Title: At the Shores of Normal
Author: MissAnnThropic
Spoilers: season 8
Summary: She had to see her son one more time.
Disclaimer: I own nasing! Really, I don't. All you see here (that you recognize, anyway) is the creation of someone else. I take no credit.
Her hands twisted and coiled the handkerchief under her fingers into a tight knot, white anxiety-knuckles flexing and tensing sharply on her already pale hands. Her fingertips dug into white cotton, pulled, contorted, stretched beyond any hope of regaining its former shape, and the somber man in the driver's seat beside her knew he had lost that handkerchief. He was not nearly as concerned about the handkerchief, however, as he was about the woman destroying it.
She was sitting quietly, an unnatural quiet where even her breath was held in check. The windows of their parked car were rolled down and a salty sea breeze was dancing through the car, in and out with such impunity, and that freedom only served to make her look more stony and aged by comparison. His eyes tracked to her face and his heart gave a strange tug at the sight. It wasn't the face he'd known for so long, that elegant, powerful face had been hidden behind cosmetic surgery. Even her jaw line, that regal line he used to trace in stolen moments, was changed. The doctors who had worked on her were the best; he would have had it no other way. They had taken a woman who may never had been beautiful by most people's definition, at best handsome but always captivating to him, and created a stranger's mask.
He tapped his fingers against the steering wheel and momentarily looked away from her disguise. It was necessary, he more than any other understood the concept of sacrifice, but never had he thought those demands would reach to touch her dear face. Always he was giving, and when he thought there was nothing left he gave even more.
A half-choke, half-sob from her tight throat drew his eyes back to her face and he wanted to reach out and touch her. He wanted to, but he didn't. Her heart had changed long before her face as far as her regard for him was concerned, but still he was held in limbo by her mouth. Collagen didn't alter the way she held her lips, a grim, determined line, a woman to fit the tasks and trials she had suffered. So many years, so many regrets, so many times it was all they'd been able to do.
She was wringing his handkerchief into a twisted snake in her lap. He feared if she didn't stop soon she'd start drawing blood when the blisters she had to have broke open. He reflexively started to reach toward her, intent on laying his hand atop hers if only to make her aware of her hands.
Her eyes were locked out the front windshield. The botox had eased the crow's feet at the corners of her eyes, the contacts made her irises foreign shades, but the heartache in the depths of her eyes could not be masked by any means known to man and then some. He knew... he'd looked for it.
He pulled his hand back and frowned. "I told you this was a mistake."
She sucked in a breath at his voice, quiet and stubborn. He'd told her so many times, but she had to see him. She demanded it, and in the end he was notoriously bad at denying her.
Her tongue barely darted out to wet her lips, still new to her senses. "I didn't ask you if you thought it was a good idea."
He gave a noncommittal sound and looked out his own window. "You never were good at listening."
Her face set in a furious glower but she didn't spare a moment to look at him, and in the next second her expression had settled back on heartsick.
He sighed in frustration and looked back at her. He ended up staring. She was too preoccupied to notice, and even if she had he probably wouldn't have cared. The longer he stared, the longer frustration turned to something nearing sympathy. "We should go."
Her hands clutched frantically at the handkerchief, she half-grimaced, and with a tiny voice she squeaked, "A few minutes more."
"You're only making this harder on yourself. You have to let him go, allow him to live his life. It's what you wanted, isn't it?"
"I know," she whispered in a frail voice so unbefitting the defiant woman he'd known for so long. "I know... I did this for him, and it's the right thing for him, but he's my son."
That never slipped his mind. He didn't say anything, instead followed her gaze to the scene that had caught her attention like a bug zapper mesmerizes a moth.
Across the street a white sand beach framed the sea, an eggshell strip of shoreline holding back a dark azure ocean. It was the off-season for beach-lounging and only local residents could be found cavorting in the surf. It was strange. A place so fiercely loved for a short season then so completely forgotten but by a few.
Like the three lone figures on the beach now. A man, woman, and child. A family. The man and woman were sitting on the sand together, heads bent close, words a sacred trust of the shore, while the year old baby boy with them toddled precariously over the sand. Every two seconds one of the adults would look toward the child, a check on his whereabouts, though the boy for the time seemed content to squat down and play in the grainy carpet.
They looked so normal. They looked happy. It made the man sitting in the car across the road feel bone-weary. These kinds of observations were dangerous. He couldn't afford to regret what he had so long ago forsaken to know the truth, to become a part of the future.
Now was not the time to long for the simple pleasures.
"He looks so..."
"Content?" her companion asked, and even he was surprised by the bitterness in his tone.
She only nodded and for a second her hands went completely still, the twisted viper of cotton spared for a breath's span. "I could never give him this, no matter how hard I tried. I did try."
His resentment fled and in its wake a kind of hollow sadness. "I know you did. In a way, you have given this to him by doing what you did."
Her stolid silence seemed to suggest she didn't see his point, but she wasn't going to waste words arguing.
