Character: Dana Scully
Fandom: The X-files
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: Making Christmas Vol 2. Week 31
Setting: Season Three Episode "War of the Corprohages"
AN: Technically this is Scully on Vacation, but it's before the infamous cockroach episode.
"You realize that sitting there at midnight won't make Santa Claus come any faster?"
Scully chuckled at her mother's teasing words. The matriarch of the Scully clan settled on the overstuffed couch beside her daughter, watching the shimmering Christmas tree as it winked softly in the darkness of midnight. Despite the fact her internal clock said it was 3 AM, Scully hadn't found sleep, instead had resorted to cuddling her gently napping Pomeranian, staring absently at the relics of Scully family Christmases from long ago.
"I always hoped to catch him putting presents under the tree," Scully grinned softly, playing along with her mother as she made room for the other woman on the couch, shifting the protesting Queequeg. "I always had this suspicion he looked a lot like Dad."
"He did look a lot like your father, most Christmases at least," Maggie held out a mug of egg nog, thick and creamy and smelling of more than a little bit of her father's cherished Irish whiskey. "There were the Christmases when he looked a bit like me."
"Ahab's holidays at sea," Scully had remembered a few from her young childhood, before her father's rise in rank increasingly brought him to shore for longer periods of time. "It must be hard, this time of year…missing him."
"Mmm, yes," Maggie sipped from her own cup, trying to hide the sadness in her eyes. "I miss Melissa too."
Of course, Scully thought, the sister who shouldn't have died.
"It hardly seems real that they are gone, sometimes, does it," Scully curled deeper into the couch cushions, glancing at one of the silvery ornaments on the tree. It had been Missy's, etched with her name on the flat, metal surface. She hadn't really believed in Christianity for years, but never failed to take joy in the season. "I keep expecting Dad to call out from sea, and Melissa from some divvy place up in Washington State where she's been celebrating with a commune."
"I know," Maggie laughed, thinking of all the holidays without the two Scully's most effected by wanderlust. "Your father and I sat up like this the last Christmas he was alive. He couldn't sleep either, and we sat here watching the tree till morning, when Bill and Tara woke up." Tears shimmered in her bright blue eyes, but didn't quite fall. "We talked all night, about past holidays, you kids…the grandkids we hoped would start coming soon. You father was looking forward to spoiling them." She sniffed, laughing at the memory, despite the pain. "It's till hard to believe he was gone just days later."
"I know." Scully had been home in Georgetown that holiday, spending it with her other brother, Charlie, the two of them teasing and joking over old holiday movies and Christmas cookies. It hadn't occurred to either of them that they would be bereft of the captain of their family so soon. How things had changed since then, she realized, thinking of all the events that had occurred to her in those scant two years. The closing of the X-files, her abduction and near death, the return of Samantha, the loss of Mulder and her sister, all of that in a scant twenty-four months. How far away her life with her father seemed now.
"Sometimes it seems it was a whole lifetime ago," she murmured, holding the cold glass up to her lips. A lifetime ago when she was Dana, the daughter, the sister, Starbuck, not Special Agent Scully, the efficient, skeptical, reasonable half of the X-files division, not Scully, Mulder's go-to person in a jam. Now it seemed that was all that did defined her anymore. Autopsies, reports, weird things, they were the facts of her everyday life now. Before her father's death she would have laughed at anyone praying to a piece of cheese shaped like the Blessed Virgin. Now she had received a message from God.
What was her world coming to?
"Did you and Bill have your 'talk' yet?" Maggie hadn't asked about what took them so long on their car ride from the airport, though both siblings had furtively shared a look and smile when she hadn't mentioned the smell of grease and onions. The subject had past, though the conversation had not, not completely.
"Yes," Scully replied thoughtfully, ignoring her mother's surprised look. "No, it wasn't a knock-down, drag out fight like usual." Perhaps it spoke to the age and wisdom attained by both brother and sister in the years since he married and she had joined the FBI. "We were quite rational about it. He said he was proud of me, and what I had become. And he explained why it was he was so over-protective of me as a brother. I don't think we'll come to any agreements, but at least we can understand the corners of the playing field we are coming from."
