JET (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} jetfic) wrote,@ 2002-12-31 11:21:00 |
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Things That Lie Outside
Part One of Two
"The dead need peace, the dead need sleep, let the dead have peace and sleep..." -- Carl Sandburg
Things That Lie Outside
by JET
(jetpaine@yahoo.com)
(eviljesemie@yahoo.com)
December 2002
Scullyfic/Emuse Secret Santa Swapfic
Distribution:
Please let me know.
Slightly Prettier HTML Version Available At:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/je
Proprietors I'm Borrowing From and Would Like to Not Be Sued By Since I Am Poor and Not Claiming Ownership of Their Stuff:
1013 & Friends, Lewis Carroll, and, for one line, quite possibly the people who made "A Christmas Story."
Feedback:
Yes, please and thank you. jetpaine@yahoo.com or eviljesemie@yahoo.com
Author's Notes:
For minimum confusion (maybe), please pretend the following for the duration of this story:
An enormous Thank You and new virtual boss to Emma-M., and an enormous Thank You and many rolls of packing tape to Lilydale -- your betas were indispensable and, as always, deeply appreciated. Any remaining typos or errors of logic and imagination are mine alone.
For MaybeAmanda, who gave me "The Answer," a beautiful story you should go read: Merry Christmas
- - - - -
In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.
---
She found him where she left him, that evening it was confirmed they knew little more than was known years ago. Sophisticated lab, insufficient results, a scrap of fabric with faint history and no future. Its origins were almost infinite: any nightgown, any vanished child, any town on the cold coastline, any city set down in Pennsylvanian hills or between New Hampshire's towering white birch.
She found him asleep in his unheated office, head on his desk. She was the person who fetched him to beds or out of meetings with Skinner, who stood between him and smirks of evil, rotting things. She wondered if he felt lost heartbeats beneath his own sometimes, if there were more ways than dreams that his grief reached beyond him, heat or breath or wish as tangible as cloth. She touched his shoulder to rouse him.
He didn't stir and she put her hand on his head like a priest would in blessing. The softness of his hair made him real, startled her. She looked down at herself -- she was wearing old jeans and an old navy blue sweater, tennis shoes with ragged laces and holes at the toes. Her trenchcoat swung around her, unbuttoned and splattered at the hem with dried mud. She was pillow creased with uncombed hair and mascara smudges, the taste of hasty toothpaste still in her mouth.
His eyelashes were dark and long, his arms were reedy pillows, his chest rose and fell.
He was real and that meant she was, standing there with her hand in his hair at three o'clock in the morning. She had driven back to work through chilly streets to find him, to play Princess Charming and remove the binding spell. She felt like that sometimes, brave, loyal and well-armored. She had not realized, though, not until he opened his eyes, that she was also there for another reason. He did not seem surprised she had come but she was, incredibly stunned, and that wouldn't suffice.
Sitting up, he blinked once and said, "Scully," the word containing a child's clarity, as though this time she had been the dream he woke to find come true.
She smoothed the hair back from his face but could not speak, and could not stay.
She crawled onto her couch again, later, and tried to not think the words in her head. They too were a spell, one she could not trust herself to say aloud or hold for too long, like a newly sharpened blade. There were things that could not be undone. She tried to focus on the scent of spruce and grass and rain, the grainy dampness of dirt, a child asleep in a forest with no one to wake her.
---
The Ross's -- Caitlin and her parents -- and Mulder, in a JEH hallway. An apology falls at their collective feet like the silence after a gunshot.
He must have been the one to apologize but has no idea what he really said. After the family leaves, he realizes her presence behind him. Turning, he catches an expression on her face so protective of him he almost steps back. She straightens up, goes to grab their files off the internal audit conference table.
It might not have been there at all, that look. Probably not. Almost 100% guaranteed it was not.
He misses his sister at this moment, he realizes, because in every alternate world he's imagined, every place Samantha is alive and well and his sister, she has grown up to be the kind of person he would tell about that look, and he might let something into his voice that she would suspect, and it would be a secret between them.
Would that make him stronger, better able to maintain the secret, if it were shared, or would it just make the secret stronger, more anxious to be discovered?
Scully closes a file and blots from sight a photograph of a child's skull and the delicate crushed throat bones found in that same grave. What happened to him should not be the issue. What happened because of him -- those things will always be more important. It will always matter more that his sister was taken, denied, that girls died and another nearly so when he could have prevented it, could have prevented everything--
Scully's hand on his arm, Scully standing this near despite what he is, what he's capable of. (Does not make it right. Does not save you.) He nods once, and they head toward their office.
---
There were two snapshots for each girl. In one there was often a smile missing one or two teeth, a lock of hair loosed from a braid, a glance off to the side, where the classmates were giggling in line or the little sibling was crying in mom's lap. In the other the skeletons were always dirty, fissured in the same places, delicate cracks that proved both the strength of the bones and the determination of the killer.
She put the photographs away and took out a notepad. Skinner had sighed when she told him what she wanted to do. Skinner didn't kneel over any of those bodies, though, didn't know their power and sorrow. He would keep Mulder busy, and she would continue the necessary work.
There were people to call now, help to rally. She couldn't fail. The days were getting shorter, darker and colder. There was one child left, shivering.
---
He steps out of warm, drifting fog into his motel room. Behind him the shower faucet sniffles. Beside him, the unmade bed looks more inviting than it actually is, lumpy mattress and scratchy sheets disheveled seductively. He is heat pink, damp, sleepy, wrapped in a thin towel. He sits down on the bed to yawn and fasten his watch on his wrist.
His weight cues five smallish eyeballs, which roll toward him down the crooked line of the dented mattress.
Surprised, he grabs them up and surveys the room. On one pillow, someone has left him a missive in a bright purple envelope.
He opens the envelope, breathes a short sigh of relief, and then feels sort of silly. The front of the card he removes portrays a glittery cartoon cake. Only Scully would observe an event he stopped actively celebrating about twenty years ago, and only Scully would observe said event exactly one month late.
