Silence Waiting (1/4)
"I saw old Autumn in the misty morn stand shadowless like Silence, listening to silence..." -- Thomas Hood
Or, The First Nine Days.
First Posted: October 2001
Category/Rating: Oddness. Angst. NC-17.
Spoilers: Through "Amor Fati." In my world, the World Series happens in September. Does that make this an Alt-U?
Disclaimer: Not mine. Grr.
Feedback: Nicer than gummy brains. Please and Thank You. eviljesemie@yahoo.com
Notes at end.

~ - . ~ - . ~ - . ~
Since I lost you I am silence-haunted

-- DH Lawrence

- - -
When did it first happen?

Yes, Scully says. When did you first realize? She takes a sip of milky tea.

Gretta answers, I was seven and Fredrick was nine. We lived on the same road and sat next to each other in class because of assigned seating, but we'd never spoken. Fredrick, like most of our classmates, usually pretended I didn't exist. One day in early October, our fourth grade teacher was drawing a large multiplication table on the chalkboard. It was after lunch, after recess.

Another cup?

No, thank you, says Scully.

Gretta says, I glanced out the window. Clouds were building up, and it thundered once, like the growl of an unsettled dog. I wasn't afraid of storms. I was, in fact, indifferent to storms. Mrs. Sanders asked me a question; I don't remember what it was. I knew the answer but didn't want to provide it. There was nothing worse than being different, and any seven-year-old who knew the answer to a fourth grade question was different. A bright green bolt of lightning jumped from one cloud to another. I looked around the room but no one had seemed to notice. Something was starting to buzz in my head.

She pauses to stack the empty teacups and saucers. Scully tips her head, a slight gesture to indicate slight impatience.

I can never explain this well, Gretta says. I was sitting there, unconcerned about the storm-- And then all of a sudden I'm nervous. No, not nervous. Anticipatory. Fredrick is looking out the window, and Mrs. Sanders has turned to the chalkboard again. The clouds are thick and my insides wiggle. Fredrick is not smiling, but his face is transformed with delight.

She smiles at Scully. I saw a hint of what he'd look like in five or ten years, she says. Scully returns the smile, and prompts, Then what?

Gretta continues, The sunlight is running ahead of the clouds, and it hits the October trees around the playground in such a way that they appear lit from within, like flame. There are words in my head. The storm is washing in closer and closer. Fredrick's thoughts are as warm as wool in my mind. He doesn't know I'm watching, much less that I'm listening. He is beautiful, secretive, kind; waiting. He is thinking, Soon there will be rainbows.

~ - . ~ - . ~ - . ~
11 October 1999


He hates that his hands tremble. He's shaved as best he can. His black dress shoes are newly polished. He folds his suit jacket over the back of a dining room chair and goes to the living room windows. Doesn't check his watch. She probably had to park down the street. They're not supposed to be at the church until 8 p.m. and they have plenty of time to get there.

And afterwards?

The vividness of her resolve and the strength of her beliefs are nothing compared to the veracity and swallowing depth of love of which she is capable. He understands that now. What he heard in her, when she came to his bedside, was intoxicating: she sounded like a dreamscape, like starlight, like joy distilled to its purest form and then expanded, exploded and rushed to all corners.

But there was also desperation, ache, fear -- he saw the edge of a machete, a man touching her temple in benison, percolating water, a ship that was not supposed to exist, insects swarming, blood-waves splashing at her feet; puzzle pieces of DNA, religious texts, prophecy; himself, in her stunned heart, as she tried very hard not to cry, as she tried to tell him that he had to be strong, her mind opening fully to him, every emotion spilt and ruptured so that he would know, hoping that it would help him fight.

It is too quiet in the wake of such music.

He can't take another five minutes of sitting and recuperating. He's swallowed antibiotics and vitamins and Advil. He's slept seven and half hours a night every night for the past week. He needs to be with her. They have work to do. He refrains from scratching at the stitches on his scalp, which heals and itches. He paces his living room. There are files on his desk he can't fix on. He needs her here to sharpen things, to make things real again.

