Einstein’s Twin Paradox: A New Interpretation (Or, Reading TXF Through Scully’s Couture) by suspect affiliations (no_romo@yahoo.com) The Twin Paradox - One twin leaves Earth on a spaceship traveling at a relativistic speed, while the other twin remains on Earth. Owing to time contraction & the nature of Lorentzian geometry, when the first twin returns, the one who remained on Earth will in fact be older. Bear with me, people. Or, find me here: http://www.wonderhorse.net/authorspgs/suspectA/suspectA.htm * * * * * * * Mulder’s arms are wrapped comfortably around my naked body and all I want is my closet. He is sleeping soundly, his breath heavy and regular across the top of my head. Of course it’s well-known that it’s more difficult for women to fall asleep after sex, but I wonder if he’s dreaming of Armani as wistfully as I am in my wakefulness. I hope my mother doesn’t sell everything before we make it back to DC. * * * * * * * When she first returned from the hospital, she didn’t even make it to her bedroom. She shut the door on Byers and Frohike and curled into a fetal ball on her couch and tried not to think at all. When she had to go back to work she stared at herself in the mirror for an expanse of time that she didn’t recognize as having passed and tried to puzzle out the woman reflected back. What did this mirror-woman want? What did this mirror-woman do? What did this mirror-woman have to look forward to? She had no answers and so she buttoned her blouse and in that act found the strength to face the day. * * * * * * * When I started working for the Bureau I was paying off my loans from med school. Although I was making good money - less than a doctor, but I’d been hired as a specialist, so I started out pretty high on the federal pay scale - it was all funneled towards paying off four years of medical education. At the Academy we all wore the same things, Bureau uniforms to distinguish us from the other agencies training at Quantico. Then I graduated to a forensic teaching position and a life spent mostly in scrubs. I was glad for it; the uniforms hearkened back to my Catholic school days, but in the scrubs I was comfortable. They were familiar. And then I had a meeting with Section Chief Blevins that I had to dress for. I bought my suits on sale racks at JC Penney’s. I got my hair cut at SuperCuts. I was not bothered by either of these, as I was struggling to make it in an old boys’ club and attempting to de-emphasize my femininity without ending up like Nancy Spiller. I’d never been particularly confident about my looks, but neither had I ever been particularly insecure; I had an athletic body and I always looked put-together. That was enough. No wonder I never got dates. * * * * * * * Gibson could hear her. He hadn't been trying to listen to her since she'd come to Arizona; she was one of very few people in his life whom he trusted. Besides, he'd learned from previous encounters that she always said what she was thinking. She didn't hide, as others did. She was hiding now. Hiding from this man Doggett; hiding her face as she cried in his arms, the body of the man who'd born the face of Assistant Director Skinner dissolving nearby. One hand covered her eyes and the other rested on her abdomen and in her mind she was pleading for Mulder, repeating a desperate refrain: We will find your father, she was saying. Gibson recognized the longing in her insistence from his own experience, from a boy he saw in the mirror whose parents had been in a mysterious car accident two years earlier. He hoped that this child would have better luck finding its family. When she stood, with Agent Doggett's assistance, and moved towards the nurses' station, Gibson could only stare at her, wide-eyed and knowing and silent. * * * * * * * The Christmas before I started at the Academy, Missy’s present was to take me shopping. I resisted, because Missy liked bright clothes in flowing cuts and she always made me try on stuff that I hated. But she promised that we were just going to get a suit, one really nice suit, so I would look appropriately G-Woman. She was doing freelance work for some small stationary companies in San Francisco and I knew she couldn’t afford the kind of suit she was describing to me on that windy December twenty-sixth, but I decided to go along at least for some sisterly bonding. I assumed we’d hit the after-Christmas sales at a department store but instead we drove to a corner of Annapolis that I didn’t know very well. “It’s a vintage store,” she said. I didn’t think vintage was very FBI and told her so. “We’ll just see what they have,” she replied, amused as always by the severity of her little sister. We sorted through racks full of garish prints and drab browns and ruffles without success and then, as she was rifling through the group labeled “40s - jackets,” Missy let out an excited shriek. “Dana, I got it,” she said authoritatively. Since she was the one paying I knew I didn’t have much of a chance to argue and prepared myself for some chintzy monstrosity as she disentangled the item to show me. She held it triumphantly in the light and I stared, pleasantly surprised by her selection. She grinned and I took my coat off and tried on the jacket there in the aisle, and it fit perfectly and we marched to the register. When we got home Missy demanded that I show it off; my mother thought it was a wonderful suit and was so glad to see me wearing some color, and my father told me that I looked so beautiful and grown-up and for a moment I almost thought he was proud of my choice. Bill and Charlie gave it a quick thumbs-up and wandered back off to watch football while Tara, then Bill’s fiancée, eagerly felt the fabric and oohed and ahhed in a way that reminded me why we’d never really be friends. The next time I wore that suit, the deep red skirt and jacket with the black velvet lapels, was at my graduation from Quantico. Then it gathered dust in my closet for two years while cheap fibers and unflattering cuts and overlarge buttons went to work every day with me. This suit was too nice to trade in for scrubs on the job. Then I wore it for Mulder. I hadn’t known him