She is on the other side of a wall, like always. He can hear her moving around. Is she pleased about sneaking into his room without getting caught? They've each violated the unofficial rules in the past for certain occasions -- Halloween, April Fools' -- but her last attempt was thwarted when he ambushed her with melting ice cubes. It had been pure retaliation on both their parts. Sure, he shouldn't have put fake cockroaches in her shoes, but she shouldn't have put fake latex noses in his. Aside from being squishy and cold, the disembodied snouts had been disturbingly life-like.
He mentally high-fives himself: she may have been in his room while he was taking a shower, but he had not been singing "Yummy Yummy Yummy" in a falsetto voice. Not this morning.
Today she's probably morning sloppy, half awake, brushing her teeth twice because she forgot she already brushed them once before bathing, grouching at the portable hair dryer that never works for more than a minute at a time, reluctant to put on pantyhose. Perhaps her thoughts are on the victims who were buried alive under a hill of cursed Egyptian coins, or on the list of clients they have to go through today -- museum curator, PhD candidate, president of largest exhibit-sponsoring company?
Maybe she's looking out the window, her expression soft and faraway, her dark eyes filled with rain.
Her phone rings. He can hear her low murmur, a sharp peak and then balance. She's had a lot of phone calls lately, and a shortage of DC pathologists has been keeping her occupied when there aren't paranormal tribulations taking precedence. He has fielded the majority of the X-Files' paperwork, for once. He keeps meaning to ask her if Skinner's persistent requests are starting to overstep realism, if other divisions are begging for too much, or if she's competing for a Nobel prize of some sort. She'd resent him asking, though, since she is entirely capable of putting other divisions, not to mention Skinner, in their place.
Not that Skinner's a pushover. Skinner is in fact one of the most tenacious people on the planet, but Mulder is trying to remember that the alternative to Skinner's ground rules, in light of the Roche "incident," included collecting unemployment.
But one heart left. One girl. Skinner said VICAP would keep the case, would follow up on any leads, as if there would ever be a lead.
Let it go. Bad mistake, pay the price, could've been worse, won't happen again. He's shitty at pep talks but also sick of moping.
You haven't lost everyone.
And it's hard to complain about a shortage of X-Files, considering how they usually accompany a surplus of victims.
He looks down at the paper in his hands. Inside the card there is a typical preprinted message professing apologies for belatedness, about wishes coming true and all good things to you and have a swell day. But he hardly reads it, eyes drawn to Scully's familiar scrawl. A hesitation mark, here, another. She'd thought about what she wanted to say, was careful with the words she chose. His vision is blurry suddenly, and his chest heavy. He sets the card on the bedside table and takes a deep breath. When the moment passes, he twists off an eyeball's cellophane skin. He pops the eyeball into his mouth and bites down -- GooGum™, with a squiggly strawberry center.
He stands up, starts to dress. He chews the gum, blows a few bubbles at his reflection while he ties his tie and combs his hair. If his hands are a little unsteady, it's because he's tired, or hungry: long drive yesterday, irritable case, bad coffee.
Shoes need a polish. The suit could stand a trip to the dry cleaner. It's raining, cold, and his trenchcoat is in the car. She's knocking, asking if he's ready. He opens the door. She is bundled like an arctic crusader, hiding a smile. Before he recognizes what she's holding, she gives the armload to him.
Two presents in one hour. He shrugs into his trenchcoat. He pulls the door closed, puts his hands in his coat pockets, where more eyeballs crackle. She is awake, focused, brimming with smarts and sparks.
That secreted smile is unveiled suddenly, her face turned up to his as though seeking similar sunlight. He can't return the smile, but can't look away either, not for a second, not with that warmth directed at him. Then he somehow does, turns toward the end of the hallway, walks through the propped open exit door into drizzle and nail-chill.
He is a year and one month older today. She walks down the steps a half-step in front of him, and he doesn't put his hand on the small of her back or open the car door for her. It will be fine, he thinks. It will pass, old hat, no problem. He has been lonely before. He has longed for things he wasn't supposed to have. Happy birthday to me.
---
She did not understand how Mulder could have done this every day, every hour, for weeks. For years, the details saturating his subconscious like permanent ink. She attempted to categorize the current files, neat piles on her kitchen table, but neatness and categorization were part of her problem. What she needed was the ability to step into Roche's psyche, to hear what rattled and pushed, to feel intuitively where he might have started, why, where he might have taken this last girl.
Her courage was faltering. She should sleep but it wasn't time. She didn't have the system memorized yet, she didn't see the pattern. Scully had a piece of cloth the size of her hand. It wasn't enough and it had to be.
---
She is using his phone when he enters the office. Stepping around his desk, he brushes her arm and she flinches, ready to strike before seeing it's just him. Her mouth is set tight and she nods in no particular direction, agreeing to whatever the caller has said. She hangs up.
"New case?" he asks.
"No. No. Agent Newcom was following up on an autopsy I performed last week."
She sits down in front of his desk. She picks at her suit jacket.
"Was anything wrong?" Mulder cocks his head and waits for her answer.
"No," she says finally, looking off to the side.
Okay.
"Is there a case pending?" Scully asks.
"Not that I know of."
"Newcom wanted to know if I could take another look at a body that might be connected to their investigation."
"How long will that take?"
"A few hours. This afternoon. It'll be the last thing I do before going home."
The back of his neck tingles. Her words mean nothing bothersome by themselves, but she sounds angry. Or, she sounds discouraged.
No, he thinks. She sounds weakened, a vapor of herself.
"I'll call if anything comes up," he says for lack of a better response.
She stands and leaves. He should run out into the hallway and call her back. He should tell Newcom to get another pathologist for the afternoon. He should ask what's wrong, like someone would if he were well adjusted and concerned for his partner within all the suitable parameters.
He stays at his desk.
---
Scully snapped the file on her lap shut.
She paced the living room, wanting to get away from it, to get out from beneath it. There was dirt in her hair, her eyes and throat, dirt squirming like grubs and maggots. She took deep breaths and circled the end table, paced the kitchen, the hallway. At the hallway window she pressed her fingers against the cool stained glass panes and wondered what the night air felt like.
Twenty-three years. There would be nothing left but rags and bone.