They haven't really talked about what's happened, which is in no way atypical for them. He said some things a few days ago, but they were just words in that cloaked, measured way he always seems to be speaking to her in his hallway -- if he can hold her in his arms for thirty seconds at a time, once every two or three years, if he can say 'saved' and 'touchstone' and 'whole person,' eventually, decades from now, he might also finally string together enough of those words to fully explain what she means to him.

Which might be less important than a more pressing matter: she is his dearest friend, and she has been hurt. They are closer and more apart than ever. He has no idea how to correct this or comfort her. He strains to see past his own reflection in the dark glass, strains to remember the pulse of her thoughts inside him.

The elevator dings at the end of the hall. He goes to the door. His neighbors have arrived home. He's already stuck his head out, so he says hello and prepares for the onslaught of polite conversation. She isn't very late. He shouldn't worry.

- - -

"Fredrick, these posters are fabulous," Carole says. She slings her scarf over one shoulder and flips her hair in the same direction. "I know I've said it before but I'm utterly thrilled you've joined the fund." She giggles.

"Thanks," he says, using the level to adjust the frame across from the door. The large Artober Fest print is currently the focal point of the entire room. The Whisperwood Arts Association has one week to raise enough money to cover their expenses for all of 2000. Carole is the fund's broker, and Fredrick's newest patron. Everyone involved with WAA has spent three hours sweeping and scrubbing and redecorating the fund building's lobby.

Fredrick thinks, Carole has been my unasked-for personal assistant for three hours longer than anyone not on medication should have to tolerate.

"How's Gretta these days? You guys see much of each other?" Carole inquires in an innocent voice.

He puts the level in his toolbox and rummages around for a permanent magic marker. He'd really enjoy writing all over Carole's face with it, but he needs to mark the paint cans for tomorrow's kids' classes - - free workshops after school in the field by Joleen's Hot Potato.

"Haven't run into Gretta lately, no. I hear she's doing well. The market's busy this time of year. With the harvest and all."

"Of course." Carole smiles her fakest smile. "Well, I'll be going. Have a great kickoff tomorrow."

"You too." Fredrick juggles five bottles of tempera and sighs with relief when Carole shuts the door behind her.

He's the last person left in the building. He should go home and eat something. Do laundry. Finish up the flyer designs or take notes on the website proposal.

He could call Gretta, ask if she wants to go for a stroll, or if she needs help loading all those pumpkins into storage for the night. He opens the door and leans out into the sharp autumn evening, spirits near in smoky air, the sort of night during which he once thought he'd propose...

What a fucking sap, he thinks. If she heard you thinking that--

Sort of the problem, wasn't it? The wind slaps at him, scrambles his black hair messily. He should go home and go to bed alone and wake up when it's March, and everything's covered in snow and he's too cold to think about anything but not dying of frostbite.

Yeah.

Two blocks down, he can see the lit jack o' lanterns lining the yard in front of the small market Gretta owns. They have wicked, fanged grins, and flickering eyes.

- - -

The suspended leaf flutters in cold night breeze, rotates in levitation, its silk cord catching silver light for an instant before becoming invisible again. Spider magic.

Scully stops on the sidewalk to button up her trenchcoat. She shivers, peering up at the oak with its decaying foliage. She is four blocks from Mulder's apartment and ten minutes late. Her heels compose the only noise on the street save the breeze whistling low, clashing melodies against her clompy rhythm. Her ears are cold, and she regrets both her new haircut and her unreasonable refusal of hats. (She thinks they make her head appear unnaturally round.)

The orange-tinted moon seems to have been eating too many carrots. She knows it's just smog reflecting city lights, but she thinks of celestial dairies and lunar cheese, moon mice with tiny pick-axes. She hadn't expected it to be so dark just yet. She isn't quite used to autumn. Her internal clock ticks with hot sunlight, salt-watered, gritty with sand and sleeplessness. Less than two weeks ago she looked out over the choppy surface of a bloody tide, slept in a tent woven with locusts, dreamt she'd lost his heartbeat.

