Foux

By alanna
alanna@alanna.net

     
Apr 21 2001, 9:36 pm
(I've posted directly to Ephemeral, since the auto-forwarding seems to be
down.  My apologies if this shows up there twice.)
DISCLAIMER:  The characters herein are the property of Fox Broadcasting and
1013 Productions.  The situations into which I have placed them are of my
own creation.

CATEGORIES:  SRA
RATING:  PG
ARCHIVAL:  My site only.  Please feel free to link to it at
http://alanna.net/fanfic/foux.html
SPOILERS:  Through TINH.  I'm using the real world timeline, so this is set
in March, 2001.  If 1013 plays with timelines, so can I ;).

This is a sequel to "Throwing Words Away", but you do not have to read it to
understand this story.

SUMMARY:  "This is who Mulder was.  This is who you will someday be."

+++++

FOUX
by alanna
alanna@alanna.net

+++++

Mulder could always tell a good story.

Scully presses "play" on the remote, then settles back to listen.

"Ready?" Mulder's voice asks as her face fills the screen.

"Turn that off.  We're supposed to be using it for surveillance, not on each
other."

"Nah."  Though the camera was on her, as she watches the videotape, Scully
can almost hear his grin.  "I'd much rather film you."

She stares at her face on the video, eyes bright and the sun unforgiving to
her complexion, and begins to see herself the way Mulder saw her.
Self-consciousness breaks through and she wonders what he saw in this woman
whose age was beginning to show and whose face scrunched up unattractively
with mock-irritation mixed with bemusement.

But she knows Mulder thought she was beautiful, and this knowledge thrills
her.  She still feels the same about him.

Over the speakers, he says, "I'm going to tell you a story."

"A story?  Why?"

"We have to pass the time somehow, and while I can think of much more
interesting ways to do so, we are still on the clock, after all."

Scully watches the corners of her mouth twitch into a smile.  "Fine, Mulder.
Tell me a story."

"Once upon a time," he began, "there was a young rabbit, who lived in a very
woodsy area.  Despite the admonitions of his friends and family, his
favorite game was to kill the wild mice of the area, usually by blunt-force
trauma to the cranium."

"So it's a murderous hare, then?"  She watches herself deliberately cock an
eyebrow at him, and remembers how she'd nearly had to bite her lip to keep
from laughing.

At that point, she'd taken the camera from him, gave a cursory turn toward
the object of surveillance -- an apparently empty building -- then focused
on him.

His face seems to leap and fly as he continues to tell his story.

"As I was saying, the rabbit became the first sylvilagus serial killer.
But, as is wont to happen," his voice became melodramatic, "his deeds could
not go unpunished."

Scully interrupted, "Does the animal kingdom have capital punishment?"

"Only in Texas, Scully."  He wagged his eyebrows, then lowered them in a
stern expression.  "Quit interrupting me.  So, one day this rabbit was
visited by a ghostly apparition, very much in the Germanic tradition, like
the Brothers Grimm.  This spirit warned the rabbit that if he did not cease
and desist his killing, she would transform him into an ogre.

"Now, any psychologist will tell you that the rabbit psyche lacks the
ability to fully accept responsibility for its actions.  Therefore, he
continued to kill mice, shocking the animal community, and creating a
scandal the likes of which it had never seen.  The ghost visited him on two
successive days, but the rabbit ignored her each time.  Finally, the ghost's
warning was fulfilled, and the rabbit became an ogre."

Mulder stared at her, a light in his eyes.  "Do you want to hear the moral
of the story?"

Against her better judgment, she replied, "I'm afraid to ask."

"Hare today, goon tomorrow."

Her groan echoes through the television speakers as Scully listens to her
reaction.

"Mulder?"

"Yes?"

"That's 'Little Bunny Foo Foo'."

"What?"

"You know, that song from back in nursery school."

He stared at her with a blank expression on his beautiful face.

