From: spookey247 <spookey247@msn.com>
Date: 21 Feb 2003 16:43:18 -0800
Subject: [all-xf] NEW: Spores (1of1) by Spookey247
Source: atxc

Title: Spores
Author: amy (Spookey247)
Category: MSR, V, A,
Rating: PG (just a little language) 
Spoilers: William, The Truth
Archive: Sure, if Amanda says it's okay 
Distribution: No to Ephemeral, I'll do it myself
Disclaimer: Oh, all right. Sheesh.  Characters not 
mine! Making no money! 
Feedback: Makes me giddy, in a good way. <g>
Spookey247@yahoo.com
Visit the Mystic Mulder Ranch, created and maintained 
by the lovely and talented Amanda: 
www.geocities.com/spookey_247

Soundtrack: Coldplay, "Parachutes"
Notes: A couple at the end

Thanks and Dedication: This story is for Amanda, in 
honor of her birthday.  But there's much injustice in 
the world: she had to beta and name her own present!  
Thanks for everything, A.  You rock. <g>

Summary:  Sometimes inefficient strategies are the 
only ones available.
 

***********

The old biology text used to prop up one end of the 
living room sofa; now it lies open in Mulder's lap.  
The book is water-stained, smelly.  He smoothes the 
stippled page, glances down at cream-capped 
Stropharia Ambigua, re-reads the bold-face caption 
about its umbonate pileus and cottony stipe.  The 
Questionable Stropharia is edible, the caption tells 
him.  Its flavor, however, is very mediocre.  The 
mushroom poses, unaware of its mediocrity. 

There's a thump on the wall next to his head.  The 
sound of a box being dragged across the floor.  
Cursing.

"Guess it's time to clean up," she'd announced, after 
dinner.  She'd taken her plate to the garbage, 
slammed it once against the side of the can, watched 
Velveeta-coated shells roll away like whelks at low 
tide.

It had been his turn to cook.  Unfortunate for both 
of them.

She'd still been dressed for work: strip-mall blouse, 
consignment slacks, cheap shoes.  She'd claimed the 
boss at the temp job wasn't fooled; in fact, he'd 
made a point of asking where she went to college.  
She'd been doing her best to dumb down, but 
apparently it wasn't working.

When they'd lived in the safe house outside of Fargo, 
he'd spent two months washing dishes at Denny's.  He 
hadn't seen much of Scully, between the forty-five 
minute commute and the twelve hour shifts.  Paydays, 
he'd come home with the trunk of the car full of blue 
plastic shopping bags: Campbell's soup, toilet paper, 
Deep Woods Off.  They'd both learned to split 
firewood, how to take a bath in a Rubbermaid dishpan.  
Scully had kept the cabin spotless, figured out that 
cornbread could be baked in the fire.  In the 
evenings she'd read books he bought her at the 
Salvation Army.  

She'd been slipping, even then. 

Cicada wings chafe the air.  Mulder shifts on his 
bed, shirt sticking, looks out the window.  Checks 
the progress of the sunset.  Watches the light 
congeal.  

Their new home has a charming concrete-slab yard.  

On the other side of the wall, shuffle, crunch, 
slide. An exclamation of disgust.

Mulder sighs, glances down, tries to read.

'Mycorrhizal fungi, which live in symbiotic 
partnership with trees, are known to form fairy 
rings. These rings are called "tethered" rings.  A 
tether is like a leash.'

She breezes past his door, wearing shorts now, a tank 
top, her hair in its usual high ponytail.  Scully's 
hair has gotten long and rangy of late, untouched as 
it is by anything but a brush.  There's no money for 
the kind of fruity-smelling hair preparations that 
used to line the shelves of her bathroom in 
Georgetown.  Mulder studies the picture of the fairy 
ring, memory straying to spotless white tiles, the 
potted fern she'd kept on the tank of the toilet.  In 
the book, black-and-white mushroom caps make a 
perfect half-circle in black-and-white grass.

These days, Scully forgets to cut her fingernails.  
Doesn't seem to care if her blouse has a stain.  
She's like a beautiful garden slowly drowning in 
weeds.  

"Are there any more garbage bags?" She's almost to 
the kitchen when she says it.

"Top shelf in the pantry."

When they'd first been reunited, they'd mourned, made 
love, made it work.  But lately she's become 
withdrawn.  Silence settles like concrete.   Mulder 
wonders if they should make handprints, trace their 
names before it's too late.  

Fox and Dana.  Friends 4ever. 

She cracks a Hefty-bag whip on her return trip down 
the hall.

"There's twenty years of moldy crap in that closet.  
No wonder it stinks."

He swings his legs over the side of his bed.  "Any 
books?"

Her voice rebuffs him.  "Sorry, no."

Motionless, he returns his gaze to the page.  Words 
school by, undulating like minnows.