They saw each other at lunch, when she dropped off a few files and they made plans to attend the memorial service together. Now she wrenches open the front door to Mulder's apartment building, rides the dim-lit elevator, steps out into his yellow hallway. A vaguely familiar woman -- neighbor -- and a small girl are chatting with her partner. The girl in pigtails and corduroy jumper is bouncing with happiness. The woman has her hand on the child's head. Mulder responds to something Scully doesn't hear. He sees her and smiles, gently, holding her gaze. She walks right up to him, puts her right hand in his left one and rises up on tiptoe to kiss him, as though the greeting was ordinary, practiced.

He kisses her back, and looks down at her with something like wonder in his eyes. The neighbors disappear into the hallway ether. Mulder opens his door and ushers Scully inside. He helps her out of the trenchcoat, and stops.

"What?"

He points at her collar, and then his. They each have on a button-up, medium blue oxford. We have been working together too long, she thinks.

"You should probably change," she says, smiling. "Otherwise, it'll be weird, like we're dressing as twins."

"This blue looks very good on me," he says.

Yes, it does, she thinks. "I don't have anything else to wear with me."

"Wouldn't want people to start thinking we were weird, though."

"Right."

"Too bad you have to wear anything at all," he says absently, wandering into the bedroom.

Too bad we have a memorial service to attend, she thinks. On his coffee table is a book of apocalyptic Indian prognostication, and a top level clearance entry pass into a room where she found him sprawled and borderline-septic, his invaded skull swathed in gauze. While sitting at red lights, or when she dumps the bathroom waste can into the larger kitchen one, she flashes on the memory of his delicate eyelids, speculates about the death that tempted him. She can't make herself stop.

She did not know if she would be able to wake him; she thinks of his weight against her as they staggered away. She's positive she could not find that room again with a map and a team of specialists. That room, if it has not already been, will be transformed, renovated, disappeared. Skinner said the FBI meant to put a crime scene unit in there, but it didn't happen.

Besides, the team was busy with Diana's body, discovered slumped in the doorway of her posh Watergate apartment.

"Scully?"

Mulder stands beside the couch, waiting for her answer. He is wearing a white shirt with a dark gray suit and a dark red tie. He looks almost healthy, almost steady. Very proper for a man going to pay his last respects to the redeemed double-agent with whom he reopened the X-Files so many years ago.

She shakes her head. "Hmm?"

"Ready?"

"Yes." She reaches up to smooth down his hair. He stands very still. He concentrates his gaze on her face, puts his hand on her arm. She cannot conceive of a life without him. The revelation is terrifying and liberating. "I'm ready," she says.

~ - . ~ - . ~ - . ~
17 October 1978


Under his breath, he says "My name is Fredrick" to Marcus, who keeps calling him Freddy. To Barney he says, more loudly, "Stop stepping on the backs of my sneakers." To each of the eleven boys he's in the ninth circle of hell with, he says, in his head only, I hate dodgeball. Someone's elbow pokes at his ribcage. Someone's sweat splatters the side of his cheek. I hate dodgeball a lot, he thinks.

Fredrick Roberts' father talks a good deal about the ninth circle of hell, for reasons obvious to Fredrick. The ball swings past his head and he ducks, crashing into Stevie, who yelps and thumps his shoulder hard. Eric and Jacob are aiming the ball fast and brutal. Thomas is out, flat on the pavement like a steamrolled cartoon character.

His dad might be referring to anything from Dante (whoever he is) to a career as an insurance claims adjuster, but Fredrick understands that fiery pits of lava and brimstone have nothing on fourth grade recess rituals. Brad Brendle will probably threaten to beat him up just for fun. It'll be better than having Lucas Swank sit on him. He could hit back, but then he'd have bruised knuckles and a fat lip.

He zigs and zags and the ball smacks him right in the stomach anyway. As he goes down he wonders if he looked like one of those circus guys who gets hit with a cannonball. Probably not, he thinks, taking a chance to enjoy the full benefits of a concrete bed.

"Quit napping, Freddy!" Marcus screams. "You're done!"

Someone kicks the dodgeball away from Fredrick's prone body. He sits up slowly -- the game has resumed. Dust and gravel spray around him while nine-year-olds out for various forms of revenge and recrimination try to harm each other with a rubbery sphere. When he stands up the ball bounces off his left ear with an enormous thwack and goes out of bounds, rolling across the playground before anyone can scramble to catch it.