Exasperated, she'd begun to sing the song:  "Little bunny Foo Foo, hoppin'
through the forest, scooping up the field mice and bopping 'em on the head."

Still, the blank expression.

Caught up in the moment, she'd finished the next two verses before a huge,
wicked grin spread over Mulder's face.  She'd been had.

"Mulder?"

"Yes?"

As Scully sits on the sofa, her baby tapping the wall of her uterus, she
watches Mulder's shoulders shaking with laughter at her expense, and hears
the sounds of her own laughter.

"I'm going to kill you!"  she'd growled with mock outrage.

But a year later, someone else has done that.

+++++

Someday she'll be able to appreciate the sight of a shirtless Skinner, but
probably not for years.

It's a picture-perfect late March Saturday on the National Lawn, crowded
with tourists and bureaucrats getting their first lungful of spring.  Down
the way, past the disposable cameras, drooping backpacks, and trinket
vendors, the early buds of the cherry blossoms are visible.

She is now someone that others "check up on."  Have you seen Dana lately?
How's she holding up?

Skinner called her last night and invited her to a rugby game some men from
his church had planned.

Since Mulder's death, they have become less formal with one another.  He
calls her during their off-hours; at first the calls would be about aspects
of the post-Montana investigation.  Soon he began to call her just to see
how she was doing.  Could he do anything to help?  Did she need someone to
talk to?

So she began to talk to him.  Shifting her tie to him from supervisor to
friend had been awkward at first, but nobody else had such an intimate
knowledge of the vagaries and complications of her life.  He probably knew
Mulder better than anyone else but her.  She could talk to him about the
depth of her relationship with Mulder, instead of keeping things
professional for protocol's sake.  They have begun to share secrets, not
testimony.

But they still have decorum.  Scully suspects he is attracted to her, but
she knows he will never do anything about it.  She likes him and values his
friendship too much for a romance, and besides, she knows she will never see
in another man everything that she loved in Mulder.

Right now, she needs a friend, even with a side of decorum.

"I didn't know you attend church, Walter," she asked him, with surprise,
when he called last night.

"I didn't go for quite a while," he replied, "but the past year brought me
back.  After all of this, I need to believe in something good out there,
that God is watching over this chaos on Earth."  She didn't know how to
reply, and he continued, "Anyway, we'll probably need a scorekeeper
tomorrow, if you're interested."

Scully knows what he was trying to do -- he wants to check up on her without
being overt about it.  As she'd considered his offer, she glanced over at
the television, which was showing a blue screen after Mulder's tape had run
out an hour earlier.  Scully hadn't even noticed.  Perhaps being around
other people would shake off this bone-deep loneliness, but she is
skeptical.   And she owes it to Skinner to come.  If he wants to make sure
she's okay, let him.  An afternoon of fresh air is a small price to pay for
loyalty and friendship.

That fresh Saturday air is lifting her spirits somewhat, though not by much.
Some women and kids sit a few yards away, cheering on the men and women
whose rugby game has progressed to Frisbee football.  Skinner told her that
the youth minister and her husband had staked out the swath of grass between
the Washington Monument and the Reflecting Pool at seven this morning, and
six hours later the games are going at full-tilt.  Shirts vs. skins,
technically, though most of the men are skins and the women are shirts.

Happy families everywhere, and she is alone.  One-third of the small family
she has created is inside her, living from her air and nourishment.  Another
third is six feet under the bright green grass of a North Carolina
springtime.  A stray cherry blossom drifts toward her, landing on the
notepad she's using to keep score.  Azaleas are beginning to bloom near
Mulder's grave.

Scully smoothes her beige smock over her now-significant belly.  It's not
really her style at all, but her mother had given it to her last week, along
with some similar shirts and a pair of jeans with a lycra panel over the
abdomen.  She feels ridiculous, but her old clothes ceased to fit weeks ago,
and her dark-colored maternity wardrobe doesn't quite suit a picnic
atmosphere.

