From: Kate Rickman Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2001 17:22:01 -0700 Subject: xfc: Chill (1/1) Kate Rickman Source: xfc Reply To: kate.rickman@mindspring.com TITLE: Love for all Seasons 12: Gripped by Winter's Chill AUTHOR: Kate Rickman E-MAIL: kate.rickman@mindspring.com URL: http://kate.rickman.home.mindspring.com DISTRIBUTION: anywhere CLASSIFICATION: MSR, AU SPOILERS: through deadalive, sort of SUMMARY: A very pregnant Dana Scully faces the holidays without Mulder. How will she make it through? With a little help from her friends. IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT THE TIMELINE: This continues my LFAS universe, in which Mulder and Scully have been romantically involved since FTF. In LFAS11, Mulder has been abducted and Scully is pregnant and due in December/January. Obviously the time line is not canon, but it didn't start out to be. It's my intention to finish this series with two more stories, bringing it up to the present time and congruent with the current story line (if CC and his pack of trolls don't ruin it). This will take you straight to LFAS 11, if you want to brush up on the story line before starting this one (but it's not necessary): http://kate.rickman.home.mindspring.com/lfas11.html *** Scully's Apartment Georgetown, December 23, 2000 "Sir." "I don't want to intrude." "You didn't." I wipe my cheek with the back of one hand, turning away from the door so he won't see. I step aside. "Come in." He hesitates. I follow his eyes to the problem and see the considerable swell of my belly still blocks the way. "Oh," I step back again, gesturing him inside with one hand. Light puddles around the sofa from one small lamp turned low. I toddle awkwardly through the darkness, touching switches until the room glows with welcoming light. Gathering a pile of used tissues into my pocket, I turn back to my visitor. "Can I get you anything? I'm just having some herbal tea." "No," A. D. Skinner stands just inside the door, shifting from foot to foot, gripping a small cordovan leather book in both hands. "I'm fine. I can't stay." I lever myself onto the sofa and lay back, seeking relief from the pressure that flattens my organs into a thin strip against my spine. "How's the little guy doing?" Skinner asks from his refuge near the door. Ultrasound has shown clearly that it's a boy. "Fine. Active." I reach for my child with both hands, holding him through the hard dome that protects him. Skinner follows my hands then quickly looks away. "And your mother?" "Mom's fine. She went to San Diego for Christmas." I feel his surprise and rush to explain. "It's been planned for some time." His look raises the guilt in me. "I'm too big to fly," I excuse myself quickly. Nine months. Over the limit. "And your mother went anyway?" "I insisted. I told her..." "...a lie," he diverts my story to the truth. "Ah... " heat rushes into my face, "...just a creative variation on the truth." Skinner perches on the far edge of the couch. "So who are you spending Christmas with?" "My friend Ellen." "Are you?" "Haven't seen her in years." We chuckle together for a moment before losing the connection. Mulder's fish tank burbles in the corner, the popping bubbles and low hum of the filter loud in the quiet room. "Do you really want to be alone?" he gathers himself to stand again. No, I don't. I shake my head. "I'm tired of being pitied, being tip-toed around." I think of my mother, bless her. "Mom means well but she tries too hard. I need to get this," the long two weeks since Mulder's death and his funeral hang in the air, "behind me and move forward again...for all of us." Skinner nods, his glance skating off my belly again. He turns the book over in his hands. "This afternoon the investigators released the *evidence* they confiscated from Mulder's apartment after his abduction." I remember the eerie emptiness of the apartment, the dust ring where his computer had stood, opened drawers and cupboards, things out of place. They had invaded Mulder's privacy with the same disregard they'd have for a criminal. Anger fills me all over again. "I saw this listed on the inventory," Skinner continues, turning the leather book around then handing it to me, cover up, "and pulled it out for you." The number 1961, embossed in flaking gold, is the title of the volume. It creaks open, nearly falling from my icy hands when I read the inscription on the fly leaf. Teena Mulder Arlington Virginia 1961 The chill is flushed from my body by a rush of heat when I realize this book chronicles Mulder's birth year. A sob catches on a hiccough and I swallow it whole. "I...thought you might want to have that," Skinner backs toward the door, clearly far outside his comfort zone, trapped as he is in a room thick with progesterone fumes. I can't speak. My eyes fill with tears that threaten to overflow. "Stay," he holds up one blurry hand while he twists the doorknob with the other. Clearly the physics of me getting off the couch is more than he can bear to witness. "I'll let myself out." He does. The door thumps, its handle rattles, and I'm alone with the book. I sit for a long time, staring sightlessly at the first page. When it returns to focus I follow the precise loops and turns of Teena Mulder's writing with one finger, feeling how her bold script furrows the thin sheet, even after all these years. I gather the pages into one hand and let sheet after sheet covered with tight script flutter onto the back cover. A field of exclamation marks catches my eye and I fumble through the pages until I find it again. February 14, 1961 I received the best Valentine's gift a girl could get. I'm pregnant!