From: ephemeral@ephemeralfic.org
Date: Wed, 31 May 2000 22:22:14 -0500
Subject: Shades of Blue (1/2) by KatyBlue
Source: direct

Reply To: kbxf@aol.com


TITLE: Subtle Shades of Blue (1/2) 
AUTHOR: KatyBlue
CLASSIFICATION: MSR, SA
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: Requiem
DISCLAIMER:  To CC and 1013 productions.  You have created 
a masterpiece.  Thank you for one more year and forgive my 
transgressions of fanfic.  I'm only borrowing your beloved 
characters and will place them safely back in your 
sometimes alternate universe when done.
NOTES: Aw crap...I tried to stop myself, truly I did.  
Double angst warning here.  Sorry...but this one might be a 
tearjerker (you've been warned...turn on that big ol' 
halogen flashlight, Erly!) P.S. Remember... he IS coming 
back!!  This is big time MSR, just to warn any noromos that 
might still read my stuff.  Run for the hills!  I want to 
believe they're doing it off screen...I have to.  Hoo boy...
who ever thought I would write a babyfic either?  CC 
made me do it!  On a lighter note, I think I may be the 
first author to use the term 'Muldersperm' in a story.  
It's not all dark, I promise.

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"In my experience there is no way around grief - there is 
only through to the other side."  ~Beth Nielsen Chapman~

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Part 1/2


I've lost Mulder.

It's so very still here on these dark nights.

My bed feels large.  Alone, my body whispers against the 
sheets when I move, small and curled in on myself.  It's 
quiet, my apartment.  Peaceful in the early hours of 
morning.  I'm not really alone.  I would be, but for the 
tiny being growing inside me and lending me the strength to 
go on.  It's a comfort, but still only a small part of me 
and one that does not interact with my isolation.  No 
movement yet stirs within. 

I run my hands over my stomach, which is still mostly flat 
and therefore misleading.  I attempt to soothe myself and a 
tiny fetus who, at such a tender stage of early embryonic 
development, must look not much different than the embryo 
of a chicken.  I allow this comfort and the baby inside me 
doesn't make its peep heard yet.  I let any healing in my 
touch travel through the layers of tissue and bring us 
peace.  It's very quiet, this baby.  My apartment is quiet.  
I'm quiet.  The night envelops me within this blanket of 
solitude.  

I'm not alone.  I've just misplaced Mulder.

I carry on.  Day by endless day.  I move through them as if 
I'm going somewhere.  Trying to reach something.

Mulder...

I miss Mulder.

My life, with a dramatic suddenness, is lonely.  So I talk 
to myself and, by default, to this baby about a lot of the 
things I used to discuss with Mulder.  It's not the same.  
In my musings, I tell this child that Mulder is its father.  
I wonder if I'm trying to tell Mulder as well.  And myself.  
I can bear no other possibility for its creation.  We did 
not have many opportunities for the accomplishment of this 
feat.  Our relationship was just beginning.  Exactly twice 
could we have brought into existence this miracle child.  
But I must believe this.

I stay up only as a last resort when sleep doesn't come to 
me.  I'm trying to take care of myself but relaxation has a 
hard time wrestling my body down lately.  My mind, too, is 
restless.  I have no one with which to discuss issues on an 
equal plane.  I miss Mulder's point to my counterpoint.

I miss Mulder.

I believe I will find him.  

Maybe true faith really is a form of insanity.  Last night, 
I slipped in 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' after sitting at my 
window, alternately watching the moonlight play on the tree 
outside and the clock hands travel their passage on my 
living room wall.  The inane chatter of Audrey Hepburn made 
me smile.  There's something about that movie...another 
place and time that is so surreal and contrived that it's 
hypnotic.  But before the end of the movie, I had to turn 
it off.  I had to.  It made me remember.  Frantically, I 
put in Mulder's movie and made myself watch 'Planet 9 from 
Outer Space'.  I thought about his voice murmuring along 
with the words of Ed Wood's tragically bad vision that 
night I crept into his apartment.  I can almost hear his 
recitation and remember how saddened I was when I found 
out he'd watched this movie so many times.  In the end, I 
had to turn this one off too.  Before it finished.

Mulder's struggle with life made me feel so much.

