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‘Mmm…Mul’er...mmmm… that’s nice…’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah,’ her eyes were still closed from sleep as she softened further into his touch. She inhaled deeply, the smell of him she still couldn’t get used to waking up to, even after all these years.
And then her body stiffened.
She sniffed again.
‘Mulder? Mulder!’ All the sleepy bliss had left her voice, being replaced in force with panic. ‘Mulder, there’s something burning!’
He took his nose from where it was buried in her hair, halting his ministrations, and sniffed at the air. ‘Shit.’
They were out of bed in seconds, grabbing robes in tandem: they had never for a moment lost their synchronicity. A clatter from the kitchen had Scully bounding down the stairs whilst Mulder burst into Melissa’s room. ‘Jackson?! Melissa?!’
‘Yeah?’ Scully spun around, just as she went to hammer on Jackson’s door. Her children grinned at her from the kitchen, innocent faces surrounded by a haze of smoke.
Her eyes flicked to the clock on the wall: half seven on a Sunday. ‘What the Hell is going on?!’
‘We burnt the toast.’
‘You burnt the…what? I-‘
A tumble, thud, yell and groan interrupted her as Mulder crashed down the stairs. ‘Melissa…not in bed!’ He gasped, drawing a smoky breath into his winded lungs.
‘Mulder…’ she pointed to the two young offenders. ‘They burnt the toast.’
‘But we did make pancakes that didn’t burn,’ Jackson stated, lifting his sister down from where she was perched on the countertop next to the stove, face sticky with what looked like strawberry jam.
He passed her something from the side and she ran over to her parents, barrelling into Scully with outstretched arms. ‘Happy Mama’s day!’ She plastered her mother’s face in sweet strawberry kisses as she was lifted up. ‘Flowers!’ Her chubby fingers were wrapped around a small bundle of wildflowers – bluebells and cornflowers and camomile and pink poppies - clearly collected from the meadow outside. Jackson seemed to have gathered them with a ribbon for her. ‘I pick them!’
‘You did? Oh, they’re beautiful, Baby. Thank you.’
‘An’ we make pancakes!’
‘Pancakes?! Can you take me?’
‘Yeah!’ Lissie grabbed her mother’s hand as she was placed down, reaching over to clasp her father’s hand, too, as he stood up from the bottom of the stairs and rubbed his head, and dragged the pair of them over to the kitchen table, sitting them down in their usual opposite seats. A vase in the centre of table held another bouquet, one from a florist; daylilies the colour of her hair, sunflowers and pink gerberas brightening the room. Jackson set down a serving plate stacked full of pancakes, and a tray of various toppings, then a jug of orange juice and a jar of water for the wildflowers.
‘Did you know about this?’ Scully asked Mulder, and he threw his hands up in surrender, shaking his head with a laugh.
‘This is all them. I had no idea. If I did I would have stopped them burning the toast.’
‘Hey, we tried, okay?’
‘And you did wonderfully, thank you,’ she smiled, pressing a kiss to her son’s cheek as he walked past her to sit next to Mulder, opposite Melissa.
Breakfast past lazily in a haze of laughter and golden sunshine, sticky fingers, dabs of Nutella on the nose. Plates left with only crumbs and smears of syrup, Lissie babbling away with an enrapturing story of each of the flowers she picked and why, Scully set her mind on what they would be doing with the day. ‘Lissie, Baby, Mama’s going to have a shower, and whilst I’m doing that, do you think you could help Daddy pick out a pretty dress for you to wear?’
‘Okay,’ the little girl nodded, slipping down from the table and taking her father’s hand, all thought of the flowers gone from her mind. ‘Come on, Daddy.’
‘Any specific one in mind?’ He asked quietly as he was led past her.
‘The button-up denim one with the lace trim? Or the pinstripes with the flower embroidery. Whichever she prefers.’ He nodded and let their daughter drag him upstairs, already chattering about her favourite dresses. ‘Thank you for breakfast, and the flowers.’
‘No problem. Thank you for…well…everything.’
She smiled, taking Jackson’s hand across the table. ‘Can you wear something smart today? A button-down and some dark jeans or something?’
‘Sure. We going somewhere?’
Scully took a moment to answer, swallowing thickly before she did. ‘Somewhere, yes.’
She’d been doing it for years, always undertaking the trip alone. Not even Mulder was permitted to come usually. The past few years she had been going later, at night, after the day had been spent with Jackson and Melissa. This year, though, she wanted them with her. The children had never been to the cemetery. She’d argued that Melissa was too young and that Jackson would want explanations about two of the three headstones, explanations she wasn’t ready to give. She hadn’t been ready to give, anyway. She was ready now, though.