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! After all these months of trying, Bill and I are finally going to have a baby. Bill's trying not to look too excited, but I know he is. The book bounces off my knees and onto the floor, skidding out of sight beneath the coffee table. Sobs well out of my chest in great heaves, one after the other, emptying me, filling my ears with the sound of my grief. I slide into the place I've been avoiding all month, go headfirst into it, and it closes over me. Instead of being a safe haven, this darkness - my spiritual nadir - is fractured by the slideshow flashing through my head, real memories shown in counterpoint to memories that will never be. Flash. The first time I met Mulder alternates with the look on his face when he learned I was pregnant. Flash. Our first kiss alternates with a memory of Mulder with our son in his arms Flash. The first time we made love and the second and the third time is overwhelmed by a flood of things I'll never get to remember, one coming right after the other. Flash. Flash. Flash. A bout of hiccoughs brings me out of it and I dab my swollen eyes with the handful of used tissues from my pocket. 'Bill's trying not to look too excited,' virtual purple dots dance over the memory of what his mother wrote. I blink and shake my head -- putting Mulder in his father's shoes leaves no doubt about the joy he would have felt. The thin wall that divided our relationship from our life in the Bureau would have blown apart, splinters showering to earth across the entire District of Columbia. I'm warm all over, thinking of how he would have rejoiced our pregnancy and embraced all the chores - obstetrician visits, ultrasounds, Lamaze classes, my swollen feet and strange cravings - that came with it. Gladly. There's no mystery to me why Mulder kept this particular volume of all his mother's journals. With shaking hands I find it on the floor, relieved to see my carelessness has not damaged the precious old book. It falls open to a page in the middle and I continue reading. June 29, 1961 I'm four months and starting to show. Today I bought my first maternity things, slacks with stretch panels in the front, a pretty red smock with a big white bow at the neck, and a roomy muu-muu covered in bright orange flowers. I don't need to wear them, they're still big on me, but I do because then I can imagine the baby coming sooner. If it's a boy, we're going to name him Gilbert, after Bill's father. Gilbert William (after Bill) Mulder. Gilbert (Gil) is a good, strong name that will serve him well. If it's a girl, she'll be Katharine, Kate, after my favorite actress and the anglicized version of my mother's name, Katrien. If she has half the strength, presence, of my mother or Miss Hepburn, she'll have a good life. That's what I want for my children. A good life. Happiness. Love. Success. "Gil," I test the name on my tongue. How different would Mulder's life have been had he been named Gilbert instead of Fox? Children grow into their names, fated like vines to fill the trellis they're given. Did being named Fox preordain him to come at life from an odd angle, carry a chip on his shoulder? I dab at one eye with a mangled tissue and discover my eyes are dry. "I will give our son a good name, a solid one that leaves no question of how he'll grow," I promise Mulder in absentia, riffling through the pages to find a new entry. October 8, 1961 I'm as big as a house, front heavy, I can't bend over or I'll fall over. I can't breathe, I can't sleep, and I think Bill's so fed up with being disturbed at night he's about ready to pitch a cot in his office for the duration. We're still thinking of Gilbert for a boy but now Bill has suggested the name of his best childhood friend, Foxworth, who died in Korea. It sounds a bit stuffy to me but Bill's taken with the idea. We still agree on Katharine for a girl. I'm a little hurt by Bill's reaction to the changes in my body. He seems repulsed by belly, even turning away when I get undressed at night. It's normal, I want to tell him. It's glorious and beautiful, I think. I love to lay my hands on the tight skin that protects my son or daughter. I love to feel the life growing inside me. Teena's grandson lands a swift kick on my bladder and I wince in response. "Hey now," I caution him, caressing him blindly through the muscle of my belly. He calms immediately