He couldn't watch the image of what he could have had any longer. His eyes left the beach, the family, and he found himself staring down their end of the street. A convenience store almost a block away caught his eye.
"It will be a long drive back," he began and looked solemnly at his passenger. "We should get going."
She curled her talon-like fingers into the handkerchief again. She wanted to cry, he could see it in her profile. She wanted to cry, to reach out and stop the world and just say 'wait', but she ultimately sat still because she knew he was right. So long ago that had become her form of consent. Silence.
"I'll be back; I'm just going to get us something to eat to hold us over until we can find a decent restaurant." She was barely listening. But she needed this, some time alone before she was expected to turn her back on her son. He wouldn't deny her that.
He got out of the car and she was left alone, staring wistfully at the beach-side family. The man and woman had risen from their place on the sand side-by-side. They set about putting away their scattered belongings. While they worked they touched. They smiled and sidled close for the sake of nearness. Their lovers' attention was broken only to look toward the child with them.
It was so wonderful and so foreign all at once. She ached for it as much as she rejoiced.
Then she could sit still no longer. Dropping the handkerchief on the floorboard, she opened the car door and for a moment stood, seeing the trio from a slightly different angle. Then she gathered her nerve, fought to still her beating heart, and started toward the beach.
She was a lone woman, an unimposing figure, and while they noticed her they didn't seem particularly worried. She was not a threat, only a lonely woman with a lifetime of regret. She had to look like something from a Melville novel, the widow at the cold sea's shore awaiting her lost paramour. In a sense, it might have been true... she'd cast a lot of dreams to the water and was still waiting for even one to come back to land.
Maybe one finally had.
She walked along the water's edge slowly, hands twisted together before her to still their trembling. She neared the family, torturous second by endless second.
The baby boy had traipsed toward her, blue eyes shining with a bravery and curiosity she recognized far too well even if the color was different. He stepped toward her, unafraid, emboldened by the guaranteed protection only a split second away, ready to swoop in and save him from any danger. He did not yet know disappointment, the panic of knowing his parents couldn't protect him from everything in the world.
Her breath fought her as she watched the beautiful little boy toddle closer, the tiny imprints of his shoe soles trailing after him in the sand.
He was so close. She could see the healthy glow in his face, his cherubic cheeks, ten perfect little fingers that clapped together, an eerily familiar mouth that quirked up at the corners as though in a silent laugh. So near, she could almost touch him, more than anything she wanted to kneel down and let him come to her, just for one touch, one smell of his baby skin, one chance to hold him...
"William!"
The baby jolted to a startled stop and the sailor widow's head jerked up at the voice. She looked up to see the woman hurrying across the beach to the boy. The boy turned at his mother's rushed approach. His merry expression had transformed at the red head's tone and, worried, he stuck his fingers in his mouth as the small woman finally reached her child.
She scooped up the boy and looked warily at the lone woman on the beach who'd drawn so near her son.
Of course. She, of all people, would be suspicious. Just beneath the surface, always under the thin veneer of content, there would be the fear. She knew that fear better than anyone could ever know.
She gave a watery smile and said in a cracked voice, "He's a beautiful baby."
William had snuggled on his mother's shoulder and was now eying her uncertainly from beneath his mom's chin, as though it was only his mother's alarm that had given him pause to think maybe she was a bad person.
She was, but not in any way that baby William need fear her.
Finally the mother relaxed, her son safely in her arms, and she returned the smile. "Thank you."
"He's about a year, isn't he?"
"A year and four days. This trip to the beach is his birthday present." Then a pause, a flicker of something in her blue eyes, and the young mother began to stare intently at her.
"Scully, we're all packed up," a male voice. His voice. Teena's eyes snapped sharply away from Dana to settle on the figure approaching them.
Her son.
He came to a stop beside Dana and his son and with a glance assured himself that both were all right. His arm came up to rest at the small of his partner's back, it lingered there, and Dana moved slightly closer into him before regarding Teena once more.
Teena couldn't tear her eyes from him. Her boy. He was in jeans and a T-shirt but without shoes, completely barefoot. The sand was clinging to his skin, wedged between his toes, and the mother in Teena wanted to chide him that it would be impossible to keep the sand out of his shoes, his socks, the car, the house.
And then she let it wash over her that the sand didn't matter.
Fox looked better than Teena could remember seeing him in a very, very long time. Maybe not since Samantha had he looked so alive. He had always been prone to dropping weight, as a boy he'd driven her to fits of worry whenever he was sick or upset... he'd get so thin. As he got older, that tendency to neglect himself in times of stress persisted, and Fox was always putting himself in stressful situations. It seemed, over the years, that every time she saw him he looked scrawny to her maternal eye. After Samantha...
But now it was different. He wasn't too skinny, he didn't look exhausted or sad or harried or driven. He looked relaxed. He looked happy.
She had always known her son was a handsome man, but she never knew he could be so positively radiant before.
But most of all, it was his eyes. There was a light, a life, a glow when he looked at the woman and child at his side that lit him brilliantly from the inside out. After so long, so many hardships, so much for his quest, he was home.