Massachusetts, Delaware and DC were crossed off her list. She had left inquiries with two offices in upstate Pennsylvania; one in New Jersey; one in North Carolina, a long shot -- she didn't think anyone would even call back until sometime next week or later. Not until after this holiday, certainly, but maybe not until next year.
Her throat hurt all the time. This isn't about what you want, she said silently.
This was her new hobby, when there wasn't a case and often when there was. There was no real pressure she could bring to bear. It was unofficial, what she was doing, a lost cause. No noise in it, no rumor. If it didn't work, Mulder would never know because she'd always taken side pathology gigs when she could, and she could these days, when he was on a tight leash and the maniacs and monsters were settling in for hibernation. She was busy enough to camouflage herself and there was hardly time for dwelling on the ethics of not disclosing certain things to one's partner.
She hoped he was okay. He made jokes in the cafeteria, chatted with old VICAP cohorts about Thursday plans and the weather -- wet, unseasonably strong storms turning to snow. When he left at five, he said "Happy Thanksgiving" like it was any other day-before.
He also said, "Be careful driving tomorrow, Scully." When she looked up he was sheepish, obviously regretting having given condescending advice to someone who could shoot him.
"I will," she managed, wanting at that moment to be better than she was at about a million things. Words were in her way, had been for weeks, little cement roadblocks. Treacherous traveling. He was leaving and she wouldn't see him until Monday and Samantha was taken twenty-three years ago today. Scully wanted to rush him, throw him against the wall in a hug fierce enough to...to what? Make it all right his sister was gone? Red light hung at the corners of her eyes, hazy and burning.
She picked up the phone, once, twice. She placed it on its charger.
He's okay, she told herself. You have to help him this way now. You have to find the match.
The living room floor was layered with the files of those found and the files of those who weren't. One of the girls whose whereabouts remained unknown could be Roche's last victim. Or none of them could. She took the photocopies from Tiverton, Williamstown, Atkinson, Oakland. A fax from Killingly, whose sheriff had commented that despite his town's name, all he had were a few cases that might match if he squinted. There wasn't much hope that one could be linked to Roche.
Clock ticking, turkeys thawing across the country. Her mother wouldn't mind if she were late to dinner tomorrow. Find the girl. Help him this way. She knelt in the middle of the files, touching her throat gingerly where it was rawest.
Hours in the dark, with the lamps draping shadows. For a long time she was awake and reading. For a long time she pretended it was another day on the road, and he was in the next room, and if she wanted to, if she were honest enough, she could go in, take his hand, curl up beside him. Release and be released.
Isn't about what you want.
She turned the pages over and over. Names, nicknames, birth dates, places last seen; cities Roche worked, number of units sold per year, awards given for outstanding contributions to Electrovac's Boston team and community spirit. Was wearing her softball uniform, a church dress, a Halloween costume made out of aluminum foil. Had freckles, liked peanut butter, could do long division, could cut paper dolls, loved hiking in the woods. There were more pages than would ever be answers. Red lines slipped in front of her eyes and dissolved. Went down.
Went down into the pine, into the thick and green. Sharp needled and sandy, swollen with mud and moss, slicked with ice, sweating under beams of sun fallen like swords. Went down the warped stairs, over the smoothed skipping stones, rock with devil horns and a rise of razor teeth, streams that rushed, late, late, over the incline. Went down into the wiry feathers, the nests of brush and thorn, the pockets of rancid rats, acorn, eggs, crisp hollow cicada. Weeds threaded through, worms came with small mouths, leaves floated and warped and froze.
There were so many missing. They had thin wrists, split lips, flannel pajamas, fierce growls, pigtails, tennis shoes, tutus. They slept with the covers pulled to their chins, with fairy coins under their pillows. They were jumping rope in the driveway. They were learning to drop cookie dough on baking sheets. They were Cindy desperate to be Marcia. They were reciting vocabulary words, climbing trees, kissing the bathroom mirrors, wearing white for Communion, beating up the boys on the playground, besting their brothers at board games. They saw out the passage that the gardens were lovely. They bit hard when Roche's hand covered their mouths, they struggled with the car locks but couldn't keep their eyes open, they went out like candles, they ate currants and cake. They wandered away to catch butterflies and never came back.
Went down into the dirt. The cord tightened around her throat.
When she woke she stumbled into the bathroom, filled her water glass and took a long drink. She tried to forget choking. She tried to forget holding Mulder, sometime in the dream before she died.
---
His mother's house is always warm on Thanksgiving, fires eating logs in the hearths, the heat turned up so that it fogs the windows. Hired help, inconspicuous in pressed white Oxfords and black slacks, move from kitchen to dining room with practiced grace, carrying silver trays of wild mushroom pate with poached salmon, maple syrup cured ham, roasted turkey and chestnut stuffing, cranberry relish, fresh corn, sweet potato casserole, squash pie, white turnip soup, a green salad with leeks and garlic, dusty bottles of chilled white and red wines.
There are twenty invited guests at the long table and candle flames twitch every three inches on almost every surface in the room. Teena Mulder sits between her accountant and her landscape artist. She cuts her food slowly and talks of spending December in Naples with a cousin, Khelsy, who has recently retired. Mulder is seated about five chairs away, with a museum curator on one side and the widower who lived next door to his parents when he was four or five years old on the other. Everyone speaks in low tones about the weather and politics. Mulder is wearing an immaculate wool suit and there is a fire popping behind him, steaming food on his plate and hot cider in his glass.
He's never felt so cold.
When dinner is finished, the party retires to the sitting room, the enclosed porch and the oak-paneled room Bill Mulder would have used as a cigar closet, had he ever lived in this particular house. Pumpkin bread pudding with rum sauce, coffee, spiced tea and spiked eggnog are served on the Spode settings Teena inherited from Great Aunt Elaine.
"Done much Christmas shopping yet?" Mr. Darling asks Mulder. They are standing outside, taking in fresh air, while snow drifts and shifts around them. Mr. Darling runs a private Greenwich law practice. Mulder has a vague recollection of the man sitting calmly at a kitchen island while Teena and Bill raged over some insanely small piece of the estate they were splitting. Bill banged his glass of sour mash on the counter and broke the heavy-bottomed double old-fashioned in three pieces, amber liquid rolling across a tentative and unsigned contract.
