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I’m gonna prequel this with: Figuring out a canon-compliant timeline when canon consists of a freaking 12-month pregnancy is a nightmare very specific to this show…
“I can’t do this. I can’t do this.”
“Breathe, Dana! The only thing you need to do right now is breathe!”
Scully tried hard but she only managed more small gasps before her stomach turned again. Her throat burned, her eyes watered and she felt feverish as she clung to the toilet bowl. A gentle hand rubbed down her back until it eventually disappeared to flush the toilet and then pressed a cold washcloth against her forehead.
“You’re gonna be okay. Come, sit back.”
She was guided to move back from the toilet and instead rest her back against the tub, her legs stretched out long. As soon as she’d settled, the cloth was back at her forehead and she weakly reached up to hold it there herself.
“I can’t do this anymore, Monica. I can’t-“, Scully whimpered.
Monica settled down next to her and snuck her arm behind her back and around her waist. Scully leaned into her side unashamed, seeking out her warmth and resting her head against her friend’s shoulder. She was so far past pretending she was fine. In the past four weeks Monica had seen her screaming, yelling, sobbing, fainting, vomiting and on one unfortunate instance, peeing herself, and all of that in every possible state of undress. Scully simply didn’t care anymore. When Monica had been there the night after Mulder’s funeral, Scully’s walls had come crashing down.
She had sent Skinner home that day after he’d dropped her off; her mom, too when she’d come around a little later. Monica had been at the door in the early evening and she’d tried to send her home as well, only the brunette wouldn’t have any of it. Scully had yelled at her, but she had also spent the entire day in a cycle of endless crying, throwing up due to the exhaustion of it, passing out for a couple of hours in consequence and waking up to start all over again so she had barely been able to keep upright. And so Monica had swooped into her apartment, feeding her soup and herbal tea, holding her hair and tucking blankets around her shoulders while Scully fell apart.
After that first night, she had given up rebuilding her walls. She just hadn’t had any fight left in her to pick up the pieces of herself alone. She’d done that time and time again: after her abduction, after Donnie Pfaster, after Emily and her cancer but as she’d sat on her bathroom floor the morning after the funeral, feeling like surely any minute now her heart would just stop beating from the sheer pain of it, she’d done the one thing that used to scare her senseless and asked for help. And Monica had been there and she had stayed.
So once again on her bathroom floor, Scully curled as close as she could into Monica’s side, threading her arms around the brunette’s torso, folding her knees over her thighs and letting her now-familiar warmth soothe her aching body. And ache it did. Every single part of her body hurt. She was 28 weeks pregnant- this was supposed to be the easy trimester, the one without all the uncomfortable symptoms. But Scully couldn't remember a single moment she hadn't hurt since they'd found Mulder dead four weeks and three days ago. Her pregnancy symptoms were out of control, her broken heart manifesting in all sorts of physical symptoms and all of it melted together into one huge ball of misery and pain. More than once a quiet voice from second-year med school had chirped the definition of ‘broken-heart syndrome’ in her ear.
Monica remained silent as they sat there, but continued stroking warm hands over Scully’s back while she gathered her thoughts and emotions. Scully was grateful for the quiet. She’d heard too many well-meaning words already. They were precisely the reason why she found herself cutting contact with her mother increasingly short. She was pregnant and alone and scared and in pain and she could not hear one more line about how “things will work themselves out eventually.”
“Dana, let's get up, your back’s gonna get sore,” Monica finally said softly, nudging at her shoulder.
“My back’s already sore,” Scully replied, refusing to move her face from where it was nuzzled into Monica’s neck. She was finally warming up, feeling a little less like dying than 15 minutes ago and she didn’t want to move and disturb the tacit peace.
“Please. I’ll make you a hot water bottle and some tea.”
“I’m pregnant, not sick,” Scully murmured without much conviction.
“You’re hurting and I want you to feel better. Come on.”
Monica gently pushed at her shoulders and reluctantly Scully moved and let herself be pulled up.
