Timeline
By Gwinne
gwinne@yahoo.com
Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001
Archive: Gossamer, Xemplary, Spookys ok; otherwise, ask
Rating: R
Keywords: MSR
Spoilers: "Orison," "The Amazing Maleeni," "all things,"
"Hollywood A.D.," "Je Souhaite," "Tithonus," "One Son,"
"Agua Mala," "Arcadia," "Emily," "Memento Mori," "Sixth
Extinction," "Pilot," "Requiem," "Per Manum," "This Is Not
Happening," and more
Timeline: set post-TINH; I'm also ignoring any and all
references to Mulder's disappearance happening in May
Disclaimer: Um, if they were mine, the timeline might make
more sense about now. Still, for the rest of season eight,
they belong to CC and the boys at 1013
TIMELINE
A year ago Donnie Pfaster smashed her skull into a mirror.
A year ago she wore a top hat and did magic tricks for
Mulder. A year ago she spent the night in her partner's
arms.
Scully finds herself doing this often, marking time not
forward, according to the red circle in May on her
calendar, but backward, against whatever curious thing she
and Mulder did a year ago, in that marvelous year of
firsts.
A year ago, after the paramedics checked her over; after
Mulder slipped tennis shoes onto her splintered feet; after
he wrapped her in an afghan and led her, like a sleepy,
bleary-eyed child, into his car, he tucked her into his
bed, changed into his own pajamas, and pulled her into his
arms. Then he kissed her chastely on the lips.
Neither of them spoke until morning.
The baby kicks as if to remind her, here I am, and Scully
pulls herself out of the bath slowly, careful not to lose
her balance. It is moments like these when she misses
Mulder most, quiet moments at night or early morning that
they had just begun sharing when he was abducted, moments
they'd make love warm and drowsy from a shared bath. If he
were here, Mulder would wrap her in a towel of the softest
Egyptian cotton and put his hand against the upper curve of
her uterus where the baby taps her greeting in Morse code.
"Do you remember," he would say, "what we were doing a year
ago tonight?" "A year ago tonight?" She would pause,
pretending to think. "Can't say that I do." "Let me," he
would say, stopping to kiss her softly on the lips,
"refresh your memory."
She spends her evenings swathed in Mulder's clothes,
flannel pajamas far too long and worn jerseys far too wide
despite the new bulge of her belly. A year ago she woke to
Mulder's erection pressed against her backside and couldn't
resist the most obvious cliche. "You know, Mulder, it's
really not safe to sleep with your gun."
"Well, Scully." His hand slid from hip to breast. "You
know of a safer place?"
"We'll see about that, Mulder, we'll see."
It was months of tender kisses in motel room doorways and
trading notes on iced tea labels before she found herself
in Mulder's bed again, drawn to his half-clothed body in
the moonlight when she woke with crease marks on her face,
that old blanket draped across her shoulders. She was
touched and frustrated all at once that he'd left her
there, and when she saw him she knew she was on the right
path. She left her jacket on the foot of his bed and lay
down next to him, still in her green sweater and slim black
skirt.
"Take off your clothes," Mulder said, voice gravelly with
sleep and husky with desire.
The memory is fresh enough that her cheeks flush, and she
feels herself growing wet. If he were here, he'd have her
clothes off by now, his hand between her thighs. With each
pound she gains, her libido seems to swell.
"Take off your clothes," Mulder said, and she did, sliding
into bed beside him in nothing but black lycra underwear.
She'd waited seven years for him to undo the clasp of her
bra. She admits that readily now, that she'd fallen for
him that night in her red robe. She can still feel his
hand on her back, that spot he touched again and again
through her clothes.
* * *
It's one of those days that every song on the radio reminds
her of him. "I'm blue," Scully half sings to herself,
"daba dee daba die," remembering how all of a sudden last
spring Mulder had taken to listening to music in the
office, silly pop tunes and eighties mixes from the guys.
Days she'd walk into the office and he'd be swaying his
hips to jazz or techno and everything in between, saying,
"Dance with me, Scully." And one afternoon when she came
back with lunch, they danced, really danced, because their
report was done and it was a glorious spring day and she
was wearing, just for him, that pale lavender suit.
"Want me to change the station?" Doggett asks, and Scully
knows she must seem ridiculous, hormone-crazed, her eyes
brimming with tears. Do not, she tells herself, let him
see you cry.
"No, leave it."
* * *
A year ago a genie granted Mulder three wishes. A year ago
they watched "Caddyshack" and "Plan Nine from Outer Space."
A year ago they ate Ethiopian food and conceived a baby on
his couch.
No, not a year, just six months. It feels like a lifetime,
though, and for one tiny person, it is. She looks again at
the textbook diagram, notes the placement of the placenta,
the size of the head in proportion to the body. In six
months, it will be a year since the little girl was
conceived, not the result of a frozen vial of Mulder's
sperm but semen fresh from his body into hers. The math is
making her ill.
