GRIEVING (Post-ep for "Emily", 5x07)

SUMMARY: After Emily´s death, Mulder helps a broken Scully recover from her grief. This story takes place in Season 5.

This story has 5 parts, one of each covering a different stage of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

SPOILERS: Christmas Carol, Emily and a bit of Scully´s cancer arc.

CLASSIFICATION: Angst. UST. MSR. NC-17. A bit of case file.

DISCLAIMER: Of course, I don´t own Mulder, Scully, Xfiles or any of the other characters, cause if I did, we would have seen lots of sex in it. Just saying.

AUTHOR´S NOTES: So here comes my very first fanfic written directly in English, but it wouldn´t have been possible without the invaluable help of my good old friend Mauricio, who has patiently corrected all the mistakes that my good, but still never perfect English, has produced. Infinite thanks, also, to my Xfile friend Ali, first one to read the fanfic and first one to encourage me to dare writing in English. Thanks for our Xfiles and not Xfiles-related conversations, for sharing much more than our passion for the series: for sharing a way to understand, process and live this world. Thanks to the wonderful FB group "The X-Files obssession", which has given me the opportunity to (virtually) meet some amazing people (Clara, Vered and Jules, among others) who share my madness. Finally, thanks to all of the above for worrying and taking care of me when my health is not in its best condition. I hope I get to meet all of you personally!

Finally, I would like to apologize in advance for the mistakes that you might still find, please have in mind that English is not my mother tongue! I´d really appreciate reviews, so feel free to give me your opinion, for better and for worse.

And... enjoy!

Part 1: Denial

Chapter 1

Mulder´s point of view (MPV)

"I´m fine".

There they are, those two simple but powerful words. I´ve heard them so many times coming out of my partner´s mouth that their meaning has, somehow, striped off from them and the time has erased all trace of sense. As if they ever meant what they were supposed to mean, anyway. Because the truth is that Scully is not fine now, the same way she wasn´t fine any of the countless times I have received that same answer from her over the years. No, she is definitely not fine and the growing knot in her throat is really just confirming my deepest fears. 'Cause, how the hell could she be alright when she has buried her daughter less than 72 hours ago? Who, in their right mind can face a tragedy like this, the unnatural fate of having to see your own child die? She is not fine at all and I can´t help but nodding, powerless to speak. Because I have no idea of what to say, I have no clue of what can be said to make her feel a little better, what are the exact words to wipe away the perpetual tears that get in her beautiful, everlasting blue eyes every time Emily´s memory crosses her mind. So I nod stupidly, helpless, as if there was nothing else I could do in this situation, which, in fact, there was not.

There´s a saying from Confucius that my mum used to tell me when I was little and it goes like this: "If what one has to say is not better than silence, then one should keep silent". I have never really understood the meaning of this words as, for me, one should never stay silent, no matter what painful or inconvenient truth you are about to speak. And, thinking about my own mother, I have to say that those were quite an interesting selection of words, coming from a woman that has done nothing else but remaining silent ever after my sister disappeared (no wonder why she has never mentioned Confucius again). But, right now, while I stand next to my partner in the mortuary watching her selecting from different types of mortuary plates, while I look at her unreadable face with my unavoidable expression of fear, I think I couldn´t agree more with the Chinese philosopher. "I´m fine", she said to me when she caught my worried gaze after the man in the mortuary had asked if she wanted the plate with or without Emily´s picture. I nodded silently following Confucius advice, but I managed to take her by the hand before she answered "Without" and remain there next to her through all the process, stroking tiny circles with my thumb over the petite smooth palm of her hand.

Scully´s point of view (SPV)

"Take me home".

