She Can Organize Her Life By Oceans
Scully is looking at the traces of foam left as the sea retracts from the beach. The sand is brown and damp from an overnight rain, and she reaches down with her left hand to take off her shoes. She wants to feel the crunch of wet sand between her toes, wants to hear the sound of it as she walks. She wants to leave traces of herself along this lonely shore, something that proclaims to everyone that she has been here, she has left something in this world, and she chooses footprints. It is early morning, and she is alone on an endless stretch of an unoccupied winter beach.
She loves it like this. The cold water, dark and somewhat menacing in its white caps further out, past the crashing waves. Scully suddenly feels that she is not living within her own body, but, rather, she is living in this sand, these waves, this November slice of sea and sand that, for once, is hers to share with another. Here are the tufts of grass growing on the dunes, blown by an unsteady phantom breath. Here are her footprints, evidence of herself that she can look at and say, "Yes, that is me."
She opens her eyes, and there is green around her. Green walls, linoleum floor, nurses bustling outside her room. She is incredibly tired. Her mother leaning over her. She must be crying.
"You're thinking about him, aren't you?" Maggie asks, putting a hand on her shoulder.
"No. Yes." Scully feels a sudden, terrifying urge to strike her. To hit her with so much force that she would fall into the hard sand that would wrap its arms around her like a dangerous vine, pulling her into its glass fragmented depths. This frightens her tremendously. Nothing has been the same with him gone.
"Maybe I should stay, help you out at the apartment, help with the baby…"
"No" Scully says, a little too sharply. Her mother looks surprised. "No," Scully says in a normal tone. "No, I'm fine. We'll be fine."
"You're sure?"
"Yes. Don't worry, I'm fine."
Maggie's eyes linger on her. It seems they are both waiting for the other to say something. For Maggie to insist on staying the night, for Scully to yell at her to go. Scully considers it. For what could be more liberating to a bruised soul than to clearly, loudly yell the truth in someone's face. She says nothing, and the moment fades. Maggie will leave once her daughter is settled in, and Scully will stay in her apartment, haunted. She will try to take care of a chid whom she does not yet love, and she will try to take care of herself, maybe.
Today is worse than most other days.
She lays in bed with the baby in her bassinet next to the wall. They are both silent. What could she be dreaming of? Scully tries not to dream, these days. They had been vivid during her pregnancy, fantasies of him returned safely. Dreams of being in his arms when her changing body craved love. And even, once, a dark dream of her digging into the cold dirt, pulling him out of his coffin and holding him to her tightly.
She had visited his grave today, and that had been a mistake. She'd brought the baby, because even though she can barely look at her, she's too scared to leave her at home with anyone other than her mother. It was a cold day, and Samantha had cried, kicking her little feet in distress. Her cries had triggered a responding weeping of Scully's breasts, and she had picked up the baby seat, her boots squishing in the wet earth, and taken the baby back to the car.
She nursed her in the same detached, dutiful way that she always did, with Samantha's white blanket over one shoulder as Scully watched the world around her. It seems that's all she does these days. Watch and wait for the impossible. Watch and wait even by his grave. She cannot believe he is gone, and that she is sitting here, in the back of her car with the heater breathing to life, nursing his child. A child who will never know her father.
There is something wicked about washing your hair in bathwater. Scully is staring at the surface of it, which is still shifting and moving up on the sides of the tub from when she spread soap along her legs and arms just a moment ago. The bathtub is made of white porcelain. The hair at the nape of her neck is damp. She will move to drain the tub in a moment, stay sitting up for another as the water is sucked down the drain. Then she will stand and step out, wrap herself in a towel, and the event of her bath will have come to a close. It will be like any other Saturday morning.
She feels vaguely dirty, then, when she decides to wash her hair in the same water in which she has just bathed. It is something she would have never considered doing past the age of ten. Scully watches the water move as she raises her arms, hears it drip off her elbows and hit the water in a gentle, random rhythm, as she takes the clip out of her hair.
Now she stares at the surface of the water from beneath it. She can feel her hair, longer now, spreading around her head like a soft halo. How long can she stay like this, unmoving, her hair gently shifting with the water, her eyes open even as the remaining suds burn at them, not breathing? How long can she stay like this of her own accord until she finally tells herself 'No, Dana, live' and rushes to the surface to take in air. She resurfaces now, and smooths her hands over her dripping face, leaning over the edge to pick up shampoo and lathering it in her hair. She can't quite place the smell of it. Roses?
