Chapter II
Before leaving her apartment he'd told her she couldn't wear black.
"It's not all black," she'd argued. "Look, the belt is red." She fingered the slim belt on her knee length black dress, the one she'd bought specifically for Christmas.
"We're not going to a funeral, Scully," he'd said. Slightly offended, she'd gone back in her room to change, reappearing in a deep auburn A-line skirt and cream blouse, tucked in.
"Better?" she asked, turning around.
His eyes had warmed and brightened. "Let's go," he'd said, already in his coat, holding four of the larger presents she'd wrapped.
The drive to her mother's house was quiet, they had gotten in late from a case the night before and she was conserving her energy for the day ahead of them involving four children under the age of five, as well as her two brothers and both sisters-in-law. It had snowed the night before, just enough to settle on the tops of cars and call people out of bed to shovel their sidewalks. In the city, snow was somewhat of a nuisance, but in the suburbs her nephews, especially Matthew, who lived on the west coast, would be thrilled at the opportunity to play in it. She thought about Emily, her own Christmas miracle, gone too soon. She felt Mulder's eyes on her from the driver's seat.
"Scully?"
She looked at him. "Hmm?"
"Is Bill going to kill me?"
She couldn't help it, she laughed. "Why would he kill you, Mulder?"
He shrugged. "He hates me. You Scullys have dagger eyes."
"He doesn't hate you," she reassured, "that's just how Bill is. Even when my father was alive he always wanted to be in charge of us. Anyway, he doesn't have a reason to hate you."
"I'm sort of sleeping with his sister."
Scully opened her mouth. "Oh, Mulder, tell me you're not going to broadcast that. It would break my mother's heart."
He chuckled. "Surely she doesn't think you've saved yourself for marriage?"
Scully winced. "I don't know, maybe she's holding out hope? I think Bill did." She immediately shot Mulder a warning glare. "Nothing from the peanut gallery, please."
Mulder was grinning broadly as he flicked the turn signal to take the exit. "I didn't say anything. I won't say anything."
Walking up to the doorstep of her mother's house, the sound of squealing children inside and Charlie banging away on the piano, Mulder said, "I'll make an honest woman out of you, Scully" in a joking voice, and her heart skipped a beat. Seconds later the door swung open and Tommy dashed out, his mother right behind him.
"Aunt Dana! Mulder!" His red hair was sticking up in odd directions and he had a sticky candy cane in his left hand.
"Thomas Scully!" Ginny cried, waving a quick hello before scooping her five year-old up so his socks wouldn't get wet. "You missed the six AM wake up call," she said wryly as they moved quickly inside, Mulder's odd, jokey marriage proposal shut outside the door.
"Look, Aunt Dana! Santa came!" Tommy exclaimed, jumping up and down in front of them as his mother took the bag of presents from Dana and Maggie swept in to greet them.
"Fox," she said warmly, "so good to see you. What time did your flight get in?"
"Good to see you, too," he said. "About three, because of the weather."
She raised her eyebrows. "Well I hope you both got some sleep because you're in for a traditional Scully Christmas."
"Can't wait," Mulder said, hanging his coat up in the closet and waiting for Scully to hand him hers. As she slipped out of it he saw the blush across her cheeks. I hope you both got some sleep.
"Aunt Dana! Aunt Dana!" Tommy continued, bouncing in front of her, holding out his sticky hand. "Santa came!"
Scully handed Mulder her coat and was whisked away by her nephew, leaving Mulder, Ginny, and her mother in the front entryway.
After a thorough exploration of the stockings her nephews and niece had emptied that morning and their presents from Santa, their Aunt Dana seemed to take a backseat to Mulder, whom the boys practically pulled outside with them. Lucy, only two, watched with interest from the front window with her grandmother, and Sophie dozed in a sling across Ginny's chest while the Scully siblings and their wives caught up around the dining room table, the women soon converging together.
"I just can't believe you had a baby four months ago!" Tara whispered. "Three kids, and you look the same as you did when you and Charlie first married!" It was true. Virginia, who had married Scully's brother around the time they both graduated from the Conservatory and gotten spots in the same orchestra, had always been as lean as a dancer.