I slept on the couch after that, curled under a pile of 
soft blankets.  "Your father sleeps on the couch," I tell 
the baby, stroking my abdomen.  "Maybe it's a genetic 
predisposition.  Maybe you will prefer couches to beds."

I don't want the amazing process of growing life to be this 
worrisome.  As a doctor, I know the effect of stress 
hormones on the body.  At odd and anxious moments in the 
day, I find myself overwhelmed by the thought of how they 
might be shaping the baby.  I never wanted the process to 
be this sorrowful either.  Clinically, I know that I'm 
depressed.  I recognize the stages of grief and how firmly 
I am mired in the malignant melancholy of the soul.  I can 
distinguish so many subtle shades of blue now.  Mulder 
could probably tell me how to get through this.  He's lived 
it.  But he's not here to offer help.  

In more than one way, he's the cause of all this.

Pregnancy is a strange state of being.  Unexplainable.  I 
get up in the middle of the night for pickles and milk.  
How cliche.  I've always thought this was a myth.  Dill is 
an herb I've always liked so it's not necessarily that strange 
a craving.  But I've never exactly felt the need for that 
particular taste to be mixed with a dairy product at four a.m.  
Maybe there's some nutritional or herbal precedent for it 
as far as pregnancy goes.

I want this baby to be healthy.  I pray for that.

But I can't always sleep.  

So I talk to it endlessly whenever I lie awake at night.  I 
know it might seem clinical or disturbing that I still 
think of the baby as an 'it'.  Until the ultrasound, I 
won't know for sure and I worry that thinking one way or 
the other and being wrong might create gender issues.  
So 'it' will do for now.  It's enough that it's a baby.  I 
don't care whether it's a boy or a girl.  Either one will 
be treasured.

Somewhere out there is Mulder, whom I believe to be the 
father of this child.  Not sharing this process with me.  
Not hearing my whispers in the night.  I try to imagine 
that he's okay.  I try to think where he might be and what 
he might be doing.  But my own abduction is such a blank 
slate that attempting to picture his experience only 
unnerves me at first, and terrifies me if I carry it any 
further than that.

It must be bad.  

I can't think these thoughts.

I turned on the radio the other day on the way to work.  By 
accident, I paused on a country and western station.  I'm 
not sure how this style of music managed to become so 
popular a few years back.  Mulder would call it an X-file.  
But the end result seems to be that every major and minor 
city in the United States boasts a station that plays it.  
I remember how, on our longer road trips, Mulder would find 
a particularly annoying song on one of these stations and 
leave it there, just to get a rise out of me.  He'd sneak 
looks in my direction out of the corners of his eyes and a 
small smile would play around his mouth as he waited in 
anticipation for my inevitable expression of distaste.

It was funny to him every time he played this little joke.

It's the little things that make me smile.  The memories of 
the inane that seem the most tragic.  A minute and 
seemingly insignificant detail of what I'm missing can 
bring me to my knees in a humble flood of tears.

I try not to let this happen.

The song I paused on the other day was something about a 
forever dance.  Certainly, the words didn't portray an 
accurate representation of life, never mind the irritating 
twang in the singer's voice as she conveyed her lyrical but 
nonsensical message.  It didn't matter.  As already noted, 
the most trivial detail of our time together could set me 
off.  I pictured Mulder beside me, smirking and just 
waiting for me to reach for that knob.  Wanting no more 
than to see the look I would give him as I did so.

Appreciation of my long, suffering patience with him.  

It's the minor details that make a beeline for the heart.

I actually listened to the whole miserably bad song in its 
entirety.  I never really danced with Mulder.  I'd like to.  
If by some fortune of chance, he is returned to me, 
I'll confess this wish to him.  It seems so insipidly romantic...
a wish to dance with him to something slow and meaningful.  
The length of a song, during which I can hold him in my 
arms for more than the time it takes for us to realize what 
we're doing and pull apart.

I've become maudlin.

This all seems so surreal.  Losing Mulder.  Being pregnant.

I prepare myself for pregnancy.  For motherhood.  I buy 
books I barely read.  I write lists of things I need to do.  
I make doctor's appointments.  I'm barely functional, but I 
get things done.  I'm a contradiction in many ways. 