This time, as she moves to rinse her hair, Scully sinks below the water with closed eyes. She feels the tickling sensation of her hair billowing out around her again, and takes in this dark, warm, wet world. Is this what it was like before consciousness, before birth? This secure, weightless world? She opens her eyes, watching as the water clouds from soap. The obliteration of the clear water scares her, and she comes up for air again. Where is that towel?
The baby mewls softly from the other room, up from her nap. It is a Sunday morning in January. Scully has just finished her bath, and the baby is waking up. What could be more simple, more mundane, than this moment of her life? Samantha cries again, and Scully ducks her head underwater, drowning the sound out for a blessed, evil moment.
Samantha is a happy baby, which is strange, considering the fact that Scully rarely gives her more attention than is necessary. The baby stays with her grandmother during the day while Scully works. She has left the X-Files. Quantico gives her the opportunity to drown out her thoughts, focus them on teaching eager students about the dead. Upon reading her syllabus in August, a geeky looking boy had immediately asked about her work on the X-Files.
"I worked in that department for eight years," she had said. Her tone had suggested that the topic should not be brought up again.
Scully returns home at the end of the day after a long drive. While she drives she listens to a station that plays classical music until midnight, she thinks about her next lecture, dinner, laundry -anything that will take her away from him.
Her mother must hear her footsteps in the hallway, because Scully can hear her talking to the baby.
"There's Mama! Mama's home!" Scully hears Samantha laugh, and swallows a lump in her throat, knocking quietly on the door. Maggie opens it almost immediately. "Hi, sweetie," she says, kissing Scully's cheek.
"Hi, Mom," Scully says, taking off her coat and smoothing a tired hand over her face. Samantha kicks her feet and holds out her arms. "Has she had her bottle?"
Maggie shakes her head and watches her daughter take off her shoes by the door and walk into the kitchen in stockinged feet. Dana's posture at the end of the day says everything that she won't vocalize. At first, Maggie had thought it was postpartum depression, which she sees as equally reasonable, but now she realizes that this is her daughter's way of grieving. She ignores anything that will potentially soften her, and swims in her sorrow.
"I made a chicken while you were gone. There's some potatoes and green beans, too," Maggie says, kissing her granddaughter's head and following Dana into the kitchen.
Scully sighs. "Mom, you don't have to do that. I'm fine."
"It's okay, I like doing it. Besides, it keeps me busy."
"I can take care of myself!" Scully hisses, shutting the fridge and opening the cabinet for a glass to fill with water. "You don't have to treat me like a child!"
Samantha is startled by her mother's outburst, and dissolves into tears. Scully has a sip of water and winces against her baby's wailing, which is making her breasts feel heavy. "I'm sorry, Mom," Scully says. "I'm sorry. I'm just tired."
Maggie sighs. "Dana, it's time to wake up. You have someone who needs you, now." Samantha continues to cry, and lunges for Scully when Maggie holds her out. Scully switches her to her hip, and Samantha throws a little fist on her mother's chest, burying her cheek into Scully's side.
"Tomorrow is Saturday. I think you can handle being with your daughter for a full twenty-four hours, Dana." She is putting on her coat, picking up her purse. Samantha is quiet against Scully, and Maggie comes up to stroke her cheek.
"Bye, sweetie, I'll see you in a couple of days." She repeats the gesture on Scully's face. "I love you," she says solemnly, and Scully nods.
Four in the morning two weeks later, and the phone rings. Scully reaches for it lazily, and almost cries when she thinks of how common this was with Mulder. She had resented it then, but what would she give, now, to hear his voice at four in the morning?
"Scully."
"Dana, I want you to stay calm-" Dana. Something must be terribly wrong.
Mulder.
Scully's heartbeat rises in a crescendo. "What is it? Is it-"
"We don't know. It doesn't make any sense." Skinner's voice is shaking.
"Is he -is he alive?" Scully chokes out.
There is a long pause. "Dana, you need to prepare yourself."
"Where are you? I'm coming."
Skinner inhales deeply from the other end. "We're in Dover."
