Character: Dana Scully
Fandom: The X-Files
Rating: PG-13
Prompt:Linus Van Pelt: I never thought it was such a bad little tree. It's not bad at all, really. Maybe it just needs a little love. (A Charlie Brown Christmas) Vol 3. Week.21 on scifi_muses on LiveJournal
Setting: Season Five Episode: Emily
AN: As someone on pointed out, Per Manum has a very different spin on how this all went down with the ova and her finding out. But as Emily aired first and was in my canon, and frankly most of Season Eight is not, I'm going with this. Besides, Scully is under duress in that episode, missing Mulder, you know how memories are! That's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it.
As mysteriously as Emily had entered Scully's life, within three weeks she had left it. It was as if she blinked and suddenly the girl was gone.
In the end there was no body to even bury. The nature of her disease, the mystery behind what it was and what it did to her meant the hospital had procedures to follow. Her body was cremated in the end, a small baggie of ash, fairy dust, all Scully had of the daughter she hadn't known existed, but whose loss she now mourned.
She hadn't even known what to do about a funeral. Emily hadn't been raised in any particular religious tradition. Scully didn't know anyone locally to walk her through the steps, she knew no funeral home or religious figure, and the Sim family had no friends or connections to even turn to. Her parents had been buried quietly weeks before, a distant family member of Roberta's handling the arrangements. It was all Scully had to go on as the hospital administration handed her the remains of Emily in a tiny box.
It was Mulder and her mother who handled much of the arrangements. Scully willingly passed the details to them, too lost to figure it out. She agreed to a funeral with a casket, a tiny, child-sized casket, white and innocent. The kindly funeral director had understood, they could fill the casket to give it weight, so it didn't swim with the ashes of a little girl the world would forget. They would have a lovely service, despite the fact that only Scully, her family, and the social worker for Emily's case would be there.
At least there was someone to mourn her.
If anyone thought it was strange that Scully paid for the funeral of a girl she had hardly known, no one said anything. A prayer was said over the tiny casket, a few words of comfort uttered to a life that should never have existed. Maggie sat by her daughter's side, holding her hand tightly, with the sort of empathy only she would have. After all she had buried a daughter too.
It was over before she knew it.
She was alone in the chapel. Above her the Madonna watched sadly. There was an ache in that smile that Scully knew well as the Blessed Virgin cuddled the Son who would one day meet just as incomprehensible a death. She too would never know another child, another little hand holding hers as it nursed, as it slept at her breast. There would never be another wide-eyed child who would look up at her innocently, proud over their scribbled, crayon picture, offering up the incomprehensible work as if it were fine art. Never…never…never…
Scully rose, moving towards the small casket, standing by it for long moments, wondering if it would make her feel any better if there were indeed a body in it. She dealt in the physical side of death. It was a comfort to her. Perhaps if she had Emily there to see, to touch, to cry over it wouldn't feel like so much of a dream. Had this been what Melissa wanted for her to do? To find a little girl that had no other destiny but to die? Why?
Tears fell fast down her face, unchecked finally as she tried to wrap her mind around all of this. It hardly seemed right or fair, any of this. Why did these men do these things to her, to her family, to Mulder? What had any of them done except exist? What had Emily done? She had never deserved this, any of this, the life of tests and pain and illness, to lose everything so quickly. She deserved to be loved and cared for by her mother…by her. And Scully would have loved her.
She didn't turn at the footsteps behind her. She knew the sound of them as well as she knew her own heartbeat by now. Mulder had slipped out sometime during the service and had returned. He came up beside her, the ever familiar fingers pressing into the small of her back, a support as he reached over to lay a bouquet of perfect, white lilies on the small coffin. Scully blinked at them through her tears, her broken heart swelling at the action. It was the one thing she had forgotten, flowers. Mulder would think of them, the small little gesture that spoke to his caring and understanding.
She just wished he could make sense of this all and somehow explain it to her.
"Who are the men who would create a life whose only hope was to die?"
Ignore the philosophical fact that was all their fates someday, this made no sense. Everyone else had the chance to live, to have experiences, to have a life. That was never what Emily was meant for and it hurt Scully deeply to know that. The reason for it was wrong to her it made no sense.
