Work Text:
So many things I had thought forgotten
Return to my mind with stranger pain:
Like letters that arrive addressed to someone
Who left the house so many years ago
- Philip Larkin
When she was six their father had been stationed at Naval Station Norfolk for a year while he trained for command of his first ship. The cramped housing on one of the busiest naval bases in the country had driven their mother to distraction, and faced with the prospect of entertaining four children under the age of ten for the whole summer in a house built for a family half the size, Margaret Scully put her foot down. An old farmhouse converted for vacation lets was procured on the edge of the Monongahela National Forest. The colonial house had a wraparound porch and white shutters that kept the sweltering West Virginia heat at bay, and after a summer in Alaska and two in Japan before that, the freedom of the house in Buffalo Lake had seemed like a hedonistic pleasure, even to her six year old self.
Something about the stillness of the air and the warm kiss of the sun on their skin soothed the fractious tempers of the Scully children, and for those six long weeks they got along in a way that they never did again. All too soon they were grown and heading off into the world in different directions, coming together only for the occasional Christmas.
"Wait for me, Missy!" She cried as she hurried down the creaky steps of the porch after her sister, messy ponytail bouncing behind her and one knee poking through the hole in her green dungarees where she'd fallen off Bill's bike the other day.
Her cherished Raggedy Ann doll was tucked tightly under her right arm and she had to run to catch Melissa up. Grasping her sister's hand in hers, they ran through the long grass until they reached the rocky bank of the lake. Butterflies and dandelion flowers fluttered in their wake and on the way back they would try to retrace their steps through the trampled grass.
The water level was low that year, following a summer of blistering sunshine and little rain. On the north eastern bank stood a gnarled oak tree, which looked out of place amongst the hemlock as it cast long shadows in the afternoon sun. Thirty feet tall, one of its branches stretched out at a right angle to the trunk, eight or nine feet off the ground. Leaving Raggedy Ann at the foot of the tree, they climbed the lower branches until they could scramble onto the perpendicular limb, hooking their feet through a deformed crevice. The effort of the climb left their lungs burning and as they hung upside down, the rushing blood in their ears drowned out the silence of the lake, until all they could hear was the steady beat of their own pulses. When they finally righted themselves, giddy and gasping for breath, their cheeks were ruddy and they had to hold onto the scratchy, scorched bark of the tree for balance.
In those quiet moments, as the blood settled in their bodies and the only sound was the occasional shriek of a bald eagle, they both felt untouchable.
"Scully?..... Scully?"
Mulder's tone is pinched and anxious when she tunes back in and she realizes he's been calling her for a while. Blinking away the memory of a childhood so long ago, her nose burns with the smell of hemlock and when she finally answers him, her voice is rusty.
"I'm coming," she drags her gaze away from a photograph of her and Missy on the porch of the house in Buffalo Lake and clears her throat. In the mirror, her reflection is harsh and unforgiving and the woman who stares back at her has eyes black with reproach.
Mulder appears behind her and their eyes lock in the mirror. His face is drawn and the black suit, which a few weeks ago had fitted so well, hangs off his frame. It's been a hard month for him too but his brown eyes soften as he stares at her and a wave of compassion knits his eyebrows together.
The weight of his sympathy is almost too much to bear and she wants to tell him that she doesn't deserve it; that Melissa is dead because of her. But the words are stuck in her throat and she knows he would deny them anyway. She feels false under his gaze and she shrugs into her blazer and lets her eyes drop away guiltily. Buttoning the soft, black wool and smoothing her collar down, her attention wanders once again to the over-exposed photograph on her bureau. How different life seemed then, when the days seemed never ending and the warm sun bred freckles across their noses.
A heavy hand on her shoulder pierces her trance and Mulder's warm fingers trail up her neck and cup her cheek. His touch feels hot against her ice-cold skin and she clamps her jaw closed against unbidden tears, almost biting her tongue. She remembers when he did the same thing after her father died and her eyes flutter against threatening tears.
Pulling her to him he presses uncoordinated kisses against her forehead and the corner of her mouth and he buries his head in the crook of her neck. "It's not your fault," he mumbles, his breath stirring the sensitive skin behind her ear, and God, but she wants to believe him.
**
At the graveside her eyes still burn from tears unshed and she breathes slowly through her nose in a shallow whisper to keep the sob from escaping her aching throat.
To her left, Bill's wife stands alone dabbing her eyes with a tissue, her husband stuck somewhere in the South Pacific, cursing the FBI and probably his sister, for bringing this on their family. Ironically, Tara was born not a week before her in the same hospital in San Diego; and though Bill's wife is kind and easy-going, and lacks her husband's judgmental streak, she couldn't be more different from her sister-in-law.
Across from them, her brother Charles embraces their mother as she weeps into a handkerchief, her narrow shoulders shaking with grief. His own cheeks are tacky and his wife, Sara, rubs her hand in circles on his back. He catches her eye over the top of their mother's head and his watery blue eyes remind her of Melissa. His lips are a tight line as he tries to smile at her.
He'd told her yesterday, as they stood in their mother's kitchen drinking coffee laced with brandy, that she shouldn't blame herself. Sweet Charlie, everybody's friend, with his eyes like Melissa and his left eyebrow bisected by a scar from falling off the oak tree that summer at Buffalo Lake. She nods her head at him and feels tears sloshing around her eyes.
Mulder's runs his hand up and down her arm and she can feel the warmth of his arm against her back. Not usually tactile, today it's felt as though he's been touching her constantly. From the gentle pressure of his hand on her arm now to the clasp of his fingers around hers in the church, he has tried to reassure her with his touch.
When the rest of her family filed down the aisle to take communion, and her mother slid past them, red- rimmed eyes regarding her with a disappointed look, Mulder stayed silent. But his hand found hers knotted together in her lap and he dovetailed their fingers, squeezing her hand in reassurance. He didn't let go through the rest of the service, or when they stepped from the shadows of St Michael's into the chilly September sun, half blinded by white cloud. He didn't let go as they slid into the back of a black limousine or as they watched the polished walnut coffin sink beneath the dirt, or when her mother's sob cracked the silence like a gunshot and she couldn't stop herself from flinching.
And now his hand grips her shoulder and he cups her cheek in his hand like he did this morning and forces her to look at him. His brow is furrowed above liquid grey eyes and as she stares into them she realizes that he understands. He knows the grief of losing a sibling and the desperate ice-cold grip of self-hatred that seizes your heart when you know that you're the one responsible. And he looks at her now with love in his eyes and she feels the dam inside her flex. Her chin wavers and a tear seeps from the corner of her eye and she sucks in a breath to get control of herself but it's too late, she's gone, sucked beneath the swell of emotions that she's been fighting for days.
Mulder pulls her to him and she sinks against his chest, a silent sob wrenched from her throat as his long arms envelop her and he presses his lips to the top of her head.
"It's ok," he murmurs into her hair, tears spilling onto his own cheeks, as he kisses the hair by her ear, "It's ok."
But even as his arms encircle her and the warm, woodsy scent of his aftershave fills her nose, and the heat from his body begins to penetrate the ice-cold chill she's felt for days, she can't help but fear it will never be ok again.