Scully is breathing heavily now. She gets out of bed and throws open the closet door. The noise startles the baby, and Samantha begins to cry. "What? Why didn't you call me sooner?"
"We wanted to be sure."
"Sure of what, damn it? Is Mulder alive? Tell me!"
Skinner seems distracted, there is commotion from his end, hospital sounds. "Shit."
"I'm on my way," Scully says, and ends the call, throwing the phone back to land somewhere in her bed.
Scully has to flash her badge to a road officer in Maryland when she's caught speeding, tells him she's on a case. If he notices her naked face, half unbuttoned blouse, and a sleeping baby in the back of the car, he does an excellent job of ignoring it.
And she drives on, her eyes burn because she won't allow herself coffee. Scully has yet to perfect the art of placating a baby using her right hand bent over behind the seat to try and coax a pacifier into Samantha's little mouth.
All the while, her heart is hammering, quick as a field mouse. She wipes at burning tears, and tries not to hope. She's desperate for him to be alive. She's been telling herself for months that he's not dead. Her mother had suggested therapy. She's only returned to work two months ago, and she receives careful looks every day, as if she might dissolve if touched.
Samantha is making unhappy sounds in the back seat, and Scully curses herself for forgetting a bottle. Twenty-five more miles. She'll stop at the next rest area, feed the baby, then get back on the road.
"Where is he?" Scully says, eyes narrowing on what appear to be government employees, all standing in a hallway in the ICU. They look at her -eyes wide and wet, shivering because she forgot a coat, wielding a baby carrier.
"I'm Special Agent Dana Scully," she explains, giving up trying to multitask, and setting Samantha down before pulling out her badge. "Where's AD Skinner? He called me."
"Agent Scully," Skinner's voice says from behind her, and when she meets his eyes hope flares in Scully's chest.
"Oh, God," she breathes. "Where is he? How is he?"
"Third door on the right," Skinner says, and Scully sets off in that direction, then turns around, having forgotten the baby.
"Can you…can you watch her for me?" she asks, quivering like a leaf. Skinner nods, picking up the baby carrier and moving to the small waiting area nearby. Samantha gets a glimpse of her mother and reaches her small arms out to be held. Scully doesn't notice, and moves down to the room that may, potentially, be Mulder's.
"Mulder?" she whispers, nearing his bed. In it lies a man, face indiscriminate from suction scarring and superficial wounds. They've put three blankets on him, and he's on life support. It seems they've yet to bathe him.
The man in the bed doesn't stir, but the monitor shows his heartbeat quickening, and Scully puts a hand on her chest, steadying herself before moving to the side of the bed, closer to him.
"Mulder?"
Again, he doesn't move. She reaches a her hand out to run her fingers over his darkened, muddy face, tracing his nose. Scully laughs softly, touches his matted hair, his ear. Behind her, she hears Skinner clear his throat.
Scully whips around. "It's Mulder, sir. I know it's him."
Skinner nods, his expression still as solemn as she'd imagined it when she received his phone call.
"Where's the baby?" Scully asks suddenly.
"She's right outside, with one of my agents." He gestures out the glass window, and Scully checks that her daughter is all right.
Skinner pauses, watches as Scully runs her hand down the man's arm. "They can't explain how he got here. No one has any record of his admittance form."
Scully nods. "Just like me, after my abduction."
"Yes." He looks at her. "But, Agent Scully, I don't want to get your hopes up. It looks like him, but we've seen this before. You've seen this before."
"I have. But right now I see no other possibility than it being him. I knew he wasn't really gone. I knew it, and no one believed me!"
"Dana, we buried him."
She throws her hand in the air, and her tone is quiet and sharp when she says, "I know we buried him! I know! You don't have to remind me of that, sir, I am fully aware."
She can organize her life by oceans.
"Did you like it? Moving around all the time?" Mulder's voice is gentle, and they are driving in a sacred hush, as rain trickles down the windows and the windshield wipers squeak back and forth, back and forth.
Scully looks at him, and he keeps his eyes on the road. Good of him. "No," she says, her voice like honey. "I hated it."
Mulder peers at an exit sign, then continues on. "I hated it," Scully continues, "but I never hated the sea, the beaches."
"Why?"
Scully smiles softly at him. "Because they were my only constant. New home, new school, new friends, new life. But the ocean…that was always the same. You could count on it."
