disclaimer: not mine, don't sue

Chapter 26: You Understand

They had just finished settling in for the night when the phone rang. It was almost midnight, and Scully sighed. It had been a hectic day. It was hard making sure that her son's birthday party had been all she wanted it to be, while simultaneously getting used to the fact that her parents were going to accept Mulder and her son's choice to call him his father. It was emotionally and physically exhausting. She hadn't even had the energy to respond to Mulder's temptations. Once William was asleep, she was done in.

So it wasn't her that answered the phone. It was Mulder who exerted himself enough to reach up and grab it.

"Hello?" he asked sleepily. He really had no idea who would be calling so late, and that was part of the reason why he answered.

"Fox?" he heard a distressed woman on the other end of the line. He recognized the voice. He had heard it that day…

"Mrs. Scully?" he asked, and this woke Dana. She sat up in bed, grabbing the phone from Mulder.

"Mom?" she asked, breathing heavily. Her mother never called anyone later than 9:00 unless it was an emergency.

"Dana…" her mother was barely able to say. She sounded like she was crying.

"Mom? What is it? What's wrong?" Scully asked, growing frantic. She couldn't possibly imagine what was wrong. Her parents were supposed to be on their plane ride home.

"Dana… it's your dad. He had a heart attack… and we lost him. He's gone, Sweetie…" Mrs. Scully said and broke down. Scully had been leaning on Mulder, so he heard Mrs. Scully's every word. He was just shocked with Scully's reaction.

She didn't cry. She didn't burst into hysterics. She didn't scream and shout. She didn't break down in his arms. She stiffened her back. Her face became hard as stone and her gaze turned icy cold. She looked like she had left her body. Mrs. Scully was still crying on the phone.

Mulder noticed that when she realized that her father was gone, a part of Scully died as well. And that part made itself known when her mother started shouting her name and she didn't answer. He gently took the phone from her.

"Mrs. Scully," he said, not really sure of what else to follow that with.

"Fox… I need you to take Dana home," Mrs. Scully instructed him.

"Home?"

"To California. Get the next flight. She… she needs to be there…"

"Right away, Mrs. Scully," Mulder agreed, not really sure he could deny the woman anything at that moment. There wasn't anything after that. Mrs. Scully had hung up, and Mulder forgave her for not saying goodbye.

"Scully… Baby…" Mulder started, but then stopped. Scully had started trembling.

"Mu-"

"Shhhh, it's okay," Mulder cooed, taking her in his arms after what she had tried to say he realized was not going to come out. As he held her, he realized that she was screaming inside, but she couldn't let those screams out. Her whole world had been shaken, and everything lay around her in broken pieces. Scully didn't want Mulder to hold her because she felt that if he did, he would break as well. There was no solid ground.

"No," was the only word Scully could say to express her emotions, "no, no, no, no, no, no!" she yelled. There was an enormous pressure building on her chest and everything inside of her threatened to flow out.

Literally.

Scully leaned over Mulder, over the side of the bed, and threw up. The wave lasted longer than most waves do, and when she was done, she was exhausted. Her eyes still filled with tears, though, and they fell onto Mulder's naked shoulder as he dared to pick her up and put her back together.

There came a point where crying was not enough. Her father had never approved of crying, telling her that nothing could be accomplished by allowing yourself to. As Scully grew older, though, she realized that sometimes crying was necessary, just in more extreme forms. Not necessarily to get what you want, but when you go for so long without crying, something more than tears comes out. Plus, there was only one way Scully could express her feelings of unfairness and disbelief. She started to scream unintelligible things into Mulder's chest.

"Baby," Mulder whispered into her hair, holding onto her tightly and riding out the storm of emotions with her. At one point she became violent, hitting him, though he doubted she knew she was doing it.

And then came the most important part. The part where Scully crashed into him with all her might and started crying real tears of real grief. The part where she slipped into a sort of catatonic stage and hiccupped for herself. This was the part where Mulder would have to be most delicate.

But somewhere in there, William had heard his mother's screams, and screamed for her as well. And though Mulder knew he needed to be delicate, William was crying out for him. He was never good at ignoring Will.

"No more tears," he said, bouncing the baby. He left Scully on the bed, but she probably didn't even know he had left. She was somewhere else.

"Mulder, why?" Scully asked him in desperation. Will was still crying, and Scully's eyes were crying as well. When he sat down next to her, she crawled into his lap and resumed her earlier chronological grief process. He held her, and she cried, but he was also holding a crying William.

Mulder felt like he was being ripped apart.

He needed to get her home, he realized. Where Scully would have help. He couldn't help her. Not like her family could. Hating himself as he did this, Mulder lifted Scully with him as he stood up and placed her on the floor. She looked like she was about to collapse, but Mulder was once again there to save her.

"We're going to California," he said, whispering into her hair. Between deep breaths, Scully nodded. The urge for her to go home was undeniable. She needed her mother, her sister, and her brothers. She needed her father. Her Ahab. Maybe if she went home, she would find this all a joke. An elaborate hoax to get her to come home. She'd be mad at first, but then she'd hug her father and just be thankful that he was alive. How could he be dead? He was with her just that day. He had given her son his birthday presents just that day. He had had the cake and sang "Happy Birthday" just that day. He had blessed her relationship and called her Starbuck just that day.

He couldn't be dead.

She had hugged him before he left and she had felt life. She was studying to be a doctor, couldn't she feel death coming on? Wouldn't she have been able to save her father? Couldn't she have done something? Maybe she shouldn't have left home and everything behind after all. She obviously wasn't a very promising med student. She couldn't even save her own father.

