Date sent:        Mon, 24 Nov 1997 18:35:06 -0500 (EST)
From:             XXandie@aol.com
Subject:          Bells and Babies (1/1)

Title:  Bells and Babies
Author:  Ali Harrett
Reply to:  XXandie@aol.com
Rated: PG
Category:  S
Sub-category: A
Spoilers: Redux II (also Memento Mori)
Keyword:  Mulder/Scully UST
Summary:  Can Scully forgive Mulder before Christmas?  Deals with Scully's
possible infertility.

Bells and Babies 
  
     The snow fell lightly outside Dana Scully's apartment.  She stared
outside her window into the chilled, silent evening.  She pressed her nose up
against the cold glass, much in the same fashion she had done when she was a
little girl.  Behind her a fire blazed in the tiny fireplace, and the warmth
from it radiated on her back.       
The effect of the heat of the fire on her back and the cold on her nose and
face sent a strange shiver down through her body, and for a moment she became
oddly turned on.  She sighed, and closed the curtains.  

     The weather depressed her.  Usually she would be outside playing in the
snow, or enjoying window shopping for gifts for Christmas.  The normally
beautifully transformed landscape became dull and boring to her.  
     With her cancer now in remission, she thought she would feel differently
about the upcoming holiday, and about life in general.  But she didn't.  She
felt barren, as barren as the world outside of her was.  In fact, she knew
she was barren.  What a bastard Mulder was, to store her ova in his freezer
for half a year and not even tell her!  He held her now impossible future in
his hands and now they were ruined from improper storage, and she could never
experience the God-given gift of being mother.  Not naturally, anyway.
     Her thoughts traveled back to when Mulder had told her about her ova and
her inability to have children.

     It had only been a couple of days ago.  She had gone over to his
apartment so that they could work on their newest file in comfort.  It had
been her first assignment since she had been released from the hospital.
 They mostly fooled around, both grateful to have the other back.  It was a
welcoming bliss to her, to have no immediate worries or fears, and a partner
who fully supported and believed in her. 
     And that was when she found the little forgotten vial in his freezer.
 It had been quite on accident, she had been getting ice cubes from the tray
when she found it.  The label was still frozen to the metal, and she could
clearly read her name on it's side. 
     She went to his living room to question him about it.  
     But he had just stared at her, which berated her.  Then he finally told
her about his journey into the labs were Dr. Scanlon had been performing his
work,  and that what she held in her hand was her remaining ova, that came
from superovulation experiments done when she had been abducted.  Never
having been so mad at him in her life, she took the vial and fled the warmth
of his apartment.  With tears streaming down her face, she sped home, and
curled up in her bed, after locking the privacy locks on her door.  She had
seen him run out of his apartment after her, and go to his car to pursue her.
 But she was mad.  And hurt. 
     She cried until no more tears could fall.  She heard the knocks at the
door, and the pleas from his voice echoing through the walls of her
apartment, cutting into the shelter that she had made for herself.  She
didn't want to talk to him.  She didn't even want to see him.  How could he
have not told her about her being infertile?  How could he keep her precious
eggs in his freezer and not even have the balls to tell her?  He was a
bastard.  She had trusted him with all of her being.  She was even ready to
live up to her feelings for him. 
     But now things would be different.  She didn't need Mulder. 
     So she hid.

     She had been taking the last couple of days off from work, not ready to
face any of the explanations and excuses he had.  She didn't want to hear
them.  He had hurt her, and now she wasn't sure if she could even work with
him anymore.  She didn't think he had known how badly she had been wanting a
baby, a little person to take care of and love.  She hadn't even cared if she
had had artificial insemination, or had the baby out of wedlock.  She just
wanted one.  And now she couldn't.
     Everyday he had come by and banged at her door, called her at all hours
of the day and night, and last night had even spent the night out on her
doorstep.  But she still ignored him.  She hoped that he wouldn't be so
stupid tonight.  It would be so Mulderistic if he did, though, forcing her to
take pity on him.  
     She prepared herself for the worst tonight.  It was after seven, and he
hadn't been by once.  Maybe he had taken the hint.

