Sandcastles for Pele (part 3 of 4)
By: JL (formerly JaimeLyn)
jaimerockifies@yahoo.com
Rating: PG-13
Category: post IWTB, MSR
Disclaimer: Apparently, I'm allowed to play with them but I
can't keep them. Damn it. (Do action figures count?)
Anyway. Please don't sue.
Summary: As they play a waiting game, Mulder and Scully
call upon the past and embark on their own little adventure.
Feedback: jaimerockifies@yahoo.com
Author's note: This is the post-movie fic I wanted to write
after realizing that "I Want to Believe" might be the last
time we'd ever see Mulder and Scully. And as with most X-
Files endings, I thought there were a few untied ends that
I really wanted to tackle. If I had to describe this
story, I would say that it is... not at all what you think
it is. Take from that what you will.
Almost at the end, guys - just one more to go! Don't bail
now!
Thanks to Alyssa for the honest feedback, and to my sister
for the late night marathons.
---
Sandcastles for Pele
By JL
"Aloha mai no, aloha aku;
o ka huhu ka mea e ola 'ole ai."
- When love is given, love should be returned;
anger is the thing that gives no life.
- ancient Hawaiian proverb
--
Scully stood on an empty beach, her bare toes sinking into
the sand. The ocean crashed behind her, speaking to her in
a language familiar from childhood. Inexplicably, she
thought of car trips across the Midwest with her family.
How she'd fall asleep to the murmur of the engine and the
lull of an empty highway, and awaken to tall buildings,
trees, and throngs of people, unsure as to when all of that
had happened.
Scully turned in place, expecting at any moment the
violence of wind, the inevitable thunder. But the world
remained silent. A breeze pushed past; her breathing
quickened.
"Mulder?"
No answer.
"Hello?"
Scully shielded her eyes against the breeze blowing sand
off the ocean. She searched for trees, grass, buildings,
stairs, a boardwalk, any sign of civilization, of the life
that had so comforted her when waking in the car - and
Mulder, her beautiful, imperfect Mulder. But instead there
was only sand, miles and miles of sand the color of clouded
honey, and silence like a cage, like the plastic case of a
snow-globe. And Scully, trapped inside.
As a doctor, Scully processed the panic before her nerve
endings could hit the actual alarm: shortness of breath,
vertigo, tingling in the arms, legs, a sudden drop in
carbon dioxide, an intake of too much oxygen, she was going
to --
"Oh." She doubled over, palms on her knees. "Help,"
thinking of noise, of loud, precious noise, of sunrises, of
waking beside Mulder on a Sunday morning and feeling his
cold toes beneath the sheets. "Please." She clawed for
oxygen and saw bursts of color behind her own eyes. "Mul --
"
When she turned, she found herself standing face to face
with a little boy.
"Jesus!" Her hand flew over her mouth and she doubled back,
nearly falling to her knees in the sand. The boy gazed at
her thoughtfully, his ivory skin seeming to glow, his blue
eyes filled with wonder and a thousand questions. He smiled
and reached for her hand, carrying with him the scent of
talcum powder and fresh cotton sheets. "Oh," whispered
Scully. "Oh, my God."
--
Mulder stood in the middle of the road, soaked and dizzy,
and listened for any sign that he wasn't alone.
He shielded his eyes, squinted up at the road-marker for
King's Hwy, and tilted his chin sideways in defense against
the rain. The rental car sat empty, its doors opened to the
night like fairy wings.
Mulder turned in a furious circle. "Scully?"
He felt panic rising to the surface like a cork that had
been pushed too far down.
"Scully!"
They'd been headed for the turnoff -- bridge or beach,
bridge or beach (he hadn't yet decided -- arguing with
Scully only ever made his indecision worse) and then --
"Right, left, or straight?"
Mulder startled and whirled and nearly fell to the wet
pavement.
Cancerman, his leisurely brace against the car door - as if
waiting for a drive-in movie, the smoke from his cigarette
curling up and up into the night.
Mulder growled in anger and immediately tried to picture
Scully, to will himself into calm. He thought of the day
she'd first told him she was sick - He'd brought her
flowers that took half an hour to arrange, later fibbing
that they were stolen, which had sounded comfortably
flippant and had made her smile. In Scully's hand was the
X-ray, and on that X-ray a black and white skull, and
inside that skull a bright cluster, and as he'd stared and
stared at that cluster, the force of its dark potential had
slammed him, and he'd known. Even before her eyes met his.
Even before her detached voice made it real: "It's a mass
located on the wall between my sinus and cerebrum. If it
pushes into my brain, statistically, there's about zero
chance of --"
Overcome with the fear of history repeating itself, Mulder
lunged at the Cancerman, slipping and sliding awkwardly on
the pavement. He grabbed the man by the lapels of his
impossibly dry suit and shoved him hard against the side of
the car.
"What is it?" Mulder demanded, clutching the man and
shaking him as he might shake a container of juice. "What
do you WANT from me? Blood? My head on a stake? Do you want
her to die? Is that it? You've already taken my family, her
sister, our first-born -- there's nothing left! Why can't
you just leave us the hell alone already?"
"Ah, Mulder. You never do go for simplicity," said the man,
his cigarette still absurdly lit between his thumb and
forefinger, the smoke swirling, disappearing into the rain.
"Clearly, I only want what everyone wants at this stage of
the game." He blew smoke from the corner of his lips and
finished, "Forgiveness."
A memory lit up before Mulder like a match: Cancerman, a
fossil in the dark, the smoke from his cigarette rising up
like a noose towards the ceiling. In his slithery, bored
sounding voice, he rattled off every sensible reason why
Mulder should probably want to, but would not actually kill
him, meanwhile Mulder, his gun unsteady in his hands, could
think of nothing but Scully, her pale face trapped in
sleep, and those blue eyes that might never open again.
The darkness of such a past threatened to crack the ice-
thin surface of Mulder's already misfiring brain; ten years
later, and he still raged for Scully. He raged with the
force of a man in love, and he wanted the past taken back -
- all of it -- he wanted it unraveled and detangled and
begun again. And if that couldn't happen, if God couldn't
see fit to reconstruct this thing that had been viciously
chopped down, Mulder would rage and rage until the
impossible was possible, until he'd destroyed everything
else and his frustration was so overpowering it could
longer be singular.
Mulder shoved Cancerman even harder against the car.
"Forgiveness? Forgiveness for what? For the things that
can't be taken back? You're full of SHIT! You regret
NOTHING!"
"Ah," said Cancerman. "But I happen to regret a great many
things."
Mulder's bared his teeth dangerously. "Where the hell is
Scully?"
"I assure you, I have no idea."
Trembling now with the force of his rage, Mulder shoved
Cancerman so hard against the car that his head banged the
hood and bounced back, ridiculously. "Tell me where she
is!"