"Your fault," Eric whines. He pushes at Fredrick with his squishy hands. "Go get it."

Fredrick sighs and looks around. He can see the ball still rolling, headed toward the school building. He jogs over to retrieve it. It's Jupiter out of orbit, he thinks.

The ball comes to rest at the feet of Gretta Carlisle. She is sitting with her back against the school. Her math book is open. She has a piece of paper and a pencil, and as Fredrick approaches he can see she seems to actually be working some of the problems that are at the end of every section. She appears to be on the thirtieth chapter. They've been in the fourth grade for seven weeks.

Freak, he thinks.

When he bends to pick up the ball, she looks up. "Hi," she says in a pleased voice, as though he's come to see her personally. "How are you?"

He palms the ball and grimaces at the sound of eleven irritated boys twenty feet away yelling for him to hurry up. Lucas advances with a threatening expression.

Fredrick doesn't answer, but turns and throws the ball to him.

"Why do you play if you hate it so much?" Gretta wants to know.

She's always asking him stuff like that. Strange little nosey questions, like she has a right to the information or something. He hates sitting next to her in class. It's bad enough she lives on the same street he does, with her dumb grandparents. Ignoring her hasn't made her stop asking stupid stuff so far, but if he walks away he knows she won't follow, and that's what he always does.

Today he is tired and dirty and his ear's ringing, and he hates Gretta Carlisle every bit as much as he hates dodgeball. The first recess bell begins to chime and he thinks he'll go in early and sit at his desk in blissful silence for just a second, before everyone else starts to pile in after the second bell.

She lets him go, and sure enough, there's no one else in the classroom when he dashes in there, hall door banging shut behind him like a delayed cue in a play, the otherwise stuffy calm quite welcome as he drops down in his seat and lays his head on the desk. Soon the second bell sounds and other kids appear, wound up and filthy, morose or laughing or just a bit meaner than they'd been before lunch, before the chance to work on their socialization skills (as Mrs. Sanders was fond of saying). Thomas and Jacob pinch at each other and stick out their tongues at Fredrick.

Gretta slides into her seat next to his and lifts her desk top to put her math book away and get out a notebook and her science text. Mrs. Sanders raps a ruler against the chalkboard and gives off her stern look, like one of those high-pitched alarms only dogs can hear. Kids start to shut up. Gretta leans over and whispers, "The dodgeball was red. The dodgeball looked like Mars out of orbit." She smiles at him the way someone smiles, Fredrick knows, when they really want to be your friend.

He ignores her. He's getting good at it.

~ - . ~ - . ~ - . ~
11 October 1999


The church is out of town, by a tiny man-made lake in the middle of a new subdivision. White candles light the sidewalk from the parking lot to the wide cherry-wood front doors. He recognizes a handful of FBI field agents, a few officious women from the CIA, an NSA advisor, a guy who used to be Secret Service, all mixed with a copious number of complete strangers dressed in Sunday best. Cousins, maybe, uncles or aunts. Friends, neighbors, contacts? Syndicate operatives, turncoats, traitors? Mulder doesn't know. The sheer amount of people, good, bad or indifferent, who are attending the service startles him.

So Diana managed something like normalcy in the last ten years, at least on the surface. Do any of these people know what she's done? Scully is hanging up their coats, her hair deep bronze in the lobby's shadows. A part of him wants to start screaming. He would like very much to know what Diana knew about Scully. There was something to be said for ranting insanity: whatever was done to him has restored, theoretically, his mental health and his pedestrian human senses. He'd have no excuse, then, if he stormed her coffin, shook her corpse and demanded she reanimate long enough to tell him everything. Skinner hadn't put him in a headlock at the hospital but Mulder was fully aware of the man's ability to do so.

'FBI Agent Arrested at Funeral for Fallen Comrade;

Charged with Desecration of a Corpse.' Best not to chance it, he thinks.

Kersh and Skinner are just inside the foyer, talking with another AD (Harvey? Luden? Maybe Jolie) about the World Series. Skinner gives Mulder and Scully a tight smile when he sees them. No one else makes such an effort. Whispers and gazes dart away from them.