for very long and was in serious denial about the massive crush I had on my new partner. I was very careful to be professional and scientific and never look too pretty, especially after that gaffe about the mosquito bites. I was, I told myself that first year, most decidedly not to be seen as a woman by Agent Mulder. Jerry Lamana didn’t impress me very much, but he was obviously an old buddy of Mulder’s. We’d already saved each other’s lives a couple of times, even by that point, but this seemed more intimate, somehow; more personal. I got the call that Lamana had died right after stepping out of the shower, and I said I’d let Mulder know. When I opened my closet, the red suit just jumped out at me. I have discovered that pain makes me want to dress well. I spent a little extra time on my hair, trying to tame the edges that SuperCuts had made just a little too flippy for my taste. And then, all dressed up for the occasion, I went to the Hoover building and told Mulder that his friend was dead. * * * * * * * When she told him he’d have a desk, he sensed the magnitude of her emptiness. When he had been tracking down Gibson Praise he’d dismissed her as obsessed, a little cracked, a rebel. It wasn’t until they were both standing in the office together that he felt how much was missing, and how acutely she was missing it. Mulder wasn’t just your partner, he wanted to ask. He didn’t say the words, for a thousand reasons. He didn’t need to ask to know it was true; he didn’t need to remind her of what was gone; he didn’t need to have her worrying that he would report her to OPR. Anyways, he knew that she would merely stare at him, cool and inscrutable, from across the expanse of Mulder’s desk and say, with precision and finality, “Mulder” (pause) “was my partner.” Mulder was her partner in a thousand ways. Doggett would settle for working with her. * * * * * * * When I first started working with Mulder I was so attracted to him that I could barely stand it, in the way that quickly fades as you become friends with a person. I was so angry and frustrated and desperate to get laid, and I sublimated in the worst way. I got fat. Somewhere along the line I stopped running, stopped doing crunches, and started eating. A lot. If I couldn’t have Mulder, I told myself, I’d settle for the next best thing. Two men that no woman can resist - Ben and Jerry. I ate ice cream like it was my job. A couple of years later I learned that my binging had rendered me lactose intolerant, and so I stuck with the thankfully non-fat Tofutti Rice Dreamsicle. One night after hitting baseballs together I sat with Mulder on a picnic table in a deserted park and confessed as much when he offered to take me out for some real ice cream. “Mulder, I can’t do real ice cream,” I told him. He snorted. “Come on, Scully, misbehave with me.” “No, I’m lactose intolerant. We can do burgers.” “Lactose intolerant? You eat that damn yogurt all the time,” he pointed out. “Yeah.” It was my turn to snort. “And I spend way too much money getting the lactose-free kind.” “But…” Mulder couldn’t seem to accept mine as a future bereft of both children and ice cream, all the simple joys in life. “I thought you used to love ice cream.” “I did,” I informed him. “That’s what brought it on. I ate too much ice cream.” “There is no such thing,” he insisted, deadpan. I grinned. “Back in the day, when I ate myself from a size six to a fourteen, I was living off of ice cream. I was an ice cream _tub_.” He grinned back at me, ducked his head. He reached for my hand and looked up and said shyly, “You were cute back then.” We didn’t misbehave that night; we sat there for hours and stared up at the stars. For the first time I was glad that I’d ever gotten fat. * * * * * * * When he learned that she was pregnant, everything made sense to him. It also sickened him. He was a childless father, and she was preparing for a fatherless child, and Doggett beat himself up for days that he hadn’t yet found Mulder. He remembered how excited he’d been when Barbara had been pregnant, how he’d endured her mood swings with a smile and how he’d given her backrubs every night because he was just that damn excited to be a dad. He’d gotten such a kick out of her expanding belly, such a jolt of manly pride every time he saw her and knew that they’d done something wonderful together. They sat in the office and she was a million miles away and he would stare at her and think, if Mulder pulled this stunt to ditch her, I’ll wring his paranoid neck myself. He just had to find the bastard first. * * * * * * * Picasso is famous for having used certain colors extensively at certain points in his work. His chromatic periods - blue, rose. Like most of the world, I am not a painter; my artistic canvas is myself, clothing my paints. I, too, became infatuated with certain hues, but my periods were achromatic, decidedly less brilliant than those of a certain Spanish cubist. This is all just a very pretty way of saying that there was once a time when I wore a lot of beige. I don’t look very good in beige; I’m too pale and it’s too bland. But the suits were cheap and after being abducted, one enjoys blending in. * * * * * * * Her boss had seen her in many states; desperate, determined, angry, compassionate, brilliant. This was the first time he had ever known her broken. She was standing over the grave of the man that she loved, the man whose child she was carrying in a body that had yet to reveal its secret, a body that she maintained with a steely desire to control something in her life. She was shaking against him, sobbing with a ferocity that he would have thought her incapable. He wished he could trade places with the man in the ground, if only to make this world right for her. She has so many men in love with her, he thought, but the only one that matters is too cold. He knew that their child - hers and Mulder’s - was the only thing that enabled her to actually walk away from the man-sized hole that felt like the worst kind of cosmic joke. He had no illusions that his own strength played any kind of role. He saw her square her shoulders, draw a deep breath, straighten her spine