From: Barbara462@aol.com
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 11:10:30 EST
Subject: Understanding (1/!) by barbara barnett (Closure spoilers)
Source: xff




Understanding
by Barbara Barnett

Been ages since I've written any fanfic.  I was so incredibly moved by 
Closure, I couldn't get any work done till I'd written something.  So this is 
a little piece...to be followed by a longer tie-it-all together story later 
this week.

Feedback:
cantorb@ameritech.net

At first glance, Mulder appeared to have been simply looking up at the stars, 
as he often did, in wonder.  Scully moved to his right side, intending to 
take his hand--a simple gesture--to let him know she was there for him.  

She noticed then; as she saw his face, bathed in the starlight.  Silent tears 
trailed a path that glistened on his cheeks.  He cried not the angry wracking 
sobs as he had days earlier, fighting the demons in his soul.  Nor were these 
tears of despair, shed in the loneliness of a darkened Alexandria aprartment 
too many times.

These were cleansing tears.  Tears of grief and sorrow, certainly, but tears 
that bathed and purified a wound too long left gaping in Mulder's heart and 
soul.  He wept for Samantha; for his parents; for little Amber Lynn and Kathy 
Lee's son.  He wept for all the children, not so lucky to have been swept 
away in starlight, who haunted Ed Truelove's North Pole.  He wept for the 
passing of time and the toll it had taken on Scully and him.  

Mulder blinked finally, noticing Scully standing solemly to his right side.  
He smiled down at her.  "Thank you."  

Scully looked into his eyes, her puzzled gaze warming him in the chilly night 
air.  "For being here, for being you.  For letting me not have to question 
the nurse."  He turned to her embracing her as her arms went round his waist. 
 "For going along with Harold Pillar and that seance, when you felt it was a 
waste of time."

"Personally I was looking forward to playing spin the bottle."  She smiled 
into his chest.  

Mulder noticed a small stone bench, near the clearing.  He led Scully there, 
never letting go her hand.  They sat in a peaceful silence for a moment.  
There was nothing to say.  

"Mulder?"

"Hmm?"  She looked at his face.  He looked exhausted, but something 
fundamental was different.  

"What happened?  Where did you go?"

Mulder hesitated, debating internally whether to tell her; wondering what she 
would say, dreading her likely response.  He needed time to process it before 
he would be up to her rational empiricist argument.  One that he, himself, 
had already been throught of as he gazed at the stars.  "I'd tell you, but 
you'd only tell me I'm trading one delusion for another.  And I'm not ready 
to hear that from you ... yet, anyway.  She's dead, Scully.  I know that now, 
and I accept it.  Whether she disappeared into the starlight and was taken by 
some benificent walk-in or angel...or messenger....or she just ran when she 
heard Spender and his cronies enter the hosptial ER.  I guess I'll never know 
with any certainty."

"And you're OK with that?  Why now?  What happened?"

Mulder swallowed, remembering suddenly things she had shared with him over 
the years.  Experiences that shook her belief in the rational; the empirical, 
to the core.

"I saw them, Scully."  His voice was low, barely a whisper.

"Who?"

"I saw my sister.  Amber Lynn; Pillar's son."

"Mulder..."

"No.  Please, Scully.  Just...just listen."  He gripped her hand tighter, 
lacing his fingers in hers.  Mulder took a breath.  "I had a vision of 
Samantha.  And she told me it was alright.  And I said goodbye to her." 

"Mulder, you've been through so much these last few days.  I don't think 
you..."

In a sudden move Mulder rose, towering over Scully, he paced away from her, 
cursing himself for the disclosure.

"Don't you think I know that, Scully?  How is what I saw any different than 
your own visions of your father?  Of Emily.  Of your own story of letting 
Emily go before she died a terrible death at the hands of...How is that 
different?  Tell me.  I know I haven't had time to process all of this.  What 
it means.  I just know.  I can't explain it.  Hell, I don't even want to.  
Maybe you were right.  Maybe my mother was trying to take away my pain, and 
knowing..."  his voice, which had risen, now dropped again into a murmur. 

"...knowing she was dying hoped only in death to help me...to find a way to 
help me to know...to believe....to understand.  Maybe she sent Pillar to me."

Mulder sat again on the bench, calm again.  "Maybe she knew, Scully, all 
those years, where Sam was.  April Air Force Base.  She knew and she couldn't 
tell me.  Telling me would have been her death sentence.  Maybe mine.  So she 
took their victory from them, like her anscestors at Massada.  Killing 
herself, so that she could finally tell me dead, what she couldn't alive."

Scully wanted to argue with him, to tell him he was trading one fantasy for 
another. But she had seen too much.  Had her own visions that had let her let 
go of Emily.  Maybe they were both deluded.  Maybe it didn't matter.

"Let's go home, Mulder."  She moved her hand, still clasped in his and moved 
it to his face.  He turned into their joined hands kissing her knuckles 
lightly, as she brushed his tears away with her thumb.

He smiled.  "Ooo.  Then can we play spin the bottle?"  They rose, Scully 
trying hard, and failing, to conceal her amusement at his comment.  He was 
going to be alright.  

end.