They had piled into the car, each in smart clothing; dresses for the girls and button-downs for the guys. Mulder drove; it gave her time to look out of the window, plan what she’d say. A stop at the florists on the way, the same florist she had been going to for the last decade and a bit. Picking up an order of three bouquets she had put in the month before: one yellow, one dusty pink, one white.
When they parked up, the cemetery not busy but by no means empty, Scully slipped one hand into her youngest’s and handed a bouquet each to Mulder and Jackson to carry, taking the white one for herself. Melissa clutched another buddle of wildflowers in her other fist, one that her mother had helped her pick before they’d climbed into the car.
‘Where are we, Mama?’
‘We’re here to say hello to some very special people.’
‘Do I know them?’
‘No, Baby, you don’t. But I do, and Daddy does.’
‘Does Jack-Jack?’
‘No, Baby. That’s why we’re here – so you two can say hello.’
They walked in a line, four abreast, along the main gravel pathway, before turning off into one of the rows of headstones.
‘What are all the…thingys?’
‘These?’ Mulder asked, pointing at a grave marker. ‘They’re special things, they’re like homes for the people we’re going to talk to.’
‘They’re small.’
‘But the people can be any size.’ Alert little eyes started roving everywhere, searching for these people her father was talking about. ‘You can’t always see them, Honey. They’re special people.’
They halted at three headstones just as Lissie was going to ask another question, and Mulder touched his finger to his lips, silencing her. She perceived the quiet mood of the grownups around her, then, and stifled her questions.
Scully opened and closed her mouth three times in an attempt to figure out where to start, before Mulder cut in, ‘hi, Maggie. Thought we’d come say hello, for Mother’s Day. Scully’s got some people for you to meet. Well, I guess you’ve met one of them already, technically, a long time ago, but you get to meet him all grown up now.’
‘Mom, this is Jackson. You knew him as William. You’d be so proud of how he’s grown up. He came back, just like you said he would. I guess our prayers were answered.’ She had never really spoken to headstones until Mulder had encouraged her to. Even then, it took a while, and she still preferred it when she was alone. ‘And my other prayers were answered, too. This is Melissa. Melissa Samantha. You’d love her.’
‘Mama, who you talking to?’
‘I’m talking to your grandma. The memory of her, anyway.’ Grandmas were things that had been discussed with photographs, only by stating that Lissie didn’t have any grandparents anymore, but they would have loved her if they had met her.
‘Can she hear me?’
Scully crouched down to her daughter’s eye-level. ‘Well, Daddy believes so, and I think that, in some ways, the people who aren’t here with us anymore will always have a connection to us, whether they can actually hear us they always know that we’re okay, here in our hearts,’ she tapped Melissa’s heart, then her nose. ‘Do you want to talk to her? You don’t have to if you don’t want to.’
‘I don’t know what.’
‘That’s okay,’ she smiled, pressing a kiss to a permanently sticky cheek. ‘You don’t have to say anything, or you can tell her that you love her, or you can just think it if you want. It’s up to you.’
‘Okay.’
‘Okay,’ Scully winked, pressing another kiss to her little girl’s cheek before taking the yellow flowers from Mulder and placing them on her mother’s grave. She rested a hand on the cold granite for a moment, saying many other things in her mind, conversing silently with the memory of her mother, feeling the warmth of Maggie Scully’s hand in her hair and the smell of her perfume on the wind. She breathed, then moved onto the second of the three graves. ‘Hey, Missy. I’m guessing you heard all that. You’d have been a great aunt, you know. I can just see you making pillow forts and reading their tea leaves.’ She held her hand out to Melissa and she wandered over, tucking herself into her mother’s embrace and looking at the grave. ‘This is your Aunt Melissa, who you were named after. She wasn’t a mama, but she still deserves some flowers, what do you think?’ Lissie nodded, and Scully looked up at her son. ‘You want to lay them down?’
‘Oh, I…I don’t know…I didn’t…’
‘She’d have loved you. I can see her taking you to get your first tattoo and dying your hair for you and buying you your first leather jacket. Not that you are ever getting a tattoo,’ knowing that he had mentioned, briefly in conversation that he was thinking about getting a tattoo.
‘You have tattoos.’
‘I know.’
‘What if it was discreet?’
She looked at him. ‘Not a conversation for today.’