Cancerman gestured at the road in response, vaguely waving
the hand with the cigarette, but otherwise said nothing.
Against his better judgment, Mulder turned to look.
"What the - "
Just below the sign for King's Hwy, on the wet pavement,
something bright orange had begun to paint itself onto the
cement. Mulder blinked. No, that couldn't be right. That
couldn't be real.
He felt suddenly unsteady, and his grip on Cancerman
loosened. "What the hell is going on?" he demanded. His
brain, clearly, was losing control of this vehicle.
"You and your questions," said Cancerman. "All these years,
and you're still asking these absurdist questions,
questions nobody can answer. Here I thought you were
looking for Scully."
Something in Mulder finally snapped, like a matchstick. His
hands found their way to Cancerman's throat, and as the
storm screamed all around them, he pressed down, the force
of what he felt so great that he thought it might consume
him. "SHUT UP!" he yelled, losing his tenuous hold on
reality. "I SWEAR - "
"Well, this certainly ought to be a novel experience," said
Cancerman, as an explosion of darkness filled Mulder's
field of vision, "Especially since I'm already dead, and
you only have a few more moments to find your precious
Scully."
---
In the terrifying minutes after Scully's son was born,
Scully had been too disoriented and too weak to hold him.
By the time Mulder had finally come for them, a burst of
fear and passion and something much more primal driving him
as he fell to his knees, Scully had already lost almost a
liter of blood, and been blinking in and out of
consciousness. "Baby," she had managed, and when Mulder
somewhat dazedly took hold of her hand and brought her
fingers to his lips, she shook her head, managed a smile,
and pointed to the baby. Mulder sheepishly brought the baby
close, and she'd breathed in relief to see his tiny,
screaming face, her gentle, beautiful child.
This memory cradled Scully as she took hold of the little
boy's hand, as more images rushed her like floodwater, and
suddenly she was pulled into the eye of them: the boy lying
on wet pavement as a man ran to him and scooped him up; the
boy and a woman playing piano, the boy poking delightedly
at the ivory keys; the boy standing in a batting cage,
learning how to hit a ball with the man; the boy collapsing
on the playground, his teachers gasping in alarm at his
bloody nose; the boy squeezing his eyes shut in the
doctor's office as a needle pierced his neck; the boy
paragliding high over the beach and the dark blue ocean,
squealing in wonder; the boy on a bus with the man and the
woman, staring out at the bridge as his nose began to bleed
and his body began to seize. Beneath these lightning quick
shards of memory, a single comforting sound emerged, a
humming, a voice, Scully's own voice getting louder and
louder, and suddenly, Scully was staring up at an image of
herself, humming and rocking a tiny infant, the window
behind her filling the room with a beautiful white light.
Scully gasped as something deep within her released, like
steam from a pot boiling over; the fluttering, butterfly's
kiss of one soul touching another. Through her tears, she
managed, "Oh," her bigger hand gripping the boy's
impossibly small one.
---
Thunder shouted over the rain as Mulder shouted over the
thunder, "What in the HELL are you talking about?" and he
again thought desperately of Scully, of her frightened blue
eyes, of her hand on his forearm as she tried to tell him
that she needed him to listen. That she needed him to hear
her. She'd come searching for his help just as surely as
she'd ever searched for anything, her plea like that
flashlight still bobbing frantically along the hard stone
walls. And yet. And yet Mulder had turned his back and left
her to find her answers alone in the dark.
Damn it.
Scully.
He had to find her.
Mulder shoved Cancerman one last time against the hood of
the car and stepped away, trying to catch his breath. "Tell
me," he ordered. "Tell me. Where. She is."
Cancerman shrugged. "What makes you think I know? This is
your In-Between, Mulder."
Finally out of options, Mulder pounded his fist against the
side of the car, and thought, stupidly, of the upstairs
bathroom in the house he shared with Scully. The ceiling
was high and slightly domed, and he could never change the
bulb without standing on the toilet lid and stretching at a
dangerous angle. Scully had begged him to buy a stepstool,
but Mulder had refused, the idea of a stepstool somehow,
ridiculously, like giving up a fight.
Mulder spread wide his hands to the sky. "Okay, you know
what?" He swiped rain from his face. "I'm done being lead
around by the testicles in my own hallucination."
He jutted his chin in the direction of Cancerman. "I
forgive him." Then he bent back his head and yelled at the
sky, "Do you hear that? I forgive him! Ancient history!
Water under the bridge! Never again the twains shall meet,
and I promise not to kick the shit out of him anymore
either, okay?"
Mulder waved his arms wildly, not knowing what else to do
or say. A fierce energy moved through him. "Look," he
called, "I don't know if I've died, or if I'm talking to
God, or some form of God, or if this is just me
hallucinating about dying and moving into the light, or
whatever, but you should probably know that I'll dismantle
the afterlife piece by piece if that's what it takes to
find her. So you might as well just help me. Before I end
up accidentally setting fire to the universe. Or,
uh...worse."
And for a startling moment it all fell away and he was just
lingering there in the bathroom with her, his Scully. She
was gazing at him from the doorway, her hands folded across
her chest, her brows pinched nervously as he stood on the
toilet, fiddling with the light. "A step ladder," she said.
"That's really all I ask."
And then he was back in the rain again, the harsh night
still growling angrily around him, as Cancerman cleared his
throat. He gestured at the wet pavement, at the orange line
growing into what appeared to be an "X," and Mulder frowned
in confusion, not quite understanding the logistics of this
hallucination.
He whirled to face Cancerman again -- only to discover a
glowing red dot where the man had once been.
Mulder blinked in surprise.
"Follow," said the dot.
And not knowing what else to do, Mulder followed.
He followed as the dot trailed blood red down the road,
across the shoulder, and towards the beach. There, the dot
trailed up the trunk of a banana tree and out onto the
thick teardrop of a leaf: "Follow, follow, follow," said
the little red dot.
Mulder followed.
Down the beach, past the rocks, beyond the boardwalk, down
where the shells made a prickly carpet on the sand.
"This way," said the little red dot. "Follow, follow,
follow."
Mulder followed.
His feet sunk deeper with each step, his legs burning with
the effort.
Finally, after a stretch that felt both like forever and no
time at all, he found her at the water's edge, staring out
at the ocean. Her flame-red hair blew in tangles across her
face, her chin tilted to the sky, her eyes closed. She
seemed relatively unharmed, for which Mulder was eternally
grateful, and she clutched tightly to the hand of a small
child.
Relief flowed through Mulder, and he called, "Scully?"
But when the child turned and Scully did not, Mulder found
himself staring into a pair of familiar Scully-blue eyes, a
chin shaped just like his, and a nose that had surely come
from his mother.
"Oh," whispered Mulder, his skin suddenly much too tight.
