them. He was here and it was okay to be happy. He said so, so it
must be true. Her mom and Melissa said so, too, so how could that be
wrong? 

Melissa had given her this gift on exactly the right night, this January...
She glanced at her watch and found that it was after midnight. This
January eighth. The new Christmas to go with her new birthday, April
twenty-fourth. 

She looked up to find Mulder looking alternately at the frame in his
own hands and at her, and his smile turned up the voltage on her own.
She felt the muscles in her face stretching with her grin, her eyes
crinkling with it, almost amazed that her face still remembered how to
do this, at how wonderful it felt. Could her smile possibly be
transforming her face the way Mulder's was transforming his? Had she
ever really seen him happy before this night? She could feel an energy
rolling off him that fed perfectly into the energy that seemed to radiate
from her. She felt happy. She felt free. She felt... powerful. And it was
suddenly very clear to her, why those nameless men had done
everything they could think of to keep this from them. There was
power in this kind of joy.

"It's the key to everything," she said, her voice hushed with awe. He
nodded, understanding her meaning exactly, and threaded his fingers
through hers, pressing their palms together, and they both felt the
surge of the circuit completed--a tingle that caused them both to laugh
simply because there was no other outlet for it.

"What'd you get?" they asked simultaneously and laughed at that, too.
Each offering the other the item in their hands, they both found that
they were reluctant to release their clasped ones. Instead, they held the
pictures up so that they could see them side by side, nodding
appreciatively.

"God, she's good!" they said in unison, chucking again. "Stop that!"

"Really, Mulder," she said, trying to get her laughter under control. "I
can tell you right now that this isn't going to work if we keep talking
in stereo. I don't do that. It's just... it's just icky."

"Icky?" he repeated, teasingly. "Is that a scientific term, Dr. Scully?"

"Yeah," she retorted. "I read it in the last New England Journal of
Medicine. You know what I mean, Mulder. It's creepy. It's saccharine.
It's Danielle Steele. It's *Moonlighting* for God's sake. It's just icky."

He threw his head back and roared with laughter. "There was
something I kinda liked about *Moonlighting* although I could never
figure out how two people who were so stupid could ever solve
anything. They were glib but vacant--a bad combo. Cybill Shephard
was hot, though." That earned him an elbow in the ribs and a grin.
"We're nothing like them, Scully. We're lots smarter, I have better hair
than Bruce Willis, and Cybill couldn't name all the phases of cell
division if her life depended on it, which is why she is nowhere near as
hot as you." He waggled his eyebrows suggestively. "Gorgeous and
brilliant. I never stood a chance."

She blushed with pleasure at the same time she sighed and shook her
head. "See Mulder? This could get icky. Saying the same things at the
same time, you telling me I'm gorgeous, me telling you that watching
your eyes change color might become my new hobby."

"You never told me that." Now it was his turn to blush.

"I want to," she answered quietly. "But it... it doesn't feel like us. I
guess maybe I'm scared of this, too. I don't want to lose who we are
now."

"Even if we become something better?" he challenged her gently. "I
understand what you're afraid of. I am, too. But look at us, Scully.
Together we've trekked through cellars and sewers and deep dark
woods with hardly a second thought, but we don't dare let ourselves
be happy. I want to tell you you're beautiful. I want to tell you I love
you. I would love to hear you say you love me. Maybe it doesn't feel
like us because we never let it feel like us."

She was silent for a long time, thinking about his words. "It doesn't
have to change who we are," she said softly, and he knew it was to
convince herself more than him.

"Everything changes us, Scully," he said quietly. "You know we're not
the same people we were when we started this. I understand the
simultaneous chatting part, though, although I suspect that I have a
higher icky tolerance level than you do, because I think it's kinda cute.
But, there's probably not much chance that we'll spend a lot of time
talking in stereo since our ideas are almost always diametrically
opposed. I don't think that's going to change."

She shook her head. "Nope. Science is still science."

"Of course it is," he replied with a grin. "But it still doesn't explain
everything,"

"I wouldn't have you believe anything else." she said simply. She
looked down at the pictures they still held side by side in front of
them. The looked like they belonged together. Even the frames were
surprisingly complementary. "Pretty amazing, huh?"

"Yeah," he answered, giving her hand a squeeze. "She knew even
then. So did your mom."

"So did we," she said, not without a little sadness for all the wasted
time. But she pulled herself out of it because sadness had no place
there with them on Christmas. "You know what, Mulder? I think I
understand Missy's thing with presents. It's just damn good to get 'em.
And good to give them, too." She smiled brightly at him and he didn't
hesitate a second in returning one of his own. They sat in quiet
contentment, appreciating their gifts and each other.

"I have a theory," she announced suddenly, her tone conspiratorial.

"Special Agent Dr. Dana Katherine Scully posits a theory," he said
with a playful grin. "And what would the subject of this particular
theory be?"

"It suggests why they've never been able to beat us," she replied
smugly. "Why they never will. Wanna hear it?" He nodded. "It's
simple. They don't understand our calendar. They keep watching us
and waiting for that major holiday, but they miss it because we usually
work right through them. But then when they think things are quiet,
we have the real holidays. They think my birthday is on February
twenty-third, but we both know it's on April twenty-fourth. They think
Christmas is on December twenty-fifth, when it's really on January
eighth. It's the answer, Mulder. They'll keep watching us and we'll
keep confusing them. We'll have Easter in August. Your birthday
every week. Fourth of July on the seventeenth." She gave him an
expectant look that brought a smile to his face.

"I like it, Scully. I think it could work. I especially like the birthday
every week as long as I get to pick the age I am and presents are
involved. I think that'll confuse them all the more. But you have to
have more birthdays, too."

"Okay," she said agreeably. "But let's take care of Christmas first."
Without warning, she stood up--so quickly that he didn't have a
chance to release her hand and she fell back down, landing squarely in
his lap.

