Baby Steps
By Gwinne
gwinne@yahoo.com
Date: Wed, 24 May 2000
Distribution: Yes, but please contact me
Rating: R (I think)
Classification: MSR; Angst
Spoilers: post-ep for "Requiem"; a continuation of sorts
from my "In the Moment"
Disclaimer: Of course they're not mine, but they do occupy a
lot of my quiet moments
Feedback: This is part of what I imagine will be a series of
vignettes devoted to Scully's pregnancy and her thoughts on
Mulder's disappearance. Should I keep going? E-mail me at
gwinne@yahoo.com
BABY STEPS
Scully was standing in line at the grocery store when it hit
her, a familiar wave of nausea and melancholy. She exhaled
slowly, fighting back tears. In the cart in front of her, a
baby kicked its heels together and smiled. She had to
remind herself not to feel envious of the young mother,
spreading jars of Gerbers and boxes of Pampers on the
conveyer belt. It was the feet that got to her every time--
the sturdy white baby shoes with their ugly soles, or the
pink booties, or, god, the bare feet, with the thick ankles
and chubby little toes. Soon, she reminded herself, soon.
And for a brief moment, she pictured Mulder tickling the
bottom of their baby's feet as she lay face up on their bed.
Mulder. Deep breath, she told herself, exhale. It had been
two months, two months of dizzy spells and vomiting and
crying and an incessant need to pee. And fear: that she'd
never see Mulder again, that she'd lose the only piece of
him she had left, this child blooming like a fiddlehead
inside the once-barren field of her womb. The morning
several weeks ago when she woke with the worst cramps of her
life and a streak of bright red on her underwear, Dana sat
half-dressed on the bathroom floor and sobbed, crying for
him, crying for her, crying for them. But then Dr. Scully
became rational and Agent Scully gained control; she pulled
herself up from the floor, called her OB, put on a suit, and
went to work. Case closed.
In front of her, the baby started to cry, and when the
mother turned around, Scully smiled wistfully. Soon. She
was in the sixteenth week now, just starting to show, and
for the first time, starting to believe. Baby steps.
* * *
Scully had barely set the groceries on the countertop when
she started pulling of her clothes. Everything was so
confining these days; all the suits she liked (that Mulder
liked) cinched at the waist, and she couldn't stand to wear
what she thought of as her fat clothes, the ivory and black
pantsuits she kept at the back of her closet as a reminder
of her post-abduction days when her body had become
unrecognizable, her appetite out of control. Her mother had
been bugging her to go shopping for maternity clothes, but,
with the threat of miscarriage so tangible, she just
couldn't bring herself to go. The time for that was now,
with the visual reassurance of the latest ultrasound tucked
in her briefcase; she'd add it to the scrapbook later, a
collection of moments she desperately hoped Mulder could
see.
Still stripping, she walked into her bedroom and pulled on a
gray t-shirt of Mulder's. It smelled like her now, not him,
but she'd put it on the last time they'd made love, the
night before he left for Oregon with Skinner. Even
retrospectively, she was glad she hadn't known it might be
their last night together. Their passion was genuine, not
the frantic lovemaking of two people convinced they would
never see each other again. It was the same slow burn that
brought them together the night he'd returned from England
and she told him about Daniel. She felt a quick throb
between her legs, remembering how tender Mulder had been
that night. She missed him desperately and, chuckling
softly to herself, imagined the conversation they might have
if he were here.
"I have a theory," he'd say, running his hand up her bare
thigh. "Well, it's not really my theory, a widely held
theory in the medical profession, and I was wondering if I
could get your opinion."
"Yeah. Sure. OK."
"Is it true that women have an increased sexual appetite in
the second trimester?"
"I don't know Mulder. That theory of yours might require
some *hard* evidence. We'll just have to investigate."
She found herself doing that often: carrying on imaginary
conversations out of the sheer need for him to be there
during this pregnancy, to experience it with her. He'll
come back, she thought, he always comes back, thinking of
how he somehow, God knows how, he managed to escape from
that boxcar in New Mexico; how she and the guys literally
fished him out from the sea in Bermuda; how she'd gotten him
back from the DOD lab and patched him back together with
bandages and nights of cheap Chinese. At the moment she
least expected it, he would walk into their basement office,
kiss her and make some snide remark. "Scully, you should
have told me you really were having David Crosby's baby..."
* * *
After work she went to Mulder's place, like she did every
night. Someone had to feed the orphaned fish, and somehow
she'd managed to convince herself that if she went there and
straightened up, kept orange juice and iced tea in the
refrigerator, watched a little bit of TV, that he wasn't
missing, not really, just gone on one of his many "side
projects" without her.
She pulled out the photo album he kept in the bottom desk
drawer, the one with the few family pictures, some
mysterious man like Kurzweil or the recently named CGB
Spender lurking in the background. Today she noticed one
she'd never seen before and wondered if he'd taken it from
his mother's after the funeral. It was black and white; a
young woman sat on the floor, and in the V of her open legs,
a chubby-legged baby struggled to keep himself upright. One
foot was slightly in front of the other, both arms stretched
toward the sky, and the grin was unmistakable. Scully
pulled the photo out from the protective casing and looked
at the back. "July 1962--baby steps--Fox." She imagined
Bill Mulder on the other side of the camera, and she hoped
he looked lovingly at Teena, at their tiny son. She hoped
Mulder would be back in time to take a picture of her like
that, half-crying, half-smiling at their baby's feet. She
clutched the photograph to her chest, pulled his Navajo
blanket up to her chin, and dreamed.
want more? let me know. e-mail me at gwinne@yahoo.com