Sometimes, I think about things too much.  

On a good day, I can convince myself that making love with 
Mulder even one time was enough for this.  Even though I 
know it can't really explain everything.  It certainly 
doesn't explain how I went from barren to pregnant.  But 
the possibilities are out there.  I imagine the odds 
against one valiantly swimming Muldersperm finding the one, 
happened-to-be-ovulating-that-night egg that the consortium 
somehow missed.  The likelihood of such odds seem 
phenomenal, but I tell myself they're there.

It makes me smile sometimes, remembering the nights we did 
spend together.  The tenderness of making love with Mulder.  
I even smile thinking of Mulder's sperm swimming bravely 
forward.  I remember how indescribably amazing it felt to 
have him moving inside me, with my arms and legs wrapped 
around him, holding on tightly.  I can recall how his body 
trembled when he came.  How I framed his face with my hands 
and kissed his closed eyes.  The tip of his nose.  His 
lips, panting softly against mine.  Perhaps this was the 
moment of conception.  I cherish this memory of him.

Those are the good days.  The days where I whisper stories 
about Mulder to the baby and run my hands in amazement over 
my abdomen.  Until I reach the point where I'm not sure I'm 
talking to the baby anymore or Mulder himself.  Then I stop 
and stay quiet with myself, remembering.  Everything about 
him.  I try to recall the bad as well as the good but 
memory doesn't seem to work that way when love is involved.

I talk about a lot of things to this baby.  But always, I 
come back to Mulder. 

And when I fall asleep, I dream of him.

Those are the good days...  

Some days, it's not quite so easy.  

Some days, I wonder just who or what is inside me.  I think 
about Emily, and her short and tragic life.  I wonder if 
this baby is meant to repeat that history.  I don't want 
that.  I couldn't bear that.  On these days, I have such a 
desperate desire to escape my own body it's almost 
unendurable.  I have learned to recognize within myself the 
moments when hopelessness and fear come to call.  The 
subtle edge of insanity and the worry I might step over 
that edge. 

I try to take it one day at a time, like some recovering 
alcoholic instead of an expectant mother.

I am terrified that if I lose this child, I'll lose the 
will to live.  I'm terrified that I could become the type 
of person who might contemplate her own death and see with 
clarity the awful sense it makes.  I remember Mulder with a 
gun to his head and draw these analogies.

All this could happen to me.

There are other pathologies that are triggered by such 
introspection.  I go over and over the trip to Oregon and 
the weeks before it in my mind, trying to account for every 
minute of my time.  Trying in vain to consider every last 
detail of every last second in a compulsive need to 
determine if this pregnancy is not the miracle of our union 
but instead, something that was done to me.  I make lists.  
Strange shorthand notes of times and events, going over and 
over them, scribbling more observations in the margins 
until I realize what I'm doing and force myself to stop.  
Until I realize the huge gaps and opportunities for evil 
and just sit there, staring into space and wondering why I 
hadn't checked my watch and noted my place at each and 
every pause I took.

I get caught by surprise in thoughts such as these.  Too 
paralyzed to go any further.

Those are the dark days.  The days I can only keep myself 
busy with the more mundane and forget.  And if it's night 
when these demons come out, I try to stay in my bed until 
the fear cuts into me like a knife.  Until my heart pounds 
and skips a beat.  Then, when sleep is no longer even a 
remote possibility, I get up and greet the next day grimly 
but with a purpose.

I do have some rituals that help bring me a step back 
closer to sanity.  Things that make me feel good.  A warm 
bath.  A visit with my mother.  I buy flowers for the 
dining room table or something for the room I'm setting up.

A baby room.

The surreal hits again if I spend too much time with this 
new creation.  I let my mother handle most of it.  It's 
only the spare bedroom, changing purpose.  But it's a place 
that Mulder has never seen.  And so it makes me feel very 
far away from him.  As if he's at a distance that's growing 
larger and impossible to span.  I can't picture him in this 
room.  He wouldn't recognize this woman who is folding 
little t-shirts and putting them in a white drawer 
decorated with rocking horses.  I don't recognize her.  
Little clothes.  Little shoes.  Little things.

It's the little things that make an impact on the heart 
somehow.