He nodded and smiled at her before laying down the dusty pink calla lilies and roses.
One last look at her sister’s gravestone and she moved on to the last one. The one with the smallest inscription. The shortest gap between years. The stone itself was smaller than the other two. Delicate flower carvings wreathed the name and age. ‘Mulder…?’
‘Sure,’ he didn’t need her to articulate what she needed; he knew. ‘Hey, shall we go for a walk?’ Hand held out to Melissa, meaningful look sent to Jackson. They both nodded, the younger of the two handing her mother the wildflowers before skipping over to Mulder and slipping her hand into his. He pressed a hand to Scully’s shoulder and a kiss to the top of her head before guiding their two offspring away, at a slow stroll.
‘How did Melissa die?’
‘She was killed. They thought she was Scully and they shot her. It destroyed your mom.’
‘I can imagine. Did they look alike, then?’
Mulder shook his head as he thought back. ‘Not particularly. She had the Scully hair, same as Scully and your uncle Charlie. And she smiled kind of like your mom, too, though it was more of a free, easy smile. If she liked you, she wouldn’t stop smiling. But other than that, they were pretty different. It was just that she had let herself into Scully’s apartment. From what I understand, she had gone to Scully’s and Scully wanted to meet at Melissa’s instead. Scully had been diverted and missed her sister. They’d been waiting in her apartment for her, and shot Melissa in the dark instead.’
They walked on, winding their way around the paths, nodding solemnly to the few other families scattered around the place.
‘Who’s Emily?’
Mulder, deciding that this was a conversation he really needed to be holding his daughter in his arms for, swung her up as he looked at Jackson. ‘You know about Scully’s abduction?’
‘Yeah, she went missing, and she came back with these implant things, and she got cancer and couldn’t have kids. Which, by the way, I still don't quite understand.'
He nodded, ‘right, well, just after her cancer went into remission she and her mom went to California to spend Christmas with her brother and his wife, your Uncle Bill and Auntie Tara. While she was there, she got a phone call, telling her that someone needed her help – she thought it was Melissa calling, despite Melissa being dead. She had a trace run, and ended up being led to a house with a little girl in – her adoptive mother had just been killed. Several other things happened, the little girl’s father was murdered too. Scully recognised the girl, though. Was certain she was Melissa’s daughter.’
‘But, she just said…’
‘She was certain she was Melissa’s daughter. She looked like her, had the same smile. Was convinced. She sent Emily, the little girl’s, DNA back to D.C. expecting them to be a match. And they were, just not to Melissa’s. Emily was hers.’
‘Wait, I’m confused. So, Emily was Scully’s daughter? How do you not know…? I don’t…?’
Mulder looked at him. ‘How do you think Scully felt? To suddenly find out you have a daughter when you have never been pregnant and you have just been told you were unable to conceive and carry a child? Her eggs had been harvested and used to create Emily. Born to a surrogate mother, they’d messed with her DNA, she was an experiment. And she was very, very sick. Dying. It was why her adoptive parents had been killed, they wanted to stop the treatments, the experiments masquerading as treatments. Scully tried to adopt her, but the courts wouldn’t let her. Didn’t think she’d be a fit enough mother,’ the scorn and disgust in Mulder’s voice were evident as he spat the words out, and Jackson didn’t think he had ever heard his father speak with that tone of voice. ‘So, they removed her rights to make medical decisions and she sat and watched as this little girl she had fallen in love with died. Stayed by her side the entire time, barely ate, barely slept, just held this fragile little body as she faded away. If that’s not being a good mother, I don’t know what is.’ He shook his head, wiping his eyes on his shoulder. ‘She’s lost a lot, your mom. And she’s still tough as nails.’
‘There aren’t any pictures of her, of Emily.’
‘I think there’s one in a photo album of Maggie’s, somewhere. Actually, there should be two, one of Emily before we knew her and one of Em and Scully together at the children’s home. She’d be twenty-six this year.’ It seemed strange to think, this little girl he still thought of with a shy smile and the eyes of her mother, colouring a potato on the floor surrounded by crayons; she would have finished college by now, would have a job doing lord knows what, maybe have a boyfriend or girlfriend who came over for dinner on Friday nights. This girl who never aged in his memory, who would always be three years old. ‘She was a good kid – quiet and shy, but she had this smile: Scully said it reminded her of Melissa, but I could see so much of Scully in it.’
‘Do you…think if Emily had survived you would have still gotten together?’
