From: Michele Lellouche Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2000 01:28:14 GMT Title: WHILE I WAS GONE Author: Michele Lellouche (mdanl73@gmail.com) RATING: PG SPOILERS: "Requiem." 8th Season conjecture ARCHIVE: Anywhere you like SUMMARY: A one-joke vignette inspired by recent pop culture events. "You two look like a Hallmark card commercial." Scully said it with affection but a touch of amusement at their domesticity that she knew Mulder would appreciate. Her partner looked up at her with a wry grin. "Yeah. Sappy, isn't it?" Liam was asleep in his arms as the credits of "Chicken Run" scrolled across the screen. The DVD player (with its region and coding chips disabled) had been one of the Lone Gunmen's baby shower gifts and since Liam's birth, they had been using it heavily. In between bouts of child care, new to both of them, they watched the contents of a box Scully had been assembling since his disappearance. In the depths of one of her despairing moments early in the days after his abduction, she had been watching television almost mindlessly. Then, she was sometimes unable to move from her couch for stretches and people came to her. That night it was her mother, and Maggie Scully had been dismayed to see her daughter crying at, of all things, a commercial for the remake of _Shaft_. Scully could not manage to explain that she and Mulder, as they always did, had taken the Entertainment Weekly issue on summer movies and marked out what they wanted to see. _Shaft_ was first on the list. The magazine went into a cubic foot box that had been intended by some well-meaning person for her to store Mulder's belongings after she cleaned out his apartment. Instead, she remembered him keeping her plants alive and brought his fish home to her apartment and paid his rent. And instead, into the box sailed magazines, videotapes, CDs, and later DVDs, all remembrances of the summer, then the fall and winter he was gone. A stack of Newsweeks. The Don Henley CD with "They're Not Here, They're Not Coming" about aliens. A tape of C-SPAN's coverage of Ralph Nader's nomination as Green Party candidate, with corresponding bumper sticker. (She hadn't managed to scrape the one off the bumper of the Accord she had finally bought, knowing their child deserved better than a Bureau car). Tapes of the entire run of Survivor. Then the movies: Shaft, Shanghai Noon (which some of the women at work had made her see and she had almost broken through to laugh at), Chicken Run (which of all people, AD Skinner took her to see and she did laugh at, at all the spots she knew Mulder would). Tapes of the series Roswell. Mulder had been watching it to debunk it, but she had become addicted. She would look at Brendan Fehr and hear Mulder's voice as if he were with her: "Scully, that kid looks NOTHING like me!". Tapes of any Oakland A's game with Mark Mulder pitching. And so on. The box had become her talisman for his return. He would want to know how the election had gone, sure, but when she had returned from her abduction all those years ago, Mulder's stack of saved Newsweeks and tapes of Deep Space Nine had been her best reentry into the world. When he had finally returned, their days were too full of finding themselves again, finding the perpetrators, stopping the Consortium once more--they had barely taken any time to live. Even their marriage, at Mulder's insistence before their child was born, had been in Skinner's office, the legal side taken care of by his secretary Kim, a notary public. (To Scully's surprise, Mulder had insisted on marriage almost two breaths after he realized she was pregnant). It wasn't until after Liam's birth, when Skinner had enforced a month long paternity/maternity leave that they had had time to even look at the box. She had at first been unsure of Mulder's reaction but he had loved the box and all its contents, diving in with zest to catch up on all the time he had missed. And as she had expected, Mulder had taken to fatherhood. She knew he was good with children, better than she was, truth to tell, and he leapt into Liam's care with both feet. He found old child development texts and searched for new ones, but never gave up Dr. Spock ("He had a Star Trek character named after him, what's not to like?"). He fed, changed diapers and awaited each new learned behavior with excitement. "So when can we take him to the movies?" Mulder asked softly as she moved to pop the DVD out of its tray. "Not for a while, Mulder, he has to keep his eyes open the whole way through one first." She smiled as her partner scooped up Liam to carry him to his crib. They had both been thrilled that their child had combined their best features--hazel eyes, red hair, and had not gotten either of their noses. "I'm just thinking that the first Lord of the Rings movie opens at Christmas-" "Mulder, he'll be too little." She shook her head. "Okay, how `bout Star Wars II next summer?" "Maybe." She grinned. "Want to watch another video?" "Yeah. I'm interested in what those tapes are, the ones marked `football'? I mean, you told me who won the Super Bowl. I do want to see how Jacksonville managed to pull it off but-" "They're tapes of Monday Night Football," she said enigmatically as she settled Liam carefully for the night. "Okay-.why would I be watching Monday Night Football when I know how it all turns out?" Mulder asked as they quietly escaped the nursery for the living room. "New guy in the broadcast booth I think you might like." She cued the tape up and sat on the couch next to her partner, now husband. She leaned into his chest and, with a grateful smile, let that long arm drop around her. "Who?" He waited through that inane but catchy Hank Williams song and Al Michaels' intro, through the first commercial break. When Michaels came back and began talking to his two analysts, Mulder stared at the screen in shock. "Wait a second-is that who-.Dennis Miller? Dennis Miller is on Monday Night Football? What else happened while I was gone?"