It's the little things I miss about him...

For those who've never been to this place, I know 
now it's impossible to even imagine just how much 
these moments matter.

But life, as they say, goes on.  And persists in whatever 
small form it can.

I struggle every day with my emotions.

It's not so easy to stay detached anymore.  I've lost that 
cool exterior Mulder admired in me.  Control slips through 
my fingers at some moments, leaving me grasping.  Searching 
for my footing in this new woman.  Trying to hide behind a 
mask that used to be so easy to wear but now, at odd 
moments, I find to be missing.  Leaving me defenseless 
against the onslaught of the world.

It is strange to be both sad and joyful at the same time.  
When I think about this baby, I find myself both laughing 
and crying.  I try to be alone when this happens.  My 
mother has seen it.  Skinner has seen it.  And if I'm 
honest, probably anyone who's gotten a true response out of 
me about my condition has observed the dichotomy.  It's as 
if the two emotions, happiness and sadness, have become 
inseparable inside of me.  As if one, without err, triggers 
the other in some complex meshing of elation and sorrow.  
I'll be smiling and my eyes will fill with tears.  Or it 
will happen the other way around.  It's not only 
predictable but has, in fact, become an unavoidable union.  

My joy over this child is firmly married to my sorrow over 
the loss of Mulder.  Connected in some strange netting 
of love.

I'm excited about this new life.  But I miss my old life.

When I think about the conversation we had that last night 
together, and Mulder's voice murmuring against me as he lay 
wrapped around my body, it makes all that has happened seem 
like destiny, no matter how much I don't believe in that 
sort of thing.  As if Mulder had a plan in mind for me.  Or 
God had a plan that Mulder was part of.  And the only thing 
that makes me more angry than my own recalled lack of input 
into the conversation is the fact that Mulder obviously 
didn't feel he deserved a place in this vision.  In his 
mind, he already wasn't a part of this wonderful new life 
he envisioned for me.  

He didn't consider the cost of the sacrifice of himself to 
me.  And by extension, to this child.  

There is a place for Mulder in my heart.  In this baby's 
life.  I want him back.   I want him back fiercely.  
Without the smallest shred of doubt.  With everything that 
is in me.  I want to tell him these things.  To confess my 
feelings as I never did when we were together.

There's got to be something more.  These are Mulder's 
words.  Not mine.  But I just keep following this circle 
round and round, doing the same familiar dance.  He wanted 
something more for me.  Why don't I want something more for 
myself?  It's got to end somewhere, he said.  But is this 
an end or a beginning?  And if this is a beginning, then it 
too will someday end.  

And where am I, in this confusing and circular continuum?

I just want to find him.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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End Part (1/2)  Continued in Part (2/2)

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Part (2/2)


So I go on searching.

Skinner has kept me on the X-files, but down in our office, 
as the bureau so shortsightedly suggested.  I stay there, 
by myself, surfing the internet in rebellious response and 
looking through all of the alien abduction cases, trying to 
make the connections that will tell me how to reach him.  
But I just can't.  It was Mulder's brain that had the 
singular ability to pick out seemingly insignificant and 
borderline insane details and somehow pull them all 
together to make some twisted sort of sense.  

The closest I can come to this mindset now is to consult 
with the gunmen, who've taken their role as official bureau 
consultants on reluctantly, with distasteful grimaces and 
liberal negative commentary exchanged in low tones amongst 
themselves.  But who've also shouldered the responsibility 
of filling in for Mulder's mind with enthusiasm, as well as 
grave silences and obvious concern for my well-being in 
the looks I catch them giving me when they think I don't 
notice.  Collectively, they're much less aesthetically 
pleasing, but they get the job done.  They're working to 
find the connections.  They've never had so much fodder.  
It's like Nirvana for them.  If Skinner only knew how much 
confidential information I've shared with them, I'd be fired.

Their help frees me up so that most days, I have spare time 
on my hands.  Time to just sit in our office and try to 
feel Mulder.  I know this is truly crazy, but I concentrate 
on the connection I had with him.  I hold the picture of us 
he kept on the filing cabinet and close my eyes, searching 
for a feeling I've lost.  In fact, I've collected all the 
pictures that I can find of him.  I know I will need these, 
at some point in the future, to remember the specifics of 
the currently familiar lines and curves of his face.  His 
expressions.  His stance.  I've been told these details 
desert the memory, no matter how much one attempts 
to hold onto them.