"That's all I ask." Maggie seemed content. "I don't like it when you kids argue."
"You know Bill…he and I are so alike, we hate admitting that the other might actually have a point."
"He just worries about you, Dana." It was Maggie's stock answer for all disagreements between her children, and Scully only met it with a nod. She had nothing to counter that statement with, no way of challenging it, and so she fell silent, watching the lights twinkle quietly in the darkness, rubbing one of Queequeg's fox-like ears gently as her dog snored.
"Are you happy, Dana?" The question was so out of place against the holiday scene that surrounded them. This had been a holiday that had always before made her happy. And it wasn't that Scully wasn't happy, seeing her brother and sister-in-law, sitting up with her mother. But she felt…
"Weighted down," she murmured, frowning slightly. "I feel weighted down. It's strange, Mom, I'm in a job that should be giving me answers, making me feel like I'm accomplishing something good in this world. And I feel that every case, every mystery we take on just adds a new layer of weight. And it answers nothing…not really."
Coming full circle indeed…going in circles, again, and again.
"I suppose that's how anyone who works in this sort of field," Maggie murmured philosophically, the sort of comforting, motherly response Scully expected out of her. It was of course reassuring, but not what she needed at the moment. Hell, she wasn't sure what she needed? Answers? Another sign from God?
"How is Fox," Maggie smoothly changed subjects, as always curious about the man that Scully seemed to spend far more time with than friends or even potential significant others.
"Mulder is fine." She assumed he was. She hadn't dared to try him and see how much of that fifth of scotch he had managed to consume. "We're busy."
"I know. You keep calling and putting off dinner."
Guilt, one of those emotions so familiar to Scully now around her family, the slowly drifting daughter, whose work had brought ruin upon them, "it's just been hard of late, that's all. Mulder calls at all hours." She hadn't mentioned the women in Allentown, Mulder's most recent near-death experience, not the experiences she had in Ohio. "It's just been a lot of stuff."
Stuff…her world was reduced to a single, paltry word. Stuff.
"Would it do me any good to tell you I worry about you, Dana," Maggie sounded resigned to the fact. "It was one thing when you joined the FBI, a dangerous job. But now…I don't know." She looked torn. "I've always supported you in this, Dana, to follow your dreams. But I worry at the cost. And its more than your health and life, I know that is something you agreed to sacrifice the minute you took your oath. But are you sacrificing this at the cost of your happiness?"
"Who says I'm not happy?" To be honest, Scully hadn't given it much thought whether she was happy or not. She just was…working, struggling, fighting, and searching for answers. But was she happy? She didn't feel unhappy. How was she supposed to feel?
"This is the most I've seen you smile in months, Dana. And you don't see your old friends anymore. When was the last time you spoke to Ellen?"
"Ellen's busy and has a husband and child."
"That didn't stop you before," Maggie challenged. "You used to see Ellen all the time, and your other friends from college. And now…" She sighed, reaching over to scratch in between the ears of Queequeg, who yawned and rolled over. "Now your only companion is a thoroughly spoiled dog who seems to be the only grandchild I can hope for a while."
"You say that as if it's a bad thing."
"It isn't a bad thing, Dana, if you are happy with it." Maggie's steady gaze met her daughter's. "I just am not so sure that it's what you want."
"What if I'm not sure what it is I want, Mom," Scully whispered, inexplicably feeling overwhelmed by her mother's statement. She wanted to find her answers, to find justice for her sister, to know that Mulder's work wasn't in vain. That she wasn't simply chasing around in circles, no matter if they lead to the truth.
"Better get to bed soon, love?" Maggie rose, leaning over just enough to press cool lips to Scully's forehead. "If you don't, Santa won't come."
"I'm a bit too old to believe in Santa," Scully chuckled softly at her mother.
"You're never too old to stop believing, Dana," Maggie called back softly. "Come to bed soon."