It was a question he hadn’t thought about in many years, but that had plagued him often enough when he had thought about it. ‘I honestly don’t know. I like to think we would still have been friends, and that the inevitable would eventually have happened. When she first told me, when she called me up that New Year’s Eve to tell me that she had a daughter I…part of me was terrified that Scully would get hurt, knowing that it probably wasn’t going to end well – the people who created Emily definitely wouldn’t want Scully or myself around her, but part of me, a bigger part of me maybe, was terrified that I would get hurt. There was this other person, this child, that could give her so much that I couldn’t. At this point, we both knew she was infertile, though we didn’t know that the other knew. But I knew she wanted a family, and I knew I couldn’t give her that. Emily could. And at that time, I don’t think I was ready for a family – I was still dealing with the after-effects of my own family, of Samantha. I didn’t even own a bed, I mean, I was barely taking care of myself. I worried that because of that we’d drift apart; she’d spend more of her weekends at home with Emily than with me on the road, she’d stop doing fieldwork, eventually go back to a teaching position at Quantico, she’d stop accepting my late-night phone calls because she’d have had a long day taking care of a three-year-old and eventually I would have faded from her life completely.’
‘I doubt that would have happened. You were still friends, right?’
He shifted Melissa on his hip, noticing that she was quite happily watching the world go by and thankfully not paying attention to what was being said. ‘I think in hindsight I see it probably wouldn’t have happened, but I was insecure. I was mad about your mom, absolutely crazy for her, still am, but I didn’t think she felt anything like that for me; I was just this nerdy, dorky guy she had to put up with at work who dragged her across the country on dangerous wild goose chases. And she was…everything. Don’t forget, at this point, we hadn’t slept together; we’d come close a couple times, but one of us always backed off at the last minute, sure that whatever we felt wasn’t actually reciprocated. We’d never really talk; about anything, really. I mean, we talked, of course, we did, but never about our feelings. Maybe that was the 90s for you, though.’
‘Or you were both just emotionally underdeveloped?’
‘Or we were both just emotionally underdeveloped, yes,’ he chuckled. ‘Lissie’s almost the age Emily was when we met her. I think this year’s going to be hard on Scully.’
‘Does she look like Emily?’
‘No, she looks just like the photos of Scully when she was this age,’ he turned to the girl in his arms, pressing a kiss to her nose to get her attention. ‘You do, you look just like your mama.’
‘Oh, I don’t think that’s possible. She’s so much prettier than me,’ Scully had walked up behind them, slipping her hand over the back of Mulder’s shoulder and pressing a kiss to her daughter’s cheek.
‘You are both beautiful and I will hear no more on the subject,’ Mulder declared. ‘My queen, my princess and my prince.’
‘Does that make you the king?’
He shrugged, placing Melissa down when she started squirming. ‘Or maybe I’m just a pauper who lives at the base of the castle and worships the land you walk on?’
Scully raised her eyebrow at him. ‘So, in this world you’ve created, I, a queen, had, what? An affair with a pauper? Most queens don’t get away with children born out of wedlock.’
‘You do. Though, we could change that, if you wanted…?’
‘Mulder…’ she smiled indulgently at him, casting an eye-roll towards Jackson, making him chuckle before wandering slightly ahead of them to catch up with Melissa. ‘We don’t need to change anything. I’m happy as we are now, and I think you are too. We don’t need rings and white dresses.’
‘I’m happy if you are,’ he held his hand out for her to take, ‘but the offer’s always there if you want it.’
‘The offer’s been there for years, Mulder. Have you ever thought to consider that I just really like living in sin?’
He grinned, lascivious and oh-so-very Mulder, eyebrow waggle and everything. ‘I can make it even more sinful for you if you want.’
She smirked, lowering her voice. ‘Somehow, I think God stopped looking for saints in our bedroom years ago.’
‘Well, you call to Him often enough.’
‘Hmmm…’ she considered this. ‘Maybe I’m just making sure He knows how grateful I am for you.’
They walked on, keeping their fingers locked together and their children in their eye-line ten paces ahead as they reached the car, having circuited the cemetery to the parking lot. Mulder paused before they joined their kids, using their still connected hands and the momentum of his stopping to pull Scully around into his chest. He tucked a tendril of hair behind her ear and rubbed a thumb along her cheekbone as he stared into her eyes, his face a mask of seriousness. ‘You know I’m grateful for you too, don’t you Scully.’
She grinned, covering his hand with her smaller one and pressing it into her cheek. A slow nod and a soft kiss brushed against his lips. ‘Eternally.’