     The time off she took allowed her time to think.  She finally decided
that this must be a major crossroads in her life, and now was the time to act
upon it.  She spread her options out in front of her like a blanket, and she
found comfort in them. 
     She had finally decided earlier that day to get a transfer and teach at
Quantico, and adopt a baby.  Her decision made her feel better, and so she
had started to make a list of all the things she would need.    Then the snow
had started to fall,  and depression set in once again.  Her
once-enlightening decision became left behind like yesterday's garbage.
     It wasn't that she wasn't strong.  Normally she would be mad and get
over it, but this was different.  She felt that her livelihood had been taken
away, therefore causing a deep scar in her emotions.   Faced with her own
mortality and recent past events, she couldn't face yet another
disappointment in her life.  This was a great test on her emotions.  Death
she could except, but the inability to procreate a being in her likeness held
great repercussions that she had not expected and had to deal with in her own
way.  Death is final.  Life is forever. 
     She went to bed early, and cried herself to sleep.

     Two weeks passed before she called Skinner to let him know she would be
returning to work.  It was four days before Christmas, and she knew she would
be working over the holidays.  She had so badly wanted to see her mom and her
brothers for Christmas.  Instead of blaming herself for taking the time off,
she blamed Mulder.  Tomorrow would be a hard day, and she would have quite an
act to pull off.  And a lot of headache from Mulder.  A part of her wanted
them to be friends the way they had been in the past, yet it was already a
given that things would be strained for a very long time, because she wasn't
ready to forgive him.   She had already faced the fact that she couldn't have
children, but it didn't mean that she wasn't still vulnerable and wanton for
revenge of some sort.

     She tentatively entered the office, walking slowly and silently into the
cramped office.  She found, to her surprise, a second desk crammed into the
already crowded room, and a nicely trimmed name plate sitting on it.  He
wasn't in the room.  She went over to her new desk, and plugged in her
laptop.  On the desk sat a small silver picture frame, and contained in it
was a wallet-sized picture of the both of them, exhausted from a day of hard
work in the Oregon forest.  He towered over her petite form, and he smiled
lopsidedly door at her.  Their arms were encircled lightly around one
another.  She remembered that day.
    For a moment she wondered where he had gotten the picture, but rage soon
overcame her.  He was trying to kiss up to her.  She picked up the delicate
picture frame in her fingers and flung it across the room to where his desk
stood.  It bounced off of a stack of paperwork and landed somewhere under his
desk.  A tear slid down her cheek. She quickly wiped it away in case he
walked in.  She pulled out a file from the file cabinet and started to go
over it.  
     She worked the whole day and he never showed up.  Oh well.  He had been
on her mind all day.  She wanted to talk to him, to stop hiding.  It was so
unlike her to hide from her emotions.  She was ready to talk.  But a part of
her still hoped that maybe she would be able to spend Christmas without him
being around the office.  If she was lucky.  Mulder usually worked through
the holidays, but this year could be different. 

     The next day was much the same as the day before. Except that it was
Christmas Eve, and instead of being home with her family, she was here at the
office, tucked away in the basement.  She received one gift, and that was
from Skinner.  
     He gave her a gold-plated pen with her name engraved on it.  She didn't
see him that day, so she prayed a silent prayer for him that his holiday
wouldn't be as glum and meaningless as hers.  Mulder never showed up.  Again.
 The office cried out to her of emptiness and loneliness.  It missed the
daily banter between the two agents.  She missed it.  She left early, too
wrapped up in emotional turmoil to work at all.

     She flicked on the lights on her midget Christmas tree.  It stood alone
and forlorn on the coffee table.  That was when she noticed the petite,
elegantly wrapped, and equally singular present nestled under the branches.
 She stared at the present, having no idea where it came from, or how it got
there.  It dawned on her that it must have been Mulder, though, who had snuck
into her apartment, as he was the only one she knew who was rude enough to
enter where he was unwanted.  A card lay underneath the delicately wrapped
present, and the messy scrawl on the front of the card confirmed that it had
been Mulder.  "Open me first," it read. 
     Tempted by the teaser he had given her, she opened the card, despite the
pangs of guilt and anger that ran deep in her soul.  On the card sat three
naked babies.  They were smiling up at her from he midst of pine branches and
miniature bells.  `Merry Christmas' was spelled out in silver and gold
glitter over the top.  
     She opened the card, and a folded piece of notepad paper fell out.  For
a moment, she thought about tossing it in the fire, along with the card, and
letting them blaze.  The picture, as cute as it was, angered her.  She felt
that he was making fun of her, at the fact that she could never harbor
something so precious in her womb.  And now there was a letter, obviously one
that would tell her everything.    She had prepared herself for this moment,
knowing that his excuses would eventually be in her face at some time.
     She unfolded the yellow paper, and read the inscription.  `Dana.' It
figured that he'd use her first name and not her last.  It was a term of
endearment that she had allowed him to use once she was out of the hospital.
 She continued.