"Oh." Dumbfounded, Mulder continued to stare, and for a
second, he saw himself, his lips pressed in gratitude to an
infant's pale, downy head. "Oh." The scent of talcum powder
and cotton and the memory of Scully's gentle lullabies in
the breeze all around. "Oh, God."
In a hoarse voice, he managed, "My little boy." Tears
caught in his throat, and he reached out again to Scully.
"Our baby. Scully, it's him."
---
Scully heard him call for her as if from below the surface
of the ocean - a rippling sound, a vague memory.
Mulder, she thought, absently. Come watch the ocean with
us.
"Scully," Mulder was saying, "Scully, please look at me."
Why couldn't he hear her?
Scully's soul reached out for him, whispering, " You came,"
as her fingers brushed his, as the sky above them exploded
with pink and orange and lavender. "You came for us,
Mulder."
And then Mulder's arms were tight around her, his lips
pressed to her temple. The beach fell away and they were
again in her apartment watching the sun rise together,
their child cradled between them, as Mulder brokenly
whispered promises, vivid landscapes, things that could
never, ever be: "We'll go away, we'll have wonderful
adventures, we'll leave this all behind, we'll travel the
world, just the three of us, Scully."
The memory gave way as the little boy reached for Mulder,
and suddenly, Scully felt something hot and cold, up and
down, right and left, inside and out, pass through her,
cramping quickly in her abdomen. With a choked sob, Scully
grabbed tight to her stomach and let go of the boy, and the
boy began to fade, his mouth moving slowly and carefully
around words Scully couldn't hear.
"No," she managed. "No, not yet! I can't hear what he's
saying --" She gazed desperately up at Mulder, whose tears
were in her hair. "Mulder, I can't --"
But in another moment the sky erupted in silver and black,
and the beach fell away, and language disappeared
altogether. Her world, the shaking insides of that snow-
globe, had shrunk to the size of she and Mulder, a blanket
of space and earth and stars moving through them and into
them, as Scully saw herself, fifteen years younger,
covering her head with her hands while the radio screamed
and the world went white and everything stopped.
---
END part 5
Feedback warmly accepted and cuddled at:
jaimerockifies@yahoo.com
Title: Sandcastles for Pele (part 4 of 4)
Author: JL (formerly JaimeLyn)
Rating: PG-13
Category: post IWTB, MSR
Disclaimer: Apparently, I'm allowed to play with them but I
can't keep them. Damn it. (Do action figures count?)
Anyway. Please don't sue.
Summary: As they play a waiting game, Mulder and Scully
call upon the past and embark on their own little
adventure.
Author's note: This is the post-movie fic I wanted to write
after realizing that "I Want to Believe" might be the last
time we'd ever see Mulder and Scully. And as with most X-
Files endings, I thought there were a few untied ends that
I really wanted to tackle. So this is the teaser for the
actual completed story, which is still in editing and
should be posted officially to ephemeral in the next two
weeks or so. If I had to describe it, I would say that it
is... not at all what you think it is. Take from that what
you will.
Thanks to Alyssa, and to B - for her and humor, mainly.
"Aloha mai no, aloha aku;
o ka huhu ka mea e ola `ole ai."
- When love is given, love should be returned;
anger is the thing that gives no life.
- ancient Hawaiian proverb
Sandcastles for Pele, Part 4
By JL
---
Kings Hwy Intersection
2:10am
Tree.
This was the first thought in Mulder's head as he opened
his eyes and peered out the windshield. Wide and thick and
dark and too dangerously close for comfort, a Kokia tree
towered over the rental car without touching it; tiny,
blood red buds and petals lay scattered like candy hearts
over the undamaged windshield, and more still drifted off
the branches.
Flower showers.
This was the second thought in Mulder's head, and
admittedly it was dumber than the first, although no less
observant. The third was that his head hurt, as if someone
had been poking at it repeatedly with a fork, which was
when he also realized that his chin was actually resting on
the airbag.
The airbag.
Scully.
Scully was his entire fourth thought, and she also figured
significantly into thoughts five through nine hundred.
Mulder twisted towards her as she raised her head and
stared out the windshield, frowning as if seeing Mars
orbiting backwards around Earth. She pushed back on the
airbag and turned to face him, his name unspoken in her
eyes as she asked, "Are you okay?"
Mulder breathed in relief, and nodded. "I think so." He
pushed back on his airbag, sat up, and leaned towards
Scully, brushing his knuckles across her warm cheek. He
searched her eyes. "You?"
"Fine." Scully took a breath. "What happened?"
Mulder shook his head and inexplicably thought of mornings
settled at the kitchen table at Oxford, hung-over and
stoned, and slurping cereal out of coffee mugs. "Is today
Thursday or Sunday?" his roommate would ask, bleary eyed,
as he frowned and tapped at the face of his watch.
"The last thing I remember is you telling me to look out."
Mulder frowned, unable to dig any further. He glanced out
onto the pavement, where a gigantic tree branch had fallen
across both lanes. Lighting streaked across the sky and the
branch lit up in halftones, twigs sticking out in bends and
twists like the fingers of a cartoon witch. Mulder
whistled and nodded his chin at her. "It's a good thing
you've got a keen eye, Scully."
"Yeah," said Scully, with a peculiar expression on her
face. "Good thing."
Mulder's brow arched. "You don't sound convinced."
Scully tilted her head. "No." Her brows knitted. "I'm
not. You?"
"No."
Scully nodded slowly. "Well..." She squinted, her eyes
glazed with a familiar looking dance of mental
calculations. "The airbags must have deployed early and
with too much force. Presumably, we were knocked
unconscious just as the car began to skid, which would
account for the lack of memory and the disorientation."
Mulder nodded. "Perhaps." He leaned against the headrest
and worked out the kinks in his neck. He examined the
unlit dash, the stationary windshield wipers, and exchanged
a wordless glance with Scully. Taking one good deep breath
for luck, Mulder turned the key in the ignition, and the
engine roared easily to life. The windshield wipers
snapped into position, the air conditioner whooshed back
on, the clock blinked: 2:10, and static screamed forth from
the car stereo. Scully winced and covered her ears, and
Mulder tilted his head, his body slightly out of sync, just
a degree or two off balance. His gaze shifted from left to
right, like a dog still unsure of his surroundings, and he
flipped the radio off.
"This is weird," he declared. Then he undid his seatbelt
and got out of the car.
"Mulder?"
Scully scrambled out after him and followed him into the
grass, down the shoulder and out onto the pavement. Rain
pushed sideways at them, thick with dirt and sand and grass
and leaves, and Mulder shielded his eyes as he searched the
road - for what, exactly, he had no idea. But in his head,
he felt a strange tugging: this way, a soundless voice
urged: follow, follow, follow.