"I say, much shopping?" Mr. Darling inquires again, giving a little cough. He is a meek man, a kind man. Mulder shakes his head to focus on the question.
"No," he says, "not any yet. I'm sort of well-known for my, um, last minute decisions."
"It's the same for me," the lawyer agrees. "My son says every year that he half expects me to try putting litigation in a box with a bow on top. I've been a lawyer for close to fifty years, can you believe that? All I know. Never was good at choosing presents." He chuffs his feet along the sidewalk. Dry snow scatters, catches light from the window and glitters, briefly, before settling. "Many people to buy for? Your mother, of course."
"Mom, and a handful of close friends. My partner."
"Oh, right, you're still working for the FBI?"
"Still there."
"Been keeping busy?"
"Extremely."
"Good to keep busy."
"It is."
The two men stare out on the snowy lawn. Mulder realizes that he's no colder out here than he was inside. He doesn't think it's a good omen.
"Your partner is...well?" Mr. Darling asks.
"I think so," he says. He isn't actually convinced of that but it isn't the sort of thing one mentions to casual acquaintances.
"Good, good," Mr. Darling says. "Going to go have a taste of puddding, I am. Care to join me?"
"I'll be in shortly, yes, thank you," Mulder says, his voice sounding formal and awkward in his ears, as though he has agreed to some higher social obligation, such as marrying a Kennedy.
Mr. Darling smiles and goes inside.
Mulder stays in the snow and wonders if he should go by Scully's apartment on his way home. An envelope for her came to his office by mistake last week; she seemed very happy at first, before she knew what was inside, like she expected it to contain a million dollars. Not wanting to pry, he'd surreptitiously watched her open it. The defeat he witnessed almost made him speak.
Phone calls, long absences from the office, strange mail. Maybe she's networking, sending out resumes in a desperate attempt to find a job unrelated to unidentified substances that ooze from the several maws of creatures that aren't supposed to exist. There could be something wrong with someone in her family, or a relationship struggling, a conflict between her career and her heart.
That's it, he'd bet. She could be trying to find right way to say to him what needs to be said, an explanation for how quiet she has become, for how she shrinks from him with guilty shrugs.
The snow is heavier, making the lawn look like a wide swath of cellulite. Mulder pinches the bridge of his nose. He needs to go home, far from this house, far from thoughts of visiting Scully tonight.
He says his farewells, finds his coat. Drives home, straight home. Does not go to her and kiss the bruised shadows under her eyes, does not tuck her inside a blanket and whisper that he will always want to be her friend, no matter what, that she can tell him anything, anything at all, even good bye.
---
On many of the tombstones in Parkway Cemetery there were fresh wreaths and holiday sprays, and on just as many there were dusty, weather-battered arrangements. Beside one marker, a vase had tipped over, spilling dried red roses that were shriveled like the fists of old men.
Bill Mulder's tombstone stood unadorned.
They were in Boston investigating a slew of Melusina sightings at the Harbor. This detour was Scully's suggestion, and she was not sure it was a good one. Mulder had not shown much of his normal enthusiasm over the possibility of dredging up mermaids. She couldn't begin to say why she'd thought a trip to a cemetery would cheer him in the least.
It seemed like he needed to go somewhere that meant something.
And it seemed like he was standing there out of obligation -- but to her, not his father.
Just in case he was having some protracted inner dialogue with Bill, she waited another minute before breaching the cemetery's hush.
"You about ready to go?" she asked.
"Yeah."
"I hadn't been out here at all this year," he said as they walked back to the car. "So thanks."
His voice was wan, and he didn't say anything else for a long time.
---
She has brought over shredded duck soup, stuffed crab claws, moi shi pork and kung pao shrimp even though he insisted he wasn't really hungry.
She shakes a packet of soy sauce over the remainder of her rice. "You put a decent dent in that for a person who wasn't hungry."
The pile of pork is gone and the crab claws are nearing extinction. He explains, "I didn't want to be wasteful. There are starving kids in China, you know." She chuckles.
He's glad she's here, plying him with rich food and acting more like her old self. He owes her a meal now; with the holidays coming up it might be nice to take her somewhere fancier than the IHOP in Alexandria. If he calls tomorrow, he could probably make reservations at The Caucus Room -- she said not a month ago that she hasn't been in years. He pictures her there against the restaurant's dark leather browns, linen creams and royal blues. A bottle of wine, filet mignon or timbale with lobster and crab or rack of New Zealand lamb, warm coconut cream cake; and still nothing as opulent as the way she talks to him sometimes, when everything's okay. He can hear her unraveling a story, pieces of her he's never seen before, and laughing her goofy, wonderful laugh.
He breaks from the unspoken soliloquy. He clears off the hotel room table, closing up the little take-out boxes and bowls so that the scent of leftovers won't be quite as obtrusive in the morning. Scully pitches her plate and napkins in the garbage after him and they end up stuck, briefly, in the tiny corner behind the table, askew chairs crowding their path out.
"Oops. Thought there was more room," Scully says.
"Wait," Mulder says. "We can just...scoot...the...table..." The table must be made of lead.
"Here, I'll move the chairs."
Scully manages to crash the uncooperative chairs into the wall before climbing over them. Mulder follows, his left foot snagging obstinately on the second chair. He stumbles and Scully grabs him around the waist to keep him upright.
"Y'okay?" she says.
"Yes," he says, his arms going around her reflexively.
Scully looks up at him, her ripe mouth open just a little, her eyes bluer than sky.
He drops his arms and steps away, fast. He busies himself with pushing the chairs into less treacherous positions.
Near the door, she says in a small voice, "See you in the morning."
"'Night," he says, deliberately not turning around until she's out of the room.
"Asshole," he whispers to himself.
-----
Go to part two.
Part One of Two
"The dead need peace, the dead need sleep, let the dead have peace and sleep..." -- Carl Sandburg
Things That Lie Outside
by JET
(jetpaine@yahoo.com)
(eviljesemie@yahoo.com)
December 2002
Scullyfic/Emuse Secret Santa Swapfic
Distribution:
Please let me know.