"I told you, holding that cello like Demi Moore in 'Ghost' gives your thighs a good workout, although it was almost impossible to play towards the end," Ginny joked. "When are you going to have another? My kids need more cousins!"
Tara smiled a secret smile. "We've been trying," she confided. "Bill wants another before Matthew's four."
Dana smirked. "Bill and his schedules."
Tara giggled. "I know. But that doesn't give us much time, and with him away more and more often I just don't know how we'll manage it."
The women shared a laugh.
"I didn't realize you and Mulder were together," Tara said shyly.
Ginny, who had picked up immediately on her sister-in-law's connection with her partner at Thanksgiving, waited for the confirmation she and Charlie currently had a wager on.
Dana struggled to come up with a lie, but they were family. "It's not something we're open about at work," she explained. "Plus, it's rather...new." She blushed as she sipped a glass of eggnog.
Ginny smiled knowingly. She was younger than Dana, but had watched her through the years with other men, and none of them had looked at her like Mulder did. She'd suspected something was happening between them years ago, so the fact that it was new did surprise her a little.
"Well, I'm really happy for you, Dana," Tara said, squeezing her sister-in-law's hand. "It was so hard on you when you came for Christmas, that sweet little girl."
"Mama!" Lucy had toddled into the kitchen, trailed by her grandmother, and was tugging on Ginny's skirt. She raised her arms, wanting to be held.
Ginny nodded to Dana. "Honey, I've got Sophie right now, I can't pick you up."
Lucy held her arms up to her aunt, and settled her head onto Dana's shoulder once Dana had her hitched on her hip. Ginny smiled. "I think someone might be ready for a nap after lunch. Mom, can I help you set the table?"
Maggie shooed her. "No, sweetie, you just relax, I'll put Charlie and Bill on it."
Ginny rolled her eyes at Dana and Tara. "Charlie's favorite thing after assembling Tommy's toys."
"Yeah, don't get me started on 'Some Assembly Required'," Tara laughed.
Dana moved to get a clearer view of Mulder, outside with the boys. He was so tall next to them. Tommy saw her looking out from the window and waved. She smiled and waved back. Mulder looked up from his work packing snow to form a snowman, his cheeks pink from cold, and caught her eye through the glass. Standing there, a baby playing with her hair. They could be in another world. The corners of his mouth tilted up in a smile, and she smiled back, her eyes warm. Lucy drew her attention away. Stroking her aunt's hair, she said, quite clearly, the word 'red'.
"Dana, Mom wants your help with the apple pie or something," Charlie called, and she turned away, walking to the kitchen. She handed Lucy off to her father, running a hand over the child's soft, strawberry blonde hair one last time.
The Christmas Eve after he'd killed himself, a black day.
A film of snow covered the street, no one was driving down it on Christmas Eve. Dana walked across the street to her car, her footprints marking it in a diagonal line. It was cold out, her fingers were numb unlocking the car. She got in and closed the door harder than she'd meant so that it slammed shut. She imagined if the snow-flecked glass of the window had shattered, shards falling on her lap, along the dashboard. People would wonder, What is she so angry about? It's Christmas, for Heaven's sake! And she would smile and say, None of your fucking business. Have a Merry fucking Christmas. She bent over, resting her forehead on the cold steering wheel. The windshield wipers worked at the snow-speckled windshield.
She started the car, pulled out of the spot quickly, sloppily, and drove. She couldn't think of a better way to spend her Christmas Eve than to drive, drive, drive, and forget. Dana almost wished she could buy a bottle of some cheap liquor and hold it between her knees as she drove, take swigs at red lights, get blasted like some high schooler. Merry Christmas.
She didn't want a Holly Jolly. She didn't want a Very Merry or a Feliz Navidad. It was only eight o'clock and she had the whole night to get through. All over the city families were sitting down to have dinner together, schlogging eggnog, carving turkeys. Kissing relatives' cold cheeks as they arrived from out of town, laughing, children begging to open just one present. Christmas lights were draped over doorways, along windowsills, tangled up in the trees lining the sidewalks. She threaded her car through the streets of Washington. When Scully turned on the radio someone was singing about how they'd be home for Christmas. She changed stations. She didn't want to have herself a Merry little Christmas. She didn't want to deck the halls. She turned the radio off. There was nowhere she wanted to be after declining her mother's invitation to go with her to Charlie's, instead staying home in bed until four when she decided to get up and clean her already clean apartment, because there was nothing else to do. Nothing to do but drive around until her tank was empty and she had to fill up. She wished she was drunk, really drunk.