She wants to go home, to bury herself in the few remnants of Mulder she has
collected, but she will be polite and stay another half-hour.  It will give
Skinner something to report to others when they ask how she's holding up.

He looks carefree, and she envies him that.  Perhaps she should have worn
her black shirt.  Dark colors absorb heat, and she begins to feel the chill
of Mulder's grave.

+++++

Mulder is spread across her coffee table, all smiles and furrowed brows and
glossy brown hair.  Eyes glittering green or gold or brown, fingers splayed
and reaching toward hers.  Barely touching.

"Did you see this, Scully?  It proves Caroline Bell isn't who she says she
is.  I'll head to the police station and interrogate her while you do the
victim's autopsy."

"We are pleased to announce to the citizens of Santa Fe that the so-called
Pueblo Strangler was apprehended at 1:43 P.M. this afternoon."

"You look beautiful today, Scully, but you'd look even more beautiful in my
bed tonight.  Naked.  Let's ditch the investigation and head back home."

The last was not a direct quote, of course, but he'd had that look in his
eyes, his smile, so many times over the years.  How had she not noticed it?

She leans over and picks up a newspaper clipping, drinking in the gleam of
his eyes and the quirk of his lips.  Captured on flimsy Chicago newsprint,
they are in the background of a news conference after the Henry Weems case.
She'd just finished explaining to the press how the mobster -- she can't
remember his name -- had been killed, and the two of them had stepped to the
side while the chief of police answered questions.

Mulder's face is tilted down toward her, looking like he'd want nothing more
than to kiss every inch of her body.  Had she been looking back at him
instead of at the reporters, she might have seen the desire in his eyes, and
they wouldn't have had to wait another five months to finally make love.

She smoothes the creases out of the clipping, then sets it aside and picks
up another photograph.  This one is of the two of them, crouched low as they
examined some evidence at a crime scene.  A quick check of the back says
that the photo is nearly six years old, a fact verified by their simpler,
less-stylish clothes and hair.

They looked so much younger then.  Happier.  He had not yet died for the
first time, or looked up at starlight and seen the specter of his sister.
She had not yet experienced cancer or beacon-microchips or the loss of a
daughter and Melissa.  They'd still believed that life could be good and
pure.  They did not yet know they were in love.

When she learned of Scully's pregnancy via Maggie, her aunt sent her a
fabric-covered baby book, full of magnetic photo pages and charts for the
baby's growth and development, first words, birth announcement.  It sits on
her coffee table, under the collection of photos of Mulder.

Scully wonders if she could find an album exquisite enough to hold Mulder.
One with pages trimmed in gold leaf, or perhaps multiple colors for each of
the shades of his soul.  The spine would have to expand, to contain
everything he was, and a brass clasp would keep the mementoes safe.

She could show it to her son or daughter and say, "This is your Daddy.  This
is who he was, and who you will someday be."  She would spin tales of his
accomplishments through newspaper clippings.  She'd rub their child's back
until he or she giggled, then point at a photo of Mulder grinning and
whisper, "See?  Daddy has the same smile as you."  Their child would try to
reach out and play with the wildflower he'd once picked for her, now pressed
between onionskin pages.  She would pull the tiny fingers away, kissing them
and telling the child that they will plant a garden instead.

Thirty-nine years of a glorious life, illustrated in photos.

She owes Agent Doggett more gratitude than she ever expected to feel.  He
came by this afternoon, her ninth Sunday after Mulder's funeral, bearing an
accordion file stuffed full of these clippings and photographs.  "After you
left work on Friday, I started going through all those filing cabinets in
the office, and pulled every photo of Mulder that I could find," he told
her.  "I doubt it'll make much difference to the Bureau, but I re-filed a
photocopy of each one, just in case."

Too amazed to reply, she stared at him, blinking back tears and shifting on
her feet.  As she clutched the file to her stomach, the baby kicked,
reaching out to its father.