Slightly Prettier HTML Version Available At:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/je
Proprietors I'm Borrowing From and Would Like to Not Be Sued By Since I Am Poor and Not Claiming Ownership of Their Stuff:
1013 & Friends, Lewis Carroll, and, for one line, quite possibly the people who made "A Christmas Story."
Feedback:
Yes, please and thank you. jetpaine@yahoo.com or eviljesemie@yahoo.com
Author's Notes:
For minimum confusion (maybe), please pretend the following for the duration of this story:
- the present-day action in "Paper Hearts" took place no later than October of 1996, and everything that happened afterwards didn't happen [It's alt-u without colonization or historical reenactments!];
- local and state police departments keep files forever and are always totally willing to help out attractive FBI agents regardless of so-called rules and regulations [Or: Boy howdy, research sure is hard!];
- Mulder is capable of following a direct order from a superior [Uh, did I mention the part about this being an alt-u?];
- JET knows oodles about New England [JET lives in Indiana. Let's be reasonable.].
An enormous Thank You and new virtual boss to Emma-M., and an enormous Thank You and many rolls of packing tape to Lilydale -- your betas were indispensable and, as always, deeply appreciated. Any remaining typos or errors of logic and imagination are mine alone.
For MaybeAmanda, who gave me "The Answer," a beautiful story you should go read: Merry Christmas
- - - - -
In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.
---
She found him where she left him, that evening it was confirmed they knew little more than was known years ago. Sophisticated lab, insufficient results, a scrap of fabric with faint history and no future. Its origins were almost infinite: any nightgown, any vanished child, any town on the cold coastline, any city set down in Pennsylvanian hills or between New Hampshire's towering white birch.
She found him asleep in his unheated office, head on his desk. She was the person who fetched him to beds or out of meetings with Skinner, who stood between him and smirks of evil, rotting things. She wondered if he felt lost heartbeats beneath his own sometimes, if there were more ways than dreams that his grief reached beyond him, heat or breath or wish as tangible as cloth. She touched his shoulder to rouse him.
He didn't stir and she put her hand on his head like a priest would in blessing. The softness of his hair made him real, startled her. She looked down at herself -- she was wearing old jeans and an old navy blue sweater, tennis shoes with ragged laces and holes at the toes. Her trenchcoat swung around her, unbuttoned and splattered at the hem with dried mud. She was pillow creased with uncombed hair and mascara smudges, the taste of hasty toothpaste still in her mouth.
His eyelashes were dark and long, his arms were reedy pillows, his chest rose and fell.
He was real and that meant she was, standing there with her hand in his hair at three o'clock in the morning. She had driven back to work through chilly streets to find him, to play Princess Charming and remove the binding spell. She felt like that sometimes, brave, loyal and well-armored. She had not realized, though, not until he opened his eyes, that she was also there for another reason. He did not seem surprised she had come but she was, incredibly stunned, and that wouldn't suffice.
Sitting up, he blinked once and said, "Scully," the word containing a child's clarity, as though this time she had been the dream he woke to find come true.
She smoothed the hair back from his face but could not speak, and could not stay.
She crawled onto her couch again, later, and tried to not think the words in her head. They too were a spell, one she could not trust herself to say aloud or hold for too long, like a newly sharpened blade. There were things that could not be undone. She tried to focus on the scent of spruce and grass and rain, the grainy dampness of dirt, a child asleep in a forest with no one to wake her.
---
The Ross's -- Caitlin and her parents -- and Mulder, in a JEH hallway. An apology falls at their collective feet like the silence after a gunshot.
He must have been the one to apologize but has no idea what he really said. After the family leaves, he realizes her presence behind him. Turning, he catches an expression on her face so protective of him he almost steps back. She straightens up, goes to grab their files off the internal audit conference table.
It might not have been there at all, that look. Probably not. Almost 100% guaranteed it was not.
He misses his sister at this moment, he realizes, because in every alternate world he's imagined, every place Samantha is alive and well and his sister, she has grown up to be the kind of person he would tell about that look, and he might let something into his voice that she would suspect, and it would be a secret between them.
Would that make him stronger, better able to maintain the secret, if it were shared, or would it just make the secret stronger, more anxious to be discovered?
Scully closes a file and blots from sight a photograph of a child's skull and the delicate crushed throat bones found in that same grave. What happened to him should not be the issue. What happened because of him -- those things will always be more important. It will always matter more that his sister was taken, denied, that girls died and another nearly so when he could have prevented it, could have prevented everything--
Scully's hand on his arm, Scully standing this near despite what he is, what he's capable of. (Does not make it right. Does not save you.) He nods once, and they head toward their office.
---
There were two snapshots for each girl. In one there was often a smile missing one or two teeth, a lock of hair loosed from a braid, a glance off to the side, where the classmates were giggling in line or the little sibling was crying in mom's lap. In the other the skeletons were always dirty, fissured in the same places, delicate cracks that proved both the strength of the bones and the determination of the killer.
She put the photographs away and took out a notepad. Skinner had sighed when she told him what she wanted to do. Skinner didn't kneel over any of those bodies, though, didn't know their power and sorrow. He would keep Mulder busy, and she would continue the necessary work.
There were people to call now, help to rally. She couldn't fail. The days were getting shorter, darker and colder. There was one child left, shivering.
---
He steps out of warm, drifting fog into his motel room. Behind him the shower faucet sniffles. Beside him, the unmade bed looks more inviting than it actually is, lumpy mattress and scratchy sheets disheveled seductively. He is heat pink, damp, sleepy, wrapped in a thin towel. He sits down on the bed to yawn and fasten his watch on his wrist.
His weight cues five smallish eyeballs, which roll toward him down the crooked line of the dented mattress.
Surprised, he grabs them up and surveys the room. On one pillow, someone has left him a missive in a bright purple envelope.
He opens the envelope, breathes a short sigh of relief, and then feels sort of silly. The front of the card he removes portrays a glittery cartoon cake. Only Scully would observe an event he stopped actively celebrating about twenty years ago, and only Scully would observe said event exactly one month late.