Mulder followed.
Across the pavement, around the fallen branch, just past
the sign for King's Hwy, Mulder followed until he was
standing at the center of an orange "X" painted onto the
concrete. For a single bizarre moment he saw himself,
compass in hand, shouting in gratitude at the sky,
spreading his arms wide like wings, as Scully looked on,
young and soaked and utterly perplexed.
"What is it?" Scully came up behind him and touched his
shoulder.
Mulder pointed at the ground under his feet.
"Okay," she said slowly. "What's so strange about -" She
stopped talking. Closed her eyes. Opened them slowly.
"You think this is somehow not a coincidence."
Mulder rubbed his temples. He felt restless, filled from
head to toe with a very strange nervous energy. "I don't
know. I don't recall having seen it before, but I don't
think I've paid enough attention at any point while on this
road. I've, ah," he scratched water from his scalp, "I've
been preoccupied."
Scully's expression softened. "So have I." She squeezed
his forearm, her hand slick with rain.
Mulder sighed and endeavored to put it out of his head: the
bright little X-ray cluster no bigger than his fingernail,
the trips to her apartment on days when her treatment had
overpowered her. Together, they would sit cross-legged on
her bed, playing Gin and hurling philosophical questions
and obscure facts and double-entendres back and forth until
inevitably, Scully called his bluff and won the hand.
Sometimes, they would touch one another as she trudged
knee-deep into some Scullylogue about rapid aging or the
Butterfly Effect - her palm fluttering against his
collarbone, his fingers tapping against the soft arc of her
knee. That year, they'd touched five thousand four-hundred
and forty-six separate times. Mulder had silently counted,
wondering always in the back of his mind whether this next
touch would end up being the last.
"What are you looking for?" Scully's hand slid down
Mulder's arm, stopping only for a moment at the base of his
pulse, where her thumb lingered, rapping the beat out
against his skin. "What are you hoping to find?"
"I'm not sure," mumbled Mulder, and he brought his wrist to
his face, examining his watch, recalling the late hour, and
how tomorrow would likely be spent: scurrying from hospital
to hospital, getting second and third and fourth opinions.
He frowned and tapped at the glass face, trying to get the
hands to move. "Scully," he said, "What time do you have?"
Scully let go of his hand and held her wrist close to her
eyes. "Two-oh-four am," she said. "Why?"
Something niggled at Mulder, poked at his brain as if with
a long, pointed stick. "Scully, what was the time on the
clock in the car?"
"I don't know, I didn't exactly - " Scully set one hand on
her hip. "Why are you so concerned with this?" She eyed
him suspiciously. "What are you thinking?"
He was thinking of rainstorms and dark highways, of nine
minutes lost, of time as a spring, or as something that
could perhaps be inverted, turned inside-out like a
sweater, and then, once smoothed and clean and new again,
folded and put back correctly.
He was thinking of the prickly wet sand by the ocean, and
how the air at the shore always smelled of salt and coconut
and rain.
He was thinking of the first time he'd ever seen Scully
breast-feed, and the look on her face when he'd asked
whether there was a two-drink minimum.
He was thinking of an old parlor trick he'd learned in
college, one that he'd tried to teach Scully as they lay in
bed atop her covers, fed up with Gin. The idea was to
flick the card up into your sleeve as another was pulled
from the deck - easy enough, it seemed - although Scully
had been hopeless - no matter how hard she tried, she'd
just keep flinging the card the wrong way, right off her
thumb and onto the floor, one after another.
"Mulder?" Scully touched his arm. "What is it?"
"Magic," answered Mulder. He turned his face up into the
rain, where he could examine the trajectory of droplets
hurtling towards him. "I was just thinking of magic."
"Magic?" Scully backed off slightly. "Why, exactly?"
Mulder sighed. "I don't quite know." He frowned. "But my
watch is dead. And ah, I think yours may be a little slow.
That's not exactly textbook weirdness, but I don't get why
the airbags deployed if we didn't actually hit anything."
He touched her arm, trying to ground himself, trying to
think, but only pleasant tingles seemed to fire back and
forth inside his brain. "I feel strange, Scully. Do you
feel strange?"
Scully looked pained. "Mulder, I was just knocked
unconscious while trying to bring a sack lunch to a
volcano. And now I have a slight powder burn on the side of
my head from the airbag." She sighed. "Yes, to answer
your question, I do feel strange. There's another word I
can use to describe it, though, if you'd like."
Mulder shook his head. "No." He played with the wet
fabric of her sleeve, pressed the pad of his thumb to her
elbow. "I think you know what I mean."
"No, I don't think I do." Scully's gaze was cautious, as
if she had no idea whether to turn right or left at the
fork of a dangerous intersection. "Mulder, what are you
really thinking?"
"At this very moment?"
Scully rolled her tongue in her cheek. "No," she said,
"Yesterday morning."
Hands on hips, she stood under a diagonal spray of petals
and rain, her hair matted, half-stuck to her neck and half-
curled out in knots and tangles. Her oversized T-shirt
clung awkwardly to her, soaked through and soiled with
flecks of leaf and twig. With a grunt, she pulled at the
hem of the shirt, which only made it more awkward, and
finally, she swiped the back of her hand across her face,
flinging the water off like a dog, demanding, "Well?"
"Love is weird," Mulder finally said.
Scully made a face. "What the hell does that m-- "
He was dragging her forward and kissing her before she
could utter a protest, her surprise swept up like a pebble
in the water by the tip of his tongue and the insistent
press of his lips. As her arms circled his neck, colors
burst out along the backs of Mulder's eyelids until all he
could see was the girl he'd first met, strong and indignant
and rigid and insisting to know who the hell he thought he
was, implying that time could just disappear when time
didn't work that way.
When he pulled back, Scully's wet hair tangled across both
their shoulders. She paused to catch her breath, and
managed, "Oh."
Mulder smiled and brushed water from her cheeks with the
tips of his thumb and index finger. Sometimes, when he
considered the evolution of the past fifteen years, he
imagined destiny as a silent third party, as something that
had cleverly distracted him, tossing aliens and
conspiracies and lost time and abductions into their path,
meanwhile allowing the fragile balance of love to sneak up
on them, even at the beginning, in the rain, in the
graveyard, or on the highway - just he and that young,
unafraid Dana Scully. In his imagination, she would always
be pacing in a downpour, always declaring with a surprising
and hungry tone that he was crazy, that this whole fucking
thing was crazy, all the while her eyes flashing excitement
in a thousand different shades of blue.
"You do realize that wasn't a real answer," said Scully,
looking slightly dizzied.
Mulder nodded. "That's because I'm not even sure there's a
real question."
Scully's eyes searched his, her steady gaze rooting around
through the spaces between his words for their correct
meaning. When finally she seemed to have it, her knuckles
grazed his jaw. "Mulder," she said gently. "What is it
you want to believe?"