Never one to miss a golden opportunity, he pulled her face to his and
kissed her soundly, liking this new position a lot. "Man, Santa finally
came through. I've been writing, e-mailing for seven years. This is
*exactly* what I wanted for Christmas." His voice was a whispered
groan against her open mouth.

"Mmm," she moaned her agreement, but suddenly remembered her
initial intent. "Wait. I have real presents for you."

His mouth smoothed kisses down her throat, moving the collar of her
shirt  aside to nibble on her shoulder a bit. "It don't get
much more real than this, Scully," he muttered around a mouthful of
clavicle. His tongue blazed up her neck, leaving a warm moist trail in
its wake, as his lips found her earlobe, eliciting a breathless, throaty
chuckle from her.

"Wait, I want to give you your Christmas presents," she said with
weak insistence--a tone she didn't even know she had. But then, she
also didn't know that Mulder's mouth could do such marvelous things,
although she'd long had her suspicions.

He tried to sneak back to his new favorite spot at the juncture of her
neck and shoulder, but she tiled her head, closing off his access. "You
mean this isn't it?" His face clouded over like a stormy day.

Scully pulled his head away and gave him a knowing smile. "I was
thinking of more than just Christmas for this. You know, the gift that
keeps on giving."

"Oh, Scully, I like the way you think." He grinned and kissed her nose.
He helped her to her feet and rose with her, placing his hands on her
shoulders. "Okay, you want to do presents? I can do presents. I have
to go down to my car, though."

"You brought my present with you?" she asked, excitement tingeing
her tone.

"Presents," he corrected her. "They've been in my car since... since I
got 'em. I mean, would you keep anything that meant anything to you
in my apartment? In case you haven't noticed, anybody can get in there
and almost everybody has. Funny, they don't seem to fuck with my
car, though. Except Phoebe, of course."

"Don't even go there, Mulder," she warned, knowing it was only half
in jest. She pushed him toward the door. "Now why don't you take
your cute little ass down to the car and get my Christmas presents?
We're way into Christmas here. Time's a-wastin'."

He looked at her curiously. "Are you going to be bossy like this all the
time?"

"Don't go there, either. I think it's gotta be my turn, Mulder. I've been
following orders from you for years." 

"That is such bullshit, Scully," he replied, looking back at her over his
shoulder. They'd made it to the door and she handed him his jacket. "I
never..." The door closing gently in his face cut him off and he
laughed. He opened it again to find her standing on the other side, still
laughing. "My ass is cute? Rosie told me you checked out my ass!" 

He closed the door before she could either confirm or deny and she
heard maniacal cackling as he walked down the hall. Damn, busted by
Rosie!  Scully recalled the day she caught
Rosie checking out Mulder's ass, too. Some things you never get too
old to appreciate. It was, after all, a mighty fine ass.

She looked around her living room, regretting that she hadn't put up a
Christmas tree this year. If she had, it would undoubtedly still be up.
But knowing she'd be in San Diego, she hadn't bothered this year. She
could do a few candles, though. That would be nice and she had
literally hundreds of them, having accumulated them over the years
with too few occasions to use them. Well, that was going to change.

She ran to the cabinet where she stored the candles and opened the
door. The scent that wafted out was slightly reminiscent of a head
shop in the seventies. Too many different scents closed up together for
too long. Grabbing a few, she closed the door as quickly as she could,
hoping the scent hadn't overpowered the room. She placed the candles
in what she hoped would be strategic places and went automatically to
the CD player, not sure what to do. She wanted to put on some jazz,
but knew that would feel too sleazy, too seductive. Which wouldn't be
a bad thing some other time, but not tonight. Only one answer.
Christmas songs. She certainly had plenty of those. And who else but
Nat King Cole? Christmas-y but still leaving room for extreme
possibilities. She smiled and headed for her room to get Mulder's
presents, just as the velvet tones of Nat King Cole drifted out of the
speakers.

She pulled out Mulder's presents from their hideaway beneath her bed
and brushed a few imaginary bits of dust from the surface of the paper.
The larger box she'd had for some time, having bought the present
shortly after Mulder's return when she was finally able to convince
herself that he would, indeed, recover. The smaller box--the
glow-in-the-dark universe--she'd wrapped upon her return from San
Diego. While she was pleased with her gifts to him, she suddenly
wanted to give him more, knowing instantly exactly what that should
be. She looked at the drawer of her nightstand, pausing only a moment
before opening it and taking out a notebook. Opening it to the first
page, she read the words, remembering the feelings behind them.
Fishing around in the drawer, she found a pen. Then she sat at her
vanity table, turned to the very last page and began to write. In her
hurry, her words were less legible, but she knew that their meaning
would be clear, for he heard her heart, too.

Outside, Mulder popped the trunk and was surprised when the light
came on over his head. He thought the trunk light had burned out a
long time ago.  He dug around
through the stuff in his trunk, amazed at what he found. His trunk was
similar to his bedroom, only in a more concentrated space. Two of the
three books the Bureau Resource Library had been on his ass about.
The purple sweats with the hole in the knee--his personal favorites. A
file folder containing the report he swore to Skinner that he'd turned in
and Skinner made him do all over again. A nine iron. He had golf
clubs? Another Christmas miracle occurred when his hand emerged
from a laundry basket holding a bottle of Chardonnay, with his Knicks
jersey snagged on the neck. A bottle he couldn't for the life of him
remember buying. "Melissa, is that you?" he called out into the quiet
night, his face pointing upward. "Good one! So you think I should go
for it?" He grabbed the shirt and wine, and set them to the side.