My voice came out weaker than I expected, barely a sigh. Mulder met my eyes with concern written all over his face, but he was clever enough not to ask the same obvious question again. Because as well as I always reply with the same two words over and over – I´m fine, of course I am, not like if I had just lost my daughter, you know –, I´m also incredibly tired of always getting the same question, sometimes vocalized and sometimes unspoken, sometimes with his words but most of the times, with his eyes. I can´t avoid my cynical answer just as much as he can´t stop questioning, worrying for me. And I know just how crazy it drives him to listen to my lies all over again, but I can´t do better, I don´t know better, because there´s no way I am answering honestly, there´s no possibility of breaking the walls that I have been building with so much effort for the last five years and to let him inside them, inside this little frightened heart of mine that can´t stand any of this anymore, that it´s about to break in pieces for good and forever. So that´s why he always gets the safe answer, the controlled one, because if he had any idea that this character of mine is just a façade, if he knew how close I am to collapse, he would run the hell out to Skinner´s office and ask for my transfer ASAP. But instead of that I keep showing him the serene, cold, consistent Scully that he is used to, the one that never breaks, no matter what, that always stands up with her high heels on and her flawless hair ready for the next stroke. That is the Scully I have become, that is the Scully I have created for him, and I doubt he would be able to deal with the real one.

And, so, he doesn´t say anything besides nodding, placing his hand on the small of my back as we exit the mortuary.

MPV

The wall of silence raised between us is so big that I can almost feel it over our heads, pressing down on us like a heavy mass of air. Scully hasn´t said a word since she entered the car ten minutes ago, when she automatically hid behind the cold wall she likes to impose to tepegraph the message that everything´s fine, wiping out all traces of the tough time she had just faced in the mortuary. She has remained still for the last ten minutes, her mouth shut and her eyes lost somewhere in the highway to Georgetown. I´m searching for something to say; yet, I just can´t find anything that doesn´t sound too naive for the circumstances. But, as we get closer to the city in the low traffic of this Saturday evening, I realize that it´s only a matter of minutes until we arrive to her neighborhood and I lose her for the day. And that scary feeling just pulls the words out of my mouth before I´m even conscious about it.

"Do you want me to take you home or do you feel like going anywhere else?"

She looks at me confused, like she has just arrived from a far distance and my words sound vague to her. She is silent for a moment, until she comes back to reality and processes my question.

"I´d rather… I´d rather go home, please." She replies, looking at me with her impossible light eyes. "I just need to be alone".

I was expecting that kind of answer even before she pronounced it, but that didn´t help the pain that got momentarily stuck in my chest with her petition, her will to be alone. And as much as I tried to smile and remain illegible, she knows me far too good to pretend she didn´t recognize just how much her answer hurt me.

"I´m sorry, Mulder. I didn´t mean to be rude". She apologized, glancing down to the floor of the car. "But I don´t feel like doing anything else right now".

"It´s all right, Scully, I understand. There´s no need to apologize. I´ll take you home so that you can rest properly". I tried to sound nice and cool, hoping for her to buy it.

But, of course, she did not buy it.

"I know you are just trying to help me here, Mulder, and I really appreciate that". The look in her eyes showed a vast gratitude as she spoke. "It´s just that it´s been a difficult day and I feel like sleeping it off". And then she added those last words, which caught me completely off guard due to the spontaneity of them: "But maybe you could join me for a cup of tea before I head to bed for the day".

Because my partner can be many things, but spontaneous is definitely not one of them.

Before I head to bed for the day. Oh yeah, I could see the appropriate selection of words that she used, the remark of bedtime in her last line. She was trying to say goodbye to me but she didn´t have the heart to deny me an elegant farewell before she left. And as much as I knew that she was just compensating for her absent minded attitude of the last few days and that she was expecting no more than a polite negative reply from me, the thought of leaving this woman alone, alone with her memories and alone with her suffering, just broke my heart. So all I could do was accept her offer, even though I knew that it was just mere courtesy.

"I would like that, yes". She was as surprised with my reply as I was seconds before with her offer, but she managed to hide the disappointment somewhere in her beautiful, complex brain and to show me a small fake smile.

