By Christine Leigh
leighchristine@hotmail.com

RATING: PG
CATEGORY: MSR
SPOILERS: Everything through DeadAlive
SUMMARY: Scully POV.  A look at Scully's emotional state of
mind during the three months between This Is Not Happening
and DeadAlive.
 

Small Things
By Christine Leigh

Cemetery
Raleigh, North Carolina

This is not real.  This is not happening, this is not happening,
this is not happening.  Would the echo in her head ever go
away?

There had been nothing after the funeral service.  There was no
one left.  No one to come to a gathering, had there been one.  In
the white cold that surrounded them, Scully cried in Skinner's
arms, and then they walked back to the car, where her mother
was waiting.  They were home by dusk.

Maggie's entreaties to her daughter to come stay with her for
a few days had been refused, squarely, and now Scully was
alone in her apartment.  Her one concession to her pregnancy
was that she had managed to change out of her funeral clothes
and into pajamas and a robe, and she now sat on her couch
and stared. She wanted to see him.  She wanted to go back
to the motel room in Montana and relive that moment.  Only
this time there would be no interruption; it would be the
two of them for as long as they  wanted it to be.  Even if they
couldn't speak, she would just look at him, and he would
know that she was there.  He would know that she would
never look away, and that if it had to be this way that it
would be fine.  She'd just stand there, for the rest of her life.

Soon she started to cry.  When she stopped, two days had
passed.
 

One month later.

God, she hated that alarm clock.  She slapped it off and got up.
Another day.  Oh boy.

Scully made a cup of tea and sat down with the newspaper.  She
was getting better at handling the daily grind, but there was the
one problem that persisted.  They were trying to drive her crazy.
She knew this for certain.  Between the phone calls at home,
even though she didn't ever pick up, and the kind words at
work, she was going to go crazy.  All out, ballistic, postal, crazy.
Frohike would be the first to go, then Skinner or Agent Doggett,
depending on which one of them she encountered first, and
possibly her mother after that.  Then she would be alone until
the baby was born.  After that the two of them would be each
other's worlds.  Charlie might want to visit, that was always
possible, and if he wanted to bring Jeana and the kids, that
would be good.  She would allow that.  Bill was another story.
He knew of her pregnancy, but hadn't called, or even conveyed
a message via Maggie.  The same for Tara, not a word.  Scratch
that, she thought.  She'd get rid of them, too.  She'd raise
Matthew.  She'd do a better job than they ever could have.

It was time for her shower.  She got in and remained there for
three quarters of an hour, something she would do again tonight.
Scully had become the hot water-hog of her building, but this
had kept her from letting the insane fantasies that had been
playing out in her head for the past few weeks from becoming
real.  Standing under the steady, warm stream she slowly
returned to her new self.  The one that kept on going; the one
who was trying so hard to assimilate the foreign culture
she now inhabited.

The one who was still here.  The one who lived.   The one who
would raise their child.
 

One month later.

She awoke to snow.  Her living room was dark and the
television screen was white.  The video had ended.  She hit the
rewind button and turned the volume down.  The static had been
loud enough to awaken her from what must have been a good
dream, and she wanted to go back.  She didn't remember any of
it, but Mulder must have been in it.  Only he made her feel this
way.

She was laying on her couch wrapped in the blanket that he'd
covered her with on the night that he'd returned from England.
Scully wasn't ready yet to revisit that night, but having the
blanket around her was a comfort.  Her evening ritual now
consisted of popping in the movie that had just ended, wrapping
herself in the blanket, and falling asleep eventually.  She'd been
in her bed twice only in the last month.

She'd taken the blanket away with her after her first visit to
Mulder's apartment following his funeral.  She'd  had to force
herself to go, and when the ordeal was over and she was
headed out the door, something had made her turn around and
go back inside.  She'd stood just inside the entrance for a few
minutes, not knowing what to do.  And then as though she were
being led by hand, she walked to the couch and picked up the
blanket that was folded over one of the arms.  For a split
second she thought of that night.  She had never experienced
more clarity of mind and heart than upon awakening here
on the couch that night.  For just a second she allowed herself
to remember the night sounds of the apartment and the feel of
the blanket that had covered her.  But she couldn't let it go any
further.  The blanket in her arms, she ran like a thief until she
stood outside the elevator, desperately waiting for the doors
to open.  She felt absurd, but behaving like a crazy woman
was a small price to pay for keeping the pain that she was
certain would kill her, at bay.