"And, um," Doggett sputtered, close to babbling, "Agent Reyes and I went out
for drinks when she was here last week.  She says she thinks she has a
videotape of Agent Mulder from when he gave a deposition in a case in New
Orleans.  On Monday she's going to ask the agent who handled the case, and
if it's true she'll get a copy made and send it to you."

"Thank you," she had whispered, feeling small and vulnerable in bare feet
and the t-shirt and sweatpants that stretched over her belly.  He nodded and
said nothing, then left.

She now wears a huge smile as she soaks in the glory of Mulder, here before
her.

+++++

Byers phoned tonight, just after she returned from her first exploratory
session of shopping for baby things.  He told her that they'd noticed some
intriguing activity over the southeastern skies, near the coast of the
Carolinas.  "We don't think it'll add up to anything important, but we
thought you should know."

"Thanks for keeping me up to date," she had replied, wondering whether she
could be excited about 'unusual activities' in the skies of a world without
Mulder.

But Mulder would have been excited, and perhaps the second-best legacy she
could give him -- besides the baby -- is keeping alive the quest that
destroyed him.  She can almost hear him whispering in her ear: "The truth is
still out there, Scully."

Three months after his death, the pain and hopelessness are still raw, but
she is slowly learning the language of moving on, and finding ways to
celebrate his life instead of mourning his loss.

A few days ago Frohike dropped off two copies of that tape of her and Mulder
on stakeout, "just in case you wear out your copy, Agent Scully."  She'd
murmured her thanks while he gaped at her stomach, astonished by how the
baby is suddenly growing by leaps and bounds.

Most of those leaps and bounds make themselves felt on an hourly basis, as
her acrobatic offspring practices for future athletics championships.
Another kick jabs her hand where it rests at the bottom of her belly.  She
winces, but it makes her feel that Mulder is still alive.

+++++

Structurally, Doggett's hands are very similar to Mulder's.  Of course, all
hands are constructed alike, but both men have -- well, Mulder had -- long
fingers and large palms.  But whereas Mulder's were fleshy and soft,
Doggett's are an architectural frame, each carpal bone and knuckle in sharp
relief against tight skin.

In his hand is an orange and blue FedEx box, his fingers clasped around it
like talons.  She watches him carefully as he shifts on his feet then walks
over and places the box on her desk.

Answering her raised brows, he says, "This just arrived from Agent Reyes.  I
think it's that videotape I told you about."

Scully stares at it, then lifts a finger to trace the dulled edges of the
box.  One corner is dented, as if it had been dropped.  Even the box
carrying the tape is fragile.

"Um..."  His voice trails away, and he gives a significant glance toward the
TV cart in the office.  "I'm going to run upstairs and pick up some files
from the archives."

As he briskly walks away, Scully calls out, "Agent Doggett?"

"Yeah?"  The word carries over his shoulder before he turns to look at her.

"Thank you."

He nods, looking almost embarrassed.  "It was the least I can do."

She replies, "You've already done so much.  The photos...."  But he is
already gone.

To an empty room, she whispers, "And all this for a man you never even
knew."

Scully stares at the box for almost five minutes, her eyes tracing Reyes'
looping script on the address label.  She dots her I's with a half-circle,
perhaps a remnant of teenage years spent making little stars or hearts in
similar fashion.  The last two T's of Doggett's name are crossed in one
straight line, her handwriting both structured and fanciful.  From what
little Scully has seen of Reyes, she can see more of the latter in the other
woman.

The need to watch the tape *now* rises in her gut, but she pushes the box a
few inches away and picks up the phone, the pen in her other hand annotating
the listing of voice mail messages she has to return.  Keep busy, Dana, she
chides herself.  It can wait until you get home.

Her resolve only lasts through call number three, to the personnel office,
telling them that she needs to change her official next-of-kin notification
back to her mother.  Then her eyes begin to burn as the woman informs her
Scully had been named the beneficiary.  Once the paperwork is processed, she
will receive $50,000 in blood money.

She keeps her composure until the call is over, then allows herself a few
minutes to dissolve.  Once the shivering abates, the yearning to see Mulder
again gets the better of her, and she opens the box.