Mulder pulled her close and kissed her earlobe. He was
dirty and soaking wet, and somehow he felt both young again
and incredibly old. "You know what I want to believe," he
said, and kissed the place on her neck where her heartbeat
echoed. "What do you want to believe?"
Scully frowned, seeming lost for a moment in thought. She
took a few deep breaths, her blue eyes glazed with
deliberation.
"The sandwich," she finally said, jerking her chin in the
direction of the "X." Her cheeks were warm with color, her
determination pried open like the stubborn walls of a
clamshell, releasing from its dark confines a pearl of
hope; it was the look of someone who desperately wanted to
complete the journey, someone who had turned her face to
the sky in an unconventional sort of prayer. The
significance of this passed between them without words,
like a private hand-shake, and Scully finished, shyly, "I
think we should leave it."
"Ah," said Mulder, delightedly, "Very well played."
Scully, looking slightly embarrassed, fiddled with the wet
neckline of his T-shirt.
"Just don't tell me you actually believe in this nonsense
now," Mulder continued. "The storm is bad enough - I don't
think I can drive us back through Flying Pig."
Scully's eyebrow arched. "Who, me?"
She tickled the hair at the back of his neck, and pulled
him backwards with her towards the car. Rain continued to
pummel them like pebbles, prickling at their skin, as
Scully made her way back up the road, down the shoulder and
into the grass, and opened the backdoor, where she pulled
out a tiny red cooler filled with food.
Mulder's eyebrow arched as he watched. "Need any help,
Scully?"
Scully shook her head. With a look of mischief, she
wandered past him, back into the road, around the fallen
tree branch, to the foot of the Kokia tree and the sign for
the highway, and bent to her knees, dropping the cooler
onto the 'X.' She rose slowly to her feet and clapped her
hands satisfactorily, soaking wet and ridiculous, as she
smiled and angled her face slightly into the rain, up at
the sky. Out loud she said, "You know, your theories just
grow more and more out of touch with reality as time goes
on, Mulder."
--
Kauai Veterans Memorial Hospital
Waimea, HI
2:01pm
The windows at the hospital stretched from floor to
ceiling, the world beyond so bright and clear and vivid
Scully could almost imagine she stood instead at the edge
of a tropical jungle; she was someplace else, perhaps
perched on the cusp of some unknown adventure, just she and
Mulder together. Not in a waiting room. Not back here,
not again.
In the years following her return to medicine, Scully had
begun to develop a much friendlier relationship with ERs
and waiting rooms, a sort of grudging truce after so many
years spent groggy and battered in one ER or another. Even
now, if she truly wanted, she could still capture the
essence of that strange, dark period: walls white as
January; the antiseptic harmony of EEG monitors and air
compressors; the horrible stillness of a body so used to
motion, so suddenly at rest.
When Mulder had first brought her to their new home,
leaning her possessively against the doorjamb so he could
kiss her unhurried, Scully had vowed never to let them go
back here again. Their work on the X-Files had once been
beloved to them both, but it had beaten them and stripped
them bare; it had left them in one hospital bed after
another, too often tied to a respirator, too often waiting
to die. In the end, when the work had finally swallowed
all else but Mulder, Scully had realized that in the end,
Mulder was all she'd ever wanted anyway.
And she'd vowed to never, never go back to Before.
And she wouldn't.
Not ever.
Mulder tapped her on the shoulder. "Hey, you want
something from the vending machine?"
Scully shook her head.
"All right. I'll be back." He chucked his thumb in the
direction of the outer lobby, gave her fingers a quick
squeeze, and disappeared down the corridor.
"I'll be here," whispered Scully to nobody. She closed her
eyes and tasted rain on her tongue from the night before.
The drive had been exhausting, in all ways.
After they'd returned, both had been too prickly and too
starry-eyed to sleep. Both had been humming with nervous
energy, with the magnetic pulse of something building,
something raw and anxious that begged for release. Without
words, they had stripped nude, their skin slick with rain,
and crawled up onto the bed together. Mulder had turned
out the lights and Scully lit a candle. They'd made love
slowly amongst the flickers and shadows until nothing else
remained of the world but the pleasure of such acts.
Afterwards, they'd lain facing one another, Scully tracing
her secrets onto his warm skin.
"This is all that matters," Mulder had promised. "Whatever
else happens, we'll deal."
Early that morning, they'd watched the sunrise together
from the floor beside the bed, her nude legs crisscrossing
his. Mulder had pulled the comforter down and draped it
around them both, and they'd sat skin to skin in the
changing half-light of the room, churning and restless and
watching the remnants of the storm. Mulder had held her
close and kissed her hair, and Scully, understanding a fear
as great as hers, had promised him that she would live,
that she would go to every hospital on the entire island if
she had to, if that's what it took -
"I'm sorry, is someone sitting here?"
A woman with sad brown eyes pointed to the chair next to
Scully.
"No." Scully gestured at the chair. "Go ahead."
The woman nodded, "Thank you," and sat, clutching a small
stuffed rabbit and a wad of tissues. She handed Scully the
triage clipboard with her free hand, and finished, "I'm
sorry, I... I think I got it wet." She sniffled and
swatted at the medical questionnaire.
"It's okay," said Scully, thinking briefly of Christian
Feuron's mother, Margaret, the way she'd wander the halls
of Our Lady of Sorrows when Christian was in surgery,
absently picking up magazines, rolling and unrolling them,
folding them in fourths and then setting them back,
apologizing to anyone who might later pick them up: "I'm
sorry, I think I bent it a little," her eyes filled with
tears and her mind far away. "I think it's still readable,
though," she'd murmur, "It's still okay..." Once, Scully
had found Mrs. Feuron just this way, rolling and unrolling
a copy of Men's Health as she apologized blankly to someone
who had already gotten up and left.
"I'm just waiting for my husband," the woman said blankly,
as if Scully had asked her a question. "He's still signing
the papers, making all the arrangements... I couldn't go
back in there, I couldn't go back in the, the - " her voice
broke.
Scully took a deep breath. For years, she'd been fluent in
the language of grief. She touched her hand lightly to the
woman's back, seeing in her mind the nervous faces of
Margaret and Blair. "I'm so sorry," said Scully quietly.
The woman nodded, stifled a sob, and looked up into
Scully's eyes, her thick brows pinching. She studied
Scully for a long, uncomfortable moment before asking, "Do
I know you?"
Scully shook her head.
The woman sighed. She looked a bit embarrassed, and waved
the hand with the tissue as if trying to lighten the
moment. "Sorry again, I..." Her lower lip trembled. "I
just..." She bit her lip. "I just lost my baby."
Scully nodded sadly, but said nothing.