“Brush your teeth, I’ll be in the kitchen.”
Scully sighed and stepped toward the sink. Brushing the acid taste from her mouth, she locked eyes with her reflection and couldn’t help but wonder where in heaven and hell the woman staring back at her was headed. Untethered; that’s how she felt. After the initial shock, after the first few awful days, what made everything so much worse was that she was pregnant and where do you even go from there? This was never in any plan. This pregnancy had seemed impossible, but losing Mulder? No matter how many times she had come close, she’d never considered it an actual possibility. His unfaltering presence by her side had become so inherent. And yet here she was.
Scully spat the toothpaste from her mouth, ran some water over her face and buried it in a towel so she didn’t have to look at her reflection any longer. She trudged into the kitchen and plopped down on one of the wooden chairs, accepting the steaming mug pushed towards her and the hot water bottle placed between her back and the backrest. When Monica settled opposite her with her own cup of tea, Scully eventually looked up and managed a small smile.
“Thank you.”
She didn’t say it often enough, Scully was well aware, but she tried. Despite the tragedy that had sparked it, she really treasured this friendship that had developed between them. It had been far too long since she had anything even remotely like it.
“I’m glad I can help- even if just a little,” Monica smiled back.
“You’re doing so much more than ‘just a little’.”
Monica shrugged but accepted Scully’s words quietly. For a few moments, they just sat and drank their tea. The warmth of the drink and the hot water bottle at her back seeping into Scully eased some of the tension her body had come to carry everywhere. Almost unconsciously, Scully’s left hand came to rest on the swell of her belly and as if her baby knew she felt a tiny movement. It didn’t hurt, instead it made her smile wistfully.
She was having a little boy. A tiny little miracle boy who would never get to meet his dad. Another wave of sadness rolled over her and Scully bit her lip to keep from crying again. She was supposed to be happy! Excited. Grateful. Instead, she was grieving, uncomfortable in her body, constantly in pain and she felt guilty for not appropriately enjoying the advent of her child. But as hard as she tried, the pain of losing Mulder kept overshadowing the fleeting moments of happiness she had when she felt tiny kicks like this or when she caught her profile in the mirror just right and it put a smile on her lips. Maybe that was all she was going to get from now on, though. Fleeting moments amongst a sea of sadness.
If only Mulder were here.
“Dana?”
Monica’s voice came through to Scully’s ears and by the questioning gaze directed at her, she must’ve been addressed a couple of times already.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?” She closed both of her hands around her rapidly cooling mug again and took another sip of tea to break away from her thoughts.
“I asked what you were thinking,” Monica repeated, “you looked a million miles away.”
Scully let out a dry laugh that sounded a whole lot more sarcastic than she had intended.
“Fleeting moments…” she whispered, more to herself than to Monica, before lifting her gaze to meet her friend’s. Monica’s expression showed both confusion and understanding at the same time and it was what Scully had come to appreciate the most about the other woman. Monica always took what people said seriously. Never once had she witnessed her outright rejecting anyone’s words or experience. Before she came to any kind of judgment, she viewed them from the other person’s standpoint and tried to realign them with her own beliefs. In a way, it made her the perfect agent to work on the X-Files.
“Fleeting moments?” she now queried.
Scully nodded slowly, tracing the rim of her mug with a finger, sighing deeply.
“Yeah. Are they all I’m gonna get from now on? Fleeting moments of calm between the madness and chaos and pain of it all.” She sighed and lifted her eyes to meet Monica’s.
“I feel like I don’t appreciate this pregnancy enough. I’ve wished for it for so long, but now? I just- I can’t enjoy any of it when I know that Mulder won’t be here to meet our son.”
She had tried so hard to fight them back, but new tears were forming in her eyes and finding their way down her cheeks. She brushed at them in frustration, breathing deeply in an attempt to calm herself. She knew all of this crying, the stress and the vomiting and everything wasn’t good for the baby, but what was she supposed to do when the love of her life had died?