"Dana,
     Never in my wildest dreams had I ever thought that I would be blessed
with a woman as intelligent and skeptical as you.  Through the years of
working together, I grew dependent on your abilities, your strength, your
desire, and drew upon it and made it my own.  
     "Everytime you almost died, I sat beside you, and prayed that you'd come
back.  This time, however, I thought I'd lose you forever.  Miracles don't
happen everyday, but you are a miracle.  
     "I know I am not a religious man, nor do I believe in God, but last
month, when your cancer went into remission, I found myself questioning my
own deeply rooted beliefs.  I would have died for you, you know, just so that
you could be away from the pain, away from what so blatantly lay ahead of
you.  I watched to take your death in stride, and that scared me. It scared
me to think that you had given up on me, on us.  I watched you sleep, and
wept by your bedside. Now it seems I have done a greater wrong that your
death would have been...."
     She read the words written to her from the heart of an obviously pained
man.  A tear crept in her eye, and she furiously wiped it away.
     "I had never meant to hurt you. That has never been what I wanted to do
to you.  But sometimes it seems that is all I do.  What I have done is
unacceptable.  I kept the truth from you, and I am sure that this truth is
something that should never be covered with lies or untruths.  
     "I forgot about your desires and wants as a woman, and left those
yet-to-be-used life forms go to waste.  I hope you are still reading this,
because there is something else I have to tell you.  
     "I didn't forget about you.  Not in the way it seems.  I hope that what
I have to tell you will make you happy and repair some of the damage that I
have caused.."
     <Yeah, right>, she thought to herself.  By now she wanted to laugh at
him, and at his sorry attempt to crawl back into her heart.  Nothing could
ever repair the damage that he had done.
     "I want you to remember that it was not me who stole the ova from you,
but those assholes that we have been chasing for so long.  It brings me great
anguish to think that someone could do something so cruel to you.  I want you
to go to the Washington DC Fertility Center.  They have in their possession
one of your ovum.  The only one that was viable in that tube.  I had it
placed there after I stole them from the lab.  I never ruined them.  They
were already ruined.  I just wanted to wait until the right moment to tell
you.  And now is better than never.
     "I'm sorry.  I miss our friendship, and your partnership.  Don't open my
present until you see me.  I will be waiting.
Merry Christmas, 
Mulder."

     Finished with his letter, she put it aside.  She wasn't sure whether to
be overjoyed, or forgiving or angry.  She was all of those, and none at the
same time.  She was confused.  She was so tired of fighting her jumbled
emotions from the past weeks that she collapsed underneath them.  Curling
into a ball on her couch, she cried.  They were cleansing tears, though, not
tears of self-pity or depression.  
     There was hope after all.  And maybe Mulder wasn't such a jerk.  Maybe
she was the jerk.  She hasn't even given him the opportunity to fully explain
himself.  It became obvious to her that they had both done some wrong things.
 He hadn't told her about her eggs, and she hadn't let him tell her about
them.  They held too many secrets from eachother, and now it was the time to
change that.  He was her best friend.   She was ready to let him back into
her world, and back into her heart.     
     And then his arms were around her, and a warm breath flowed along her
neck as Mulder joined her on her couch, and whispered all of her thoughts to
her and joined her in her catharsis.  
     She looked up at him, and he kissed her tears away, enjoying the salty
wetness on his lips.  "Don't worry.  I'll never keep any secrets away from
you.  And if you can never get pregnant, I will help you adopt a child.
 Anything to make you happy.  Because having you makes me happy."
     She smiled.  
     Untangling herself from him, she took his present and tore the wrapping
open.  A plain white box lay hidden under  the tawdry casing.  Inside, a gold
pendant was nestled in between folds of soft cotton.  The gold was fashioned
into 3 Maile leaves that were entwined together.  A ruby, a diamond, and a
garnet encircled a pearl at it's center.  `Truth, honor, respect.'  It was
beautiful.  He clasped it around her neck.  
     Life was good now that Mulder was back.  
     Outside, the snow started to flurry as a storm moved in.   The whiteness
blanketed the world outside of her window, but inside they lay warm and
protected in their own little world.
     Bells chimed and babies cried.  The dreams of a white Christmas had
become a miracle in their making.

The End

Works in Progress:
Illusions of Death II-Return to the Illusion
Illusions of Death III-Remarkable
1st Light
9 Days
A Fairy Tale

And many more to come, for sure

Oh, yeah, what'd you think?  Any and all responses are welcomed.