"It doesn't make any sense," said the woman, as if she'd
been in the middle of this very sentence for a long time.
"He was just this wonderful little boy, and Mark and I -
imagine this - we actually thought there might be something
wrong with him because, because there was nothing wrong
with him. Isn't that the most ridiculous thing?" The
woman sniffled. "Then one day, he was on the playground at
school and he just collapsed and the doctors said that he,
that it, that it wasn't good. I guess I was just hoping
that this vacation..." She clutched the rabbit to her chin,
pressed her lips against it. "The Make A Wish people have
this saying, apparently, and this whole vacation, my son,
he, he was really quite hopeful, even yesterday when we
realized, when we knew that he..."
Scully swallowed back the urge to run from this
conversation, imagining an empty crib, empty bottles in the
cupboard, a stroller, a car-seat, clothes and books and
toys, things that would no longer have use in a life
without a child. She knew what it was like to see the
world changed in these ways, to look around, to feel
steeped in the evidence that as a mother, she had failed.
"He finally went paragliding," said the woman, brokenly,
seeming desperate to fill the silence. "He loved airplanes
and spaceships and helicopters - anything that shot you
into the sky. All he ever wanted to do was fly, his whole
room is decorated in airplanes, all sorts of helicopters
and fighter planes and, um, anyway, the - the Make a Wish
people, they made him this little paper airplane for his
room, and they painted this saying on the side -"
Scully said nothing.
"Sometimes, the most powerful thing is a wish." The woman
sniffled. "It's a very pretty little lie, anyway."
Scully, not knowing how to respond but understanding,
instinctively, that she should, squeezed the woman's
shoulder.
"Twelve hours ago, my baby was alive," said the woman,
clutching tight to the stuffed bunny. "Twelve hours ago,
he was warm and real. It's ridiculous, isn't it? To blame
yourself for the world's cruelties?"
Scully swallowed. She took a short breath, imagined
Mulder's arms tight around her, his lips in her hair as she
sobbed and sobbed into his shoulder, in the darkness of a
ratty old motel room in New Mexico. Coming to a decision,
a sort of finality, the period at the end of a sentence,
Scully said, "I lost a child once, too. A son."
The woman gazed up at Scully, her eyes red and puffy and
filled with understanding; unspoken sadness passed between
them, a secret shared between comrades on the battlefield.
The woman tried to smile again. She cleared her throat and
held out a hand. "Roberta," she said. "Roberta Van
DeKamp."
Scully shook it, answering, "Dana Scully."
Mulder came up behind her and pressed his palm to the
center of her back. "The doctor's on her way." He chucked
a thumb in the direction of the corridor. "She said to go
ahead and wait in her office."
Scully nodded, patted absently at Mulder's hand.
Roberta smiled weakly. "Thanks for listening, at any
rate," she said. "Ah, and lots of luck with --" She waved
a hand, "whatever you're here for."
Scully nodded, answered, "Thank you."
Roberta ran her fingers over the face of the bunny, and in
her mind, Scully saw herself, eight months pregnant,
running her hands over the face of Mulder's antique doll.
As she turned to go, Scully paused and crouched low next to
Roberta's chair.
She thought of the space under the bed at home, the small
shoebox filled with the things she could never again look
at but never bring herself to throw away: a small white
rattle, a bib, a washcloth, an antique cloth doll.
During that frightening in-between time, that space which
had existed before Special Agent Dana Scully could become
Dr. Dana Scully, when she and Mulder had lived out of
motels and the backseats of cars, when Mulder had been
forced to grow a beard, when Scully had been forced to wear
a wig, when the world had been a place of sharp teeth and
claws, a place of no possessions and no identities, these
were the things Scully had wanted to take with her.
Breaking back into her old apartment, finding it had been
ransacked, rushing into her bedroom, digging carelessly
through her shoes and blouses and medical journals and
overturned drawers as Mulder begged her to hurry, to work
quickly, the white stripe of the moon at his back. When
finally she'd found what she'd been looking for, a small
overturned shoebox that had been left at the back corner of
her closet, she'd sat on the floor with it for a moment,
turning over the little white rattle in her hands. Mulder,
who had been keeping watch by the front door, wandered into
the bedroom and sat with her in the dark stillness. He
picked up the doll and ran his hand over its face.
Going back in search of the past was an indulgence, and it
had brought forth an endless longing, a bottomless well of
hurt. Five minutes was all they'd allowed for it, and then
they were gone, two black shadows disappearing into the
night, as quiet and invisible as if they'd never existed.
The shoebox was all they'd carried.
Scully placed her hand over Roberta's. "You'll live
through it," she said. "Whatever else finds you, remember
that. And at least you'll have a place to start."
Roberta Van De Kamp smiled appreciatively. She squeezed
Scully's hand and the strength, borrowed, went both ways.
"Thank you," said Roberta.
"You're welcome," said Scully.
"Ready?" asked Mulder. His hand protective on her
shoulder.
Scully stood. "Yes," she said. "I'm ready now."
--
Despite having chased monsters for years with the FBI,
there existed only a handful of instances in Fox Mulder's
life that he could recall being truly, physically stunned.
The evening he returned from deep regression hypnosis
therapy, his sister's screams echoing in his ears; Mulder
had almost walked into the path of a bus that day, turning
only when he had reached the other side of the street,
realizing as if from the bottom of a deep pool that someone
was screaming at him, demanding to know if he was crazy,
the first of many who would ask that very question - this
first one, a D.C. bus driver. But Mulder just kept on
walking, had gotten all the way home, in fact, before he'd
recalled having left his car in the therapist's parking
lot.
"Can you repeat... that last part?" said Scully to the
doctor, her eyes alarmingly wide and unblinking.
Mulder was sure something had been said, something about
Scully's health - he just couldn't seem to recall anything
beyond opening the door, sitting next to Scully, and
feeling as if he were still lying across a wooden stump in
the snowy tundra of West Virginia, waiting for the axe to
fall.
"Examine the results yourself," said Doctor Owens, an older
woman with short, graying brown hair and a hard jaw-line.
She handed Scully a copy of her charts.
Mulder's stomach began to do strange, unpleasant things as
Scully snatched up the results and flipped from the first
to the second page, her lips moving silently as she read,
her cheeks getting paler and paler. "This is impossible,"
she said. "This absolutely isn't possible."
Mulder looked sideways at her, for a moment recalling the
early days of their partnership. Scully standing like a
sentry in the dim, metal cavern of an autopsy bay, her hand
set on her hip, the other on the edge of a stainless steel
table. "You're suggesting this woman shed her skin," she
was saying, "That she actually became a new person." And
then, shaking her head, the wisp of a smile on her lips,
her chin dipping to hide it, declaring, "Impossible. What
you're saying, it's impossible."