Monica moved to sit on the chair next to her and rubbed a comforting hand over her upper back until Scully managed to get the tears under control.
“Maybe it’s all any of us get,” Monica said softly, offering her a tissue. Drying her cheeks and blowing her nose, she turned to meet Monica’s forest brown eyes again.
“What?”
“Fleeting moments of happiness,” she clarified, “maybe they’re all any of us get.”
Scully’s throat still hurt and the skin under her eyes burned from all the tears she’d shed and Monica’s words didn’t make a whole lot of sense to her right now. Her face must’ve been rather expressively communicating that because Monica bit her lip and shook her head for a moment- a nervous habit, Scully had observed.
“I just mean, happiness never is a permanent state, is it? Contentment maybe, but not happiness. And wouldn’t that be creepy, too? Someone always being happy? What I’m trying to say is, I guess, treasure these moments when they happen and don’t feel guilty when they don’t. They’re just as real as your pain is and just as valid. And so maybe they’re few and far-between now, but that doesn’t mean it’ll be like this forever. And just the same, the pain you’re feeling now is real, but it won’t feel like that forever.”
Intense but warm brown eyes held Scully’s gaze, who sniffled into her tissue. It’s all just moments that don’t last forever, both happiness and pain. Something about that resonated deeply with Scully and fell over her frayed nerves like a calming blanket.
“Thanks,” she whispered quietly, “I- that- it’s comforting.”
Monica smiled softly at her and reached for her hand in her lap drawing gentle shapes into her skin.
“You’re not a bad person or a bad mother, Dana, just because you’re hurting while you happen to be pregnant. You’re your own person first and it’s okay to feel all the things, even those that you don’t want to.”
Scully bit her lip hard. This time, however, she decidedly swallowed the tears down and instead pushed herself to her feet and pulled Monica up with her so she could hug her tight. Hiding her face in soft brown curls she was sure a few tears still managed to sneak down her cheeks.
“How do you always seem to find the right words at the right time?” she only half-jokingly mumbled into Monica’s hair.
Monica’s hand came to rest on her lower back, and she felt her chuckle ever so slightly.
“It’s hit and miss most of the time,” Monica replied, her voice clear and honest, “I do my best.”
Scully drew back and when they locked eyes again, for the first time today she felt somewhat in balance with her emotions.
“You’re doing amazing, Monica. I don’t know what I would’ve done without you these past few weeks. Thank you for being here.”
It was that exact time a distinct kick stole her breath and had her clutching her belly, folding over forward ever so slightly.
“Ouch,” Scully yelped and rubbed at the right lower side of her belly, “Someone wanted to weigh in on this conversation,” she laughed once the pain had subsided. As if to apologize she felt her baby boy move a lot less vigorously now beneath her hand. She searched Monica’s eyes again, before reaching for her hand and placing it on her belly.
The way Monica’s face lit up when she felt the baby move made Scully smile widely.
“Wow,” the taller woman whispered and Scully nodded.
“Right?”
“You’re going to be an amazing mom, Dana,” Monica said earnestly and let her thumb gently caress the spot where her hand rested.
Scully took a deep breath and decided to smile instead of cry, accepting Monica’s words for what they were. She was scared of the future and of being a single parent. Terrified, actually. But she wasn’t all alone. Monica was here. And so was her mom, she knew, who had been calling daily even though she had been treating her undeservingly rude. John, too, would come to help at a moment’s call, the loyal partner and, yes, friend that he was. Even Skinner had been checking in on her. He’d done it under the guise of having to keep up with filing the paperwork in her absence, but she knew he cared about her beyond the papers. And, Scully almost laughed at the memory now, even the Lone Gunmen had been there to help: showing up at her door, awkwardly asking what she wanted to do with Mulder’s apartment and offering to take care of everything.
She wasn’t alone and neither was her son. They would be okay. And so maybe the pain of losing Mulder would never completely fade, but it would be there for moments that came and went- eventually.
She would be okay.