Blinded by White Light (5/6)
FANDOM: X-Files
SUMMARY: What are we, but the sum of our memories?
RATING: NC-17
PAIRINGS: Mulder/Scully, Mulder/other, Scully/other
DISCLAIMER: These characters are the creation of CC and company. I have borrowed a few elements of the setting from Marge Piercy's novel He, She and It. She freely admits that she borrowed from William Gibson, so I figure it's all up for grabs.
WORD COUNT: 49,000
DATE POSTED: November 1999
Later, Dana would be unable to recall much of the trip to the Emergency Clinic in a taxi. She only had fleeting images of pressing a wad of tissues to her nose and trying to breathe evenly through the throbbing pain. She couldn't even remember John and Julia being in the car with her, or the route they took.
Things became clearer when they reached the clinic. The waiting room was mostly empty but the triage nurse told her, after he gave her a brief exam, that the wait might be a long one. "I'm sorry," he said, shrugging his broad shoulders apologetically, "we're short-staffed tonight and we have a heart attack, a burn case and a drug overdose."
They settled in their seats, John laying a sleeping Julia down across two chairs, her small face buried in a pillow the nurse had given them. It was just after four in the morning and John hadn't wanted to wake any of their friends to watch Julia.
Dana felt fairly foolish, sitting in the clinic in her pajamas, with a jacket thrown over them. She formed the tissues into a ball in her hand. The bleeding had stopped. It hadn't been a heavy gush of blood from her nose, just a slow trickle most of the way to the clinic.
She didn't know why this nosebleed filled her with a creeping sense of terror. She was a doctor, used to seeing blood all the time. Granted, she was a researcher, not involved in the primary care of patients, but she could remember a time when she'd done forensic pathology, cutting into the dead without a second thought.
The pain in her temples had finally faded somewhat, enough that she could think coherently again. Even though the waiting room was designed to be as cheerful as possible, with fish tanks built into the walls, comfortable chairs of plum and royal blue and a shelf of toys for children, Dana found it depressing. There was an elderly couple in the corner, heads together and whispering in desperate tones. A moan of pain echoed from down the hall and the room smelled of hospital disinfectant.
John excused himself and went to make a phone call, no doubt expecting a long morning at the clinic and making plans for Julia and rearranging early meetings via Messenger.
She wondered if it had hit John yet that this was where she'd been taken for her two miscarriages. Both times she'd been at work and had suddenly started hemorrhaging, both times brought there by an ambulance and rushed to a cubicle only to be told by the doctor that it was too late-the baby could not be saved. Dana reached over and stroked Julia's fine hair, her survivor, the one who'd hung on long enough to emerge bright pink and screaming at the indignity of being forced into the cold, bright world of the birthing room.
It was out of these glass doors that an orderly had wheeled her to a waiting cab after her second miscarriage, John at her side. Pale and still weak, she'd silently sat in the car and stared out the window, feeling crushed by her failure to hang onto this baby, too.
John had patted her hand and smiled at her. "It'll be okay, Dana. We'll just have to try again."
She'd shuddered, then, restraining herself from screaming at him. Try again? She wasn't going to do this again, wasn't going to lie on another table for a D&C, numbed with sedatives while the resident OB-GYN scraped the rest of her child from her uterus.
Never again.
Six months later, they went to the Fertility Clinic for another round of IVF.
"Dana Scully?"
She looked up to see Rebecca Haugen, the Emergency doctor who'd seen her for both miscarriages, the one who'd had to gently break the bad news to her. She wondered if the doctor would remember her.
She did. "Fancy meeting you here," the short, heavyset doctor said. "I understand you're having a bad migraine."
"Yes," Dana said, standing a little too quickly, which made her nearly black out.
"Careful," Rebecca said, taking her arm.
John returned and sat next to Julia, giving Dana a little farewell wave.
"She's a gorgeous girl," Rebecca said with a smile. "I'm glad it worked out for you."
In the examining room, the doctor looked at Dana's records on her computer and then gave her a quick but thorough exam, catching up on her recent medical history. "What did you eat yesterday?" she asked.
Dana struggled to remember. "I had some toast in the morning and blueberry yogurt. No lunch; I was working and forgot to eat."
"And what did you have to drink?"
"Um...let me see...a cup of English Breakfast tea in the morning and then some coffee."
The doctor's dark eyebrows rose. "How much coffee?"
