Disclaimer: I cannot claim such brilliance, though I'd like to. The Waste Land belongs to T.S. Elliot. The X-Files belongs to Chris Carter et al. No monetary gain, for fun not profit, etc.
Setting/Spoilers: Anything and everything in the actual series, especially heavy for season nine's William. No speculation theories about the latest movie, or out-and-out spoilers.
Notes: Written because I was so severely unhappy with the way season nine went about. Through the eyes of Mrs. Van De Kamp, who I have taken the liberty of naming Abby, if only because she looks like one.
Though this does not follow the poem, The Waste Land inspired the themes/motifs of this for two reasons: It's a poem about both fertility and religion – or, the loss thereof of both; and it's about the redemption of man and the regaining of religion, and by so, fertility (though not necessarily defined as human procreation – rather, mainly as society in terms of ideas and love in context of the earth as a whole.)
oOo
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock
(Come under the shadow of this red rock)
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or you shadow at evening rising to meet you:
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
oOo
The air outside swells with the heat of the sweltering sun, breathless in anticipation of wind that is either late or nonexistent. Her glass of water sweats small drops at first, which soon turn to rivulets, running down the curve of the plastic and over her hand. She looks down, and back up, wiping her hand vaguely on her apron, setting the glass down.
The grass is brown and dying; and the animals have retreated to the shade. One of the cows had died just that week from heatstroke. It's not much to look at.
Wasteland, whispers her mind. It's killed them all.
"Come away from the door, honey," comes her husband's voice from behind her.
"It's no hotter here than anywhere else in the house," Abby retorts, but complies with a sigh. "I hate this weather."
She sees he's carrying William. His hair had started to grow in thick about three months back, brown, and fallen out two weeks later. It's red now. She wonders what his mother looked like.
He reaches toward her, and she melts at the gesture, acquiescing to his desire to be held. He's a needy baby, but she doesn't mind. His pudgy hands tangle themselves, uncoordinated, in the hair sticking to the base of her neck. She feels one drop, two, of sweat roll under her collar. She resists the urge to brush it away, and they soak slowly into the soft fibers of her cotton dress, succumbing to the fate of a multitude of others. It hangs on her, dragging, water weight.
"It seems like we were just here," says Bill quietly, on a breath of air that refuses to move. Stilted, the words remain close to him, though she hears them, humming a restless tune and clutching William tighter to her. He squeaks a little, indignantly, but then gurgles, and she knows it's alright for the moment.
She ignores the words, pretending they haven't reached her yet.
Pattycake, pattycake, baker's man, she singsongs in her head, or to William; and it's a game.
William stares at her with wide blue eyes that follow her every move. It unsettles her.
At that moment, she sees a car on the long dusty road, at first a blazing ball of reflection against the monotony, now visible only by the long trail of dust in its wake. It alternates with its movement.
It pulls into the driveway, and parks; and momentarily, she's taken aback. She'd always thought of William's birth mother as a teenager, and William as the mistake of her youth. She'd been expecting a young college student, or a high school student, and a solitary one at that.
She emerges from the passenger side, short but regal in her tall heels and the grace with which she carries herself, despite the nervousness that emanates from her. It gets to Abby quickly enough, and William gives a few jerks in her arms, waving his arms around in his baby-fashion.
The first thing she notices is her hair: red, a bright halo about her face. It approaches slowly.A golden cross hangs unobtrusively just beneath the hollow of her neck. Though her lines aren't definitive, they score her face with the care and worry of a hard life; and in her face, Abby sees her age reflected in more ways than one.
Dust blows in her face, and she blinks. A light wind stirs, and in the distance, she can see a dust devil. It dissipates almost as quickly as she saw it, and she wonders if she imagined it.
The woman is nearly the picture of composure, until Abby can see her hands trembling at her sides.
"Hi, I'm Bill Van De Kamp," her husband introduces himself, coming up behind her. Abby jumps. William squeals. The woman takes his proffered hand.
"Dana Scully," she replies, her voice low. "And my partner, Fox Mulder."
"Nice to meet you both," Bill replies easily. "Why don't you both come in?"