Ah, finally. He pulled the plastic bag that held Scully's presents from
the back of the trunk, glad that he'd thought to put them in a bag
because they still looked good. He'd actually wrapped the two boxes
himself, after a quick lesson from the grandmotherly lady who worked
in the gift wrap booth at the mall. He managed to sweet talk her into
letting him watch her wrap a few presents and then letting him try it.
She helped him pick out some great paper and ribbons and
decorations. It was almost a shame that she was just going to rip them
open. Almost, but not quite, because he couldn't wait for her to open
them. He felt much better about the whole thing after learning that the
slippers had been a success.

He stepped back, his hands poised to slam the trunk shut, but he
hesitated, wanting to give her more, knowing exactly what, but
wondering if he dared. Taking a deep breath, he reached back behind
the spare tire, pulling out another, smaller plastic bag and sliding it
into his pocket. It had been there in the back of his trunk for so long
that the plastic had grown brittle, making a crackling noise even
surrounded by the fabric of his pocket. He'd wanted to give this
particular gift to her for a long time, but the time was never right. It
felt to him like maybe it was right tonight, but what if it wasn't? If he
brought it up, just the noise it made might commit him to giving it to
her. He slammed the trunk closed, tired of second guesses and doubts.
She loved him. She'd told him so, and she was the one who never lied
to him. He sprinted across the street and up the steps to her building.

End Part 6
+++++

Simple Gifts -- Part 7 of 7
See Disclaimer in Part 1


In the now


Mulder uses his key for a record third time that evening, musing about
how many times in the past he's let himself in by kicking her door in.
This time, he kicks the door shut behind him, his hands full of presents
and wine. Taking a deep breath, he looks around and smiles,
remembering the scent from his wayward youth--eau de head shop.
For once, he thinks things through and decides to forego the bong
joke as he throws his jacket back over the armchair where Scully put it
earlier. With soft lights and candles and Nat King Cole, things are
shaping up pretty well and he doesn't want to take a chance of blowing
it. The only thing that could be more perfect would be if she were
actually in the room, too.

"I'm back bearing gifts!" he calls out, resisting the *honey, I'm home*
option.

"Be right there," he hears her call back in return and smiles for no
good reason whatsoever.

"Take your time." He takes the presents from the bag, setting them on
the coffee table. Realizing that the Knicks shirt is tucked under his
arm, on impulse he rolls 
it up and shoves it down between the cushions of the sofa. He can
retrieve it later if he finds he's misreading the situation. He takes the
wine to the kitchen in search of a corkscrew and glasses, finding them
with a minimum of difficulty. The cork leaves the bottle with a
satisfying pop and he grabs the glasses, heading back to the living
room.

She is waiting for him when he comes back in, sitting on the sofa, her
presents to him beside the ones he placed on the coffee table. Even too
thin and too tired, her beauty takes his breath away. Smiling shyly at
him, her skin is flushed, her eyes glittery. Her hair catches the glow of
the candles, shining like it did in that shoddy motel room in Bellefleur,
Oregon on their first assignment. Back when she was just pretty
instead of beautiful. The night he'd first touched her skin, fragrant and
velvety, and his reward for holding himself back from nuzzling his face
against it was that that spot on her lower back became his for all time.
He thinks, with a little effort, he could have gotten her into his bed
that night and he thanks any entity that might be listening--benevolent,
omnipotent or otherwise--that it didn't happened. Because if it had,
she'd have been gone within a week. And right now he'd be...
Absolutely no picture comes to mind because even his imagination,
open to all extremes, can't conceive of his life without her.

Scully watches him watch her and wonders what he's remembering.
 His scrutiny is intense--disconcerting and
compelling at the same time and she finds she can't look away from
him. Doesn't want to look away from him. She knows that she is
aware of him in a way that she never has been before, yet has always
been aware of--since the night she felt his fingertips trace the bare skin
of her lower back. As she tries to look closely enough to see if his eyes
have changed color again, she notices something that had completely
escaped her attention before.  The tee
shirt he'd been wearing beneath his jacket is another of his seemingly
endless supply of gray ones, like the one she's wearing. And she can't
believe how much it turns her on that they're wearing the same shirt.
 Somehow the
awareness of her arousal arouses her even more but although she
knows that she can act on it--that it would not only be accepted but
welcomed--she still feels shy and self-conscious.

"Wine," she says, immediately feeling foolish for stating the obvious
but wanting to move the moment along, afraid that they might spend
hours just watching one another. The butterflies return to her stomach
like the swallows to Capistrano and she is alarmed, and a little thrilled,
to realize how nervous she is about this.

To her relief and delight, Mulder seems that way too. He looks
sheepish and... and *smitten.* Smitten is a good look for him,
especially since she is the *smittee.* "Yeah," he replies. "I found it in
my trunk." He sits down next to her, his leg pressed up against hers
and she's glad not to be able to think of a single reason to move away.
In fact, she moves a little closer and isn't sure if the trembling she feels
is coming from her or from him.

"I've seen your trunk and that scares me." She smiles at his hearty
chuckle. Usually it's Mulder who tries to alleviate nervous situations
with humor, and she finds that it's a lot more fun than just clamming
up like she usually does. Still admiring his smitten look, she wonders if
she is wearing one of her own. Because she certainly feels smitten.

"Have no fear, Scully. It was at the bottom of a basket of clean
laundry. I'm pretty sure it's safe." He pours a glass and hands it to her
before pouring one for himself.

"Merry Christmas!" They clink their glasses together and drink deeply
from the wine, neither of them complaining about the fact that they've
talked in stereo once again. The wine is good--dry and crisp and
chilled to perfection. Mulder's trunk, all purpose catch-all and wine
cellar. 

Both are eyeing the four boxes on the table with curiosity and
awkwardness. Was exchanging gifts so difficult last year? Finally,
Mulder can't wait any longer. "Same as before? Together?"

She nods and smiles as they each take the bottom one of the two
boxes meant for them. "I hope you tipped whoever wrapped these,
Mulder. They're beautiful." She runs her hands over the paper,
fingering the sprig of plastic holly that adorns the package.