She cruised through one of the rich neighborhoods, the families strolling along the broad sidewalks, the stores all decorated, windows spray-painted with snow and cartoon Santas, Merry Christmas. She stopped at the Chinese market, the parking lot was jammed, people buying their last-minute fish and sponge cake. She pushed a cart around for awhile, accidentally banging into someone in the bright fluorescent light, down the long cold rows of vegetables and fruit. She decided to buy a weird huge fruit that looked like a porcupine, it weighed about ten pounds and smelled like armpits. Mulder would do something like that. There was no trace of Holly Jolly in here, God bless the Chinese. Men with huge cleavers hacked up chickens and hunks of pork behind the butcher case without a shred of tinsel or a single Santa hat. Two tiny withered grandmas stood over a metal sink full of little blue crabs scrambling over each other in a hopeless bid for escape. Maybe that was God. Peering over the edge of the sink as you tried to claw your way out, picking off this one and that one.
She carried her purchases out to the car, some of those cakes Mulder liked and the stinking porcupine fruit, and started driving again. She couldn't shake the feeling that any minute she would see him, walking along with his hands in the pockets of his dark jacket. There by the newsstand. Or there, in front of the kindergarten.
The CVS parking lot was still bristling with unsold Christmas trees. They probably would have bought their own tree here. She could see them, walking together, the tall man in the long coat, collar raised against the cold, the small woman in the jeans and turtleneck sweater she wore on weekends, her auburn hair bright against the grey sky. Christmas in his eyes, practicality in hers, saying No to the tallest ones. A day they would never have. Driving home with the tree tied to the roof of his car like a dead deer, carrying it up the steep stairs. They'd sit up late decorating it with the white lights Mulder had bought, the box of generic and personal ornaments Scully had stored above her towels. The sparkly little UFO ornament she was hiding in her drawer for him. Maybe they'd dance once it was over, Mulder wrapped all around her, his cheek pressed into her hair. That didn't seem like them, but it could have been. They could've had that.
She pulled into the parking lot, parked, trying to see through the tears gathering in her eyes that stung like bleach. They had been happy, they had been happy together, if only for a year. She got out and pushed her way between the trees, brushing their sticky needles with her bare hands, the smell overpowering, clinging to her arms. She wanted him desperately, fiercely. She wanted him back, now, right now, she didn't think she could live one more moment.
"Ma'am?" A pimply-faced boy was peering at her through the branches. "Ma'am, are you all right?"
She was exhausted, her nerves stripped like wires, the red and the white. She felt like a saint with the arrows shot through, bleeding to death. "Do I look alright to you?" she said, clutching at pine branches. Her hands smelling of pitch pine and loss.
She bought a whole carton of sad Christmas oranges from the boy and brought them to the car, where their smell compounded with the other fruit's and the lingering pine that was smeared all over her. She peeled one on the steering wheel as she drove. The rind was thick, the orange smaller than it should have been, cold and sour, but she ate it anyway, knowing somewhere there was a place where the oranges would be allowed to ripen all the way. They would fall off the trees before they were picked they were so ripe, the smell was only a promise. Juice ran down her chin.
She drove idly through to the suburbs. Christmas lights festooned the houses, in the trees and across balconies, around windows. Little houses with their little families, getting ready for Christmas. Flickering lights at the rooflines, trees in the window. Why couldn't they have been like that, for him? She tried to look into the windows of the houses as she passed. So pretty. So hopeful, that instinct for light in winter, believing, waiting for a miracle. While she was left with just this, a stinking fruit in the backseat, a cold bed. She refused to change the sheets, but they already didn't smell like him anymore.