There are pale pink roses in a vase by the guest ledger. Diana, Mulder remembers from some long-ago dinner, loved pink roses. How pedestrian, he thinks. She probably thought it made her unique, to want pink ones instead of red. Scully puts her elegant signature below his harsh scrawl.

It is almost eight o'clock. Seats at the back of the auditorium are chosen, Scully sitting by a porch door, Mulder on her right. The crowd settles in. A man at the pulpit opens a Bible. The casket to his left is closed, pink roses draped over its rounded lid. Mulder remembers kneeling by Diana, her hair tinged with gray, wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. Lifting her veil, holding a squalling infant with her coloring, watching her die in increments.

The man at the pulpit says, "We are gathered tonight to say goodbye to a beloved friend and colleague, a woman of courage and dedication, Diana Beth Fowley." Mulder takes one breath and then another. Diana once threw him a birthday party complete with barbecue and three beer kegs, once deep-throated him in a shower stall, asked how anyone could quantify the spiritual, believed his theory about gashadokuro, the skeletal ghosts of starved victims, sometimes fifteen persons tall, who were thought to devour the heads of the living. Diana once slipped a key under Scully's apartment door.

Scully has her head bowed, her eyes closed. He would give up his normal boring blatantly inferior human abilities to see, touch, taste and smell to hear one more minute of her thoughts, to have her emotions mainlined directly into his, the intensity of her overwhelming everything he feels at this moment.

Diana's thoughts had been like a strong drink of turpentine, sickly sweet, bitter, sour, scalding. Poisonous.

Amen, the pulpit man says, amen, glory be to God in the highest.

Mulder puts his hand over his mouth. Selfish, he thinks angrily. He takes it back: he would give up any sense but touch if it meant he could take Scully's hand in his and tell her that it doesn't matter what she saw in Africa; tell her and have it be true. If he could apologize for Diana. Her fingers are laced together, and she's biting her lip.

Not everything that occurred in the last three weeks was Diana's fault, but she has hurt Scully. The man at the pulpit finishes his remarks with a proverb or a psalm, Mulder doesn't know which, something about absolution and grace. It doesn't matter, Mulder thinks. I couldn't forgive her anyway. The man steps down.

The auditorium is filled to capacity with people breathing and saying nothing. Scully's eyes are closed. Diana is dead. Mulder takes one breath and another, isolated in alien deafness.

- - -
At ten the register is cashed out and Gretta is exhausted.

"All right, Jacks, time for sleep."

She snuffs the pumpkins' candles and carries each head into the market, lining them up on the countertop by the baskets of gourds. Before locking up, she tells them bye.

How macabre, she thinks, that the last things I say good night to are a bunch of decapitated heads.

Just pumpkins, she tells herself.

Across the street, Fredrick is closing up the fund hall.

She almost yells hello -- it's still instinct after, what, twenty-some years. But she quells the urge. He is walking the other way, hunched a bit, probably cold.

She thinks of holding his hands between hers, trying to warm him after an afternoon of snowball fights or faux ice hockey on the creek (tennis shoes don't make the best skates). She thinks of his cool hands on her hot skin, when he'd insist on guessing her temperature during her annual bout with the flu, making her laugh until, well, snot came out her nose.

The last memory of his thoughts sits resonant and soft in her mind. She watches his lean figure until he is out of sight. She doesn't realize she is shaking until she arrives at her darkened porch, until she notices how smothered all sound is in the sleeping night, in her empty house.

- - -
Scully listens to him rattle around in the kitchen, boiling water for tea. She thinks maybe she should let him get some rest. Their shirts no longer match but their weariness might. She toes off her heavy shoes and pads to the doorway. The kettle puffs so much steam she can't see any liquid water at all as he prepares two coffee mugs. He slides one down the counter toward her.

She picks up the mug and swirls the tea bag a few times. He passes her and drops into a chair at the dinner table.

"Can I ask you something?" he says a minute later.

"Sure." She removes her soggy bag and stirs two spoonfuls of sugar into her hot tea. She brings a saucer and the sugar bowl with her and takes the chair next to his at the table. He prepares his tea, takes a quick sip, and sets his mug back down.

"Mulder, what did you want to ask?"