He shakes Dana's partner's hand (Abby's mind questions the use of partner) as well, and they both retreat to the relative shade of the indoors. She's close now, her trembling hands over her trembling mouth, unable to restrain herself, her arms obviously aching for something to hold, to be able to reach out and satiate that need. Her forearms are tense; her muscles twitch.
William's arms are waving now, again, but toward this woman. He's insistent, and she can barely keep a hold on him.
"William?" Dana asks, voice low and soft and questioning. William stretches toward her in response.
Wordlessly, Abby offers the woman her son. Desperately, she buries her head in the baby soft neck Abby'd only just rubbed baby lotion into, sharply inhales the scent of the baby powder Abby had only just sprinkled on his bottom; and he clings to her, cooing.
"Come inside," Abby says to her softly, neither commanding nor entreating. A shadow lingers grotesquely on the porch steps behind Dana, the memory of two dead men hanging in the balance. The sun is setting, rays of light falling sharply over the spot and disappearing altogether, shades of darkness blending, obscuring.
Such optical illusions. The air is motionless against her face. Abby wants to blink for reassurance.
Dana straightens, with William still firmly in her arms, and strides purposefully inside.
oOo
Inside, the two men are talking quietly. Small talk, Abby assumes. Something colossal looms above them, suspended, saturated, and threatens to drop with its weight.
Damn this weather, she thinks. A drop of sweat slides lethargically over her temple; she brushes it away impatiently.
Dana's husband looks at William with a sense of exuding ache, but doesn't reach for him where he sits comfortably, babytalking in Dana's arms. He seems to wave at Abby from there, and look away just as quickly, drawn to the fascination of redness that spreads before him in careful waves. His hands tangle in it. Abby aches.
Bill seems to notice, and takes her hand before speaking. "So, I suppose you know why you're out here."
Dana shares a quick glance with her husband, a thousand words communicated in the space of a second; and Abby reels from it. "We assumed there'd been some sort of trouble," she says vaguely, but the dark look in her eyes betrays her, and Abby knows she remembers death and blood and a mother's fear. The dashboard of a car, maybe; or in the living room?
At this point, she'll believe anything. She just wants to know what's going on.
"Who are these men," she speaks up for the first time, frustration making a question into a statement that rolls oddly off of her tongue. "You know," she says, and suddenly is entreating this foreign woman who is flesh and blood to her son. Her blue eyes reflect an intensity that is just as suddenly gone, or imagined. Abby continues, desperate. "They have some sort of abnormality on their spine, or neck. A lump, like metal."
She feels Bill nodding next to her in confirmation.
"They've come twice," he says. "The first time they managed to make it as far as the nursery. The second time we were able to get help fast enough our neighbors shot them on the porch."
"You aren't armed, Mr. Van De Kamp?" Dana asks, curiously. William bounces, unconsciously, naturally, on her knee.
"It's bear country," replies Bill with the barest hint of a smile. "But my shotgun was in the shed for cleaning."
Dana's husband sighs. "We may as well be honest. We're former FBI agents, and have had to go on the run. Some very bad people are after us, and William. My partner, at the time, thought he would be safer distanced from her."
"Not from you?"
His eyes, like hers, darkened inward, rather than out. "At the time I was unavailable." But he takes Dana's hand, the one that isn't protectively on William's back. There is no blame, shared or otherwise; only a deep, permeating regret.
"I get the feeling this is the short story," Abby tries to joke feebly.
"Mmm, the long story would take weeks to tell," Dana said, returning a smile she didn't feel. "And I doubt you'd believe it even if we told it. Trust me, the short version suffices for now."
"How were you able to reply, then?" Bill questions.
"Unofficial channels," Dana replies, brow hardened. "We have a few friends left who we can pass messages to, and through. Two weeks ago our former superior was able to make contact with us."
Her eyes are steely with words left unsaid, a bright blue that hardens into an impenetrable shell. Outside, the crickets' chirping is frenetic. A fly buzzes lazily around the room, wings seemingly impeded by some unknown force.