Mulder steals a glance at her. She looks lost, afloat. "What was your favorite thing about it?"
"Are we playing a game, Mulder? I feel like I'm at a sleepover."
He exhales a laugh and takes a careful turn as the rain continues to pound down on the roof of the car. "No, but it's been three hours of driving, and you've been asleep for one and a half of them."
"Fair enough." Scully links her fingers and rests them on her lap, leaning her head back. "All of it." A small smile widens her face. "I love all of it."
Scully feels as if she's being buffeted from shore to shore as she sits by his bed. They've washed him back to his Mulder self and there's no denying the fact that it's him, his face puckered with scars and his bones protruding from his skin -a living skeleton. She feels him breathe under her hand, under her cheek resting on his chest. She hears the doctors say there's nothing to be done, that apart from his brain, which seems to be functioning in the same way that a comatose patient's would, the rest of his body doesn't seem to be reacting to any course of treatment.
Her hope rises and falls, swings side to side. It's been three days, and she's been sleeping by his bed, staring at him, holding his hand. The nurses have tried to get rid of her, but she pulls the doctor card, and they back away.
For some reason, Scully can't bring Samantha into the room. It's not that it's not allowed, or that it would be harmful in some way to the the five month old baby. But it's impossible to her, all the same. She gives Skinner money and he sends an Agent Eastham off to buy clothes and diapers for the baby, who the nurses coo over in their spare time. Scully takes her into a private bathroom to nurse her, and winces against the sound of her daughter sobbing as she leaves her in Skinner's care again.
A week, and nothing. At Skinner's insistence, Scully goes to a hotel during the night. She buys a change of clothes, room service mysteriously appears in the evening. Paid for, predictably, by the F.B.I. Scully forces herself not to dream, and wakes up at seven each morning to leave for the hospital, baby in tow.
A nurse calls her out of Mulder's room at noon, tells her Samantha is crying. She doesn't need a diaper change, she refuses Scully's breast, and it's only when Scully holds her up to her shoulder that Samantha buries her warm little head into her mother's shoulder and quiets. They stay like that for a long time, Scully sitting on the closed toilet, gently rubbing circles on Samantha's back, until the baby falls asleep and can be put back into her carseat cradle.
He wakes up on a Sunday, and Scully wonders if her God has been listening during all her lonely nights.
"Mulder?" Scully asks in a whisper as he turns his head. He blinks his eyes open and looks at her. When he opens his mouth to speak, all that comes out is a raspy cough, and Scully squeezes his hand.
"No, it's okay, don't talk."
He coughs again. "Water."
Scully gives him one of her slow smiles even though her hands are trembling. She almost laughs in joy. "Water. Yeah. Okay."
It is raining. How wonderful, Scully thinks, to be awoken by rain at six in the morning. How serene a sound to start your day. She sits up in bed, nude, with the sheet drawn up to her chest, and looks out the window. Outside, the world is coated in a thick tulle fog, and through it she can make out the shadows of cars in the parking lot. A couple is coming back from having their continental breakfast, holding hands and looking sleepy. Going about their lives while she sits here in this bed, in this room, living hers.
Scully looks over her shoulder and sees Mulder, a hand across his middle and one flung over his shoulder. He is the picture of the perfect lover, with the white sheet drawn halfway up, his face slack with sleep.
"You," he had said the night before, drawing meaningless patterns across her shoulder blade as she lay with her breasts pressed against his chest, her chin resting near his collarbone and she looked at him with eyes sleepy from sex. Somehow, she had understood him. One little word meant everything. You. Him. Everything about him, even the parts she was often angry with.
Scully looks back out the window, eyes drifting over her own reflection coupled with the bushes outside their room. She is trying now to remember her dream from a moment ago. She closes her eyes and tries to conjure it up again. A good dream. It had been a good dream.
Scully lays back in bed, facing away from Mulder, looking at the wall as if it would tell her something important. She is suddenly self conscious, afraid somehow that someone is watching her, that someone is witnessing the jumps of her mind. From her love of rainy mornings to her growing satisfaction with her lover to the sorrow that overtakes her when she thinks of how things have changed. She is exposed, and draws the sheet up until it covers her shoulders. Scully wonders why she is sad, and rephrases the emotion in her head. Not sad -uncertain, confused.