and all he could think was, she will never stop grieving. * * * * * * * After my abduction I made a definitive effort to reclaim my body and my life. I started working out again and stopped eating ice cream. Well, I stopped eating as much ice cream. I was going to become invincible, I told myself. I had problems looking the part. I was still in debt, still writing half of every paycheck right back to Uncle Sam in thanks for supporting me through an education that I was using in ways I’d never have imagined at the time. I had gained quite a bit of weight, and it took time to work it off. And then there was the beige thing. Late at night, lying sleeplessly in my bed listening to all the sounds of the darkness, I could admit to myself that I was a little skittish. During the daytime, the preponderance of beige within my wardrobe was the only indication that maybe I wasn’t quite ready to jump back into my life. Talbot’s had a great sale on v-neck blouses. I’d heard that v-necks were slimming, so I bought half a dozen without trying them on. It was a while before I realized how unattractive they really were. * * * * * * * Two men with nothing but her best interest in mind tried to prevent her from walking through the doorway, but they knew it was futile. Instead they could only stare, witnesses to this grotesque tableau. She entered his hospital room slowly, aware of the eyes at her back, and when she saw her partner lying ashen and moldering and alive on the bed her breath caught with stark relief. She heard the steady beeping of the EKG and saw the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest and suddenly she didn’t care who was watching. She sat and put her ear to his heart and heard in its beating a hope that she cried for. * * * * * * * After Missy died, I bought new clothes. I couldn’t bring myself to move out of my apartment, the place from where I’d been abducted and the place where my sister had been shot. But a week after her funeral I awoke on a Saturday morning and stared at my closet and suddenly saw it with my sister’s eyes, and for the first time I realized how ugly some of my clothes were. The white jacket with wings for a collar? What was I thinking when I bought _that_? I was back down to a six by then and I tossed out my fat clothes, and the ugly cheap suits that I’d worn my first year on the X-Files. I went out and bought a cute blue suit, remembering Missy’s admonition that I needed to wear color, and - to celebrate my return to slenderness - a double-breasted pinstripe that would’ve made me look like a blimp three months earlier. Clyde Bruckman gave me a dog to make up for the loss of my sister, and I realized that Queequeg’s hair wasn’t noticeable against beige. So I kept some of those, too. I saved the red suit, of course. But it would be a while before I could wear it again. * * * * * * * When she took him home - to an apartment that she’d paid for when he was abducted, the check for another quarter sent three days before she’d seen his body in a field in Montana - he could barely look at her. Instead he made a vague gesture towards her midsection and said flatly that he thought he knew what “that” meant to her. She told herself he was readjusting and hid her hurt. She didn’t want to upset his return to the living and so she used lots of first-person singular pronouns, and his reaction was always blank. She wanted to hold him, feel him solid and real and inside of her, but he was so cautious and uncertain around her now. She wanted to stop, to ask why, but theirs was a Heisenbergian world and reality propelled them ever-forward. * * * * * * * It was the first date I’d gone on in almost four years, and I didn’t have anything to wear. I didn’t tell Ed Jerse that the real reason I was early was because, after calling him, I’d panicked. I dumped out the contents of my suitcase and tore through them all, and the best I could come up with was black pants with a dark gray camisole. It all looked woefully incomplete without a jacket, and I wasn’t about to wear a suit on a date. The pants were good, I decided. I raced out of the motel, only pausing to ask the desk clerk the location of the nearest ladies’ clothing store. There was an H&M ten minutes away, and I drove there purposefully. I was not going to look like dowdy Dana Scully that night. It took me twenty minutes to pick out the black shirt that I purchased. I changed in the bathroom and fixed my hair, and later that night I got a tattoo and had an orgasm. It would be a good memory, except for the part where he tried to kill me the next morning. * * * * * * * She seemed tired these days, and he felt distinctly responsible. He wasn't sleeping well, either, and he recognized the symptoms of insomnia; he wanted to tell her to get more rest, take better care of herself and her child – their child, he reminded himself – but he wasn't sure what kind of authority he had anymore. He hurt her every time he talked to her or looked at her, disappointed her with every breath. He didn't know how to fix this; he didn't even know how to fix himself. He picked up the phone. She answered in a clear, precise tone; “Yes?” He heard her steady, familiar breath and something in his chest twisted. “Scully,” he said raggedly. They cried together, over the phone, for nearly an hour. The next day he dropped by and made a crack about “Mad About You” and she ended up in the hospital. But then he put his hand on the hard mound of their child and they smiled at each other and in that moment everything became a little more right in the world. * * * * * * * I didn’t have many opportunities to wear casual clothes, and so I didn’t own very many. It was a Friday night, so when I got home from Quantico I changed out of my sweaty camisole and into an old, comfortable gray sweater. It was a little low-cut, but I suspected the lab results wouldn’t notice. Eddie Van Blundht sure did. I drank almost an entire bottle of wine that night and was baring lots of cleavage. The two were unrelated, but together, they made me dangerous enough to want to kiss Mulder. Too bad Mulder wasn’t actually the man with his lips so close to mine. I