'A spore is typically a cell surrounded by a cell 
wall; in resistant spores and in the resting stages 
this wall becomes tough and waterproof.'

In the next room, rattle, crash, smash.  She's 
dragging something heavy-sounding.  

Eyes trained on the book, he tries again.  "Need some 
help?"

She could be on the moon.  "I've got it, thanks."

A box upended.  The distinct sound of dozens of 
marbles spilling, bouncing, rolling under the bed, 
through the door, into the hallway.

He can't help it.  "How about now?  Scully?"

No answer.

He smoothes the page as if trying to push the words 
into place.  Narrows his eyes as the darkness 
thickens.  Night is coming but somehow he can't bring 
himself to reach for the lamp by his bed.

Instead his pupils dilate, strain to take in bold-
face: 'When the Giant Puffball cracks open, the wind 
carries away its spores. This is not an energy-
efficient method of dispersal.'

A light clicks on in the hallway.  "Mulder."

"What?"  He looks up, startled.  

She stands silhouetted in his bedroom door, chin up, 
porcelain-still.  "I wanted to give you this."  

She tenders a limp something.  Her expression is lost 
in the shadows. 

"What is it?"  Mulder sets his fungi aside, rises 
cautiously from the bed.  His path toward her is 
elliptical.  He no longer makes assumptions.  

Forcing himself forward, he wishes he could break 
through, be one with her again.  One gentle tap, he 
thinks, like an egg on the edge of a bowl.  One 
little crack.  He'd slide inside her, immerse 
himself.  Risk drowning.

He arrives at her side. "What's the matter?"

"It was in the closet in my room." 

When he takes the soft thing from her, he finds it's 
a book.  A baby's book, the kind made of cloth, with 
no sharp edges. 

"Scully - "

"You wanted a book."

"Yeah, but - "

"It's um...The Poky Little Puppy.  A classic.  
Thought you'd enjoy."  She turns to go, flesh milk-
pale in the scathing light of the hallway. 

One gentle tap.  He'd mix her grief with his own.

"Hey." He catches her hand.

She closes her eyes.  "You know," she murmurs, after 
a moment, her lips trying to find a way to smile, 
"all the experts say you should read from day one."

He puts his arm around her waist.  "I've heard."

A tear slips free of her lashes.  "You're supposed to 
give them books to play with, teeth on..."

"Uh-huh." His arms make a circle.  One tap.  Crawl 
inside.  "Did you?"

"We always read in the morning after his bath.  He 
used to laugh at that puppy."

Mulder tries to picture their son laughing, finds his 
memory too shallow.  His throat gets painfully tight.  
"Did he?"

"But they wouldn't let me...I couldn't send the 
book." She's starting to tremble.  "How will they 
know to get him a new one, Mulder?  He can't talk.  
He can't tell them."

He strokes her cheek.  "Don't worry."

She flinches.  "I wanted...Mulder, I had to keep him 
safe.  But I didn't think about - do you think he 
misses it? The book with the puppy, I mean. He must 
wonder what happened to it.  We read it every 
morning."

He makes the circle tighter.  "He's a baby.  He'll 
adjust."

She's starting to sound panicked.  "He used to laugh 
at it.  It made him happy."

Holding on: "They'll get him a new book.  He'll be 
happy again."

But she pulls away, takes the book from his hand.  
"How do you know? How do you know he won't always be 
- oh god." 

And she doubles.  Drops to her knees.  Curls into 
herself on the floor of the hallway.  A marble rolls 
against one of her bare feet.

"Scully - " He starts forward, but something stops 
him.  Maybe it's the fact that he can't feel his 
fingers and toes anymore, maybe it's the way all the 
blood has drained from his head.

Crawl inside her.  Feel her pain.

Feel his own.

"How do I know he won't always be *what*, Scully?"

Forehead pressed down, her answer gouges the floor.

"Suffering."

Suffering?

His hand, bloodless, against the door frame.  His 
cheek, bloodless, against his hand.  Star spirals, 
tiny cyclones before his eyes.  Half-blind, he is, 
and half-deaf and half-dumb, sharing absolute zero, 
the agony of perfect understanding.  

As with any catastrophe, his first instinct is to 
turn and run.

In the wild, a baby animal that loses its mother has 
an almost zero chance of survival.  Surrogate 
parenting helps, but the interruption of the bonding 
process almost always causes irreparable harm.

And she's a scientist.  A doctor.

She must have known.

Something uncontrollable begins to rise - the rage 
he's contained for her sake, anguish, long hidden.  
Love, black and violent as sin itself. 

"All I could think about was what *they* were going 
to do to him.  Not what *this* was going to do to 
him.  Or to me, or to you." 

Don't tell me this, he thinks.  Let me believe you 
thought it through.