She thinks about the night the baby was conceived. No, she
tells herself, conceptualized, the way she'd asked him,
without pretense or preamble, to father her child. She'd
gone straight from Parenti's office to Mulder's apartment,
heart pounding with the best kind of adrenaline rush.
Fists clenched in her pocket during the long walk down his
hallway, she didn't know whether to kiss him for being
sentimental enough to keep the eggs in his freezer or smack
him for being cowardly enough not to tell her.
The words were out of her mouth before he had time to shut
the door. "I consulted a specialist. He said he can get
me pregnant. I know it's crazy and I know the timing is
awful, but after everything that's happened. . . ." She
didn't finish, but they both knew she meant the gunshot
wound and the fiery deaths of the Syndicate and delivering
that baby during a Florida storm. "I just want to try."
She paused for a beat, just long enough to catch her
breath. "Will you help me, Mulder?"
"Will I help you? Will I help you what, Scully? Give you
one half of the necessary genetic material? Play Uncle
Mulder to the Uber-Scully? We've already tried the
cohabitation thing and look how well that worked out." He
gave her a loopy smile and tried to soften the blow. "I
don't know, Scully. I'm flattered. And part of me thinks
I owe you that much and more. That day at the Gunmen's?
You were right; your investment couldn't have been more
personal."
Melissa and Emily, her mind supplied, a price etched in the
names of girls.
"But another part of me," he began, then walked to the
couch and sat down. "Another part of me knows that giving
you a baby couldn't possibly replace what you've lost. And
what kind of world would we be bringing this kid into?"
She sat beside him and let him tuck her head beneath his
chin. She remembers everything about that night, the feel
of Mulder's blue sweater against her cheek, the smell of
his aftershave and the unexpected offer of chamomile tea,
Chet Baker on the stereo singing "It always happens to me."
* * *
They tried IVF for two cycles. After the first didn't
take, Mulder said he'd do anything, look everywhere.
They'd go back to San Diego, they'd track Dr. Calderon,
they'd bring their children home. After the second
attempt, he put her faith before his investigative work and
said, like a character from the soap opera that their lives
were quickly becoming, "Never give up on a miracle."
Then Africa happened and Mulder's brain surgery. She
wasn't surprised when neither of them mentioned the idea
again.
* * *
She remembers making a timeline in her junior high history
class, all colored pencil and girlish handwriting. She
told Mulder once that time was the universal invariant but
she knows now that time isn't linear but circular. Perhaps
in ten years she'll tell her daughter, I met your father
eight years before you were born. It was March 1993. I
was wearing a red bathrobe when I fell in love and a white
one when I realized what he meant to me. Silly, she
thinks, chronicling time with bathrobes. Bathrobes or pop
tunes or cases, what's the difference?
Five months ago her partner kissed her good morning and
refused to kiss her goodbye, standing in the hallway
outside their office. Five months ago a doctor showed her
the results of a blood test. Five months ago Mulder went
missing.
Another mark on the timeline.
Just a day before she'd set up an appointment to see her
doctor, still dizzy, inexplicably nauseous. How could she
have been so stupid? What kind of woman having regularly
scheduled nights of unprotected sex doesn't conclude she's
pregnant when her period is late and the thought of food
makes her want to throw up? If she'd even thought--no, if
only she let herself believe--for a single moment, Mulder
might be with her now, drawing circles on her belly and
telling their unborn child a bedtime story. But she didn't
and here she is, making timelines and wearing her partner's
clothes. Math geek, he said, a year ago, and then he
kissed her.
* * *
For two months she's known they are having a girl. After
she collapsed in Montana, after she started cramping and
Skinner accompanied her, again, to the emergency room, she
decided she'd had enough surprises to last a lifetime.
Skinner held her hand while the technician spread gel
across her belly. When the sound of fetal heart tones
filled the room, she said, "I hope she has her father's
heart."
"I'm so sorry, Scully. This shouldn't have happened."
No, it shouldn't have happened, but it did, and in the two
months since Mulder's funeral she's tried to think about
the future, the red circle in May on her calendar. Still,
she finds herself thinking of him often, organizing mental
files so she'll be able to find them when their daughter
asks. The baby isn't an alien or a violation but a girl, a
human girl, a girl created from her and Mulder alone. She
needs a crib, not a filing cabinet or a black leather
couch, and Scully decides to go shopping tomorrow. When
the time is right, she'll ask Skinner to paint stars on the
ceiling.
The baby is restless, turning like her father in the middle
of the night. There's no question of where his soul
resides.
FIN
* * *
Acknowledgements: Thanks so much to Alanna for being my
first ever beta reader (you rock!) and for moral support,
Texan and otherwise; and thanks to Scullyfic, for community
(I owe you smart gals an improv and a whole lot of eclairs
<g>)
feedback--now or belated--gleefully accepted at
gwinne@yahoo.com