"I don't know," Mulder murmured gravely. "But the fact that you found her, and had a chance to love her…then maybe she was meant for that too."
Maybe…Melissa's ghostly voice had been the call that had drawn her to Emily. Had it been her sister, or God, or fate? Or had it just been a little girl whose soulful gaze spoke to her from the ruin of her adopted mother's death?
"She found me," Scully sighed.
"So you could save her," Mulder insisted. Scully didn't refute him.
"How is Detective Kresge?" She had heard of Mulder's adventure and of the downed detective. He was currently being administered a course of anti-virals the same as Emily's doctor.
"He's doing better. He's already out of the ICU."
The poor man, all he had done was try to help her and Emily and for his troubles he was infected with their synthetic virus. "And the men who did this to him?
"They've already cleaned up the nursing home. All the women have been placed in new homes. There's no evidence that anyone at Transgen Corporation knew of Calderon's work." Scully looked up at the quiet anger and frustration in Mulder. He had wanted to find them, to have his proof, not just for their work…for her, and for Emily. She was grateful to him for trying.
"There is evidence of what they did," she replied, turning back to the coffin and opening it wide. Her daughter was gone, but she didn't have the body destroyed without samples being preserved. All the tests, the X-rays, the blood work, even samples all resided with Scully now. They were her personal X-file, the remains of a child that should never have existed, a little girl whose existence she would explain somehow, whose death she would make relevant in some way. She would find the truth on why this happened, to her, to Emily. It was all she really had left of her.
Nestled inside of the coffin, on top of the find sand within, lay the cross her mother gave her that Christmas nearly twenty years before. It had been the symbol of her mother's love, a constant that gave Mulder hope even in the time she was gone. And it had been the one thing she could give her daughter in her darkest moments. Scully didn't know how she felt about the sentiment behind it, the cross, God, faith…all of that right now. All she had left of Emily was a memory…and this.
Quietly she closed the lid, turning to Mulder. Without a word he fell into step beside her, following her down the narrow aisle of the chapel and out into the impossibly bright, Southern California sun outside. It shouldn't be so bright on a day like this. Usually it rained in San Diego all through the first of the year. But perversely it was sunny and bright. Not even Emily's funeral could be stereotypical.
In silence she and Mulder pulled away from the chapel. There would be no graveside service, but the coffin would be buried next to the parents who had raised her and loved her and tried to give her a normal life for all that Transgen would let them. Scully mourned their loss as well. An entire family wiped out for the plans and machinations of others.
"Scully…Dana," Mulder fell on her last name awkwardly. He'd used it more in the last few days than she had ever heard him use it in their entire partnership. "You know how sorry I am about all of this."
"I know," she murmured, watching the passing cars and businesses on the drive back to her brother's house. She knew Mulder's sorrow and guilt without him having to say a word.
"I would have told you about all of that, the ova, what I knew if I felt I could."
"I know." What else could she say to that?
Mulder was quiet for several heartbeats, fingers drumming against the steering wheel. He was nervous, fretful, the energy making him twitchy. He finally spoke again, hazel green eyes sliding sideways towards her. "I found some of your ova."
She stopped still. Her ova? What did he mean he found it? Was it lying around somewhere? Had he had it all this time? Where was it? What was he doing with it?
"I found it when I discovered they took it. I…I took it, to show you, but…I never had the heart."
"Where are they, Mulder?" She had to ask. He had them all this time and said nothing?
"In a private facility, under an assumed name. I can get them for you at any time."
He had them. "Is it all of them?"
"No…I don't think so."
That meant there could still be other Emilys, other little girls or boys out there with half of her genetics being used for…what? She didn't know. She didn't want to know. It made Scully's headache thinking about it.
"I'll want them sometime, Mulder. Not today." Today, she wanted to mourn and grieve. And she would have to think and consider, understanding what had happened to her and coming to grips with what was done both to herself and to Emily. But in the future…perhaps. Maybe there was a ray of light in all of this after all.
"Anything you want, Scully," Mulder assured her softly, reaching across the space between them, fingers groping for hers briefly. "I'll do whatever I can."