"I wrapped them," he says, beaming with pride, and she wishes she
had a camera to freeze this particular grin--smitten and smug. She
looks down at the box once again, even more impressed with it now
that she knows he wrapped it himself. Impressed and touched, and as
she feels her eyes mist up, she berates herself for her newfound
emotionality. Then she berates herself for berating herself because this
newfound emotionality is something she thinks she's yearned for a long
time.

This time, he makes Scully start ripping first, then dives in after her,
attacking his present like a cat pouncing on a mouse. Nothing but the
sound of tearing paper and Nat singing about the Little Drummer Boy.
They both hit box at about the same time and lift the lids together,
looking down and looking up in near mirror image. Ice skates. They'd
each bought the other a pair of skates, his large and black and hers
small and white.

"I thought we should have a winter sport, too," she offers by way of
explanation, envisioning them skating around a rink together, arm in
arm, prosaically enough, to strains of *The Skaters Waltz.*

"Winter sports are good," he replies grinning goofily, envisioning
standing behind her, his arms enfolding her, teaching her the fine art of
maneuvering a hockey stick. 

She toes off her slipper and grabs one of the skates from the box.
Bending to slip it on her foot, she feels his hand as it grips her arm and
she looks up to find his face near hers. Without a word, he takes the
skate from her and reaches for her foot, his fingers grazing tentatively
against her ankle. He asks permission with his eyes and she responds
by twisting so that he can place her foot in his lap. As he rubs his hand
across the top of it, he stops to give her toes a little squeeze and
Scully realizes that this could be a lot more interesting than trying on
the skate herself.

"You need socks. There's a pair in with the skates." His voice is low
and just slightly gravelly, and his attention to her foot makes her glad
she gives herself the gift of regular pedicures. Her toenails are painted
a vibrant red and coated over with a layer of gold glitter. In her staid
life, bright toenails are her one concession to that side of her that
would just sometimes like to go a little wild.

 She digs through the tissue in the box until she
finds them.  The
thought strikes her funny and she's about to giggle, when the giggle
dies abruptly in her throat and surprises the hell out of her by turning
into a moan, as she feels him trail a line of small, wet kisses down the
top of her foot from her ankle to her toes, now curling in bliss at this
wonderful new sensation. 

He opens his eyes to find hers again and they are there in her beautiful
face as she leans forward to watch him worship her foot.
Wordlessly--and a little breathlessly he notices--she hands the socks to
him and he pulls on the plastic connector until it snaps, making sure to
take the little plastic tab out of the inside of both socks. He slides a
sock over her foot, regretful to have to cover those delectable
red-capped toes. Her foot is almost ridiculously pretty--tiny and
narrow and almost as soft as his memory of the skin on her lower
back--and he looks forward to spending some quality time with those
feet later. Sliding the skate over the sock, he carefully adjusts the
tongue and laces it up, making sure to secure it tightly enough at the
ankle to give her good support. He squeezes along the outside of the
boot, pleased with the fit and how pretty her foot still looks in the
bright white leather. Running his thumb along the blade to test its
sharpness, he pushes on it to be sure that it's safe.

"Stand up," he says, taking her hands. "We won't know how it fits
until you put some weight on it."

She shakes her head. "Let's put one on you, too, then we'll both stand
up. Come on, my turn." She holds out her hand, waiting for him to
give her one of his skates. The look she gives him, gazing up from
slightly lowered lids, sends a rush of blood to his loins immediately
catching the attention of Mulder, Jr., who is amazed to find that the
big guy isn't fighting this one off.

"No, my turn," he replies with a grin as he stretches out to put a foot
in her lap. She unlaces his shoe, pulls it off and drops it with a thud to
the floor. Even in socks, she can see that his feet are a perfect match
for his hands, slim and elegant, and she longs to pull the sock off and
investigate further. But this isn't about feet.  It's about skates and Christmas. But still, she can't help
giving the sole a firm rub with her thumb from heel to toes and smiles
at the instinctive curling of his foot.  She holds the top of the skate boot in both hands
and as he pushes his foot inside, she watches his face to judge the fit.
His smile shows that she has chosen well. She is not as adept at lacing
as he is and the process takes longer for her. The leg of his jeans
covers the top of the boot and she must raise it to finish lacing the
skate. Pushing up with both hands under the hem, she soon encounters
the bristly hair on his calf, and the sinew of muscles well-developed
with years of running. He sighs, a sound that makes her heart beat a
little faster, and straightens his leg even more, causing her fingers to
drift further up his leg. His skin is warm against her slightly cool
hands. Meeting his eyes once more, she finds him grinning playfully
and with just a hint of a challenge. Nope. Skates and Christmas--at
least for the time being. She rakes her nails lightly over his skin on her
way back down to finish lacing the skate, just to show him that she's
not backing down, and she feels him shiver.

Their skates ready, they clasp hands again and manage to pull
themselves and each other to a standing position. Their ankles wobble
slightly after many years of not being on skates, and it allows them an
excuse to clutch at one another for support. Even though excuses
aren't really necessary now, it somehow still seems right, like
something they do.

"How's it feel?" he asks her, looking down at their skates.

"Feels great," she replies, bending at the knee to shift her weight
experimentally. "How 'bout yours?"

"Like it was made for me," he says with a grin. "So when do we go
skating? Tomorrow?"

"Don't you mean later today? Are there any rinks open on Christmas?"

"They don't even know it's Christmas," he answers, mock scorn in his
voice. "They'll be open because they think it's just Saturday. Will you
go skating with me, Scully?"

"It's a date." And they are both struck with the sudden and pleasant
realization that it would be a date--something neither of them has
actually dared to believe would happen between them. Their smiles are
twin reflections of surprise and a giddiness they've never before
allowed themselves.

"I can't believe we both got skates," she says, falling back onto the
sofa with a happy sigh and propping her foot up to admire her new
skate. "I was just going to use my old ones from college. They still fit.
Well, I know you didn't get me what I got you on the next one." Her
other present is cube shaped.