Twisted tones.  "I was just...I was so scared.  There 
was a man.  He tried to...god, I feel so...what if I 
made up my mind too quickly?"

Black beast inside him. Waking dead things.

"Don't do this," he chokes, turning his back on her.  
Selfish bitch, the beast says.  Killing your heart.

Love is terrible.  It makes us do unforgivable 
things.

He faces her.  She's upright, now, staring at him 
with a look of disbelief.  

"Don't do what?"

The beast speaks.  "I thought I knew you.  Now you're 
telling me you gave our son away out of some knee-
jerk, control-freak..."

"Mulder - "

"I trusted that you'd examined all sides.  Made a 
rational decision.  I forgave you because I believed 
that."

She looks at the floor.  "A *rational* decision?"

"Yes."

Suddenly she's on her feet.  "After the kidnapping?  
After they tried to *kill* him?  You expect me to - "

"Expect you to think about the consequences of a 
decision?  Not lose your head from fear?  Yes, I 
expect that."

She starts toward him.  "What, do you think I'm a 
robot?  A computer?"

His blood is boiling.  "No, I think you're a fucking 
FBI agent."

She's in his face, now.  "Nerves of steel, right? 
People threaten my baby and I should suck it up and 
go on like it's any other X-File?  Never mind I don't 
even know who those people are or when they're coming 
or what they might do."

"And the new parents?  What are they, a couple of 
certified clairvoyants?"

"Shut up, Mulder.  You have no idea what it was 
like."

"You were 'advised,' I suppose.  Who helped you make 
the arrangements? Skinner? Kersch?"

"Shut. Up."  Wild tears.  "I had to do something!"

Before he knows what's happening, his fist is 
crashing through the wall, ancient plaster shattering 
like glass, his throat scarlet, shouting.  "You could 
have called me home.  *I* could have taken him."

"Oh, right! They were trying to kill you, too."

Drag his hand back out of the wall.  White and red.  
No pain.

"But they didn't, Scully.  And they won't.  And if 
we'd all stayed together..."

His face, streaming.  His voice, scraped raw.

"If we'd all stayed together..."

His knees buckle.

"Oh, Jesus..."

He turns, stumbles a few feet, lands face forward on 
his bed.  His head hits the wall, the heavy book hits 
the floor.  He hears himself roar.  

She's somewhere nearby, chanting, "Sorry, sorry, 
sorry."

In his mind, he's driving.  He's got a road map and a 
gun and he's going town to town, house to house.  

And she whispers, frantically, making a cloud of 
words, a swarm, a fog.  Words burst from sheets and 
walls, line floor, ceiling, window, door, find 
purchase everywhere, surround him completely.

And she tells him of his son's beautiful smile, of 
losing tiny shoes in public places, how Walter 
Skinner couldn't hold Will without making him cry.  
And cold nights of walking, both wailing with 
frustration, then sleeping together, he warm in the 
crook of her arm.  About singing and croup and walks 
in the park and the hellish first tooth.  And the 
baby book that's lost with the rest of her things in 
Georgetown - the one she made for William's father, 
who was coming home someday.

He feels her dare to touch his hand.  Fingers lock 
together.  She whispers and strokes his hair.
 
"Mulder, listen.  They meant to use him, just like 
they used us.  To make him an Achilles Heel.  To rip 
us apart."  Her voice breaks.  "I couldn't let them 
do that.  Not to him."

Mulder remembers a woman.  He read about her in the 
Post.  When her car was stolen with her infant son 
inside, she hurled herself through the open driver's 
window.  Legs flapping at fifty miles per hour, she 
pummeled the carjacker with her bare fist until he 
gave her back her child. 

Love defies nature.  It overwhelms reality.

It is dark now.  He lets go of her hand, rolls 
against the wall, pulls her to him.  They settle on 
the bed together.  Let the real tears come.

"You're a good mother," he tells her. 

She cracks then, shatters, falls to pieces.  Fists 
full of shirt, her head slams against his chest like 
a battering ram. Like she's trying to crawl inside.  

"No," she moans, "no, no..."

His circled arms know how her heart is bursting.  

"Yes, Scully.  Yes.  It's okay.  It's okay..."

He holds her like a lover, lets the fallout powder 
his skin.

**********

Notes: I couldn't think about the events of 'William' 
for a long, long time. Thanks to Sophia Jirafe for 
writing 'Sweet Season,' the fic that allowed me to 
face this subject without blowing a circuit in my 
head.

On a lighter note, for more Fun Facts about Fungi, 
visit the following sites:

http://www.herb.lsa.umich.edu/kidpage/Dispersal.htm

http://www.mykoweb.com/CAF/species/Stropharia_ambigua
.html

http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/s1/spore.asp

Feedback is yummy!
spookey247@yahoo.com