She is on the other side of a wall, like always. He can hear her moving around. Is she pleased about sneaking into his room without getting caught? They've each violated the unofficial rules in the past for certain occasions -- Halloween, April Fools' -- but her last attempt was thwarted when he ambushed her with melting ice cubes. It had been pure retaliation on both their parts. Sure, he shouldn't have put fake cockroaches in her shoes, but she shouldn't have put fake latex noses in his. Aside from being squishy and cold, the disembodied snouts had been disturbingly life-like.
He mentally high-fives himself: she may have been in his room while he was taking a shower, but he had not been singing "Yummy Yummy Yummy" in a falsetto voice. Not this morning.
Today she's probably morning sloppy, half awake, brushing her teeth twice because she forgot she already brushed them once before bathing, grouching at the portable hair dryer that never works for more than a minute at a time, reluctant to put on pantyhose. Perhaps her thoughts are on the victims who were buried alive under a hill of cursed Egyptian coins, or on the list of clients they have to go through today -- museum curator, PhD candidate, president of largest exhibit-sponsoring company?
Maybe she's looking out the window, her expression soft and faraway, her dark eyes filled with rain.
Her phone rings. He can hear her low murmur, a sharp peak and then balance. She's had a lot of phone calls lately, and a shortage of DC pathologists has been keeping her occupied when there aren't paranormal tribulations taking precedence. He has fielded the majority of the X-Files' paperwork, for once. He keeps meaning to ask her if Skinner's persistent requests are starting to overstep realism, if other divisions are begging for too much, or if she's competing for a Nobel prize of some sort. She'd resent him asking, though, since she is entirely capable of putting other divisions, not to mention Skinner, in their place.
Not that Skinner's a pushover. Skinner is in fact one of the most tenacious people on the planet, but Mulder is trying to remember that the alternative to Skinner's ground rules, in light of the Roche "incident," included collecting unemployment.
But one heart left. One girl. Skinner said VICAP would keep the case, would follow up on any leads, as if there would ever be a lead.
Let it go. Bad mistake, pay the price, could've been worse, won't happen again. He's shitty at pep talks but also sick of moping.
You haven't lost everyone.
And it's hard to complain about a shortage of X-Files, considering how they usually accompany a surplus of victims.
He looks down at the paper in his hands. Inside the card there is a typical preprinted message professing apologies for belatedness, about wishes coming true and all good things to you and have a swell day. But he hardly reads it, eyes drawn to Scully's familiar scrawl. A hesitation mark, here, another. She'd thought about what she wanted to say, was careful with the words she chose. His vision is blurry suddenly, and his chest heavy. He sets the card on the bedside table and takes a deep breath. When the moment passes, he twists off an eyeball's cellophane skin. He pops the eyeball into his mouth and bites down -- GooGum™, with a squiggly strawberry center.
He stands up, starts to dress. He chews the gum, blows a few bubbles at his reflection while he ties his tie and combs his hair. If his hands are a little unsteady, it's because he's tired, or hungry: long drive yesterday, irritable case, bad coffee.
Shoes need a polish. The suit could stand a trip to the dry cleaner. It's raining, cold, and his trenchcoat is in the car. She's knocking, asking if he's ready. He opens the door. She is bundled like an arctic crusader, hiding a smile. Before he recognizes what she's holding, she gives the armload to him.
Two presents in one hour. He shrugs into his trenchcoat. He pulls the door closed, puts his hands in his coat pockets, where more eyeballs crackle. She is awake, focused, brimming with smarts and sparks.
That secreted smile is unveiled suddenly, her face turned up to his as though seeking similar sunlight. He can't return the smile, but can't look away either, not for a second, not with that warmth directed at him. Then he somehow does, turns toward the end of the hallway, walks through the propped open exit door into drizzle and nail-chill.
He is a year and one month older today. She walks down the steps a half-step in front of him, and he doesn't put his hand on the small of her back or open the car door for her. It will be fine, he thinks. It will pass, old hat, no problem. He has been lonely before. He has longed for things he wasn't supposed to have. Happy birthday to me.
---
She did not understand how Mulder could have done this every day, every hour, for weeks. For years, the details saturating his subconscious like permanent ink. She attempted to categorize the current files, neat piles on her kitchen table, but neatness and categorization were part of her problem. What she needed was the ability to step into Roche's psyche, to hear what rattled and pushed, to feel intuitively where he might have started, why, where he might have taken this last girl.
Her courage was faltering. She should sleep but it wasn't time. She didn't have the system memorized yet, she didn't see the pattern. Scully had a piece of cloth the size of her hand. It wasn't enough and it had to be.
---
She is using his phone when he enters the office. Stepping around his desk, he brushes her arm and she flinches, ready to strike before seeing it's just him. Her mouth is set tight and she nods in no particular direction, agreeing to whatever the caller has said. She hangs up.
"New case?" he asks.
"No. No. Agent Newcom was following up on an autopsy I performed last week."
She sits down in front of his desk. She picks at her suit jacket.
"Was anything wrong?" Mulder cocks his head and waits for her answer.
"No," she says finally, looking off to the side.
Okay.
"Is there a case pending?" Scully asks.
"Not that I know of."
"Newcom wanted to know if I could take another look at a body that might be connected to their investigation."
"How long will that take?"
"A few hours. This afternoon. It'll be the last thing I do before going home."
The back of his neck tingles. Her words mean nothing bothersome by themselves, but she sounds angry. Or, she sounds discouraged.
No, he thinks. She sounds weakened, a vapor of herself.
"I'll call if anything comes up," he says for lack of a better response.
She stands and leaves. He should run out into the hallway and call her back. He should tell Newcom to get another pathologist for the afternoon. He should ask what's wrong, like someone would if he were well adjusted and concerned for his partner within all the suitable parameters.
He stays at his desk.
---
Scully snapped the file on her lap shut.
She paced the living room, wanting to get away from it, to get out from beneath it. There was dirt in her hair, her eyes and throat, dirt squirming like grubs and maggots. She took deep breaths and circled the end table, paced the kitchen, the hallway. At the hallway window she pressed her fingers against the cool stained glass panes and wondered what the night air felt like.