"The packages are completely different," he says, reaching for the
shirt-sized box in front of him, enjoying this present thing immensely.

Mulder tears into his second package, no longer bothering with
niceties. This time, he gets to box first and laughs out loud when he
sees his gift. "A glow-in-the-dark universe. This is so cool! You mom
said that Matty's room has one and I wanted one, too." He looks at
her, and sees she is paying more attention to getting to her present
than to him and he loves the sight of her face in deep concentration as
she slowly and carefully unwraps her present.

"I'm glad you like it," she says, still opening her present, trying to keep
the paper from this package more intact. She's never been one for
keepsakes, for holding onto objects for sentimental reasons. But she
thinks now that maybe that was because she'd never received the right
one, for she finds that she'd really like to keep this wrapping paper.

"Will you come over and help me put it up?" he asks suggestively,
hoping for a yes, but keeping enough of a joke in his voice that she has
a way out if she wants one, and she looks up at him from her task.

Realizing an out when she hears one, she nixes it immediately. Not this
time, not anymore. "Wouldn't miss it," she replies, looking down again
and picking at a piece of tape with her fingernail. "Especially since you
got rid of the waterbed." She looks up again and meets his eyes,
preferring to project her suggestiveness in the way they've
communicated for so long. "They're bad for you, ergonomically
speaking, and highly overrated in other ways." She loves the look of
eager pleasure that crosses his face.

Mulder finally loses patience with the keepsake idea and reaches over
to tear at the wrapping. "Hurry up. This is going to make you laugh."
He can barely contain his own laughter.

She gives up when she sees that he's ruined the paper anyway. Oh
well, there will be other keepsakes. The paper gone, she stares at the
box, which boldly proclaims that she is the proud owner of a home
planetarium and she can't help the giggles that emerge from her. Leave
it to Mulder to find the high-tech version of her gift to him.

"Look," he says, excited as a kid. "It's this big globe thing with a
halogen light inside and it shines the stars up on your ceiling. And you
can change the settings. You can set it for the place and any date you
want and it will show you where the stars were that night. Or even will
be."

And strangely, this intrigues and enchants her, the idea of falling asleep
under the stars from any night in history on her ceiling. It enchants her
almost as much as his excitement does. She's always been interested
in, aware of, the stars. As the favored child of a Navy captain, she
learned navigation by the stars at an early age and she still loves the
fact that stars are both constant and mysterious. Suddenly the
difference between their gifts strikes her and it gladdens her to realize
how well they know each other. She's given Mulder stars that he can
arrange any way he imagines. He's given her stars as they are
perceived from earth--factual stars. Same concept, different
viewpoints--as their partnership has been from the first. And she
realizes that all the years she thought they'd never be on the same
page, they were on the same page all along. She reads the lines and
Mulder reads between them. Together, they can see everything. 

"I love this, Mulder," she says, her voice catching slightly in her
throat, hoping he knows by her tone how much she means it.

Then she remembers. She doesn't have to rely just on tone anymore.
She can show him how much she loves the gifts he's given her, how
much she loves him. Tucking a foot beneath her to give her a little
more height, she wraps her arms around his neck and pulls him down
for a Christmas kiss.  

His mouth against hers is warm and welcoming and she swoops in to
taste every inch of it. The part of her mind that still has some
semblance of rational thought wonders if every single kiss is going to
be better than the one before it, for this is the best one of all. As she
moves her mouth over his, varying the angles to make sure she finds
all the hidden nooks and crannies, she feels him shift so that he can
wrap both arms around her waist.

However they soon find that her sitting on her foot and him twisted
sideways is not the best they can do in this wonderful new situation
they find themselves in. Never losing contact with her inquisitive little
mouth, he holds her tightly and shifts again, bringing her around to
straddle his lap. She remembers to lift the foot wearing the now
cumbersome skate so that neither of them is injured by the blade. They
both sigh their contentment at this intriguing new position as she
settles more comfortably into his lap.

Scully. He's kissing Scully. Scully is sitting  in his lap and
he is kissing her. And even more significantly, she is kissing him, in a
way that is so thorough and Scullylike that it warms his heart at the
same time it makes him incredibly hot. His hands, having declared
independence from the rest of his body, roam up and down her back
completely of their own accord. He feels her threading her fingers
through his hair, her fingertips rasping his scalp. He always loves it
when she touches his hair.

Mulder's hair is silky beneath her fingers, as it always has been. She
can recall each of the too few times that she's ever allowed herself to
touch his hair. Never too often because it terrified her how much it
affected her when she did, how much she wanted to plunge both hands
into its thickness and warmth. And now she can and she does and he
breathes out a low, satisfied sound that she breathes in, keeps for
herself for a moment and gives back to him. His hands on her back
seem to be chasing the chills that are now continually, deliciously
running up and down her spine. She presses closer and she can feel the
force of his desire and is amazed by it. Not that he feels it for she
knows that if he is half as excited as she is, he's ready to go. No, she is
amazed at the fact that it's there against her. That they're here,
together in this wonderful new way.

His hands find the hem of her  shirt and easily slide beneath it for
it's much too big for her. And, finally, they encounter what they've
waited seven long years for and splay across her bare skin like weary
pilgrims who've finally reached Mecca. In return, she presses against
him and moves her lips across his face to his throat to nibble and lave
the skin there. He can feel himself breathing as if he ran full-tilt for
three miles as her mouth settles on a place at the base of his neck and
he wonders if she's going to give him a hickey. No one has given him a
hickey since the night of his senior prom. He's hoping for hickey as he
tilts his head, a low hum coming from somewhere inside him. His
hands, rediscovering their own power again, come up with a plan. One
slowly pushes the fabric of the shirt up her back, while the other
escapes to plunge between the sofa cushions.