SPV

I thought I had had enough tension for the day, but it was clearly not over yet, present while we waited for the elevator to arrive to my floor. We had stood as far away from each other as possible, given the small size of the elevator, aware of how little space we had between us, but also of how many unspoken truths separated us, many more than any physical distance. I could feel Mulder´s sidelong glance, but when I eventually found the courage to meet it, the elevator was already in my floor and Mulder opening the door, anxious as he was for space. He left the door open for me and gave me an impeccable smile.

"After you", he said like the perfect gentlemen than he can be, waiting for me to get out of the elevator and walk down the hall to my place.

I returned him the smile and walked out of the elevator. He followed me while I searched for the keys in my purse, placing his hand on the small of my back. Again.

When I had first met him, I had hated his refined but somehow patriarchal manners, like if I needed help to walk or, even worse, like if I needed the hand of a man leading my way. But, as time went by and his gesture of courtesy became and old habit between us, I learnt just how much I actually liked it, how it speaks about the genuine and deep tenderness that Mulder feels for me, and the care with which he treats me. The fact of having Mulder´s complete attention over myself in that darkest hour of my life, which I was pretty sure to be going through at the moment, made me feel a little bit of relief.

And yet, only a little bit.

As I entered my place, I replied to his courtesy with more courtesy.

"Make yourself comfortable", I told him pointing at the sofa while I headed to the kitchen. "I´ll be back in a minute".

It took me less than five minutes to prepare two cups of green tea – my favorite -, and I actually enjoyed this little time away from him. When I was back from the kitchen with a tray in my hands I found Mulder sitting on the edge of the sofa, hands in his pockets and his leather jacket carefully folded in the back of the sofa which was, by the way, something not very typical from him. As much as I love his casual weekends outfit, I could sense he was not feeling comfortable at all and he was trying to compensate by taking care of the little things. He looked at me when I entered his field of vision and automatically stood up to help me put the tray on the coffee table. He was trying to keep it cool, but I knew him too well to see that he was feeling anything but cool right now. I tried to repress a sigh of fatigue. If only I didn´t know this man this well, some things would be simpler with him sometimes.

Ok, but only some things. And only sometimes.

"Green tea, of course." He joked. "My favorite". I had told him thousand times about the natural benefits of Green tea, something he had taken as seriously as every other time that I would try to get him into healthy food. That means, unsatisfactorily, of course. I gave him half a smile and pretend to wear my offended face, which in our private language meant that it was ok for me to having him joking about my healthy lifestyle, something he finds (inexplicably) amusing. I was now expecting a reply like "You sure know that the way to a man´s heart is through his stomach, Scully", as I knew how much he disliked teas in general, but he just looked me back with a warm smile and put some sugar into his cup. I think he thought it wasn´t time for jokes and, as much as I appreciated his caution, I actually could use a little bit of humor myself, particularly after all the drama of the day. After all, I´m not the drama queen type.

"It´s good, thank you". Mulder had two more sips of tea before he returned the cup back on the table. He let the silence run for a bit while I drunk my own tea, and then he added, in a low voice: "I´ve been there before. I know how much it hurts."

I stared at him, incomprehension written on my face, so he tried to explain himself further.

"In the mortuary, I mean. With your mum. That was three years ago, when you were missing". I nodded at him but didn´t say anything, not very sure where he was going with this. "She asked me to go with her, the same way you did today".

"It sounds like her". I said, this time showing a bit of a smile. "She has always trusted you on anything that concerns me". I made a pause and looked at him directly into the eyes, because I knew how important my next words were for him: "She likes you from the beginning".

"Yeah, she does. Only God knows why". He showed me a genuine smile which was a mixture of joy and certain shame, as if he wasn´t worthy of her appreciation.

I could think about a couple of reasons, but I decided to let him continue, wherever the conversation was going.

"She helped a lot, your mum. It took me a while to realize, but she always found a way to help me put myself back together despite the gravity of the situation. She irradiates peace, and that helped me cope with your disappearance".