"Dr. Scully," said the doctor, who looked as pained as any
of Scully's doctors had ever looked during the many medical
crises of her life, "I can keep repeating the results of
the many, many, many, many -- " the doctor sighed, "Many
tests you asked us to do, but those results are not going
to change."
Scully wrung her hands. "Have you reviewed my medical
history?"
"Yes," said the doctor. Her brows furrowed, nose twitched,
as if tasting something awful. "And frankly, I think you
should sue for malpractice."
Mulder chuckled nervously. "What about global conspiracy?"
Scully shot him a dirty look.
Dr. Owens continued to stare blankly, as if the both of
them had caused her great pain.
"I've been to several doctors," said Scully, her voice
getting smaller and smaller. "Surely, you can see that on
my chart."
"Yes," said Dr. Owens. "And I wish I knew what to say
about that."
Scully looked down at her lap. "You're not the only one."
Mulder took her hand, not knowing what else to do, feeling
his ears prick, his skin tingling. The science of a thing
had always been Scully's department; she needed to poke at
something, open it up, examine its insides and hold it up
to the light before she could trust in it. For years she'd
done that with him - prodding at him with words, examining
the meaning in between each sentence, wondering at what
made him tick, testing him in small ways. Mulder had
always accepted this elemental need for proof in Scully,
although he often wondered if Scully had ever accepted it
within herself. Making leaps, believing blindly - these
areas she left to him, trusting him to pull her just far
enough off the ground so she could see it from a safe
distance. Meanwhile, Mulder had always searched for
miracles like other men searched for religion, and during
their time together as partners, he had presented these
miracles and unexplained things to her as gifts. But for
Scully, it could never be enough. She'd always needed
more.
The doctor sighed. "Dr. Scully." She paused and touched
Scully's shaky hand. "Dana," she amended. "You do realize
I'm trying to tell you that you're perfectly healthy."
She jutted her chin in Mulder's direction. "Perhaps
consider your husband's global conspiracy theory -- if that
makes it any easier for you."
"I..." Scully glanced at Mulder. "We're not-- "
"My wife," interrupted Mulder, tasting the strangeness of
that word, his heart moving irregularly at the sound of it.
"My wife... is much better at debunking my theories than
considering them." He looked at Scully meaningfully and
finished, "But she usually knows the truth when she sees
it."
Scully shot him a hard look, but said nothing, instead
returning her hungry gaze to once again review her charts.
Her face got whiter each time she read them. Eventually,
at this rate, she would turn the color of notebook paper.
Scully gazed up at the doctor, her eyes wide with
disbelief. "Are you sure these couldn't have been switched
or tampered with?"
Dr. Owens startled. "I'm sorry?"
Mulder sighed. "Scully."
Scully whirled to face him. "Mulder." She held up the
charts and smacked the ultrasound. "You know as well as I
that this is impossible."
Dr. Owens cleared her throat. "I assure you, it's not."
When Scully said nothing in reply, Dr. Owens continued,
"Once more from the top, and this time with feeling."
She angled her glasses on the perch of her nose, and read
off her clipboard: "Your CBC, LFT, and metabolic panels
came back normal - FSH within normal levels, LH levels
good."
She flipped to the next page, continued, "MRI came back
clean, your X-Rays are perfect, and you have no abrasions
or cuts in your sinus cavity, nothing that would account
for a nosebleed, and especially not a nasopharyngeal mass."
Mulder squeezed Scully's hand.
The doctor took another breath, flipped the page, and
continued, "Your bone density test seems to indicate that
you are not only healthy, but you somehow have the bone
strength of a woman fifteen years your junior."
She licked her index finger and flipped the page again.
"Your ultrasounds confirmed the presence of developing
follicles, which speaks well for the condition of your
ovaries, so I can also tell you beyond the shadow of a
doubt that you are not in any way infertile. And as a
matter of fact, in your unusually healthy, age-defying
condition, you should have no problems - either conceiving
or carrying. And if you're going to insist on not believing
me, as I have repeated this to you three times already, I
will make additional copies of your charts, X-rays,
ultrasounds, and MRIs to take with you or fax to wherever
you'd like. You're also welcome to continue studying the
ultrasound yourself. But I assure you, Dr. Scully, nobody
has tampered with, removed, stolen, switched, or otherwise
pulled some soap opera trick with your results."
Mulder felt slightly dizzy. In his mind, the unmistakable
portrait of an infant began to form, at first a collection
of black and white cells, a union of two unfinished things;
like colors colliding in an oil-slick, the union swirled
into something tangible, something with fingers and toes
and eyelashes, something part him, part Scully, that made
him feel as if he still straddled a high tree above the
woods and his house and the lake. Could it be possible?
Could it truly be possible?
Scully sprung up from her chair as if someone had
catapulted her, and Mulder jumped in alarm.
"I - we -- my -- " she shook her head. "My husband and I,
we need a second opinion." She turned to Mulder, a manic
glint in her eye. "How many hospitals on this island?"
Mulder's sudden inability to envision anything but how to
best make a baby with Scully was affecting the reasoning
center of his brain - a condition Scully would likely argue
didn't need exacerbating. "This island or all of Hawaii?"
He glanced at his watch. "We could go alphabetically."
Scully turned to the doctor. "You wouldn't happen to have
a map, would you?"
Dr. Owens dropped wearily into her chair. "The two of you
are inexplicable."
Scully had no response for that. Her hands laced and
unlaced in front of her, and she stared in askance at
Mulder. Mulder, however, could think of nothing to do for
her but start the car and point it wherever she instructed.
In these small, frustrating ways, they were still
prisoners, still huddled in the corner of an electrified
cage, still afraid to move, afraid to believe the door had
really opened for them. Just what in the hell would it
take?
Dr. Owens perched her chin on her palm, her expression
unreadable. "A word of advice, if I may?"
Mulder and Scully exchanged wordless glances.
"As I was saying," said Dr. Owens, "You're more than
welcome to go wandering up and down the coast getting
second, third, fourth, and fifth opinions for whatever
strange reasons you deem necessary. I have no doubt
you'll get the same results each time, although if the hunt
for those results is what gets you off, then by all means,
knock yourselves out."
The doctor took off her glasses, pinched the bridge of her
nose, and leaned forward. In a voice edged with her years
of pronouncing far worse news, she said, "But do me a favor
-- just humor me, just for the hell of it, okay?" She
leaned towards Scully as if conversing over a cafeteria
table. "If you're not going to listen to the plumber when
she tells you that the bathroom works just fine, then at
least turn on the damned shower and test it out for
yourselves." She smiled wryly and patted Scully's hand,
jutting her chin in Mulder's direction. "At least I would,
if I was married to that."
And for the first time since they had entered the doctor's
office, Scully laughed. Her full-throated sound, edged
with traces of disbelief, filled Mulder with a thread of
hope. He blushed and shrugged at Dr. Owens, and held
tightly to that thread as he tangled his fingers with
Scully's and kissed her knuckles.