He tastes so damn good as she gnaws and licks the smooth skin of his
neck. And there is something really wonderful about making him
squirm the way he was doing it to her. She finds a particularly savory
piece of skin and grazes her teeth along it, unable to believe what she's
considering. She hasn't given anyone a hickey since that disastrous
night with Marcus after her senior prom but she finds she wants to
give it another shot. Sinking her teeth in just slightly, she sucks the
tender skin into her mouth, tracing circles and figure eight's with her
tongue. She feels him gulp in air and arch up against her with a groan
and a whisper of her name. His hands are raising her shirt, trying to
remove it, but she is reluctant to release her claim on his neck,
although she knows that losing the shirt is a pretty good idea at this
point in time. Finally she does and raises her arms to allow him to take
it off of her. She pauses a moment to look at him looking at her and to
admire the mark she's left on his neck before returning to plunder his
mouth a little more. 

She's just settling in again at his mouth when, to her dismay, he pulls
away slightly. Eyes still closed and about to protest, she is stilled by
the feel of her shirt being placed back over her head. Wait a minute!
Him putting clothing back on her is not in this scenario. Her eyes fly
open, the hurt in them showing only momentarily before she looks
down to see him trying to slip her arms into his Knicks jersey, and the
hurt turns into glee. She sits back willingly and pulls the shirt over her
torso, running her hands over the dark blue fabric with a grin. 

She giggles at the soft, fuzzy, slightly goofy look his face has taken
on. "Another Christmas present for me?" she asks, her voice so low it
startles even her.

The giggle turns into a gasp as his fingers trail down the front of the
shirt, lightly grazing her breasts on their way. His smile has changed
from goofy to seductive as his eyes rake over her hungrily. "For both
of us," he whispers and the love and desire in his eyes sets a blaze in
her belly. "I knew you'd look hot in it."

"I can have this?" she murmurs, bringing her face close to his.

"You can have anything I own," is his simple reply.

She smiles gently, hoping he sees the same love in her eyes that she
sees in his. "You don't own much stuff, Mulder."

"No, I don't," he agrees. "And you already own the thing that matters
most to me."

"Your shirt?" she asks, confused.

"Yourself."

And that single word removes the final brick in the wall she'd begun
carefully constructing almost from the day she met him. "God, I love
you," she says and without the slightest hesitation, she enfolds him in
her arms and descends on his mouth, adoring it, adoring him. She feels
her heart laughing, singing, and tears seep through the lashes of her
closed eyes.

"Love you," he whispers against her mouth, around her tongue and
she understands him perfectly. And he kisses her and kisses her until
this dizzy, lightheaded feeling seems like her normal state of being. His
mouth is hot and tender and hungry and loving and demanding and
giving. His kisses are everything she's ever needed and never felt.

Finally, to his dismay, he finds he must break away slightly--to
breathe, to process, to believe that this isn't just another of the
sometimes painfully cruel dreams he has. He opens his eyes and just
watches her. Her head is tilted back, her eyes closed, her skin flushed a
rosy peach, and she is breathing rapidly through lips that are swollen
with kisses. With *his* kisses. Her eyes open slowly and a tear that's
been trapped in her lashes drops to her cheek and, unable to resists, he
leans toward her and takes it onto his tongue. It tastes salty-sweet
with her joy and lets him know that the time is right.

He pulls her close to whisper in her ear, to inhale her scent, to have
her near him at last. "I have another gift for you," he says softly,
planting a chaste kiss behind her ear.

"Yeah?" she sighs, her whispered tone matching his. She snuggles her
pelvis against his and feels his come up to meet hers in a gentle rolling
thrust. "I think I know what it is."

"Hmm," he groans into her ear, and she can't help but pull him closer.
"I bet you don't."

"That's not for me?" she purrs, mock disappointment in her voice and
she nudges against his hardness once more, making them both ache
and burn.

"It's for you," he replies breathlessly. "It's because of you. But it's not
the gift." She pulls back and he sees her wondering look. "You want
the gift now?"

"You want me to have it now?"

He nods. "I want you to have it forever." He makes to tip her off his
lap, and sees the look of disappointment. "It's in the pocket of my
jacket." She nods and slides to his side and the point of the skate blade
accidentally pokes into his leg. "Hold it, you're going to hurt
somebody with that thing." He catches her foot and quickly unlaces
the skate, removing it and the sock and placing them back into their
box. Leaning forward, he snags the fabric of his coat in the chair
adjacent to the couch, as she sits beside him trying not very effectively
to cover her impatience.

Scully hears the crinkle of the bag as he takes it from his pocket and
places it into her hand. "Sorry it's not wrapped," he says and she
detects a hint of nervousness in his voice. 

She reaches into the bag and pulls out a box made of rose quartz, pale
pink and gorgeous. All over its surface, in bas-relief, are carved what
seem like hundreds of tiny, perfect roses. She gasps and brings it close
to her face to admire its delicateness. "This is absolutely beautiful," she
says, her voice struck through with wonder. 

"It came from my great grandmother, my father's grandmother," he
explains softly. "I found it when I was cleaning out my father's house
on the Vineyard before I sold it."

"Mulder, I can't..." Tears spring to her eyes and when she looks at his
face, she knows that she'll accept it, that she must accept it. "Are you
sure?"

"Open it," he requests.

The box has a hinged lid and she lifts it carefully, anxious that the
hinges might be weak with the age of the box. Inside nestled on a bed
of plush, cream-colored velvet, rests what may be the loveliest ring she
has ever seen. A large sapphire--she has no idea of carat sizes--flanked
by two baguette cut diamonds only slightly smaller than the sapphire,
set in a platinum setting.

"Oh!" she gasps, not knowing whether from the beauty of it or her
surprise at seeing it there. She finds she can't look away from it, but
can't quite bring herself to touch it, either. It is absolutely stunning, the
deep blue of the sapphire a dramatic contrast to the sharp white of the
diamonds. The butterflies make an unprecedented fourth appearance in
her stomach, bringing reinforcements with them this time, and in her
shock she wonders what the collective adjective for butterflies is. 