"I'm not sure." Dana shrugged, unable to remember how much her office carafe held. "Four, five cups, I think."
"Dana," Rebecca said with a sigh, "you're a doctor, you should know better. With your history of migraines, you can't have more than a cup or two a day, and then only if you're eating properly."
"I've been busy lately; I needed the energy."
"Well, your health has to take top priority. Now, you say your Migranex inhaler didn't help much this time?"
Dana shook her head. "I had two doses, but the pain was nearly constant, even after I took them. I got sleepy, but my head still hurt."
"Resistance to Migranex has been noted in a few journals. There's a new drug, Madorex, that's been very successful with severe migraine pain. I'm going to give you a dose, but only after we've gotten an IV into you. You're clearly dehydrated from the vomiting and lack of fluids."
She was afraid to ask the next question, but she had to know. "What about the nosebleed?"
"Nosebleeds aren't common in association with migraines, but they are known to happen. Extra pressure in your capillaries... But I noticed on your chart that Dr. Young has never given you a full brain scan. Any idea why?"
"He said my presenting migraine complaints were so textbook that he didn't want to give me an unnecessary test."
Dr. Haugen smiled. "Ah yes, socialized medicine. Although I probably would have done the same thing. Still, it's best to rule out certain things. I'm willing to bet a week's pay that your migraine was brought on by caffeine, lack of sleep and stress."
Stress was a mild word for the last week of Dana's life.
The doctor continued, "I'm going to have the nurse come and put the IV in and I want you to rest for an hour or so while you rehydrate. Then we'll get you upstairs for the scan. I don't want to give you the pain medication until after the test because it'll knock you out for a few hours." She companionably squeezed Dana's shoulder. "Think you can take the pain for a bit longer?"
Dana nodded. "It's not as bad as it was before."
"Good," Rebecca said and left the room.
Dana lay in bed, listening to the bustle of the clinic around her, the IV dripping clear liquids a vein in her left hand. Monitors beeped and the PA system kept announcing, "Paging Dr. Patel to Radiology. Dr. Patel to Radiology."
The more anxious she became, the more the pain worsened, spiking jolts into her temples. Slow that adrenal system down, Dana told herself, nice, slow breaths from the diaphragm.
She tried to remember her disjointed dreams from earlier in the night, but they were just beyond her reach, like old song lyrics only half-remembered.
I want to remember something good, she thought, staring at the tiles in the white ceiling. I want a sweet memory, not a disturbing flash of remembered pain. I want it whole and beautiful...
Dana closed her eyes and willed her brain to bring something tangible to her.
For once, it worked.
She took a deep breath and remembered.
The dishes are cleared off the table and put in the dishwasher and the leftover turkey and stuffing is packed neatly away into Tupperware. Tara and Sally put on their coats and leave for a walk around the block and sister-in-law gossip. The men take their pie and coffee into the living room to watch the game. Judging by all the shouting, the Redskins are winning.
Her mother brings out the bottle of Bailey's and pours a healthy slug into their coffee. They sit down at the big wooden kitchen table, the site of every childhood meal Dana can remember.
Maggie gives her a look that tells Dana they are going to have A Talk.
"Tell me about him," her mother says, sipping her coffee.
Dana grins. "I already did."
"Sweetie, announcing the news to me that you're a couple five seconds before he and everyone else arrives does not constitute talking to me about him."
She notices how wonderful her mother looks today in her sapphire blue dress, her hair waved around her face. During the horrible years, when Melissa and her father died, when Dana went missing and was so ill, Maggie had taken on a haggard, haunted look. Now her face is flushed and pretty, and she is clearly content to be surrounded by her loved ones on Thanksgiving.
Dana reaches over and cuts herself a slice of apple pie. "What do you want to know, Mom? I mean, you've known him almost as long as I have."
"Sure, I know him; I like him. But almost every time I've dealt with him it's been in a crisis situation." A flicker of pain crosses Maggie's face. "What I want to know is how is he with you now that you're together?
Stalling for time by eating pie, Dana tries to think of what to tell her mother.
She doesn't want to tell her mother about waking in the big bed at the Vineyard house, after their first night together. She opened her eyes and saw their bodies were entangled like conjoined twins. Her head was on his chest and she turned it to take a deep sniff of his morning scent, realizing she'd always known how he would smell the morning after they'd made love.