A note in the same loopy script is attached to the top of the tape.

"Agent Scully -- I remembered this deposition from a few years ago, and
thought you would like to have it.  Please let me know if you have any
questions, and I'm very sorry for your loss.  -- Monica R."

Scully runs her fingertip over the label on the spine of the tape:  "Agent
F. Mulder; Deposition:  United States vs. Quinn; 3/23/97."

Almost four years old, to the day.  She remembers the case now.  Mulder had
been called down to New Orleans to give expert testimony in a murder trial.
The Bureau keeps copies of such videotaped depositions for its own records,
and Scully surmises this is a copy of that.

A deep breath filling her lungs, she slips the tape into the VCR and presses
"play".

Mulder, in living color.

Shoulders strong, eyes focused and bright, tie in the perfect Windsor knot
she'd tried to replicate when they dressed together in later years.  "You'll
never get it right, Scully," he'd chuckled, "but that's okay.  I'd much
rather you take off the tie than put it on."

Three months ago, she'd stood in Mulder's closet, choosing a burial suit and
tie.  She wrapped the silk around her hand and pulled it as tightly as
possible until her mother grabbed her and yanked the tie free.  But it had
let her finally feel something in the midst of numbness.

"Think of the baby," Margaret had whispered, offering cheap platitudes, but
also deep sympathy and support.

It took her another month for her to be able to enter his apartment and see
his things again.  A message on her voice mail from his condo management
company had told her that resident fees were a week overdue, and she found
herself at his place again, writing a check she couldn't afford, but unable
to let it go and contact a realtor just yet.

She walked around the dark apartment, noticing the careful touch of the
cleaning crew she'd hired.  She began to collect a few personal mementoes,
like the blanket that he'd covered her with after they made love for the
first time, and a white dress shirt that now began to stretch over her
belly, but which he'd once said "looks incredibly sexy on you, Scully."

There she had found the videotape from their surveillance.  The label simply
said, "Scully: Happy," in Mulder's scrawl.  She didn't show him her
happiness nearly enough until they became lovers.  She knows now why he
wanted to mark the occasion.

And now she has another video memento of him.

In later years she will watch this tape with their child, explaining the
complexities of the investigation in terms a young mind can understand.
Today, however, she leans as far forward in her chair as her belly will
allow, and watches him, chin on hands and eyes slowly beginning to water.

I'm re-learning him, she thinks.  Too many months have passed and she has
forgotten his professional side, having only his clever story and charming
face on that one videotape.  Though his eyes are focused slightly off-screen
as he talks to the attorney, Scully rolls the chair around until she is
barely a foot away from the television, so that his face nearly fills her
peripheral vision.

For the next few minutes, he speaks only to her.

Footfalls and the opening door break the spell.  She turns around and
catches Doggett's eye as he takes a step back and moves to leave again.
"I'll, uh, be back later, Agent Scully," he stammers.

"That's okay, Agent Doggett.  You can come in," she replies as if he hasn't
shared this office with her for the past five months.

He remains in the doorway for a long moment, then enters and takes a seat at
his desk.  She presses the pause button, Mulder's face caught mid-speech,
his lips slightly curled the same way they would after a long kiss.

"You never met Mulder, did you?"

"Not really," Doggett says, in an uncharacteristically hesitant voice.

"Not really?"

He sits back in his chair.  "Well, we never had a conversation or anything,
I mean.  I saw him at a couple of VCU seminars nearly ten years ago, when I
was with the NYPD and thinking about applying for a job here.  A friend of a
friend introduced us at a reception afterward."

She smiles, still staring at the freeze-frame of Mulder.  "I'm glad you got
a chance to meet him, even if it was years ago."

"I am too."  Her face must register surprise as she turns to glance at him,
because he continues, "I don't have the greatest memory for things that
happened that far in the past, but he stood out to me.  He was really
excited about profiling.  That was pretty rare."