The plane ride to northern California was uneventful. Scully couldn't sleep, and Mulder accepted that once they were three quarters of the way there. William slept through most of it, but the other part he had been good. Mulder took care of him. Scully was still distant and in her own place. She could stay there. He would be waiting for her when she came back.

"William, stay with me, Bud," Mulder told the one-year-old as they tried to make their way through the airport to baggage claim. He felt like he was a father of two, not only dragging around William, but dragging around Scully as well. Their fingers were laced and he never stopped trying to tell her how much he loved her without words.

Try as he might, he couldn't get Scully to open up. He didn't know it wasn't up to him to get her to open up. She would open up to someone else. Someone who was waiting in the parking lot when they got there.

"Missy?" Scully asked. Those were her first words since landing.

"Hey Danes," the tall red-head said sadly. Scully let go of Mulder's hand and ran towards her sister, jumping into her arms, practically. Mulder's heart ripped when he heard her cry out in pain, and he tried to remember that he could not be everything to Scully. He had to share her.

"It's not true, is it?" Scully asked. She still wanted to believe it was a terrible joke. Or maybe even a dream.

"I'm sorry," her sister admitted, wiping tears away from her already tear-stained eyes.

"He can't be. He's our dad…"

"I felt the same way. But he had a heart attack on the plane, Dana. They had to do an emergency landing, but by then it was too late. They worked on him for fifteen minutes, Dana, and they couldn't get anything--"

"Stop!" Scully yelled, putting her hands over her ears. She didn't want to hear the gruesome details. She didn't want to know the where, the when, the how, or the why. She didn't want to know anything. This was her father they were talking about. Her Navy captain father. The one who called her Starbuck and threatened to kill her boyfriend. Her Ahab.

"I'm sorry, Danes," Melissa apologized. She stroked her sister's hair for another minute until she noticed a man with a baby walking toward her.

"You must be Fox Mulder," she said, tucking her much-shorter sister under her arm. The two shook hands.

"Yes, I am. I'm very sorry for your loss," Mulder said. He remembered when people had told him that. He never really knew the effect it had on people because he himself spent most of his time trying to avoid that particular comment.

"Thank you," Melissa said somberly, "… can I hold my William?"

William seemed to instantly remember his Aunt Melissa, and it was a nice family reunion for them. Only, Scully could not stop thinking about her son's future, and how he wouldn't have his grandfather. She shot Mulder a few glances, but he had removed himself from the picture. This was Scully's life before him. He felt like an intruder.

"Dana…" her mother greeted her at the door once Melissa had driven them back to the house. It was the first time Scully had been back since she left for college, and she wished with all her heart it were under better circumstances. Now there would always be something missing about that place.

"Hi Mom," she said as she was hugged, trying to be strong. She knew it was useless to try and pull of her strong routine for Melissa, but Scully figured her mother didn't need any more grief. She didn't know that that was all her mother wanted to see out of her youngest daughter.

"Hi Fox," Mrs. Scully felt it important to add over Scully's shoulder. He was holding Will and carrying the bags.

Instead of repeating his line to Melissa like some insincere parrot, Mulder embraced Mrs. Scully as well, because she allowed it.

"Come on, Mulder," Melissa said to him after they were done, "let's go take your bags upstairs." It wasn't something that needed to be done immediately. But one look at Scully and Mulder noticed that sometimes, a girl just needs her mother. So he picked up William and the luggage once more, and followed Melissa upstairs.

"I'm really sorry we had to meet like this," Melissa said once she had shown Mulder where he, Scully, and William would be staying. Times must have been really hard on them, Mulder thought, if they would let him and Scully stay in the same room together. Maybe they trusted him because William would be in there with them too.

"Me too. Wow… I had just talked to your father…"

"Yeah. Mom just called me on her cell phone not two hours before it happened to tell me they were coming home. I hadn't talked to my dad, but it's so weird what you assume your life will consist of later in the day…"

"Can I put him down for a nap?" Mulder asked, noticing William's head was hitting his shoulder. Melissa told him to hold on and wheeled a very familiar baby crib into the room from the nursery across the hall.

"He used to sleep here when he was tiny."

"It's so weird, intruding on Dana's life like this. This is… she once told me that her life before me and her life after me were two things she didn't want to meet. And it feels weird that I am after all this time."

"How long have you two been together?" Melissa asked, watching her nephew sleep. She was liking Mulder. She had never disliked him.

"Almost six months."

"Wow. If Dana didn't like you, by now she would have kicked you to the curb."

"Sometimes I wonder why she hasn't."

"Relax, you seem alright."

"Alright, but not for this life."

"Mulder… my sister is a complicated person. I know that sometimes she can be cold and distant, but when she does come out, she shines, and I think you should appreciate that."

"I love your sister. I hope she loves me as much as I love her…"

What Mulder didn't know was that Scully was standing right outside the door. And because she knew the house, she was able to creep away without being seen or heard.

~Later~

"Mulder?" Scully asked, coming into the room she couldn't believe she was sharing with him. It was her old bedroom. Her old bedroom from her old life. And now her son and Mulder were going to sleep there with her.

"Yeah?" he asked. He had been reading, and he dropped everything for her.

"I'm sorry," she said, crawling into bed and effectively, into his arms.

"For what?" Mulder asked. He couldn't begin to imagine what Scully would have to be sorry about.

"I'm shutting you out. I don't mean to."

"I know you don't. I understand." Scully laughed a little at this.

"I know you understand. You always understand. Why do you always understand? You can't ever be clueless…"

"I'll always understand because I'll always love you. And you know what else? Most people don't take the death of their father lightly. You are allowed some emotional turmoil."

"I miss him so much, Mulder. You can't even begin to imagine…"

"I know."

"You understand."