She doesn't want to tell her mother how surprised she'd been to discover how tender they could be with each other. That's too personal. She'd been so sure that all they'd seen and endured had beaten all the sweetness out of them. Instead, Dana has found out that underneath their cynical and jaded exteriors, they have a deep reserve of reverence for one another.
She doesn't want to tell her mother how alive she's felt in the last month. She's found herself wearing brighter colors, higher heels, and singing in the car on the way to work to old pop songs from the early 1980s. Somehow she has more energy, no longer feels crushed by the fight.
She doesn't want to tell her mother that she's learned that being his woman doesn't change being his partner. She'd worried about that, that they'd lose their edge, the yin and the yang that makes their partnership so successful.
And she especially doesn't want to tell her mother that despite her newfound happiness in their union, she still fears that it will all come crashing down upon them one of these days. She's learned that happiness is often fleeting.
"I don't know what to say, Mom," she finally answers, toying with the tiny silver demitasse spoon. "I'm just happy with him, that's all."
"Well, as your mother, it's my job to ask if we'll be planning a wedding soon."
Dana groans. "Mom, we haven't even discussed it. I mean, we have, but only in the abstract. We've still got so much to do, so many things to learn, before we can look that far ahead."
"You're not getting any younger, sweetie." Maggie clucks her tongue.
She rolls her eyes at her mother like an indignant teenager.
"I just want to see you standing in front of Father McCue, wearing my veil. I've dreamed of that since you and Missy were born."
Dana pats her mother's hand. "I know you do, Mom. But I don't know if that will ever happen. For one thing, he's not Catholic. And at my age, I'd look kind of ridiculous in a full-length wedding veil. I'm a woman in her thirties, not a virginal girl of twenty."
Her mother raises her hand. "I do not need to hear that, Dana."
Something rebellious flares in Dana. "You can hardly expect that at my age..."
"A mother can always hope," Maggie says, demurely folding her hands on the table.
Dana just snorts at that.
But then her mother surprises her with a mischievous smile. "Although he is a good-looking man. If I were you, I probably wouldn't be able to resist his advances, either."
She has to laugh, thinking about how in the end, she was the one who made the advances. She was the one who'd kissed him on the beach, who led him by the hand up to the house and into the bedroom, who'd whispered in his ear how much she wanted him, here, now, inside her, inside her now. Dana can still, if she listens hard enough, hear the squeaking of the bed frame as they moved together.
"You're terrible," she says to her mother, still grinning. For the first time, she feels as if they're not just mother and daughter, but two grown women, friends at last.
Maggie squeezes her hand and smiles back.
Dana opened her eyes and brushed away the small tears oozing down her face. Her mother. She could see her mother now, Maggie's lovely face. She could see Maggie's eyes in Julia's face.
It felt like a rare and precious gift.
She still couldn't recall the face or name of her lover, but for a moment, despite the pain and the fact that she was in the clinic with an IV in her hand, she basked in the love they'd once shared, and the love she could still feel for her mother.
Now she had a story she could tell Julia about her grandmother.
A nurse in purple scrubs came in. "We're going to unhook you and take you upstairs now."
When she was wheeled past the waiting room, Dana saw John slumped over in his chair, sleeping. Julia was gone; Meghan must have come to take her to Primary Care.
Dana lay in the scanning tube and held her breath, fighting the claustrophobia. Over the last years, she'd been subjected to all sorts of painful procedures, but none had ever filled her with stark fear like this. My brain, my brain, she frantically thought, resisting the urge to get out of there, what the hell is going on in my brain?
The machinery hummed and clicked to life and her heart rate escalated to nearly intolerable levels. Please don't let it be cancer, not a tumor.
Why was she thinking of a brain tumor? She wasn't one to imagine the direst consequences; she was too pragmatic for that.
The scan ended and she moved out of the tube, sighing in relief.
Dana was sent back to the same room and an orderly brought her a large glass of apple juice and a bowl of hot oatmeal. "Dr. Haugen wants you to eat," he said.
She ate slowly, her stomach still feeling vaguely upset and the act of chewing making her head hurt.
As she was finishing her breakfast, the doctor came in and started punching keys on the computer, bringing up a three-dimensional image of Dana's head on the screen. Dana leaned forward to see the screen, but without her glasses or contacts, she couldn't make out the fine details.
