From: ephemeral@ephemeralfic.org Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2008 21:49:46 -0600 (CST) Subject: Emily\\'s Sunrise by Anne Elizabeth Source: direct Reply To: Dramafiend@aol.com Title: Emily's Sunrise (1/1) Author: Scully82 Rating: G Classification: UST, missing scene Spoilers: Christmas Carol & Emily Disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me. They are the creations, and therefore the property, of Chris Carter, Fox, Gillian Anderson, David Duchovny, et al. *** Alexandria, Virginia: Monday, January 16, 1998, 5:43 a.m. With a cheerful ding, the elevator door opened on his floor, and Scully waited. Her eyes took in the outskirts of his life: the brown wall; the dull, gray carpet; the plastic-sheathed newspapers flung haphazardly against doorframes and left, suffocating, on scratchy welcome mats; the light bulbs enveloped by spheres of cloudy glass; the rows of identical, dark doors with gold-plated numbers; the Washington dawn creeping in, uninvited but not altogether unwelcome, from the narrow window at the end of the solemn hallway. She was intrigued by the juxtaposition of order and disorder, by the not entirely uncomfortable cohabitation of light and darkness. It reminded her of herself, and of Mulder. Maybe they, like the contradictory, melded elements of his hallway, had become necessary, if incongruent, parts of something larger than themselves. She and Mulder were each broken, and their minute particles had mingled to form the same dreary, beautiful mess that had made them strong; that had made them almost whole. She shivered as the elevator doors slid together, obscuring her view of his hallway and letting out its heat. She muscled the heavy slabs of metal apart and stepped into his world. En route to apartment number forty-two, her ears were assaulted, suddenly, by the full-volume television set of an elderly, hard-of-hearing neighbor. She listened to the unmistakable, whistled theme song of the opening credits of "The Andy Griffith Show," smiling at the early- morning re-run and at a memory: when she was a teenager, her mother and father had watched Andy and Barney religiously, and she remembered sitting in the next room, evening after evening, bent feverishly over her algebra II/trigonometry homework and trying desperately to tune out that maddening whistling. She had hated "Andy Griffith" and everything banal and juvenile that she'd thought it represented. Now, she had a deep affection for the show because it reminded her of Ahab and Missy and algebra homework and the base in San Diego. It reminded her of stability and orderliness. Just as much, though, it made her think of emptiness and loss; of the events that had destroyed the borders of her happy and safe universe and made her realize just how sweet life had been, and was. She wondered, suddenly, if Mulder's parents had ever watched "The Andy Griffith Show" in their home in Chilmark, or during summers spent at Martha's Vineyard. Had there been a time in their lives when life was centered not around alien conspiracies, abductions, or dealings with shady chain-smokers, but was ordered, instead, by chicken pot pies and prime-time t.v.? Had there been a moment when Mulder had not associated all things with loss? She doubted it. He had existed in survival mode, consumed by low-grade post- traumatic stress, since at least 1973. Concepts like comfort and normalcy never occurred to him; were never on his radar: he didn't even own a bed. His autonomous nervous system was constantly geared up for the fight or the flight. Especially The Fight. She wondered if he would ever, if THEY would ever give it up. "Is it too much to ask?" she whispered to the cracked ceiling, and both the weight and the strange, contradictory levity of this question pushed her to his door. Without hesitation, she knocked HER knock, and he was instantly there, in the doorway, gazing at her. "Scully," he said, wincing instinctively and searching her face for the pain and torment he'd become accustomed to. "Are you. . ." he began, but stopped mid-question, thrown off- guard by her uncharacteristic serenity. "I'm fine, Mulder." He looked into her eyes and saw that, for the first time in their half-decade history, she really was. "Can I. . .?" She began, gesturing toward his living room. "Sure," he said quickly, embarrassed equally by his hesitation and the state of his apartment. "Come on in." She sat on his leather couch, and he swept his piles of research awkwardly to the other side of the coffee table. For the first time ever, he tried to hide the fact that he was reading about little green men and searching for The Truth. "It's okay, Mulder," she said, lifting a photograph that had fallen to the floor. It showed a neck cyst oozing the same green substance that had temporarily blinded an ER nurse in San Diego just a week earlier, as she had tended to a very sick little girl. "I know you want answers. So do I." Mulder leaned against the leather back of the couch and exhaled slowly, not meeting his partner's eyes. "I wanted more than anything to save that little girl," he said, quietly, "What if we could've?" For a long moment, neither of them spoke. They listened to the hum of the refrigerator; the groan of the pipes from the upstairs neighbor's early morning shower; the cheerful voice of Sheriff Andy Taylor; a homeless man's drum solo in the garbage-can-lined alley