Voodoo rituals.

I can't feel him.

It terrifies me that I can't feel the connection.

Once, early in our partnership, Mulder suggested we 
investigate the psychic bond between married couples.  It 
didn't seem to fall under our jurisdiction at the time.  
There's no homicide or crime involved in being able to know 
what another person is doing.  I'd argued that it's all 
just lucky guesses with the odds on their side.  The mind, 
able to fill-in the most likely scenario of well-known 
quirks in another's personality.

Later in our partnership, we did all these spooky things 
with each other.  I always knew when it was Mulder on the 
other end of a phone line.  And there was something...some 
intangible connection that allowed us to function so 
smoothly as a team that, in the most emotionally charged 
situations, we never had to ask what the other was going to 
do.  We just knew.

I wish I knew what he was doing now.  Or what was being 
done to him.

Maybe I don't.

The entire staff of the FBI has taken everything in stride.  
Mulder is simply missing in action and the worst is 
presumed.  An officer that has fallen into the ranks of 
those lost in the line of duty, albeit in a slightly strange 
way but nonetheless final for that.  To them, he is dead.  
Someone even had the nerve to suggest a memorial service.  
Skinner quickly squashed that idea for my sake.

As for myself, there seems to be a rumor started by some 
perceptive woman in the office that has traveled like 
wildfire.  I know Skinner didn't tell, but my body is 
changing, as much as I've tried to hide it.  It is 
automatically assumed that the alleged baby I refuse to 
confirm is Mulder's, a result of what everyone believes has 
been going on far longer than it actually has.  

I covet this simple belief.  I want to believe this is 
Mulder's child.

And so it is, to all but my darkest moments.

Sometimes I touch my neck in an unconscious habit of 
faith before I remember there's nothing there.  That what was 
once there went with Mulder when I sent him off to Oregon 
that last time.  I can still recall how my hands shook so 
badly that my fingers fumbled with the clasp of my necklace.  
And how his hands, in response, held so steadily onto my 
waist.  He was trying to catch my eye but I wouldn't let him.  
I stared instead at the too delicate cross once it rested on 
him, glittering in that little hollow of skin between his 
collarbones.  I leaned up and pressed my lips reverently 
to it.  To him.  And when he pulled my body tightly in against 
his, I slid my arms around his neck and buried my face there, 
breathing him in.  In my mind was an unspoken prayer.  God, 
please, keep him safe.  

As desperate as any unanswered plea ever is.  

Did we know in our hearts he was leaving?  Perhaps we had 
some premonition.  I try to be gentle with myself and 
redirect the acid thoughts that well up in me for not seeing 
the EEG connection in the medical records.  I try to be 
kind with my failure.  It's not easy.  'What ifs' can hold 
powerful recriminations behind their simple truths.

I keep everything in his apartment the same as it was when 
he left.  I write a check for his rent and tell myself he's 
coming back.  Every week, I make a pilgrimage to feed his 
fish and spirit away the dust that has settled on his 
silent possessions.  

I can recall one of those last nights before Bellefleur, 
sitting on Mulder's couch with him.  We'd been talking and 
he suddenly took something he'd said and backed it up with, 
"Right, guys?"

"Who're you talking to?" I'd asked curiously.

He jerked a thumb behind him, grinning sheepishly.

"You talk to your fish?"

He'd only shrugged.  "It gets lonely around here sometimes, 
Scully.  They're good listeners."  He didn't ask me to stay 
that night but I knew I was going to.  By that point, I 
was making a concentrated effort to chase the loneliness 
away from Mulder when I saw it lurking.  The impossible 
weight of solitude that rested so deceptively easily on him 
from a lifetime of practice.

The goldfish swim on in lazy circles, unmindful of the 
change in the giant hand that drops the flakes of food.  Do 
they know the face hovering out here is a different voyeur 
into their limited existence?  I can't bring myself to talk 
to them but something in me is fiercely protective of their 
tiny little world.  

The other day, when I found the white and gray one belly 
up at the surface, I cried for a solid hour on Mulder's couch.