Twenty-three years. There would be nothing left but rags and bone.
Massachusetts, Delaware and DC were crossed off her list. She had left inquiries with two offices in upstate Pennsylvania; one in New Jersey; one in North Carolina, a long shot -- she didn't think anyone would even call back until sometime next week or later. Not until after this holiday, certainly, but maybe not until next year.
Her throat hurt all the time. This isn't about what you want, she said silently.
This was her new hobby, when there wasn't a case and often when there was. There was no real pressure she could bring to bear. It was unofficial, what she was doing, a lost cause. No noise in it, no rumor. If it didn't work, Mulder would never know because she'd always taken side pathology gigs when she could, and she could these days, when he was on a tight leash and the maniacs and monsters were settling in for hibernation. She was busy enough to camouflage herself and there was hardly time for dwelling on the ethics of not disclosing certain things to one's partner.
She hoped he was okay. He made jokes in the cafeteria, chatted with old VICAP cohorts about Thursday plans and the weather -- wet, unseasonably strong storms turning to snow. When he left at five, he said "Happy Thanksgiving" like it was any other day-before.
He also said, "Be careful driving tomorrow, Scully." When she looked up he was sheepish, obviously regretting having given condescending advice to someone who could shoot him.
"I will," she managed, wanting at that moment to be better than she was at about a million things. Words were in her way, had been for weeks, little cement roadblocks. Treacherous traveling. He was leaving and she wouldn't see him until Monday and Samantha was taken twenty-three years ago today. Scully wanted to rush him, throw him against the wall in a hug fierce enough to...to what? Make it all right his sister was gone? Red light hung at the corners of her eyes, hazy and burning.
She picked up the phone, once, twice. She placed it on its charger.
He's okay, she told herself. You have to help him this way now. You have to find the match.
The living room floor was layered with the files of those found and the files of those who weren't. One of the girls whose whereabouts remained unknown could be Roche's last victim. Or none of them could. She took the photocopies from Tiverton, Williamstown, Atkinson, Oakland. A fax from Killingly, whose sheriff had commented that despite his town's name, all he had were a few cases that might match if he squinted. There wasn't much hope that one could be linked to Roche.
Clock ticking, turkeys thawing across the country. Her mother wouldn't mind if she were late to dinner tomorrow. Find the girl. Help him this way. She knelt in the middle of the files, touching her throat gingerly where it was rawest.
Hours in the dark, with the lamps draping shadows. For a long time she was awake and reading. For a long time she pretended it was another day on the road, and he was in the next room, and if she wanted to, if she were honest enough, she could go in, take his hand, curl up beside him. Release and be released.
Isn't about what you want.
She turned the pages over and over. Names, nicknames, birth dates, places last seen; cities Roche worked, number of units sold per year, awards given for outstanding contributions to Electrovac's Boston team and community spirit. Was wearing her softball uniform, a church dress, a Halloween costume made out of aluminum foil. Had freckles, liked peanut butter, could do long division, could cut paper dolls, loved hiking in the woods. There were more pages than would ever be answers. Red lines slipped in front of her eyes and dissolved. Went down.
Went down into the pine, into the thick and green. Sharp needled and sandy, swollen with mud and moss, slicked with ice, sweating under beams of sun fallen like swords. Went down the warped stairs, over the smoothed skipping stones, rock with devil horns and a rise of razor teeth, streams that rushed, late, late, over the incline. Went down into the wiry feathers, the nests of brush and thorn, the pockets of rancid rats, acorn, eggs, crisp hollow cicada. Weeds threaded through, worms came with small mouths, leaves floated and warped and froze.
There were so many missing. They had thin wrists, split lips, flannel pajamas, fierce growls, pigtails, tennis shoes, tutus. They slept with the covers pulled to their chins, with fairy coins under their pillows. They were jumping rope in the driveway. They were learning to drop cookie dough on baking sheets. They were Cindy desperate to be Marcia. They were reciting vocabulary words, climbing trees, kissing the bathroom mirrors, wearing white for Communion, beating up the boys on the playground, besting their brothers at board games. They saw out the passage that the gardens were lovely. They bit hard when Roche's hand covered their mouths, they struggled with the car locks but couldn't keep their eyes open, they went out like candles, they ate currants and cake. They wandered away to catch butterflies and never came back.
Went down into the dirt. The cord tightened around her throat.
When she woke she stumbled into the bathroom, filled her water glass and took a long drink. She tried to forget choking. She tried to forget holding Mulder, sometime in the dream before she died.
---
His mother's house is always warm on Thanksgiving, fires eating logs in the hearths, the heat turned up so that it fogs the windows. Hired help, inconspicuous in pressed white Oxfords and black slacks, move from kitchen to dining room with practiced grace, carrying silver trays of wild mushroom pate with poached salmon, maple syrup cured ham, roasted turkey and chestnut stuffing, cranberry relish, fresh corn, sweet potato casserole, squash pie, white turnip soup, a green salad with leeks and garlic, dusty bottles of chilled white and red wines.
There are twenty invited guests at the long table and candle flames twitch every three inches on almost every surface in the room. Teena Mulder sits between her accountant and her landscape artist. She cuts her food slowly and talks of spending December in Naples with a cousin, Khelsy, who has recently retired. Mulder is seated about five chairs away, with a museum curator on one side and the widower who lived next door to his parents when he was four or five years old on the other. Everyone speaks in low tones about the weather and politics. Mulder is wearing an immaculate wool suit and there is a fire popping behind him, steaming food on his plate and hot cider in his glass.
He's never felt so cold.
When dinner is finished, the party retires to the sitting room, the enclosed porch and the oak-paneled room Bill Mulder would have used as a cigar closet, had he ever lived in this particular house. Pumpkin bread pudding with rum sauce, coffee, spiced tea and spiked eggnog are served on the Spode settings Teena inherited from Great Aunt Elaine.