wore the sweater again, later, to a dinner party at my mother’s. Normally I would’ve gone for something a little nicer, something that showed a little less skin, but I’d stopped to pick up my dry-cleaning after seeing my doctor and being told that my brain tumor had metastasized and so I was not in the mood to primp. I tossed the bag on my bed and caught sight of the sweater, the bloodstains from my recent trip to Rhode Island to sort out Mulder’s mess successfully removed. So I put on the sweater and tried to show the world that I was fine and healthy and young and maybe even sexy, and most definitely not dying of cancer. I don’t think my mother was fooled, and I know Mulder wasn’t, later that night when I met up with him and told him that They had given me cancer because of him. I almost kissed Mulder in that sweater, and I almost killed that Mulder in that sweater. * * * * * * * When he arrived in Georgia, when he ran, panicked, into the beaten-down house that she thought earlier she might die in, she was waiting for him. Agent Reyes stayed outside at the door, giving them some privacy, and he approached her hesitantly and when he caught sight of his son in her arms he smiled the widest smile she’d ever seen him wear. He ran his finger across their son’s head, down his nose, and then he raised his eyes to her face and put his hand to her cheek. She was sweaty and bloody and tired as hell, and yet she’d never felt more beautiful than at this moment in his gaze. He sat on the makeshift bed next to her, one arm around her shoulder and the other reaching for their squealing son’s hand. He started to cry and he couldn’t stop smiling and for the first time in a long time she knew exactly what he was feeling. * * * * * * * After my cancer went into remission, I was determined to live life to the fullest. I’d spend less time in the office and more time outside; I’d make a point to see my mother more often; I’d sit down with Mulder and talk about what the future might hold for us. Not long after I made these resolutions, I met Emily and I watched her die and I retreated faster than you can say “repressed.” We agreed to take a weekend off not long after that, Mulder and I. He cheated and went to work, while I wore jeans and sunglasses and a tight t-shirt and drove a convertible and flirted with some old sheriff that I had no real interest in. I ate lobster and listened to Mahler and shut the world out from my bubble-filled bathtub, and I tried to forget about my dead daughter. I didn't, of course; it was merely a brief reprieve. When I went back to DC I put on my gray pants suit with the shoulder pads – the one that made me feel like I was terribly in control of my own life - and tried to pretend like I wasn't grieving. If I can thank Diana Fowley for anything - besides helping me save the life of the man that we'd both loved - it's for forcing me to remember that I have breasts, a recollection which finally lifted me from my sartorially manifested mourning. Not that I'd ever really forgotten, of course. Breasts are a hard thing to forget; they're always there, after all. But seeing her hold Mulder's hand ignited something primal and female in me, and some subconscious part of me must have thought that two could play at this game. Two days after our office burned down and we were reassigned, I went shopping. Retail therapy, I believe it's called; a medication I rarely rely on. But I was bored silly by the very idea of being on the bomb squad and so I decided that I would entertain myself with nice clothes. I bought a gorgeous black suit that ended up on an alien ship in Antarctica. Since we were off the X-Files, I couldn't claim that one to Uncle Sam. It was an Armani, and I'd spent way too much on it, but it was hard to be ungrateful towards Mulder after he'd saved me from gestating an alien being. I bought some new shirts, too, ditching those oddly ruffly v-necks for tight camisoles and low-cut button-downs. Thank you, Diana Fowley, for reminding me that cleavage can be effective. A lesson learned by every adolescent female, but eventually forgotten by those of us who spend too much of our lives avoiding sex. We both hated our jobs enough that I half-hoped we would just get over ourselves and fuck already, just for some entertainment. Instead Mulder chased a ghost ship in the Bermuda Triangle and told me that he loved me, which was less exciting than I'd expected. * * * * * * * Her son would always know his grandmother, she thought to herself - Grandma Scully, who would do her best to spoil this child as thoroughly as possible. He would hear stories from his mother and his grandmother about his brave and loving Grandpa Scully, who served his country and loved his family and never wavered in doing the right thing. She knew, from eight years of hearing little from her son's father about his own parents, that he would not have that same connection on his paternal side. It would be years, she thought, years and years before we can explain to him that Grandpa Mulder was murdered as he attempted to right things between himself and your father, and Grandma Mulder killed herself because she wanted to end a life tortured by the memory of her lost daughter. And it would years after that before they would tell him actually, your father's father isn't the man who was married to your father's mother, but the man who tried to destroy your parents at every step; the man who abducted and experimented upon the woman who would be your aunt, who abducted your mother, who left your father with a brain disease and more scars than the eye could ever see. The Lone Gunmen stopped by and interrupted her musings with their questions about the details of her son's birth; they were inquisitive and awestruck and Frohike cracked a joke about the kid inheriting Mulder's nose, and she thought how lucky she was to know these odd men with whom she would always be able to entrust her child. They wandered out, sensing she was tired; Mulder wandered in and she told him what she'd been thinking, in not so many words - "I've decided to call him William. After your father." Mulder smiled and kissed her and held