He gives her a quick look, a rueful grin. "I just...

I wanted to ask if you were okay."

"If I'm okay?" There's a hint of stridency in her tone. He's been watching her like she might disappear all night.

As if he wasn't the one who'd been lost.

"Scully--"

"No, it's okay. _I'm_ okay." It's a fib they both need to hear.

"I didn't know whether the service would, I mean, you and Diana aside, the service was pretty, um, religious. Far more than I thought it would be. Diana wasn't really big on religion, that I knew of, but I guess someone in her family arranged things."

Scully stares at him. He clears his throat.

"I was just wondering, if you felt uncomfortable, I, I wouldn't want you to not share that with me, I, uh, you don't have to share anything you don't want to, honest, but if you did want to, just someone to talk to sometime, I don't know, about anything, I just--

I wouldn't want you to feel awkward and then sit there and take it because you were with me."

He is babbling, and blushing, and she begins to answer but he starts talking again.

"Which is moot, I know, because the service is over

and if you'd really had a problem it's sort of too

late to apologize for it now, but I will anyway

because I really didn't think, I didn't think there'd

be such an emphasis on religion and everything, I've

been to actual Christian sermons that weren't that

preachy, and--"

"Mulder," she interrupts. "I'm fine."

"Okay," he says meekly.

She considers her answer.

"Actually, I'm not."

His head snaps up.

"I'm not _not_ okay, really, but yes, tonight was hard."

His face is full of compassion.

"And, you're right, not only because of Diana. Mulder, she _was_ your friend." She stops. Diana was more than his friend, doubtless, but she doesn't want to go into that. "It's going to take some time. For me to reconcile what I experienced in Africa, what I witnessed when I returned."

He nods.

"Thank you, though." She leans over and kisses him on the forehead. "I know tonight was no holiday for you either. Are you okay?"

"I think so."

They smile at each other shyly. She hates that what has happened to them almost defies verbalization. She wants to tell him everything, and has no idea how.

How can she possibly describe how afraid she feels when she thinks of all she was taught growing up? The anger that she may have placed her faith in something that doesn't exist, that may be nothing more than a deception, a fantasy conjured by other simple humans to explain mortal frailty and pain, to fuel wars, to hide truths, to pretend that after this life there is nothing to fear? That there is anything after this life, period. The emptiness she felt in Africa, confronted with answers she could not penetrate. The transcendence blossoming in her as she and Albert joined hands, her wretched hope.

What if I had found you too late, she wants to yell. What if I hadn't found you at all? How can you possibly trust me? How could I have told you the truth when I don't know what that is?

Something drips into her tea.

"Scully," he says, brushing her jaw with his thumb.

She looks at him, her vision bleary, her throat sore.

He stands and takes her hands in his, drawing her up.

They're walking -- drifting, she thinks, the apartment hazy around her -- and someone, no, she is saying, Mulder, Mulder, Mulder.

Shh. Shh.

- - -
She rests in his arms, her head heavy on his shoulder. They are on top of the comforter, his bedroom lit by one candle. After a time, she raises her head and kisses him more gently than he thought possible.

I hope you can hear me, he thinks. I hope you know.

She sits up and begins to unbutton his shirt. He does not let himself think it is a mistake.

- - -
She has never been with someone so patient, so meticulous. Her body feels like it has been roused one nerve ending at a time, until her blood hums. It is not like sex at all, she thinks. More like suturing, mending -- she is straddling him, and he is stitched inside her. She runs her finger along the slick seam their bodies make, where he disappears into her. She looks up at him and sees her own amazement in his eyes.

She feels a sting only when he's separate again.

- - -
Illuminated by a single flame, her pale, bare body carves a shallow indentation against the deep green of his sheets. He caresses the length of her arm over and over again, her skin a marvel. She sleeps with her left hand curled on his chest, and this seems somehow as intimate as what they were doing when she was awake.

He is lonely for her in a way he could not have imagined four or five hours ago.

He misses her thoughts as though she were separated from him by thousands of miles. The remnants of her emotions surge and ebb in his mind. When she stirs, he lays his hand over her heart.

~ - . ~ - . ~ - . ~
(See Part Two)