From the moment she first bared her freckled shoulders and gunshot scar to him in an anonymous bed, their partnership had only strengthened. They had both worried about this, about what would result from their mingled sweat and coasting orgasms in motel beds. So it had come as a surprise when there was no awkwardness. It was as if nothing had changed, only they seemed to understand each other on a deeper level.
He's no better off than she was all those years ago. He can't remember anything, only says he's having bad dreams, and that his body hurts. It's healing astonishingly quickly, considering. They took him off life support and his body seems to be regenerating, like a snake shedding its skin.
Color comes back into his face as he eats ravenously. The scars on his face, his hands, his chest, are fading. The burden of him being dead for the past year disappears, and Scully droops in her chair, dozes with her head by his hip, and still doesn't tell him about the baby.
The other agents have gone back to Washington. Skinner, for some reason, stays. This is oddly comforting, Scully thinks. At least one other familiar face. She can't decide if the world is changed or if it's back to what it was. She feels as if she's been flipped upside down and turned right side up too quickly, so that she's constantly fighting nausea.
He's been staring at her for a long time as she plays with the stray threads on one of his blankets. As time passes, an awkwardness had fallen between them.
"Scully," Mulder says as she looks away from him. "what's wrong?"
She sighs, looks back at him, and runs her hand across her forehead. "Mulder," she begins, clearing her throat. "A lot of things happened…while you were…gone."
He looks at her expectantly. "Some things that I thought I should wait to tell you, so it wouldn't be as much of a shock." She chuckles to herself. "I suppose it'll be a shock either way."
He inhales sharply. "Not the cancer. The cancer isn't back, it is?" He's noticed her pale skin, the weight she's lost.
Scully shakes her head. "No, it's not the cancer." Mulder visibly deflates with relief.
"I think I can take any news now that I know it's not that."
She smiles, her lips quivering imperceptibly. "Mulder, after I learned of your abduction, I found out that I…was pregnant." She sees his eyes widen. She plows ahead. "I don't know how, or why…By all medical standards, it was impossible. But," she continues, slowly. "I had everything checked, double checked. And she's ours, Mulder. And I don't want to know how, or why, anymore."
"A girl?" Mulder says, his voice so faint she has to lean forward to hear it. It's a mixture of concern and awe.
Scully nods. "A girl."
He looks at Scully as if he's never seen her before, both frightened and amazed. "Is she here? Can I see her?"
Scully nods again, hearing his heart speed up. "Yeah, I'll go get her. She might be sleeping." She stands up carefully, glancing at Mulder to make sure he's still conscious after learning, suddenly, that he's a father.
Samantha is just beginning to wake up, and is happy to be finally picked up by Scully and held against her. Their time together has always been so tense. Scully has always been so distant, so detached. The baby cries sparingly -when she's hungry and when she's tired, and any time she sees Scully walking away from her.
Scully picks up her daughter, holds her to her chest with Samantha's cheek against her heart, and tucks a blanket around her, walking to Mulder's room and pushing the door open with her hip. His eyes widen as she walks over to him, and he scoots over to make room for her on the bed.
Samantha burrows into Scully, yawning.
"Can I hold her?" Mulder asks.
Scully leans forward as his arms form a careful cradle, and she gives him the baby, watching as his jaw drops and his eyes tear. He's lost in his own world, now, and holds his daughter with extreme care in the crook of his arm, lifting the other hand to touch his index finger to her brow, her nose, to stroke her cheek. Samantha coos, and kicks her feet and hands, her brown eyes taking this rugged stranger in curiously.
"She's beautiful," he says at last. "And tiny. Jesus, she feels like a feather."
Scully doesn't say anything, just watches him take everything in as the baby reaches for his finger and grabs on to it with a strong grip. "No red hair."
"Thank God," Scully says, and Samantha's eyes immediately go to her mother. She meets the baby's eyes, then looks up at Mulder. "I named her Samantha."
He starts to cry, and Scully knows that it's way too much. Too much too soon. She moves to take the baby, but he holds her in his arms, steady. After a moment, he gathers himself. He's able to look at Scully, now.
"You were pregnant, during that case in Oregon."
"Yes."
"You did this all by yourself," he realizes, incredulous.