Mulder looks at the ring briefly. It's been a long time since he's opened
the box and looked at it. But its impact on him is not so profound, for
he's seen it many times since childhood, when his mother would
occasionally wear it. She returned it to his father after the divorce. He
watches Scullly's face as she stares down at it, a hundred different
emotions playing in her eyes, none of them staying long enough for
him to be able to interpret it. She doesn't seem aware that another of
her single, perfect tears is sliding down her face. And this time, he is
afraid to taste it, waiting for her reaction, wondering if he might have
done the wrong thing again.

Finally she looks up at him and everything is in her eyes--hope and
fear and joy and confusion and certainty. How can so much be there?
"What does this mean, Mulder?" He knows all the sounds of her voice,
knows that this is the studied neutral tone, the one she uses to ask
questions she's not sure she wants the answers to.

And he knows this might be the most important question she's ever
asked him and the most important answer he's ever given. "It means..."
he hesitates. "It means whatever you want it to mean, Scully." He
shivers slightly, remembering that he once said those same words to
her under radically different circumstances, after Jack Willis had died.
He sees her eyes widen and knows she remembers, too. "It means, if
you said you'd marry me today, I could have us to a Justice of the
Peace by ten o'clock. If that's not what you want, it means that I
thought of this ring the first time I ever got a good look at your eyes.
It means I love you and I want whatever you want. It means you're the
only person in the world who could wear this ring."

He watches her face and sees when she finally gets the nerve to touch
the ring, running her fingers lightly over the stones but not picking it
up. "Shouldn't it go to Samantha?" she whispers.

Mulder shakes his head. "It goes from eldest son to eldest son. It was
always supposed to go to the love of my life." His voice seems thick
and heavy in his throat.

The love of his life. She is the love of his life. She smiles, overjoyed at
her complete lack of doubt in his words. "And you are mine," she says
with the same absolute certainty with which she spoke those words a
few months before. And when he bends to kiss her, she is ready for it,
welcomes it, relishes it.

And when he pulls away, she is breathless--from the kiss, from what
she is about to say. "I have another present for you, too." She bends
over to reach beneath the couch, bringing out a flat brown paper bag.
Her hands tremble somewhat as she hands it to him.

He reaches into the bag and pulls out a blue covered notebook,
knowing immediately what he holds in his hand. He can feel the
astonishment on his face as he looks to her for confirmation that this is
what he thinks it is and she nods. He opens the top cover and
recognizes the handwriting and the words immediately--words he'd
read beside her empty hospital bed in Allentown, Pennsylvania when
they both knew she was dying.

*For the first time, I feel time like a heartbeat, the seconds pumping in
my breast like a reckoning; the numinous mysteries that once seemed
so distant and unreal, threatening clarity in the presence of a truth
entertained not in youth, but only in its passage. I feel these words as
if their meaning were weight being lifted from me, knowing that you
will read them and share my burden as I have come to trust no other.
That you should know my heart, look into it, finding there the memory
and experience that belong to you, that are you, is a comfort to me
now as I feel the tethers loose and the prospects darken for the
continuance of a journey that began not long ago, and began again
shaken and strengthened by your convictions. If not for which I might
never have been so strong now as I cross to face you and look at you
incomplete, hoping that you will forgive me for not making the rest of
the journey with you.*

He reads the words slowly, this time without the fear that she will
come upon him stealing them. A tear falls, hot with the bitterness
escaping his soul, and he wipes it away quickly. Not because he is
afraid that she'll see it, but because he doesn't want it to fall on the
paper and smudge the ink. He looks up to see her watching him as he
reads, her eyes directed at the page, the rose quartz box clutched in
both hands in her lap.

Turning the pages of the notebook he finds entries later than the last
one he'd seen in the hospital. Not only did she not throw it away, she
kept on writing in it. Glimpses of the dates reveal that the writing is
sporadic, but that throughout the whole thing, she uses the word
*you.* She'd always written to him. His heart is beating rapidly in his
chest and as he longs to read the words, at the same time he is terrified
to do it. So much has happened between then and now. But either
way, he can't do it here, can't make her sit here watching him as he
learns the secrets of her heart. The secrets she says can be his. They
look up at the same time, and their eyes lock as they have a million
times over their long years together. His eyes can always find hers--in
a crowded meeting room, at the end of a long corridor, in his mind's
eye when the need is there.

"Mine?" he asks on a whisper, his hand unconsciously swiping back
and forth on the page.

"It's always been yours." She lifts one of the hands resting on the
notebook and raises it to her lips for a kiss. She has his full attention
when she says, "There are things in here that will hurt you, Mulder,
things I wrote in reaction to times that you hurt me, too. But there are
some happy times in here, too. I think you need to know about both
sides, but when you read it, I want you to remember that we made it
through everything. We're right here right now."

"Do you want me to read it now?"

She shakes her head. "Not all of it. But I'd like you to read what I
wrote tonight. It's on the last page." She watches him turn the pages
and drop his head to read in the dim light. As he reads, she looks at
the ring again. Finally, she dares to take it from it's velvet bed and she
hooks it over her index finger to bring it before her face.  She clasps it in the palm of her hand and feels the
stones warming against her skin.

Mulder looks down at the page. He sees that she wrote this in a hurry,
probably while he was down at the car. It is Scully's handwriting, but
slanted slightly to the right with hurried points on some of the words.
Over the past few years, he's noted subtle changes in her handwriting.
Several times he was tempted to take samples to a handwriting analyst
for interpretation of the changes but not only would that be a huge
betrayal of her trust, but part of him hadn't been sure he could stand
the answers he might get.

He takes a deep breath and reads the entry, so brief in comparison to
some of the others.