A few nights after this, she had fallen asleep in her living room,
wrapped in the blanket and with the television on.  She awakened
to the last minutes of an old movie and became obsessed by what
she was seeing.  She had absolutely no clue as to what it was about,
aside from the obvious fact that it was a love story.  She
recognized Rex Harrison, but not the actress.  There was a man
and a woman, and the characters had been in love apparently
at some point, but had been apart until the end of the movie,
where the woman, now old, had just died.  Then he, having
been long dead himself, appeared, and she stepped out of her
old, dead, body and was young again, and they walked,
hand-in-hand, down a staircase and out the door of the house
into bright light beyond.

Scully needed to know the name of this movie.  More alert than
she'd been in a long time, she got up, turned on her computer,
and proceeded to do some research.  It didn't take her
too long to discover that its title was "The Ghost and Mrs.
Muir," and that it was available on video to purchase, which she
did.  It arrived three days later, and it and the blanket became
her evening companions.  Every night she wrapped herself in the
blanket and stuck the video in the VCR and waited for sleep to
come.

She continued to look for him in the shadows when entering her
apartment at the end of each day.  But she never saw him.
 

One month later.

It was a nice day out.  She could acknowledge this.  Scully had
risen at seven and was now dressed and waiting for her mother
to pick her up. They'd resumed their habit of attending Mass
together on Sunday two weeks ago.  Today they had planned to
have breakfast afterward and then do some shopping for baby
necessities.  Scully was very grateful to have her mother on
hand for this task.  Her eyes wandered to a large, unopened box
sitting in a corner of the living room that had arrived from San
Diego last Monday.  It was from Tara.  Baby clothes, she
guessed.  The situation with Bill was on hold.  It was a hard
truth that her older brother wasn't a pleasant or easy person, but
she hadn't given up on him.

That she was able to attend church and pray openly again, was a
big step toward returning to a so-called normal life.  It would
never be what she wanted it to be, but she would make it good.
She knew she was lucky to have a circle of people who loved or
esteemed her enough to want to be part of her life, and by
extension her child's.  They would be there.  These people who
had known Mulder would be part of their lives.  She had also
started to answer her phone on occasion.  And when she didn't,
she was able to hear the kind words without going into a
complete funk over them.  These were all small things, but she
acknowledged their significance.  And still, she continued to
pray for the one thing besides the health and safety of her baby
that mattered.

Scully wasn't a casual believer in miracles.  She knew they
happened.  She knew that most likely she'd been on the
receiving end of one when her cancer had disappeared.  Was she
being greedy in asking for one more?

The phone rang.  Her mother must be downstairs.  When she was
running late, Maggie would ring Scully from the car.  Scully
picked up.  A sudden chill passed through her, but then just
as suddenly, she felt warm all over.

"Hi, Mom.  I'm on my way down."

"Agent Scully, this is Walter Skinner."

She drew a long breath.  "Oh, hello.  I was expecting my
mother."  She waited.  He didn't say anything for what seemed
like an hour, but was in reality only a few seconds.  When he
continued, he was brief, but kind.  She must have responded,
although she really couldn't have sworn that she had in a court
of law.  After she'd hung up, she must have called her mother to
say she wouldn't be joining her that morning, but later she had
no recollection of doing so.  Her story must have been good,
because Maggie had gone on without coming up to check on
her.  None of these things registered.  There was only room for
the new echo in her head, and in her heart.

He's alive, he's alive, he's alive, he's alive.

Scully got into her car and headed for Annapolis.  She headed for
home.
 

 -  end  -
 
Author's note: This story is the third in what I call the
Party of Three universe, which is a series of stories and
vignettes that are set post-Requiem. These can all be found
on Gossamer and/or Ephemeral.

Next in series - Emergence
 

leighchristine@hotmail.com