Scully is touched by his words; Doggett's attitude in the past had made her
believe he didn't hold much respect for Mulder.  But even before they found
Mulder, the change in Doggett's investigation from tracking down the suspect
to seeking him as much as the truth Mulder represented has been fascinating
and welcome.

She likes to believe that by searching for Mulder, Doggett opened up part of
his own soul.  Once Mulder became real to him through her memories and
descriptions, her new partner began to realize that truth isn't simply about
the facts; it is about finding something in which you can believe.

She has made the same journey, though hers took seven years and became equal
parts truth and love.  Mulder was a rare soul who could inspire that in
people.

As if reading her mind, Doggett says, "He must have been a good man."

"He was," she murmurs.  "The world is a better place for having him in it."

Speaking of Mulder in the past tense is still a shock, but the pain is
beginning to abate.  These videos and the photo album she assembled are
slowly taking away the sting.

The VCR, having exhausted its pause, stops playing the tape and the screen
turns blue again.  She hastily presses "play" again, but turns down the
volume until Mulder speaks without sound.  Years of practice have taught her
the language of his lips, reading them both by sight and with the touch of
hers on his.

"You know," Doggett murmurs behind her, "I realized a few weeks ago that I
was beginning to forget my son."

Scully swivels around to face him, noticing for the first time the humanity
of his face -- furrowed brows and lines of experience mixing with an
unfamiliar softness.  Though he has told her the story of his son's
abduction and death, she has never seen him as a father before.

"After the divorce," he continues, "Carolyn kept most of our photos and home
videos of Luke.  I still have a few, but it took me months to be able to
look at them or to keep that fifth grade school picture in my wallet.  I
showed it to you, right?"

She nods.

"Yeah."  He purses his lips, and she thinks that she should say something,
but cannot.

Finally, he says, "Do you remember what you said to me after we found
Mulder?"

She opens her mouth to say no, but stops herself before she lets on that the
only thing she remembers about that night is a piercing pain in every cell
of her body.

Doggett's concentration fades into a look of deep concern.  "You told me
that your kid would never know her daddy."

Oh.  Yes.

Oh, God.  Yes.

She closes her eyes.

The man's voice drops to a near-whisper.  "I don't have much left of Luke,
except memories I'm trying my damnedest not to forget."  He pauses.  "I
didn't want the same thing to happen to you.  That's why I pulled all those
photos out of the files and asked Monica for that videotape.  You should
have something to remember him by.  Well," he hastily adds, "besides that
baby."

Her child chooses that moment to kick, and the jolt vibrates through her
body, stinging raw nerves.

She wants to say a thousand eloquent words of gratitude.  All she can
whisper is, "Thank you."

Doggett awkwardly nods his reply, then begins to examine his clasped hands.

Scully turns back to the television.  Mulder is looking down at something on
the table, his face and hands animated as he spins his testimony.

A few minutes later, she hears, "Agent Scully?"

"Hmm?" she murmurs, her gaze never leaving the television.

"Tell me about Mulder."

She looks over her shoulder and gives him a soft smile.

Where on earth could she begin?  With how the stranger an investigation
became, the greater his childlike fascination?  With how his voice seemed a
monotone to naïve ears, but carried a million shades of meaning?  With the
way he could make her feel like the center of his universe with just the
lightest of touches of his fingertips?

After a moment's consideration, she decides to start at the beginning.

"The first time I saw him, he was sitting near where you are now, studying
some slides...."

+++++
END (1/1)

Shannon has a remarkable way of giving improv elements that can be taken in
a dozen different directions.  Dr. Gwinne is wonderful at getting to the
heart of a story.  And Diana can make the most frustrating brainstorming
sessions a joy.  My deepest thanks to the three of them.

This is the second annual "alanna's Spring Break Fic" (Cleopatra's Needle
was the first).  I wrote the first few scenes under the shade of the cherry
blossoms on April 7, 2001.  Alas, Skinner was not playing rugby nearby.