William, now rooted in both sides of his family, between them. * * * * * * * I don't give much credence to superstitious notions of charms bringing exceptional luck, good or bad. I've never believed that an object can be imbued with that kind of power. But then, my time on the X-Files has made me question so much of what I previously held to be true. I didn't really consider that the shirts might be bad luck until Peyton Ritter shot me in the gut, because there's nothing more unlucky than a mortal wound from your partner - especially when he's trying to save your life. Last I heard, he was working on Wall Street, getting his thrills by exchanging large amounts of money rather than bullets. I tend to think leaving the Bureau was a good call on his part. But I digress. The shirts - that's what I'm here to talk about now. My first major mishap while wearing a simple white v-neck button-down shirt was nearly kissing Mulder and getting stung by a bee containing an alien virus; who knows which event was actually more disastrous. That shirt was left in Antarctica, so I bought a replacement. It was a good shirt. No, I'm wrong. Before that, I was wearing a similar shirt when Michael Kritschgau pushed my cancer-ridden body down a flight of stairs. I guess I should've paid more attention at the time. The white shirt disasters really kicked up after we were on desk duty. Seriously, we must've been doing something to attract the wrath of some vengeful deity to end up spending Christmas Eve believing we'd shot each other. Finding corpses wearing our same clothes should've been my first tip-off that perhaps the source of this ill will was my couture. The Alfred Fellig case was when I first considered this theory, in a moment of fancy and drugs while I sat in the hospital, but I didn't take it seriously. The shirt breathed its last, though, when a man - a man who couldn't be shot - attacked me in Mulder's apartment, tried to rip my heart out, and disappeared. I sobbed in Mulder's arms and he held me and somehow that also helped to repair the void between us. I can add Philip Padgett to my list of unlikely people who have earned my gratitude. When I changed out of that white shirt after that incident, it was for the last time. I threw them all out and hoped that my tendency towards life-endangering injury would be reduced now. * * * * * * * After he left, at her behest, she had difficulty sleeping in her bed - not really their bed, not yet, since they'd only shared it for the past week; but it was filled with his scent and his memory and his presence and so she pulled the afghan over herself and watched her son sleep from the sofa. She knew Doggett was concerned for her, and a part of her wanted to tell him what had transpired, thinking it would be easier if he knew; he might not look at her like he was waiting for her to break if he heard of Kersh's visit. But explanation required too much effort, and right now she was preoccupied with her son's ability to move his mobile with his mind. He was supposed to be normal, she thought sadly, standing over him. She looked out at the world from underneath an ocean; movement and responses were dulled, and her mother tried to hide her worry about her grandson's safety in the arms of her distractable daughter. She wanted to tell her mother that she wasn't sure that this child was worth it, that as much as she loved William she resented him too, for making her give up Mulder. They were a family for only four days, between her release from the hospital and Mulder's departure. Four days of the kind of security that most people enjoy for their entire lives. If her son were normal, then maybe it would have been harder for her to stare at him like he was a scientific question. Maybe it would have been easier for her to be his mother. * * * * * * * A week after I found Mulder, lying prone and bandaged in a DOD facility, I got a haircut. This may seem like an insignificant thing - but the truth is, I was actually really happy with my hair when I went to get it chopped off. It was soft and poufy and had just the right amount of curl at the bottom, and I looked great. But I'd just been praying with a vision of a Native American man who was lying thousands of miles away in a hospital, and I needed to restore my toughness, my skeptical equanimity. It's difficult to be a hardass when your hair has just the right amount of soft curl. They had shaved part of Mulder's head, and he got a haircut as well to make it less obvious that someone had just performed brain surgery. Maybe my newly shorn look was partially in sympathy with my partner. It ended up being a waste of some nearly-perfect hair, anyways. The haircut didn't help me to defend the scientific side of things any more vigorously; it didn't stop me from flirting with Mulder. My entire world had been turned upside-down by what I'd seen in Africa, and trying to fix it all with a haircut is the kind of thing that is destined to fail. * * * * * * * "I'm a mother" is what she said, but what she really meant to convey was "I'm hopelessly in love with another man to the point that I'm raising a child without him in order to save his life so that we might be later reunited and live happily ever after." That sentence seemed a bit too long and besides, Rocky Bronzino was a complete stranger; he didn't need to know the whole story. "Mothers are women, too," Rocky rejoined, and she wanted to say, Lord, do I know it, and I wish Mulder were here so we could finally, finally have sex again, because it's been almost a year and a half and that is too damn long. Instead she just gazed at him, coolly and curtly, while he made jokes about pheromones and reminded her that there was only one man in this world with whom she wanted to share her life, and he was just too far away. * * * * * * * When I arrived at my apartment at five am, I collapsed on the couch and fell asleep and stayed there until eight-thirty. I'm not sure what woke me up, but I was running so late that all I did was brush my teeth, slap on some deodorant, and run out the door. I didn't even bother to change. When I arrived at the office, fifteen minutes