and I leave my hand there to comfort him. Would Mulder have been repelled by my ungainly growth? No way. He would have celebrated the changes with his entire body. I can assemble a faux memory from the bits Mulder has left me and, closing my eyes, I join him there. Mulder kneels on the floor between my knees. He pushes up the thin knit of my shirt exposing the mound of my belly to the cool air. My skin is shiny white, stretched tight like a drum head over our baby, who lays curled beneath my heart. Stretch marks, delicate like pink lace, feather along my flanks. "Wow." He splays his long fingers around me and our child, holding us like a basketball between his hands. Our son responds to Mulder's touch, shifting inside me to fit better into his father's embrace. "I envy him," Mulder presses his lips against my tummy; I feel the words vibrate against my skin. "There have been days when I wish I could crawl in there, just like that." ...and be held next to my heart, like you always are. "There have been times when I thought you did." "Umm," he slips his arms around us, sliding up, pressing his cheek against my belly, resting his head against my breast. I smoothe his hair and let my hand wander across the heat of his neck to the strength of his shoulders and down the long plane of his back until I run out of reach. I find my hand on my own thigh. I sigh. "Oh Mulder." Alone in the room, I tear myself away from my dreams and turn back to Teena's memories, flipping the page. Time has skipped ahead. October 23, 1961 A lot has happened in the past two weeks. Friday the 13th turned out to be my lucky day! That evening while I was ironing, my water broke all over the kitchen floor. I finished two of Bill's white dress shirts before the contractions started. In the time it took Bill to drive from the State Department to Arlington, I finished them all and left them hanging in the closet, ready for him to wear. My contractions were lazy, coming hard only every few minutes, so Dr. Raitt left for the night, telling me he'd come deliver my baby in the morning. Surprise! The nurse caught little Fox in her hands just before midnight. Bill and I compromised on Fox William for his name, Fox minus the "worth." I hope the shortened name will still be worthy of him. Fox is a beautiful little boy, he looks like me (Bill says). He wakes me up at night and I'm so tired I find myself taking naps during the day, but I don't care. I'm the happiest girl on earth. Happy. A tear dribbles from one corner of my eye and runs down my cheek. I'm numb inside where I should be happy instead. I wish I could pick up that numb spot and move it over to the Mulder node that aches like a bad tooth. I chafe my palm protectively over my child. Poor little guy. He's having to grow up steeped in a pot of nasty stress hormones instead of happy ones. What kind of mother am I? What kind of mother was Teena to Mulder? I look at her journal and see delerious happiness. When did it end? Her increasing anxiety and despair wore on Mulder like water on stone as he grew into a boy and then into a man. She had so much more to offer him, but didn't. Couldn't. I have so much to offer this child, and I will. I will pull myself out of this funk and get on with it. I owe it to everyone. I flip a few pages ahead, reading with new resolve. December 1, 1961 Fox is six weeks old today. We're preparing for the holidays and Bill has invited his strange friend Charles Spender to spend the month of December with us. Charles lives somewhere away from Washington, I don't know where. There's something odd about him. He's always watching, never participating. He seems to be hiding something. He doesn't talk about the same work Bill doesn't talk about. I don't know whether he gives me the creeps or not but I need to paste on a smile and make nice for him while he's here. Spender. The Smoker. The presence of that man in this shrine to Mulder's birth is sacrilege. Giving him an ordinary name - Charles - makes him too human for me. I knot my fingers at the top of the page but resist the urge to tear it out. I escape to the back of the book and read the last entry. December 31, 1961 The New Year is just hours away and I'm sitting here, thinking about the old one, rejoicing for everything it brought us. Charles (Spender) is besotted with little Fox. He's turned out to be the perfect nanny and not so weird as I thought. He's better with the baby than Bill is, who holds Fox stiffly as if he might explode at any minute. Charles is infinitely patient, changing diapers without hesitation, singing to Fox when he's fussy until he falls asleep. What a blessing he's been! I'd ask him to be godfather if we practiced that ritual in our family. Tonight the three boys (as I've started to call them) are camped out in front of the new television, watching Guy Lombardo in COLOR!! Life is good. Life is good. The diary ends on those words. I close the book and fold it against my belly, thinking about how 'good' life turned out for Teena Mulder. I remember