"Too late," whispered Scully - so softly it was nearly
inaudible, "Too late." And then she laughed again. She
laughed until she cried, until she was laughing and crying
and apologizing to the doctor and blushing the color of
Kokia petals.
In his mind, Mulder once again saw the beach, endless and
white, his hands clutching at a child's, the two of them
digging in the sand. Overhead, a sunset spilled into the
blue, the colors changing like the liquid insides of a mood
ring. Streaks of pink and orange and lavender gave way to
a voice, just the faintest whisper of a lullaby. And then
she was everywhere, filling the beach and the air and the
ocean and all that lived inside of him.
Scully.
His Scully.
She would live.
In the bright daylight of the room, this was all that
mattered.
---
Kahoolawe, HI
February 1st
2:01am
The sky was still at its darkest, the night cradling those
last precious moments before dawn, when a red light
appeared at the door of the master bedroom, flickering like
the point of a laser, like the blood red sun pushing
against the horizon. It skirted quickly up the door,
seeming to almost wink, and then it whispered its siren
song, 'Follow,' before slipping out like a thief down the
hall.
Fox Mulder watched from the comfort of his bed, his fingers
tracing abstract patterns on the soft skin of Dana Scully's
nude back. She remained still, silent, swept up in sleep.
Mulder rose up out of bed and followed.
Down the hall, just past the bathroom, around the corner,
through the door that was always left open just a crack,
Mulder followed.
He paused in the doorway and looked out over a child's bed,
the pink and green sheets and pillows dotted with flowers,
an explosion of dolls and toys at its foot and splayed
across the comforter. Underneath the rumpled blanket, a
tiny, miraculous little girl lay sleeping, her skin pink
with dreams, her hands under her chin, her dark brown hair
matted against her forehead.
The little red light hovered just a breath above the bed,
where it winked "goodbye" and danced back down the wall, to
the floor, and finally disappeared, happily, into the heart
of a tiny nightlight.
Warm arms slipped around Mulder's stomach from behind. A
chin pressed against his shoulder, familiar and scented
with lavender soap, cotton, talcum powder and sweat. She
kissed the bare skin of his shoulder blade. "Last time you
were this engrossed, it turned out you were reading the
Adult Video News."
Mulder 's chuckle came out more as a sigh, and he leaned
back against her, heavy with exhaustion. "How you
feeling, Doc?"
"Pregnant," she said, the evidence of this very thing
pressed round and hard, like a snow-globe, against Mulder's
spine; a slight rippling just under the surface tickled at
his back, drawing a startled gasp from Scully.
"Insomniac," she muttered, her hand between his back and
her stomach, rubbing.
"Amazing," said Mulder, drawing Scully to his side. He
tilted his chin in the direction of the bed, of their
daughter, cupped protectively in the palm of sleep. "That
kid could sleep through a volcanic eruption."
Scully kissed the hollow of Mulder's collarbone, her palm
against his chest. She murmured, in a voice thick with the
early morning hour, "She feels safe."
Mulder turned to Scully and smiled. "Ah. Is that all it
takes?" He brushed her hair away from her face, hooked it
back over her ears. "Say, Scully, how do you feel about
watching the sunrise from the very glamorous perch of a
second hand rocking chair?" He tilted his chin in the
direction of the window, which looked out onto a garden of
tropical flowers, thick pillars of trees topped with
umbrellas of leaves and petals, and just beyond, miles of
beach.
Their day had been spent out in the thick of this beauty,
by the edge of the ocean, building castles and cars and
UFOs out of sand, and watching them dissolve back into the
sea. Mulder had taken the day off from his classes at the
university, and Scully had taken the day off from the
clinic, and the both of them had sat out by the water,
where in the distance Pele's volcano loomed tall over the
island, a guard on watch. Scully had taken their daughter
by the hand, pointing out coral and seaweed and anemones
nestled between the rocks, and Mulder had gone on and on,
telling story after story - some real, some made up - about
fairies and mermaids and ghosts and princesses and two
renegade FBI agents, and Scully had laughed at him, their
hands tightly entwined and swinging amiably. "Mulder,
you're crazy," she'd said.
"Yes," he'd agreed, "Old news."
Scully sighed heavily against him and Mulder held her close
as the night slowly broke.
Reds and oranges spilled in through the window, and Scully
leaned up and pressed her lips over his. A third heartbeat
echoed in the spaces between their kisses, quick and
hummingbird-like, the excited fluttering of a familiar
soul. Mulder brushed his palm over the hard center of her
pregnant belly, and pressed his forehead against hers.
"Love you," said Scully, her hand on his chest.
"That's good," he murmured. "Because I was thinking we
could all hang out here awhile, just like this, just the
four of us."
Scully pressed her palm to his, entwined their fingers.
"You're on," she said, and tugged him in the direction of
the window, towards the light.
---
END
Author's note:
Thanks for sticking with this piece -- I hope you had as
much fun as I did! This was the story I really wanted to
tell after IWTB. I'd always felt that the most literary
ending to the X-Files would be a union between Mulder and
Scully - and also, that this union should produce kids. So
this story then became my quest to give Scully back what
she'd lost: a cross between fertility and the woman she was
before this all started. Anyway. I hope you enjoyed the
ride!
Slight creative liberties were taken with the myths of
Hawaii and the landscape of Kahoolawe - no disrespect
intended. However, all the stories in here are based on
actual myth, and I've included my sources below in case
you're interested.
Apologies if I've gotten the (first) names of William's
adoptive parents wrong - I searched high and low on the net
for them, but could find only the last name. (And couldn't
bring myself to watch the episode again. I'd have to claw
my eyes out first.) But yes, that was them.
Oh, and 2:01 is the time that flashes on the clock in the
Pilot episode, right before the car goes crazy and Mulder
paints an "X" into the concrete.
Thanks again for reading!
Feedback: jaimerockifies@yahoo.com
Resources:
Hawaiian Tiki Gods, Legends, Lore, Folktales and Mythology
http://www.mythichawaii.com/hawaiian-mythology.htm
Pele: Goddess of Fire
http://www.coffeetimes.com/pele.htm
Mythical Realm: Pele: Hawaiian Volcano Goddess
http://www.mythicalrealm.com/legends/pele.html
Sudarsan Recreates Sand Chariots of Balaram Das
http://www.kalingatimes.com
Wikipedia: The Ovarian Follicle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovarian_follicle
Shared Journey: Your Path to Fertility
http://www.sharedjourney.com/test.html
And special thanks to Alyssa for information on blood
tests, ovaries, and ultrasounds
The Pilot (and other episodes), Memento Mori, The X-Files:
I Want to Believe