past nine, Mulder looked up and took in my outfit and an odd expression passed over his face, like he didn't know whether he should be hurt by the fact that I obviously hadn't left his apartment to take a shower and change, but instead to sleep. "Good morning, Scully," he said evenly. "Morning, Mulder," I replied, trying to pretend like everything was normal and we hadn't had sex last night. We spent most of the morning avoiding each other, not uncomfortably, just uncertainly. I retrieved some lab results and filed some paperwork, while Mulder scanned UFO newsgroups and fielded a call from Skinner warning us about upcoming Bureau audits. Just another normal morning in the X-Files office, I told myself. Nothing different about today. Except that whenever our eyes happened to meet, we'd sort of smile at each other and then realize we were at work and quickly look away. That had never happened before. Around noon, I asked, as I always did, where we should call for lunch. Mulder shook his head. "It's such a nice day out, I was thinking of going down to the Mall." The idea sounded good to me, too, so I stood up and said "Well, then let's go." I had to shed my jacket as soon as we were out of the Hoover building, walking in my skirt and sweater and feeling only slightly grimy for not having showered this morning. Mulder stopped at the first vendor we saw and got a hot dog, which he promptly inhaled while I nibbled on a soft pretzel. We wandered around, milling amongst the other dark-suited federal employees out for their lunch breaks and a few early tourists in t-shirts and fanny packs, not saying much as we occasionally bumped against each other. We approached another vendor and Mulder told me to hold on, he needed to wash down his hot dog. He returned not with the expected Coke but proferring an ice cream sandwich. "Mul-derrr," I said with a smile, in the way I do when he's delighted me unexpectedly. "I can't." "Come on, Scully, not even one bite?" I shook my head and we kept walking slowly, and when there was only one bite left of his ice cream I grabbed his wrist and brought him to a halt. "I think I do need a taste." He grinned at me but before he could say anything I pulled his head down to mine with my free hand, put my mouth to his and ran my tongue over it, savoring the springtime tastes of vanilla ice cream and Mulder. It was a long kiss, and when we pulled apart Mulder was looking at me with something like awe. "Better than I remembered," I told him with a sly grin, and he smiled back at me, ate the last bite himself, and took my hand. The people around us kept walking quickly with their heads down, like good little federal employees; we were rebellious, Mulder and I, strolling languorously and holding hands. I wasn't even wearing all black; I was still wearing my bright apple-green sweater from the day before. I wore that sweater again when I autopsied an invisible man. I will always associate that sweater with the happiest discoveries, like a body that defies the conventions of science and Mulder's face just after he's come and the taste of ice cream. It didn't fit during my pregnancy or for a while afterwards, but when Skinner called me and told me to pack a small bag quickly, that green sweater was the first thing I threw in. It's fitting me once more, and I want to wear it again. * * * * * * * "Dearest Dana," his email began, and she died a little bit when she read each sentence. It was sappy and stupid and lifted from Danielle Steele, but given that he'd been gone so long and she was afraid of loving their child, it was exactly what she needed. _I can't wait to get back to you... and to William..._ She had never wanted, never needed, any kind of protector. She'd thought she could fill such a role adequately herself, at least for her child; but now that he was so far from what she'd expected, what she could understand, she wanted Mulder back with her with a desperation that sometimes, late at night, frightened her. Mulder would be able to comprehend, to compartmentalize, what her life had become; he would be able to comfort her, to love her and their son, to be a father and thus create a family out of three people on the edge of belief. She was crying a lot, these days; tears that she'd thought expended when her belly was swollen had returned, as if to replace her lost lover. They were not as solid as he in the darkness, and she found little solace in them. * * * * * * * Fertility is a funny thing; once long absent, it not only arrives, but overflows, overwhelms. Such was my experience, at least. I developed a sudden knack for keeping my plants alive, a skill which had previously eluded me despite my most scientifically rigorous efforts. My breasts threatened the buttons of every single shirt I owned, and many of my jackets could no longer stretch over my newly Rubenesque chest. What I noticed most of all, though, was my hair. I've always had pretty good hair. It's a nice color, admittedly one which has taken me time to appreciate after a childhood spent as Carrot Top, but one of which I have become quite fond. It's a good weight, too, not so limp that it hangs but not so heavy as to be unmanageable. Basically, I was at a point where I was comfortable with my hair and not giving it a tremendous amount of thought. One day, about three weeks after I learned of my pregnancy, I looked in the mirror and had the sudden realization that my hair was _stunning_. I'm not being vain. Had I seen another woman on the street with hair like mine, I probably would've paused to admire it, momentarily wondering how I could get my own occasionally dowdy coiffure to achieve such volume and shine. Mulder hadn't just left me gestating, he'd left me gestating fabulously. Whatever hormones I was producing, they were getting something right. Once I noticed it, I started to spend more time than ever before on my hair, trying to reach that perfect level of pouf that I craved. I did it, too, just in time to trust the wrong people and end up in the hospital with John Doggett aware of Mulder and my transgression. He's a perceptive enough guy that I also figured he was now fully aware of