The ensuing silence is stifling. Dana's hand moves rhythmically as it strokes William's back. He gurgles happily, but it fails to break the atmosphere, and nothing gives.
"I was a single mother at the time I gave William up," begins Dana unexpectedly. Abby looks at her, startled, to find those blue eyes trained on the ceiling. "I had been told four years before that I could never bring a child into the world. At the time, Mulder was missing with no solid lead to his case, only to be found, and then forced to go on the run immediately after I gave birth. I went through pregnancy, birth, and a brief motherhood almost entirely alone, save for the help of friends.
"I would never have taken it back," she continues softly, still staring into the distance. "William was my miracle. I was teaching out of the FBI Academy. He was all I had. I'd failed him; and I couldn't live with myself, putting my son's life in constant danger."
"How many times?" Abby asks quietly.
Dana looks up. "Four."
"How often?"
"Within the same six months."
"And you protected him."
She flinches. "Barely."
Abby has a brief impression that this woman isn't used to talking in short sentences, but that the ability for lyrical expression has escaped her, at some long distant point. A breeze rustles lightly through the open window, or she thinks so, the next moment wondering if she imagined it.
Abby makes a decision then, one she wasn't contemplating before, but that now, depending on these strangers' answers, might be the only solution. She stands up and begins to pace, the infernal heat a lesser evil than this awful stillness. Suffocation. Terror. She never wants to know it again.
"How often are you moving?" she asks, nonchalantly. She feels lightheaded.
"Abby," her husband murmurs, a warning, or a question. She thinks he knows already.
The sudden light in Dana's eyes is too much. William laughs delightedly at her feet, playing with his building blocks, a non sequitur that compounds everything in one sound.
Mr. Mulder, if he understands her intent, doesn't show it. His face is impassive as he responds. "It depends, but usually every week to two weeks. We hope to make it out of the country, at some point, but we missed our window."
She nods. She suddenly walks over to where William's playing on the floor and picks him up as his pudgy arms reach up to her. It's a hollow gratification. Dana's eyes watch her carefully, unquestioning.
"You haven't been found out?" Abby presses.
"No," Dana replies, monosyllabic.
"You should take him back," Abby says, though it costs her everything to say it. She clutches William tighter, and hopes she doesn't imagine his grip on her left fingers tighten in response. He's always been an intuitive baby.
"What?"
The cry comes from all three of them, staring at her as if she's lost her mind. She looks back at them quite calmly, ignoring Bill's terror, or outrage. She doesn't want to know, right now. She focuses on Dana's eyes, their sharpness drawing her in.
"Legally, I believe, the birth mother has the final say," she continues.
"That's before the papers are signed," Dana points out.
"I'll sign a consent form, then," Abby replies, stubbornly. "Though I doubt one's even needed, in this case; I'm willing to throw caution to the winds where the law is concerned.
"Stay the night, at least," she presses. "And decide in the morning."
oOo
They stay. Abby rolls William's bassinet into her and Bill's room, determinedly, half blinded by tears just as stubborn.
The bassinet gets stuck in the door. Bill, not saying anything, helps her get it through the frame.
"This isn't right, Abby," he finally says quietly.
"It's more right than it has been," she replies. "I don't think it's ever going to be all right."
"William's our child," he continues, and Abby can't look him in the eye. "Our - "
But he can't get any further, though she understands what he meant to say.
"I know."
Noises on the porch, and creaks in the attic, and she wonders if she'll ever be sane again, this insanity of a tainted motherhood. She thinks it was never meant to be, and this, this was a sign from God himself against her favor, barren and cursed. Solomon and two mothers; half a baby each; no, it was never meant to be.
"But," she says softly, "he was their miracle first, and that's something."
oOo
By two o'clock in the morning she's given up all pretense of sleep. William's awake and cooing softly in his bassinet, and she feels no qualms about picking him up and carrying him out to the porch.
Dana's already there, half asleep and unconsciously fingering her cross, a golden talisman, dulled in the half-light provided by the stars and moon. Against her better judgment, Abby sits next to her.
She startles. "Hey," she says quietly, looking at her and smiling, and brushing William's cheek with her fingers.