That was the frightening part about believing in things. You could wake up one day and it could all be gone. And you were just left with bad oranges, climbing crabs, and fake snow, Merry Christmas. And yet here were these houses made beautiful by their lights. She knew that the truth was out there somewhere. It had to be. How could Mulder leave all this? How could he drive off like that and kill himself, when the night before he'd been telling her about all the sledding he'd done as a boy, when he'd asked her what her favorite present had been as a child, when he'd told her he loved her in blue…He could have left a note. Here's my dark world, it could say, you carry it for a change, I'm out.
She'd driven to her mother's house without realizing it. She saw a modest tree through the living room window, decked with twinkling lights and the family ornaments, a wreath on the door as her mother opened it and came outside, her arms wrapped around herself in the cold. Dana looked up when her mother opened the driver's side door.
"Dana?"
Her hands were still on the wheel, sticky from the orange, the car still running. Her mother repeated her name, this time more insistently as a gust of winter wind blew down the street. "Dana, come inside."
She nodded slowly, pulled the keys out of the ignition, and allowed herself to be helped out of the car and up the walkway to the front door, grey mushy snow under her feet in the darkness. I'll make an honest woman out of you, he'd said that day. Inside the house was warm and smelled like the only home she had left. None of the bustle and excitement of last year's Christmas, because this time it had been at Charlie's place. Her mother was still dressed from the day, waiting, no doubt, for midnight mass, but a throw blanket and book rested on the couch, some reading glasses on the little end table.
"Go sit on the sofa, I'll bring you some tea," her mother said gently, and Dana obeyed, taking off her shoes and going to curl up on the comfortable sofa in the living room. She took the blue blanket and wrapped it around herself, closing her eyes and resting her head against the cushion. She was tired, so tired of being tired. Her grief was like a migraine that wouldn't let her rest, but there was also anger there. Anger, and guilt from being angry at him.
Her mother returned with a mug of hot water and a tea bag steeping in it. The mug had a reindeer's face on it and a chip on the rim, and Dana recognized it from her childhood. She took a sip and burned her mouth. The water hadn't had time to grab the herbs, but she held the mug in her hands to warm them. They were always cold these days.
"You know what he said, what Mulder said, last year when we came for Christmas?" she asked softly, remembering.
"What?" Maggie asked, her hand on her daughter's shoulder.
"He said, 'I'll make an honest woman out of you'. Right outside, just before we came in. I couldn't tell if he was joking or not. We didn't mention it again." She smiled sadly. "Funny, the things you remember."
"He wasn't joking, Dana," her mother said, her voice soft but steady. Her daughter looked up, not understanding. "He asked me, this Thanksgiving, while you and Ginny were cleaning up in the kitchen. I told him he was being silly, that he didn't need my permission, but he told me he thought he should ask anyway, because you were traditional." She took the mug from Dana's hand as she collapsed into her, deftly setting it aside on the table behind her and clasping her arm around her daughter as she began to weep.
She rocked her for a few moments, until she felt Dana relax and wipe her face off. She took a deep breath. "I would have said yes," she said, surprising herself. "Marriage...it doesn't really seem like us...but if he had asked, I would have said yes, I think." She pulled away from her mother and smiled a little. "I can't believe he asked you."
Maggie chuffed a laugh, wiping a stray tear from her eye. She had to be strong for her daughter. Dana was usually the strong one. "He thought he was doing the right thing. I thought it was...endearing. He said he...he said he was going to ask you on Christmas."
Dana closed her eyes. So that's why he wanted to do Christmas alone, she realized, he didn't want an audience. He might have even thought I'd say No. They'd rarely said I love you, and usually only in the dark, where words are louder to your ears. She couldn't imagine calling him her husband, but she could imagine being a wife. Them being a family. She let herself imagine their family, the children they'd never have. A boy with her hair and his eyes, a girl with dark hair and blue eyes. It seemed that love was a crop, and her season had come and gone.
All she could ask, over and over, was, "Then why did he do it?"
Her mother shook her head.
"I loved him, and he loved me, he wanted a Christmas together, a life together, and then he had to go and kill himself." The words tasted like copper pennies in her mouth. "We were happy. It doesn't make sense."