*January 8, 2000

*Happy New Year, Merry Christmas!

*It's a long strange road we've been traveling, that we keep traveling. I
just read the words on the first page. Three years since then, Mulder.
Three years and at that time I thought I'd be lucky to get three months.
Back then I looked at you incomplete. That's not who I see in you
tonight, or who I see now as I look in the mirror at my own reflection.
Tonight I can finally allow myself to believe that, for some reason, I
actually do complete you. And I hope I can finally tell you that, for
reasons I also don't understand, you complete me as well. I don't
understand them, Mulder, but not only do I accept them, I rejoice in
them.

*I'm glad I was wrong three years ago. You were right when you said
that this was meant to be a nicely worded goodbye. But luckily, maybe
blessedly, I'm still on the journey. I want you to know that I'll stay on
the journey for as long as it takes, wherever the road goes, for it's
become my journey, too. Not just because of what's happened to me,
but because I have to be with you. The only one in the world who
knows me.

*You know this will be difficult sometimes. We'll still argue and we'll
still disagree because that's who we are. But always know, in any
battle--I am for you. Your side is mine. And for any important
question, the answer is Yes.

*I love you.

*P.S.: I've decided that your birthday is next Wednesday. How old
will you be?*

He laughs his delight out loud, though tears stream openly down his
face. And as she watches him she can see the years drain away until
she sees the man who laughed in the rain with her all those years ago.
Only more, because there is love in these laughing eyes. She looks
again and sees he has crinkles in the corners of those eyes and she
loves them. She's watched them form, knows what's happened to
cause them, what's happened to both of them. They've earned their
scars and their wear, paid for with their youth. They've earned who
they are and they've earned one another.

She goes willingly, eagerly, when he pulls her back into his lap, for a
deep kiss that speaks of love and gratitude. She sits there for once at
his eye level, her arms resting on his shoulder and for what seems a
long time, they just look at each other. His eyes are serious, pensive,
and she can feel him looking into her. And it is a surprisingly familiar
sensation. Has he always been able to do it?

"You are for me," he whispers, trying it out, testing the truth of it.
And it feels good and true.

"Always," she replies without hesitation and watches the smile spread
across his face, joyous and just a little mischievous.

"And on any important question the answer is yes?"

Scully nods, knowing what is to come and she is both anxious and
anticipating.

"I believe there's an implied question on the table," he says, serious
once again. And she's glad for this tone. Although she knows he
would not choose now to be whimsical and flirty, it calms her
apprehension to know by his tone and demeanor that he is absolutely
serious about this. It is an important question to both of them.

The ring is still clasped in her palm and she opens her hand to see it
again. She closes her hand again, giving the ring a squeeze then lifts
one of Mulder's hands to drop the ring into it. "The answer to any
important question is yes," she says in confirmation.

She extends both of her hands, palms down before him. It's up to him
to choose the hand on which she'll wear the ring. She has given her
answer and his action would ask the question. 

He understands what she is asking and goes unerringly for her left
hand. He raises her ring finger to his lips and gives it a reverent kiss
before slipping the ring onto it. Surprisingly, and not surprisingly at
all, it is a perfect fit.

She leans forward and captures his lips with her own and she feels him
pulling her close to him, leaning into the cushions until they are nearly
reclining. And suddenly she is filled with joy, moaning, laughing,
weeping against his mouth as he is against hers. She wants this, wants
it more than she knew she was capable of wanting anything. She
thought the wanting was gone forever, having died shortly after the
last of her expectations. But it's there and with the knowledge that she
can have what she wants--at least for now--is a joyous thing. A gift
that she can accept because it belongs to her.

Mulder feels as though he has always wanted. It never died within
him, simply hovered there in his existence taunting him making him
believe in what others saw as impossible just on the chance that the
endless wanting might be quelled. But the years of longing had never
felt like this, like the taste of her mouth, open and giving against his.
Like the feel of her warm small hands easing under his shirt to finally
give him the touch he'd never had.

He pulls away, needing to ask, and her mouth finds a place at his
throat, making it difficult for him to speak. "Does this mean Justice of
the Peace by ten?"

A yes springs instantly, impulsively, to her lips, but she bites it back.
So long, it's taken so long to get to this place. But finally here, she
wants to explore it, to explore who they are becoming, especially to
explore him. "Let's go skating first and see where it goes from there,"
she whispers and is relieved to see the understanding in his eyes. He is
eager to explore, too, and the proof is pressing insistently against her,
his hands pulling at her recently acquired Knicks shirt, just as hers are
tugging at his gray tee. They burn for each other.

They are sliding off the couch, threatening to become wedged between
it and the coffee table and she realizes that this is not how it should be.
This time that they've waited for, fought for, almost died for should be
something special for both of them. "Mulder," she says, chuckling at
his grunted response and the feeling of his stubbled cheek against the
sensitive skin of her neck. "Make love with me under the stars." He
pulls away to read her face and knows instantly that the home
planetarium doesn't have a chance of matching the stars in her eyes.

He helps her ease off him and she stands taking his hands to help him
to his feet. He's forgotten that he's still wearing a skate and nearly
falls, but she is there to catch him--as she always has been.

"Why don't you take off the skate and I'll go in and set up the stars."
She picks up the box and looks at the photograph on the outside,
determining that it shouldn't be too complicated.

"I already programmed in a date," he says. He sits down and begins
untying the skate's lace, his eyes never leaving hers.

"March 6, 1992," she says, not even needing to see his nod. "Good
choice." She wonders briefly what Missy would have seen in the stars
on that first night of their partnership.

He watches her head toward her bedroom as he drops the skate into
the box and hurries after her. There are still gifts left to give and
receive and he doesn't want to miss a single one.

THE END

Thanks for sticking with me this far. Hope you liked it. If so, I'd love
to hear about it. 

    Source: geocities.com/xmas_files