Rebecca sat down. "Everything looks good, Dana. I can see no abnormal growths that could have caused the bleeding or the migraine."
Relief flooded every cell of her body.
"I did find something rather interesting, though." The doctor made a few clicks and the image rotated to show the back of Dana's head.
The sensation of relief abruptly ended.
The doctor pointed to the base of Dana's skull on the monitor, where her head met her neck. Dana couldn't see what Rebecca was pointing out.
"There's a tiny piece of foreign matter right here."
Dana's mouth opened. "Foreign matter?"
"It seems to be metallic, judging from the resonance. I don't think it's anything to worry about, though. It's probably some kind of debris or shrapnel, most likely from the Invasion. I've seen a number of patients with old injuries they weren't even aware they'd had."
Her hand rose to the nape of her neck. "Do you think it should be removed?"
"It's not a bad idea," the doctor said, shrugging. "But not today-you've been through enough for one day. I suggest you see your family doctor in a few weeks and have it taken care of."
Dana sighed. She would be all right.
"How is the discomfort now?"
"Better, but it's still there."
Rebecca rummaged in a cabinet and pulled out a small box. "Madorex comes in inhaler form, just like your Migranex. I want you to only take a single dose; it's very strong."
Dana took a hit. It tasted even worse than her old medication.
The doctor got a serious expression on her face. "Dana, I know you're a doctor and know all of what I'm about to tell you, but I find that doctors, including myself, are often the worst at following common sense advice."
She grinned self-consciously, knowing that what Rebecca said was all too true.
"A migraine is often your body telling you that you're under too much stress. You need to sleep more, eat better and reduce your stress level. I don't care if you jog, take up yoga or get a weekly massage, but you have to take care of yourself."
"I will," Dana said, feeling cowed.
"Now, go home and get some sleep and I don't want you at work tomorrow, either."
"But I have-"
"I don't want to hear it. Whatever you have on your schedule, cancel it. You work with doctors, they'll understand. Spend the day in the bathtub or lie on the couch, reading."
Dana suddenly became so dizzy from the drugs that the doctor had to fetch a wheelchair for her.
In the waiting room, she loopily smiled at John, who was awake again and sipping coffee.
He rose and kissed her cheek. "Are you going to be all right?"
"Yeah, I'm fine," she slurred, chin dipping to her chest.
As the cab pulled out into the street, she leaned into John's solid side and smiled.
He touched her cheek. "What are you smiling about? Or is it the drugs?"
Her eyes were already closing. "I remembered my mother, John. When I shut my eyes, I can see her face."
John only said, "Oh."
She fell asleep in the car and the next thing she remembered was waking from a dreamless sleep in her bed at home. It was six in the evening and already dark.
The pain was gone. She wanted to exult at the sensation of freedom from the nagging ache and the fact that she didn't feel hungover from the drugs, either. Instead, she was clear-headed and starving.
She took a shower, appalled at the way she smelled, and changed into jeans and her oldest black turtleneck. Dana walked through the dark living room and into the kitchen, where she devoured a container of yogurt and some leftover pasta, and drank nearly a quart of Julia's apple juice.
The apartment was silent and she wondered where John and Julia were.
She stepped into the living room and stopped in her tracks when she heard a small cough in the darkness.
Dana fumbled for the light and gasped as she saw John sitting on the couch, his face shadowed with stubble and his eyes red.
On his lap was her journal, the one Mulder had given her for her birthday.
She forgot she even knew how to breathe.
John lifted his head and looked at her, brown eyes boring straight into hers.
When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet but laden with both sorrow and anger.
"Who is he, Dana?"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Once upon a time, there was a woman named Dana, who'd stood in front of her mirror on her wedding day. She'd stepped back to appraise herself in the full-length glass. From the satin shoes on her feet to the white empire waist dress to the pearl cluster earrings, she'd been every inch the radiant bride.
She'd had no reason to doubt she would have a perfect marriage.
On that day, Dana had believed in her marriage as firmly as she believed the earth was round and rotated around the sun.
She'd believed in words like love, honor, cherish and forever.
Dana had believed in fairy tales. John Rosen was Prince Charming and she was his princess and their wedding meant happily ever after.