below: anything but the silence. "What if we could've," Scully repeated, and Mulder searched her face for answers, for hope. "You tried, Scully," he said, his voice low and full of regret, "We both tried." "We concluded," Scully said, slowly, "That she was not meant to live; that she was created, she was BORN, just to die. I don't understand that. I can't understand it. It's unacceptable to me, but there is nothing we can do to change it." Mulder rested the palm of his hand against her back, waiting for the tears, but they did not come. "What I find the most difficult to accept," she said, finally, "Is that she taught me so much in such a short time, but I was not able to teach HER anything; to help HER grow in any way. It was supposed to be the other way around, Mulder. I was, I AM her mother." Mulder studied his partner's face and saw, for the first time, every detail of it: the straight slope of her nose; the wisps of hair not quite tucked behind her ears; the freckle in the cleft between her nose and her mouth; the fine lines at both corners of her full lips, and the way her blue eyes, bottomless and luminous, penetrated his own. He touched his cheek and was surprised to find long rivers of tears against his flesh. He guessed that he was crying for both of them; and for Emily, for Samantha. "Scully," he said, his voice low and scratchy, "I have to know something." She looked at him, her face and her soul open, and that was all the permission he needed. "I have to know that, if Emily had lived," he said, then stopped short, trying to gauge Scully's pain at the mention of her name. She placed her hand lightly on his knee, and he continued: "I have to know that I would have been more to her than her crazy, old Uncle Mulder who hunts aliens. I have to know that I would have been more to both of you." Scully closed her eyes until the saltwater stung her eyelids. He had wanted this as much as she had; he had wanted to stop looking, to stop fighting. She had come here needing the answer to a question, and he had offered it, unprompted. And now she had no idea how to respond. She was afraid, terrified of the truth. She tried to concentrate on the rosy-pale heart of Emily's face, to recreate it and store it in the most indestructible compartment of her mind. "Mommy, tell him," the little girl in her head mouthed, her rosebud lips moving with silent determination. "Mulder," she said, not daring to look at him, "She taught me so much. . . Emily did. . . she made me understand something that even my cancer couldn't. She taught me, even though I knew I would lose her, not to be afraid to love. . ." "Scully?" Mulder asked quietly, his voice thick with something that Scully allowed herself to believe might be love, even in the absence of iced tea. "You must know. . . Mulder, you MUST know that I. . . that I. . ." She met his eyes, finally, and, in the calm, eerie glow of his fish tank, their deep hazel color turned to a bright, emerald green. Mulder's eyes were brilliant, magical, and they knew her inside and out. "You know, Scully," he said, "If two people hold each other's gaze for a longer period of time than is respectable, then one of two things is evolutionarily programmed to happen. One: one of them will try to kill the other; or, two. . ." "Shhh," she said, placing a finger over his lips. His shoulders slumped slightly, but he understood. "I know, Scully, I know that there are risks." "Yes," she said. "Yes there are, Mulder." He expected her to get up and leave, to close the door behind her and meet him at work an hour later, looking as if nothing had happened. He waited. And waited. But she did not budge, only studied him with those blue eyes of hers that could change, on a dime, from transparent to opaque. Finally, she spoke. "I think. . . I think that those are risks that I HAVE to take, Mulder." Holding his gaze, she added, more quietly, "Those are risks that WE have to take." She leaned closer to him, and he reciprocated, his breath ragged and his eyelids heavy. In the full moment before their lips touched, Mulder's phone went off, piercing and insistent. He sighed heavily and fished it from beneath the pile of papers on his table. "Frohike, this isn't really a good time. . . what? Where?" He hung up quickly, his demeanor shifting from irritated to frantically resolute in a matter of seconds. "Scully," he breathed, "We have to go back to San Diego. The Gunmen have intercepted intelligence. . . there's been another secret laboratory uncovered. . . in a group home this time. . . more fetuses. . ." Scully grabbed his hand, and the pulse between them was hopeful, vital. "Let's go, Mulder. Let's get out of here." As they left his apartment, they heard the end credits to "The Andy Griffith Show," loud and clear, and Scully knew that, though they could never hope for security, for "normalcy," they would share something else, always, something bolder and truer: tenacity in the face of every obstacle known to man, woman, and. . . non-human. As much as it muddied their lives and pushed them apart, it was also what bound them together: this messy, beautiful inability to give up. As Mulder closed his apartment door, Scully could see the orange beginnings of dawn against the masking-taped "X" in his window. This was their life: this was their strange balance of ecstasy and terror; this was what made her believe in nothing and everything.