It was in that moment when, all of a sudden, I realized where that was really going.

"Mulder, no. Please." I tried to cut his suggestion before it was even proposed.

"Scully…" Mulder stretched the sound of my name, unsure on how to proceed. "You shouldn´t be alone right now. You have… you are going through a lot. Maybe staying with your mum for a while isn´t such a bad idea…"

"Mulder, really, I´m…". I felt his hand in my shoulder before I was even aware of what I was about to say. He stared at me with a harsh expression in his eyes, and he shook his head.

"Don´t. Please." He said, he almost pleaded. I tried to avoid the pain in his eyes, letting my last word die in my lips. I´m fine…

This time he was the one repressing a sigh, only that this was a sigh of frustration. Silence touched us for a moment there, neither of us daring to speak first, feeling the space between us getting larger as Mulder let his fingers slide down over my shoulder and back to the sofa.

And then he said what he had wanted to say from the very beginning, hands shaking and eyes looking down the table, unable to meet my gaze.

"Then, maybe… Maybe I could stay here with you for a couple of days… Or you could come to my place, if you prefer…"

I felt my heart leap for a second, powerless to reply anything, to find the words in my mouth. I tried to stay still, to control the little revolution that was happening inside me, to ignore the butterflies in my stomach. He clearly misunderstood my silence, because he looked at me with embarrassment in his eyes.

"I´m sorry, I wasn´t implying anything by that… I meant here in your sofa, of course". I could feel his face blushing while he spoke, and I wondered how flushed my own face was already looking.

"Mulder, I appreciate your concern, I really do". I tried to give him a tender smile with my reply. I didn´t want him to think I was inconsiderate, so I managed to use a softer tone in my voice when declining his offer. "But I really feel like being alone right now".

"Ok, then". He didn´t insist on that matter, aware of the futility of it, though he did try with a different strategy, one that somehow outraged me even more. "But why don´t you take some days off work, make a trip or just take some time until you feel better… I´m sure I can survive without you for a couple of weeks". He added that last sentence with a shy smile, trying to sweeten his suggestion, although we both knew he wouldn´t last even a week without me.

So then I used those other four words that are favorites in Mulder´s list of "Scullyisms", right under I´m fine.

"I need to work, Mulder".

This time he didn´t bother to suppress the sigh.

"No, Scully, you need to rest and take care of yourself…"

But I was starting to get tired of his excessive concern.

"Mulder, really, I just want to go back to work and continue with my life…"

"Scully, please, take your time…" He wasn´t even listening to me anymore, frustrated at my constant negatives.

"Mulder, really, I´m fine!" It didn´t come out on purpose, but I didn´t have time to process the words before they were already said, before they were already shouted.

It took him only half a second to reply, with his eyes full of ache and the fury in his loud voice:

"Like HELL you are!"

I knew he regretted the comment right away, unusual of him to lose good manners with me, to disrespect this equal, almost sacred, relationship between us. As far as I remembered, that was only the second time that I had heard him use the hell word with me, being the first time when he was about to discover that he was indirectly responsible for my cancer.

"I´m sorry..." He started, guilt crossing his desperate eyes.

But as much as I knew that he was indeed sorry, I couldn´t do anything to help him, anything to help us.

"Mulder, I think you should go."

"Scully, please..."

I felt an infinite fatigue, the amount of a day, of three days that had been mentally exhausting for me.

"Mulder, please. Go."

My voice sounded stronger than I had actually intended to, leaving him no room for discussion.

"Yeah, I think I´d better leave".

He took his leather jacket from the sofa and left towards the door. It was only before he left my place that he turned to me and added, his voice just a whisper:

"So sorry."

And then he left, leaving me there alone with an unbearable silent and my overwhelming grief, lonely as I had asked, as I had fought for, brokenhearted for the second time of the day.

TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 2 OF PART I