her as-yet unborn daughter's abduction and escape into death rather than suffer longer at the hands of goverment operatives. I recall her her ex-husband's murder and her own suicide. My memory of her son's death will always be with me as will the memory of my own sister's murder in my stead. I think of this kinder gentler Spender, dead too. All dead. When life, her choices, all became too much for her, she retreated into a hard cold shell that kept everything away, including all chance of happiness. I think of how many times Mulder tried to breach that shell. And failed. I wrap my arms Teena's fatherless grandson and wonder how on earth I guide him away from this darkness in his genes. When I wake, daylight fills the room. Turning my head, I see thin flakes fluttering outside the window. Snow. December 24th. Christmas Eve. I massage the cramp in my neck with hands stiff from gripping my belly all night. I claw my way to a seated position then discover what woke me. The door rattles in the frame from a sharp knock-knock against the wood. I attempt to rise but, unbalanced, I fall onto the cushions again. A sharp jab in the kidneys turns out to be Teena Mulder's journal. The rapping is louder this time. "Scully!" I hear my name called in Skinner's voice. I relax against the sofa, rubbing my eyes, smoothing my hair back from my face. "Come in," I call to him, remembering the door is unlocked anyway. Skinner shoulders his way through the door, a small tree in his right hand and two grocery bags in the left. He nudges the door shut with one toe, rushing to say "Merry Christmas." He raises the tree in a salute, his cheeks redder than usual. "Sir?" "Chrismas Eve dinner," he studies the bags - one paper, one plastic - in his right hand, apparently fasincated by a baugette wrapped gaily in red and white that pokes through the thin plastic one. "You didn't need to do that," I wiggle my way to the edge of the cushion, preparing to stand and be hostess. "You're doing me a favor. My family...I..." he fumbles for the right words, putting the tree on my coffee table. Its tiny green branches wave in the air, spewing pine scent everywhere. "I don't have any plans." He offers a hand and I take it; with his help I float to my feet with the grace of a ballerina, fighting the urge to dip into a grateful but disasterous grand plié. I hesitate then turn, maneuvering my belly out of the way so I can wrap my arms around his waist. I hear a thump and a rattle as the bags in his hand drop to the floor. Warmth circles my shoulders and I'm held firmly against his chest. A gust of pent-up air bursts from my lungs as I burrow my nose in the front of his sweater and hang on for dear life. I surrender to the rhythm of his breath moving in and out, drifting with it, smelling Christmas in the air. "Thanks," I say finally. His hand freezes where it's tangled in my hair. "Sure thing," he says tightly, setting me squarely on my feet before stepping away. I throw a double take at the tense line of his back as he gathers the bags from the floor and carries them into the kitchen. "Come on, Scully," he interrupts my addition, putting the bags on the counter. "Get with it. Last one with Christmas spirit is rotten egg...nog." It doesn't escape me that only one of us seems to lack the spirit. He roots around in the paper bag and pulls out three small boxes. "You have a tree to decorate and I have a dinner to fix." He pushes the boxes at me without more than a glance. Tiny golden balls, red bells, and green stars fill my hands. "That doesn't seem like an equal division of labor to me, sir." "Sir? Sir??" mock horror fills his voice as he pulls food items from the bags like rabbits from a hat. Cranberries. Bread. Olives. Stuffing mix. A large parcel in butcher's paper. He obviously finds each one fascinating because he doesn't take his eyes off them. "Cut the *sir* crap." I find my eyebrow floating out of control, creasing my forehead. "This is Christmas Eve. You are Dana. I am Walter." "SWalter," I say to his back, reaching out, touching his arm with my fingertips. Gently. It's OK, they say to him. "Dana," he finally looks at me, takes me by the shoulders and steers me toward the living room, "there's an undecorated tree in the other room. Hop to it." "Yes Sir Walter," I sketch a mock salute in his direction and nearly fumble the ornaments in my hands. I smile despite the grief that's pulling me down from the inside. Sir Walter. He's certainly some lucky woman's white knight, I think, watching the steady movement of his strong hands arranging things for our supper. Wonderful Smart Impossible Quixotic Irritating Romantic Mulder has ruined me for any other man, I sigh, holding the heat of my palm flat against the side of my belly. A tiny foot - or maybe an elbow - migrates into my grasp and gives me a swift nudge of acknowledgement. Except for one. I smile and rub back at him. *** END ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ kate.rickman@mindspring.com http://kate.rickman.home.mindspring.com