"Hi," she replies back, soft as a shy schoolgirl, and makes no move to place William in his mother's arms. Time enough for that later. Thunder's been rumbling in the distance awhile now, and she figures it might just rain by tomorrow and end this god-awful drought.
"Ever seen a prairie storm?" Abby asks aimlessly. Dana shakes her head.
"They're a sight," Abby says. "Like all of God's power unleashed on this windswept, dying land, the tall grass and wheat bowing over in the gales these storms cook up, water pouring from the heavens to the sound of sweet, rolling thunder. You've never seen a thunderstorm until you see one of these."
"This isn't right," Dana says suddenly, echoing Bill's words however unknowingly.
Abby sighs, because the right course shouldn't be so laden with missteps.
She doesn't want to explain this.
Dana looks at her quizzically when she hands William over. "Tell me it's not right," Abby says, wearily, and leans back.
Thunder rolls in the distance. The silence goes unbroken.
oOo
Between the hours of three and five, she and Dana had wrestled most of the more lightweight baby care items (two weeks' worth of diapers, car seat, five bottles and one weeks' worth of condensed milk, choice canned baby food, blankets, wipes, formula) into the backseat and trunk of her car at Abby's insistence.
(I won't be needing them, she'd said, and tucked away the mobile in a safe place. Please, go on.)
Mr. Mulder – Abby can't bring herself to call him Fox – came out and watched them around the one and a half hour mark, bouncing William on his knee with an eye on the horizon.
She'd noticed Dana kept an eye out, too; and the weapon barely concealed by the jacket she wore pushed up to her elbows.
And at five thirty, it finally begins to rain.
"Praise the Lord," she murmurs. Dana closes the trunk with a soft thump, and joins her.
"Guess you'll get to see one of our thunderstorms, yet," Abby says softly, and motions inside. "Come on – Bill and I are early risers, and I bet you're hungry."
William's formula warms on the stove with a cold dissatisfaction, ever so slowly, and Abby can't make it heat up in between frying hash browns and not burning the eggs. The last time she checks it before giving up, it's tepid and lukewarm.
In his highchair, William's been staring at her with his wide eyes. She's always sworn he's the most aware baby in the world, and shakes her head, picks him up, and nuzzles him.
Dana emerges from her room fully dressed. Abby can tell she wants to help, and with no other option, she lets her, giving her crushed peaches and a tiny spoon to try out, because the formula isn't happening today.
Her heart breaks a little when she realizes it's the last time she'll have heated up William's formula, but behind her, Dana's cooing at her child.
And there's Mr. Mulder staring at her as if he's genuinely trying to make her snap, and she nearly does.
"Are you sure about this?" is all he asks in response to her sharp look.
She doesn't want to go there, so she nods. She gets the sense that at one time he might have stayed, but now, he leaves and joins his lover and child.
And isn't that the way it was meant to be?
Then Bill comes out, and she's just as lost for words as ever.
oOo
The sunrise that day is masked by peals of thunder, where William's laughter once might have been. He's quiet in the storm, reaching for no one, crying for nothing. Abby almost wishes he would, if only to hear his baby voice one more time.
He still hasn't said his first word yet, has never identified her as mama or ma, never mommy or mom or mother. She supposes she isn't. It would have been nice, anyway.
(Her qualifications go right before her superlatives and her adjectives. She can't think.)
And at eight in the morning, still pitch black outside except for the quick flashes that leave their retinas shrieking in the heads, her baby boy drives away in a battered truck. It's been less than twelve hours since she first considered her plan.
(She can't think.)
Bill's looking at her blankly. Maybe there's anger, disappointment, grief masked in those eyes, but she can't look, can't speak.
(can't think)
"How do you know?" she hears him ask quietly, and she didn't ask him, didn't consider him, but she thinks there's still a little trust in that question.
"God's watching over him," she replies, because if nothing else, she feels this. She feels, she feels
(She can't think.)
It's a forced devolution, this return to non-motherhood. She goes back into the house.
Wasteland, her mind whispers; but the heavens ignore her, and the rain falls.