our loyalty and love, although sometimes he'd look at me like maybe he didn't get that message. My body was beholden to the child inside, my heart abducted alongside my partner, my time absorbed by two former Marines who made up for their lost families with an unspoken love for me. It was a stressful time, and my hair was something that I could control. It wasn't much, it was utterly inconsequential in this world, but it was something that I could make right. * * * * * * * Doggett was desperate and determined at his partner's deathbed, and she could only watch with a clinical detachment, wondering if this was the same face Mulder wore when she had cancer or was shot. She didn't think so; she knew Doggett and Reyes to be terrific friends, but she was also familiar with the kind of tension that arose whenever her one-time partner and her longtime boss were in the same room, had learned it over seven years of celibacy and furtive glances and promises made in hospital rooms. It was a tension that would explode, eventually, whereas Doggett and Reyes worked far too well together to ever create that vital spark. He was full of energy and pain, slamming people against walls and demanding information, and she could only look at him as if through a fog and think: been there, done that, our son's wearing the t-shirt. * * * * * * * Maternity clothing is not flattering. Had I become pregnant five years earlier, this would not have presented such a problem; at that time in my life, I was consciously rejecting fashion, striving towards androgyny and bulkiness through the likes of shoulder pads and ugly v-necks and beige. By the time Mulder disappeared, though, I'd become sleek and slender, muscular and a wearer of leather. I looked invincible, just as I'd aspired to when I was returned from my abduction. They don't make leather maternity pants. Maybe they will if Gisele Bundchen ever chooses to bear a child, but until then, the stylish pregnant woman is relegated to frumpy reinventions of the styles which flatter a smaller size. I wore long wraparound sweaters, lots of them, in dark and neutral colors, and after one shopping trip in which the sales associate would not stop encouraging me to get some "bright, happy colors," I ordered them online. I've never liked interacting with salespeople, anyways. Agent Reyes and Agent Harrison, with their youth and enthusiasm and small waists, made me yearn for tailoring and designer cuts like never before. I realized something critical about myself - I more than looked invincible. My mother took me out to dinner at a fairly nice restaurant, before I started to show, and I wore Armani pants and a Marc Jacobs leather jacket. The waiter, obviously new, spilled some of my mother's iced tea in my lap, and I nearly drew my gun on the poor boy. In the end I settled for my coldest stare, scaring the crap out of him. My mother gave him a hefty tip for enduring me. When your abdomen is the size of Delaware, it's hard to be intimidating. It's also tough to be invincible when the man you love far more than you ever should has returned from the dead, after a too-long absence in which your entire life has been turned upside down. I liked the long sweaters because they were closest thing I could get to clean lines when my entire body was nothing but curves, but it was an illusion; clean lines had absented my entire life, absconded along with Mulder, never to return. He was cold, then hesitant, then joyful, and it was a roller-coaster ride of love and emotion and once he called me up and asked if I had his New York Knicks t-shirt. I grudgingly admitted that I did, hoping his memory of his pre-abduction life was foggy enough that he would think he'd left it at my place; he stopped to pick it up and held it aloft, savoring the return to normalcy it signified. It had been stretched since his abduction, quite a bit since his death, and I prayed he wouldn't remark upon it but of course he did. "Scully, this looks like it could drown me. Are you sure it's the same shirt?" I looked away and swallowed and told him that yes, I was sure it was the same shirt, and I didn't say that I knew this because I had stolen it from his dresser and fell asleep to its scent for the long months when he was in the ground. I didn't need to say it, anyway. The contours of the fabric matched those of my blossoming belly, and he hugged me tight and let me know that he'd quit the FBI and "Caddyshack" was playing right now on TNT. * * * * * * * He wondered if his mother would come to him. There were so many dead in his life, so many who could have given him their truth and resolved his own - what Krycek and X now seemed to be doing. Where, then, were his parents? There's something rotten in the state of Denmark, he thought, musing on Bill and Teena and Scully's fearful, desperate demeanor. She hadn't been so needy when he'd arisen from the grave; something had become irrevocably altered in his absence, and no one had yet mentioned his son. There were noises in the hallway, and he wondered who would be coming so late in the evening - the footfalls were too heavy to be Scully's. Skinner, he deduced, vindicated when the cell door opened to reveal his boss. He was sitting cross-legged against the wall and didn't stand. Skinner bent to meet him at eye level. "Mulder," he said with struggle, "there's something you need to know." Mulder merely stared at the older man. "Something about Scully... about your son..." He meant to say more, but Mulder shook his head. "I know." Skinner gazed at him full of questions, but Mulder only stared past him. He suddenly recognized Scully's need, had seen it almost five years ago when her daughter, unexpectedly discovered, had just as unexpectedly died. Their son was gone, he knew that much. Skinner turned and left the cell. He didn't know how much time had passed before Scully came in, tearful and apologetic, and he spared her the revelation by letting her know that Skinner had told him. He expected her to say that their son had died, that she hadn't been able to protect him from those that had deceivingly allowed him to live at his birth. He wasn't expecting her