I know what Mulder dealt with now, all those years without 
his sister.  Every time my phone or doorbell rings, my 
heart races until I determine that it isn't him.  Every 
time I walk down a crowded street, I'm searching the faces 
as they go by.  Frantic that I'll miss him in one.  I 
understand completely now the driving force and peculiar 
tragedy behind looking for someone loved and lost. 

My brother came to see me yesterday.  He glowers so well 
now that sometimes I can't recall what his face looks like 
when he's pleased with me, it's been so long.

"So where is he, Dana?  Did he fly back down from outer 
space yet?"

I know Bill can't understand the abduction.  To him, Mulder 
is just a deadbeat Dad who couldn't take the pressure and 
took off.  He refuses to believe otherwise, no matter what 
I say, though he is at least certain Mulder is the father. 
As far as talking to him about any of this, I can safely 
say the possibility of this completely discredits the 
phrase 'nothing is impossible'.

"Heard from Mulder?" he asks.  A favorite question.

"No, Bill."

He humors me, albeit in a cruel way.  "Think he'll show up 
at any point in this pregnancy, Dana?  Or is he just going 
to come back at the end and teach the kid how to fly up to 
the stars or something?"

I just look at him.  He has so many ways of asking the 
same question.

Inevitably, he loses patience with me.  "Are you living in 
some wacko version of 'Starman' here, Dana?  'Lost in 
Space' maybe?  Do you truly believe this crap?  Why are you 
doing this?  What's happened to you?"  His rants pick up 
whenever he gets no response on my side.  "Are you even in 
there anymore?" he shouts in the general direction of my 
head.

He thinks I'm crazy.  My own brother thinks that somewhere 
out there, I've already slipped off the deep end and am 
certifiably insane.  This is one more thing to ponder and 
regret.  To be sad and dispirited about.  I stare at him 
and wish it were different.  I wish my mother had never 
told him that Mulder was abducted.  And I'm not sure she 
believes it either, for that matter, though she would never 
say so.  "That's not how it is, Bill," I say patiently.  
And just as inevitably, steel and ice creeps into my voice 
finally in dealing with him and once more, I shut him out 
of my world.  

"How is it, Dana?  Tell me how it is up there," he fumes.

He doesn't want to know really.  I think my brother, if he 
could manage to do so, would have me committed and 
forcibly extract this belief from me.  I can't necessarily 
blame him.  I understand his adamant compulsion to 
disbelieve.  I used to live it.  And I know what I sound like.  
Rationality seems to have gone out the window with me 
these days.  Seven years ago, I too would have suggested 
the nearest asylum if someone made the kind of claims 
I'm making.  Even today, if Melissa were still alive and 
proclaiming that she was pregnant with a miracle baby 
and that the possible father of the child wasn't around 
because he'd been abducted in a spaceship by aliens, 
I wouldn't know whether to laugh or cry.

That's how Bill must feel.  I try to understand.  

I try to downplay the fantastic.

I focus him on other things.  I ask him to bring Tara and 
Matthew with him when he comes and let myself be 
mesmerized by Tara's mindless chatter about how to raise 
babies.  My brother is kinder when she's there.  Some 
days, this kind of focus on the little details even helps me.  
The picture they present of the uncomplicated family.  A 
noticeably smaller picture that distracts me from looking 
at the bigger one.  Sometimes I need this.  

I do know what the larger questions are.  But some days 
now, I crave the ability to narrow my focus.

I enjoy looking up at the sky at night.  A rich, dark blue.  
I try to make a positive connection with the simple beauty 
of stars and not hate them for taking Mulder.

Today, the sun was shining.  And the sky perhaps the 
lightest hue of blue I've seen in weeks.

My mother came over, as she so often does these weekend 
days, to spend the afternoon with me.  To take me shopping 
or suggest some other task that will fill up my day and go 
on into the evening.  Taking the time step a little further 
tonight, she shares supper with me in order to lead me from 
evening to night.  She is delighted about this baby.  On 
top of that, she is doing her best to keep my spirits up as 
well.  I must be hard on her but she doesn't complain.  I'm 
not exactly the most uplifting person to be around these 
days.