"No, Mulder. She's half of you. I wasn't alone." As she tells him this, Scully is rocked by the fact that it is incredibly true. She looks at her daughter, who is looking at her now as if she'd known all along, and that she is relieved that her distant mother has finally woken up.
Scully is transfixed by him as he smiles down at Samantha. Amazed by how easily affection comes to him. She doesn't think she's ever really smiled at her daughter, and a wave of sadness washes over her. Samantha is making happy sounds, giving him a gummy smile as he tickles her fingertips.
"I'll be back," Scully says suddenly, standing up and going to the door, leaving the room and going to the nearest stairwell. She leans against the wall, a hand up to her eyes. She doesn't cry, but she wants to.
"Stop, I was fifteen," Scully whines, pulling the polaroid out of his hand. Mulder tugs it back.
"Look at that hair!" It is long and curly, complete with frizzy bangs. In her left hand, teenage Scully is proudly holding up a paper certificate.
"What's that?"
"I don't remember."
They are in her bed with an old photo album Mulder had found on her bookshelf. Scully had insisted on putting on his shirt after they had made love, telling him very seriously that she didn't want him to be ogling her chest while they looked at pictures of her youth.
"Yes, you do," Mulder says, nibbling at her neck. "What is it, one of those science fair contests? A spelling bee?"
Scully blushes, takes the photo back. "No, it was the high school math award."
He roars with laughter, and Scully swats at him. "If you want to see any more of these, you're going to have to behave."
Mulder picks up the album again and turns to the next page. Pictures of a sixteen year old Scully, sunburnt, on a sailboat next to her older brother. Wrestling with the family dog in the yard with Charlie. Mulder flips the page.
Prom, graduation, getting ready for a relative's wedding with her mother and Melissa. In all of these pictures, Mulder sees a glimpse of the Scully he is just beginning to discover. The girl who smiled on the beach in a green bikini that clashed horribly with her hair, the adolescent who hadn't yet lost the baby fat in her cheeks, the medical student who had discovered lipstick and made glasses look sexy in a bookish, innocent sort of way.
Scully has a nostalgic look on her face. "I barely recognize myself in these."
Mulder puts the album on her lap, drapes an arm over her stomach, and holds her. "I see her."
"You do?" She is genuinely surprised, and curious.
He pulls at her shirt collar, nips at her clavicle. "Mmmh."
Scully looks down at his head. "Again?" She feels rather than hears his growl against her stomach as he makes a slow descent, and sinks back into the pillows. The photo album slides off the bed and makes a hard thump when it hits the floor.
When Scully returns to Mulder's room, his eyes are still full of his daughter, but as Scully approaches and Samantha sees her, she squirms and wriggles in Mulder's arms and reaches for Scully urgently. Mulder hands her over, distressed by her tears, and Samantha instantly roots around for Scully's breast.
She pats the baby's back and picks up her little white blanket, debating for a moment before walking toward the bathroom in Mulder's room.
"I'll just be a minute," she says to Mulder as she goes in and closes the door.
As it turns out, a minute turns into thirty. Samantha nurses for ten minutes, then wails when Scully tries to ease her off to burp her. She quiets when Scully puts her back to her chest, wondering how the baby could possibly still be hungry. But now she doesn't nurse, she just looks up at Scully, a small hand splayed across the swell of her breast. Her brown eyes are so full of something that can only be love, and Samantha looks at her mother for a long time. Suddenly, Scully is overcome, and she pulls her child closer. When Samantha begins to relax into sleep in her arms, Scully pulls her up to kiss her soft cheeks, the top of her head, inhaling her perfect baby scent. Samantha coos happily and nuzzles Scully's neck, and Scully stares at the closed bathroom door, thinking of Mulder and how much he loved his daughter at the first sight of her.
When Scully comes out of the bathroom, she smiles at him, and brings him Samantha to hold again. Their daughter is drowsy now, and so is Mulder, so Scully reclines the hospital bed and tucks them in, Samantha's cheek to her father's chest.
A/N: I feel like this could have gone on longer. In fact, when I originally wrote it about two months ago, I intended it to be a full chapter-based story, but kind of hit a dead end here, and I think it works. I was always intrigued by Scully's childhood living on Navy bases, and wanted to play with the metaphor water would have in her personality. Anyway, this was one way I came up with that. Let me know what you think!