Maggie squeezed her daughter's hand. Losing her own husband had been difficult, she'd grieved for months, she still missed him every day. She couldn't begin to measure love, but at least she had had time with Bill. They'd had a whole life together, a family, a full life. Her only daughter, who rarely needed others and kept so much inside, had bathed in the sun of new, deep love, and was now being sunburnt from the inside out. And to have it happen like this. She was Juliet without Romeo's dagger.
Somehow, he'd gotten inside her building. She could hear him coming up the stairs to the second story, the fall of his footstep familiar as a song, so old that it scraped your heart like the bottom of a burned pan. The hesitation as he came to the landing, looking between 3 and 4, trying to remember which one was hers. She pressed her hands over her ears so she wouldn't hear him say her name. Instead she jumped back when he knocked on the door. She felt it like a kick to the gut. Then,
"Scully?"
Oh, God. It wasn't real. It wasn't real. Some horrible twisted game, one of those gunpowder secret sources Mulder spoke with who showed them a way to another dead end. It was like Melissa's voice! A sound as real as a heartbeat, only to be made by a machine. Yes, that's what it was.
The coffin had been lowered into the wet, muddy earth on a Saturday. Dana watched it sink, the uncomfortable mechanics of it. She'd chosen black for no particular reason, and it gleamed like the shell of a piano, although her fingerprints had left greasy marks on the side, and now a morning rain pockmarked the surface. She stood there like the other bookend to his headstone and thought, this isn't what he would have wanted. How many times had they driven past this quiet, solitary cemetery without a single thought to the people buried here? There lay the dead, but you couldn't read their headstones from the road, and why would you want to, anyway? They were dead and buried, plain and simple. I'll never forget you here, she'd thought to herself.
"Scully, come on, open up," his voice was muffled, like a half-finished thought.
"No," she said, and the word came up like bile, revolting. "Go away."
"It's me. It's Mulder. Skinner said he would call." Despite everything her grip on her head loosened. It was like sinning, hearing his voice. A flush spread up her chest. "Look, I know you're angry and you're hurting but I promise I'll tell you everything. No more lies, no more secrets."
She didn't move. A long silence. A deep breath from him.
"Prove it," she managed. "Prove you're Mulder."
He chuckled, and she pressed her face to one of her drawn up knees, closing her eyes.
"You're damn good at Gin Rummy, you've got this old pack of cards you and Melissa played with and the edge of one is burned, because you smoked a little in med school, even though that's ridiculous and as a doctor I think you should know that. It's the two of hearts. You tried to teach me on a case once in...Utah...yeah, Utah...and you let me win."
Dana's shoulders relaxed. She was carried away by his voice, a paper boat on a gentle lake.
"I once broke a bottle of champagne when I was trying to open it. It was New Years. 1999. Your apartment. The cork hit the kitchen ceiling and I dropped the bottle and it got all over the floor but to be fair that was cheap champagne, Scully. I got it at Food Lion on the way over. You kept the cork. You put it in a drawer with all the forks and knives and spoons for some reason. We drank apple juice instead. Will you let me in, Scully?"
She shook her head. "More," she said in a quiet voice, calmer now.
He made an exasperated noise with a note of laughter. Her heart soared. "You took piano lessons with Charlie when you guys lived in San Diego because the piano teacher gave your mom a deal and it was one way to keep you two out of trouble for an hour on Wednesdays after school. You can only play one piece and you wouldn't be half bad if your hands were bigger. Now Charlie, he's got big hands. He can stretch an octave."
Dana stood up, pitching forward a little, then caught her balance. She felt like a stick figure with no clothing, no organs, no skin, no soul, bare and vulnerable. She could be erased in an instant. His eyes. Those dark, bruised eyes. Blood in his mouth. His cold, hard face. A thing.
She reached forward and unlocked the deadbolt, then put her hand on the smooth doorknob. Thank God he didn't push his way through. She turned the knob and slowly, slowly opened the door. It was as if she'd been standing behind a heavy velvet curtain on a dark stage, waiting, a large audience on the other side anticipating a performance, the temperature change as the curtain slowly parted, the rush of cool air. But this was her play, and she tried to breathe, her heart rattling in her chest like a bird in a metal cage, desperate for escape. The first line wasn't hers.
"Did anybody miss me?"
Author's Note: Reviews are candy