In her mind, there is no possibility that this is anything 
but a child of Mulder and my love and to be truthful, I've 
never even tried to suggest her away from this simple 
belief.  This is all I can offer her.  The hope that this 
baby is no more or less than the result of Mulder and 
myself, alone.  Of our love for one another.

"He was a good man, Dana," she says unexpectedly as we 
sit at dinner.  

It's the little things that tend to pierce the armor of the 
heart.

I stop at her words and blow my breath out carefully.  The 
food becomes tasteless in my mouth and I swallow it down 
with difficulty.  I take another deep breath and blow out 
evenly through my lips.  This is something I practice to 
stay calm.  Tonight is her treat and I don't want to spoil 
it.  A pleasant eatery that charges too much because it's 
within the D.C. city limits.  For me, it's convenient to my 
apartment, which I have a hard time leaving these days and 
for my mother, the chef serves one of her favorite dishes 
and she doesn't have to prepare it.

I can't speak for a minute. The smells of the restaurant 
assault me.  The complex and familiar meshing of my 
emotions hits me.  Jubilation at my condition coupled with 
a sudden melancholic memory of Mulder, tilting back in his 
chair in some nameless restaurant of some forgotten city.  
Using a finger to snag the curtain tie just over his 
shoulder while he told me some theory that doesn't seem 
important now.  I remember only his expression.  

I didn't realize I'd taken such notice of it.  

All of this results in a sensation not unlike a syringe 
being painfully plunged into my thoracic cavity and then 
used to fill my lungs up with air.  I take another deep 
breath and blow it out.  I set my fork down slowly.  And 
when I can finally speak, I say only one thing.  My voice 
is steady, if small.

"I loved him, Mom." 

I say it as if I think she won't believe me.  I say it as if 
I'm not sure myself sometimes, my own life seems so 
far removed from me.

"Yes, you did," she answers firmly.  "That's all we can 
hope to do in this life, Dana.  Take whatever love is in 
our hearts and bestow it upon others, no matter where 
they go with it."

She doesn't expect my reaction, nor do I.  I burst into 
tears.

I quickly pick up my napkin and cover my face with it, 
as well as use my hands to hide my shame, mortified at 
the spectacle I must be making in this public setting.  I 
feel my mother reach over and cover my hands with her 
own, leaning in close and protecting me from prying eyes.  
"It's okay, honey," she whispers quietly.  And there is grief 
in her voice.  For me.  Maybe for Mulder, too.  I hope so.

I lower the napkin and stare fiercely down at my clenched 
hands.  "I didn't, Mom," I whisper shakily.  "I didn't show 
him.  I never even told him."

"Dana, look at me," she urges.  And when I manage to raise 
my eyes, she has that expression on her face I remember 
so well from childhood that means she isn't going to take 
any crap from me.  "Nonsense, she insists.  "You showed 
him every day, in your own way.  People don't always need 
to proclaim things at the top of their voice to make their 
point.  Sometimes, life doesn't work that way.  Some people 
don't work that way."

I close my eyes.  I can still picture his face.  

And then I feel something stir deep in me.  A little 
flutter in my pelvic area, near my right hip.  I quickly 
put my hand down on my stomach, sliding it over to find 
the movement and rest on it.  "I think I just felt it, Mom," 
I say breathlessly, startled by this. 

Mulder would be so curious.  I know he'd want to feel this 
under his fingertips.  I can imagine his expression and the 
warmth of his hand on my skin, checking it out.

Sorrow and joy.  Wedded in my heart.

A wide grin steals across my mother's face at my 
observation.  She's so excited that it's catching.  I set 
the napkin down and it happens again.  We laugh then, 
together.  She squeezes my hand tightly.  And within this 
moment, there is more joy than sorrow.  And there is a 
baby, moving within me.  

And Mulder rests easy in the back of my mind, trying 
not to be noticed.

My mother's eyes light up and she smiles.  "You will love 
this baby, Dana."

I nod.  "Yes.  I will."  And there is strength and 
conviction in my voice.  I have loved Mulder.  I will love 
this baby.  And may this meshing of sorrow and serenity 
within me create a life which is sensitive to the world 
around it.

This, I've managed to find.

Mulder, I will continue to search for.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
THE END

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