to say that she'd given him up, and so he held her while she cried and his eyes were dry and vacant. * * * * * * * Leyla Harrison's boyfriend made me jealous. Yes, I'll admit it; I'm occasionally petty. Particularly when a young, reasonably attractive man wakes me in the middle of the night when I'm wearing a bulky robe for the purpose of autopsying a dead cat. It made me miss Mulder, more than anything else since he'd left, more than his emails and my long glances at our son, because Mulder used to do this, back before we had any thought of sex and procreation and a family and life together - he'd call me, knock on my door, at absurd hours, in order to run off on his latest adventure. It was a large part of why I'd fallen in love with him, that sense of the unknown. He stirred my scientific impulses; that might not sound terribly romantic, but it's the surest way to my heart. I autopsied that cat with kitchen implements, and the whole time all I could think was, if only Mulder could see me now... He would've gotten such a kick out of the whole thing, Leyla's young love and hero-worship and my makeshift feline post-mortem while I tried not to wake our son - Our son - Our son. Our son is gone now. I gave him up. It wasn't long after that visit from Leyla's boyfriend that I sent William off to a place I don't know about, to parents whose intentions I can only hope are as good as my own were in doing so. Every time a man shows up at my apartment when I'm wearing a robe, nothing good can come of it; I'll see dead people, get infected with an alien virus, soon meet up with the long-thought-dead half-brother of my lover who's come to use my son as revenge against his father. I was wearing a robe earlier tonight, before Mulder slid it off me, before we stopped using words because they bruised the air between us. It was only the fifth time we'd ever had sex, nearly two years since the last time, and even though I'm in a motel in Roswell, New Mexico, I might as well be home. He fell asleep shortly afterward, and I've been listening to his even breathing and heartbeat while I guard against the dark. He was awake for the whole drive from DC; I've had my share of naps en route. When I wasn't dozing, I commanded him to pull over and let me drive. He refused, but he did pull over and kiss me enough to keep himself awake for another interval. We've both missed each other. The sun is starting to rise over Roswell, and I think I should take a shower and pack up; we've got to get back on the road early, and John and Monica will probably try to contact us before we leave. It's a long day ahead, and I should get dressed. * * * * * * * E N D * * * * * * * Notes: Well, The Charc-fic That Ate DC is finally done. With it, perhaps, my fic career. I said that when I wrote the “Multiverse” series a year and a half ago, and here I am now; what's the difference? “Multiverse” and “A Feynman Diagram” helped give me closure, but none of those stories were from Scully's perspective. Scully is why I started watching this show and she's why I kept watching this show, and I couldn't let it rest until I'd let her speak. So, Scully, this one's for you. It's for some others, as well: The fabulous RetroX team, Lilydale, Mara, and everyone who participates in the discussions or even just reads what I blabber on about every week. Funky Poaching has been a great way for me to get more into what the Charc really means, and I appreciate so much the opportunity to rant about pleated pants and ribbed shirts for an audience. Lilydale gets a second shout-out, for giving this a once-over and figuring out what the hell was wrong with it . I can't thank you enough for giving me the perspective I needed to finish this thing. fran, for giving me a home on the web. She is the coolest and I adore her for making such a badass site out of nothing but the goodness and coolness of her heart . They're not reading this, but thanks to CC, VG, Shiban (I got nothin' but love for Shibes), DD, RP, and most of all GA, for bringing us these fabulous characters. Writing this story was a process that involved a lot of letting go, some of which is readily evident – I recently found out that I'm very lactose intolerant, so the loss of ice cream found its way in here. More than that, though, I spent a good eight years (for that is how long I watched the show with focus) really trying to be Scully. I wanted to go to med school for a number of reasons, and somehow they all got wrapped up in trying to embody this character, and it just wasn't working for me. So this story, saying goodbye to this great character, is also about saying goodbye to something that I once thought I wanted. Goodbye is a relative term, though. I've still got my DVDs, I've still got RetroX, I've got to see how “Lost Land” ends – this community is way too much fun to ever fully leave behind. And finally, the title: Didja get it? Didja? Didja? Yeah, okay, you totally did. It's been awesome. Rock on, y'all. ~suspect affiliations 7.13.04 Appendix: Scully's infamous red suit, “Ghost in the Machine”: http://xfphotos.fredfarm.com/season1/ghost/ighost026.jpg The white jacket with wings for a collar, “Red Museum”: http://xfphotos.fredfarm.com/season2/red_museum/cap057.jpg The double-breasted pinstripe of “Hey, I'm skinny again!”, “Grotesque”: http://xfphotos.fredfarm.com/season3/grotesque/cap418.jpg The gray sweater of S4-S5: http://xfphotos.fredfarm.com/season4/gethsemane/cap101.jpg The Big Gray Suit of S4-S5, in which Scully feels in control of her life, “Patient X”: http://xfphotos.fredfarm.com/season5/patientx/x-files526.jpg The White Shirt of Doom, “Milagro”: http://xfphotos.fredfarm.com/season6/milagro/cap386.jpg Scully's “Amor Fati” haircut, before and after: http://xfphotos.fredfarm.com/season7/amorfati/amorfati311.jpg http://xfphotos.fredfarm.com/season7/amorfati/amorfati347.jpg The apple green sweater of all things joyful, uh, “all things”: http://xfphotos.fredfarm.com/season7/allthings/cap025.jpg They sort of run out of screen grabs after that, but I think that's a nice happy place to stop, eh? Thanks for making it this far – hope you enjoyed the ride as much as I did.