"Done much Christmas shopping yet?" Mr. Darling asks Mulder. They are standing outside, taking in fresh air, while snow drifts and shifts around them. Mr. Darling runs a private Greenwich law practice. Mulder has a vague recollection of the man sitting calmly at a kitchen island while Teena and Bill raged over some insanely small piece of the estate they were splitting. Bill banged his glass of sour mash on the counter and broke the heavy-bottomed double old-fashioned in three pieces, amber liquid rolling across a tentative and unsigned contract.
"I say, much shopping?" Mr. Darling inquires again, giving a little cough. He is a meek man, a kind man. Mulder shakes his head to focus on the question.
"No," he says, "not any yet. I'm sort of well-known for my, um, last minute decisions."
"It's the same for me," the lawyer agrees. "My son says every year that he half expects me to try putting litigation in a box with a bow on top. I've been a lawyer for close to fifty years, can you believe that? All I know. Never was good at choosing presents." He chuffs his feet along the sidewalk. Dry snow scatters, catches light from the window and glitters, briefly, before settling. "Many people to buy for? Your mother, of course."
"Mom, and a handful of close friends. My partner."
"Oh, right, you're still working for the FBI?"
"Still there."
"Been keeping busy?"
"Extremely."
"Good to keep busy."
"It is."
The two men stare out on the snowy lawn. Mulder realizes that he's no colder out here than he was inside. He doesn't think it's a good omen.
"Your partner is...well?" Mr. Darling asks.
"I think so," he says. He isn't actually convinced of that but it isn't the sort of thing one mentions to casual acquaintances.
"Good, good," Mr. Darling says. "Going to go have a taste of puddding, I am. Care to join me?"
"I'll be in shortly, yes, thank you," Mulder says, his voice sounding formal and awkward in his ears, as though he has agreed to some higher social obligation, such as marrying a Kennedy.
Mr. Darling smiles and goes inside.
Mulder stays in the snow and wonders if he should go by Scully's apartment on his way home. An envelope for her came to his office by mistake last week; she seemed very happy at first, before she knew what was inside, like she expected it to contain a million dollars. Not wanting to pry, he'd surreptitiously watched her open it. The defeat he witnessed almost made him speak.
Phone calls, long absences from the office, strange mail. Maybe she's networking, sending out resumes in a desperate attempt to find a job unrelated to unidentified substances that ooze from the several maws of creatures that aren't supposed to exist. There could be something wrong with someone in her family, or a relationship struggling, a conflict between her career and her heart.
That's it, he'd bet. She could be trying to find right way to say to him what needs to be said, an explanation for how quiet she has become, for how she shrinks from him with guilty shrugs.
The snow is heavier, making the lawn look like a wide swath of cellulite. Mulder pinches the bridge of his nose. He needs to go home, far from this house, far from thoughts of visiting Scully tonight.
He says his farewells, finds his coat. Drives home, straight home. Does not go to her and kiss the bruised shadows under her eyes, does not tuck her inside a blanket and whisper that he will always want to be her friend, no matter what, that she can tell him anything, anything at all, even good bye.
---
On many of the tombstones in Parkway Cemetery there were fresh wreaths and holiday sprays, and on just as many there were dusty, weather-battered arrangements. Beside one marker, a vase had tipped over, spilling dried red roses that were shriveled like the fists of old men.
Bill Mulder's tombstone stood unadorned.
They were in Boston investigating a slew of Melusina sightings at the Harbor. This detour was Scully's suggestion, and she was not sure it was a good one. Mulder had not shown much of his normal enthusiasm over the possibility of dredging up mermaids. She couldn't begin to say why she'd thought a trip to a cemetery would cheer him in the least.
It seemed like he needed to go somewhere that meant something.
And it seemed like he was standing there out of obligation -- but to her, not his father.
Just in case he was having some protracted inner dialogue with Bill, she waited another minute before breaching the cemetery's hush.
"You about ready to go?" she asked.
"Yeah."
"I hadn't been out here at all this year," he said as they walked back to the car. "So thanks."
His voice was wan, and he didn't say anything else for a long time.
---
She has brought over shredded duck soup, stuffed crab claws, moi shi pork and kung pao shrimp even though he insisted he wasn't really hungry.
She shakes a packet of soy sauce over the remainder of her rice. "You put a decent dent in that for a person who wasn't hungry."
The pile of pork is gone and the crab claws are nearing extinction. He explains, "I didn't want to be wasteful. There are starving kids in China, you know." She chuckles.
He's glad she's here, plying him with rich food and acting more like her old self. He owes her a meal now; with the holidays coming up it might be nice to take her somewhere fancier than the IHOP in Alexandria. If he calls tomorrow, he could probably make reservations at The Caucus Room -- she said not a month ago that she hasn't been in years. He pictures her there against the restaurant's dark leather browns, linen creams and royal blues. A bottle of wine, filet mignon or timbale with lobster and crab or rack of New Zealand lamb, warm coconut cream cake; and still nothing as opulent as the way she talks to him sometimes, when everything's okay. He can hear her unraveling a story, pieces of her he's never seen before, and laughing her goofy, wonderful laugh.
He breaks from the unspoken soliloquy. He clears off the hotel room table, closing up the little take-out boxes and bowls so that the scent of leftovers won't be quite as obtrusive in the morning. Scully pitches her plate and napkins in the garbage after him and they end up stuck, briefly, in the tiny corner behind the table, askew chairs crowding their path out.
"Oops. Thought there was more room," Scully says.
"Wait," Mulder says. "We can just...scoot...the...table..." The table must be made of lead.
"Here, I'll move the chairs."
Scully manages to crash the uncooperative chairs into the wall before climbing over them. Mulder follows, his left foot snagging obstinately on the second chair. He stumbles and Scully grabs him around the waist to keep him upright.
"Y'okay?" she says.
"Yes," he says, his arms going around her reflexively.
Scully looks up at him, her ripe mouth open just a little, her eyes bluer than sky.
He drops his arms and steps away, fast. He busies himself with pushing the chairs into less treacherous positions.
Near the door, she says in a small voice, "See you in the morning."
"'Night," he says, deliberately not turning around until she's out of the room.
"Asshole," he whispers to himself.
-----
Go to part two.