"Everything all right?" he asked with the first sign of concern at the strange silence he'd entered between his family and the strange shore woman.
Teena wanted nothing more than to throw her arms around her boy. But she couldn't. She wasn't his mother anymore; that woman had 'died' to free him to have exactly what he had now. Teena had never felt such pain for motherhood in her life save for one time so long ago.
"We're fine," Dana said, but not very convincingly, and Teena cleared her throat.
"I was just... admiring your boy."
An automatic grin started to bloom on Fox's face and Teena could have fallen to her knees and cried. He was so beautiful.
"He's something, isn't he?"
"Yes, he is." Teena answered, though privately she was speaking of a different son. "I... remember when mine was that age, a lifetime ago. They grow up so fast."
"That's what Mom keeps saying, but it's hard to keep in mind while you're changing diapers," Fox teased congenially, and for a moment Teena was confused, wondering if the world had changed realities on her. Until she realized Fox spoke of another 'mom', no doubt of Dana's mother. A woman who had become 'Mom' to her 'orphaned' son. The heartbreak hadn't enough left to work with to hurt much. But in a way, Teena was relieved in some measure to know someone had taken her boy in, a family that could give him that smile he wore now. She'd had his entire childhood to try and failed, time for someone else who knew what they were doing to take over. Teena Mulder was dead and it had to be that way. From what she saw before her, it was better that way.
William turned in Dana's hold and stretched his little arms toward Fox with a plaintive, demanding grumble.
Fox smirked and collected his son. William whined, tucked his head against Fox's chest with a huff, and stuck his thumb in his mouth. Fox smiled down tenderly at his son, cradled him close, and said to Dana, "Someone's ready for his nap."
"William's probably sleepy, too," Dana replied with a playful smile, and Fox gave her a look. Teena smiled through the threat of tears.
Fox cast a last look at Teena and nodded. "You have a good day."
Teena wanted to hold him back, to keep him, but she gave a stilted nod and let him go. "Nice to have met you."
Fox and Dana turned and walked back up the beach away from her. They detoured for Dana to pick up their things, then they were walking away. Fox held William with one arm and looped the other around Dana's waist.
Teena wanted to race after them. It was torment to watch them go. She stood there long after they were gone.
The sun was beginning to set and she had not yet moved when she was joined on the beach by Geoffrey. He came up alongside her, silent and solid, and she closed her eyes and dipped her chin.
"That wasn't wise. He could have recognized you. She could have recognized you."
Teena was beyond him now. She had seen her son, seen him happy. Geoffrey couldn't touch her. "I had to see him. I don't expect you to understand."
Geoffrey sighed but didn't immediately bite back at her. "Was it worth the risk? You know the lengths we had to go to in order to fool his partner that you were dead. She's not a woman easily misled, you know."
Actually, she didn't. Teena had never really spoken with Dana Scully, always she'd seemed like a quiet, ghostly figure in the maelstrom of volatility that always shrouded the air when more than one Mulder was in the same room. That damned past, the conspiracies, everything that had turned her home into a war-zone. Now Teena wished she'd gotten to know Dana Scully better... far, far better.
"It was worth it."
Geoffrey seemed to take that at face value and didn't say anything further on the matter. The breeze that had been fluttering all day started to blow harder and colder, whipped the trench coat around Geoffrey's legs, and he stepped closer to Teena to shield her from the wind.
"I never thought he would have a normal life," Teena confessed guiltily. When she was met with silence she looked up at her companion. He was staring out at the ocean with a steely expression. She knew he understood.
"I know it sounds terrible, but I hoped and wished he'd give up on his sister. I just wanted him to let go and move on, but I knew my son better. He'd waste his life chasing a dream, a lie..." she gave him one sharp glare then let it go. "I was sure he'd let life pass him by in favor of his single-minded quest. I wanted so much more for him than what you've become."
Geoffrey didn't even flinch. "That's harsh, don't you think?"
"No. Fox reminded me of you more times than I cared for."
Geoffrey turned an intent stare down at her and Teena had to look away.
"Well, in the end you released him from his burden. As a mother that has to please you."
Teena wondered how much of it was her and how much Dana Scully. Some questions she was content not to have answered.
"What happens to him now?" Teena asked.
Geoffrey looked out to the sea, cant his head back to study the darkening sky, and answered, "I don't have all the answers." With a faint grunt under his breath, Geoffrey gathered his coat around him and lowered himself on to the sand, suit and all.
Teena wanted to chide him that he'd get sand in his clothes, in the car, but instead sat down next to him. They sat side-by-side, wordlessly watching the waves, for what seemed an endless minute.
Teena looked at Geoffrey's face, so close to hers and just as familiar as hers was unrecognizable. "What happens to him now?"
Geoffrey reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a pack of Morleys. "That's up to Fox."
Teena looked in the direction her son's small family had long ago disappeared. Baby William's footprints were still pressed lightly into the sand, airy contrast to the deeper imprints of a man's bare feet and a woman's flip flops, and Teena smiled to herself.
Her son was going to be more than fine.
END