Yes, on that day she'd believed in all those things. It had seemed so simple. They'd found each other, literally picked one another out from across a crowded room. The first time she'd kissed John, Dana had thought, "Now I'll never have to be alone again." The gaping emptiness she'd felt ever since her awakening in the Clinic to a brave new world would be replaced by the security of belonging to another. She'd never again wake in the middle of the night, gasping for breath and wondering just who the hell she was.
Once upon a time, she'd believed in fairy tales.
Dana sank into the chair behind her, every bone and muscle liquefied.
Only one thought penetrated the noisy buzz in her brain-oh no, oh no, oh no...
"What are you doing with that?" she said, looking down at her hands, at the band of braided gold on her ring finger.
John's eyes had been shining when he'd slid that ring on her finger. "With this ring, I marry you," he'd said in a clear, joyful voice.
He touched the book. "I went in your bag to get out the Madorex inhaler, in case you needed it."
She couldn't think of anything to say. She couldn't really be angry that he'd invaded her privacy.
"Who is he?" John said again, this time his voice a mere whisper.
Dana couldn't, wouldn't look at his face; she didn't want to see the naked expression of pain and confusion he wore. Yes, confusion. It had never occurred to John that she would stray.
"Please, Dana. I have to know."
No, you don't, she thought. We need to rewind the tape, erase the last five minutes and carry on. In time, I'll forget Mulder and we'll live our life as before. We can have a sister or brother for Julia and watch them grow and flourish. But you don't want to know, John.
He had to know, though, Dana understood that. If the situation were reversed, she'd want to know. John deserved the painful truth.
It took a moment for her to get her voice and when she did, it was unsteady. "You don't know him. I met him shortly before you left."
"That was fast..."
She nodded.
"Of course, that's how you operate, isn't it? I mean, it didn't take very long for you and me, either."
Dana folded her hands in her lap. John didn't mean what he was saying, she told herself. It was his anger talking and he certainly had a right to express it.
This time, John's voice was gentler. "Why?"
She shook her head. "I don't know."
Dana heard him stand, heard his feet pacing on the carpet. "I don't know," he said, repeating her words. "That's all you can come up with to explain why you betrayed our marriage?"
She looked up and saw his back as he stood at the window, staring at the city lights.
Her mouth was so dry. "John," she said, "I don't have a good reason. I met him and it was so...so powerful. I've never felt anything like that before."
As he turned around and she caught the expression on his face, Dana wished she'd chosen her words more wisely. He ran his hand through his pale brown hair. "Never, huh? Do you love him or was this just some kind of fling?"
Lying would be so easy, she thought. If she said it had been merely an affair, one hot, drunken night, they could probably survive this more or less intact. It would take John a long time to forgive her, but he would. But to love another man, that was unforgivable.
To lie or not to lie, that is the question...
Dana was tired of dishonesty, tired of the bitter taste the lies she'd told John left in her mouth.
She looked up at John and their eyes met. I used to treasure those brown eyes beyond measure, she thought.
"Yes," she said, her heart pounding. "I love him."
The expression "he looked crushed" was one she'd heard before, but she'd never actually seen someone look crushed until she told her husband she loved another man. His handsome face went white and she watched his shoulders and back slump at her words. He sat down, as stunned as if he'd received a blow to the head.
It was John's turn to look down at his hands. "Why, Dana? I've tried so hard to make you happy, to be the best husband I could be."
"I know you have," she said softly.
His voice again gathered strength as he looked at her. "Then why love someone else? What does he give you that I can't?"
Her mind flashed back to something Mulder had said when they'd first walked into the hotel room.
"Before," she said. "He gives me Before."
John exhaled. "Oh God, is that what this is all about? Because I don't want to go into the past?"
Dana thought about her words before she spoke them. "John, I lived for more than thirty-five years before I met you. I had a life-a family, friends, a career, a man I loved. I don't want to be a clean slate. I want to know who I was."
He nodded, digesting her words.
"Maybe you can just move on, but I can't," she continued. "I used to think I was selfish to feel this need for the past, but not anymore. I think it's healthy to want my memories."
"And...and this other man feels the same way?"
"Yes."
"If I could talk about it, I would, Dana. But I don't want to know. I just want to move on."
And that's our fatal flaw, she thought.
"I know you do, but I can't. Yesterday, I had a wonderful memory of my mother and I was so happy, because I could someday tell Julia something about her grandmother. She deserves to know who she is, where she came from."
John said nothing, simply sat on the couch like a shell of a man, staring at a point just above her head.
She felt desperate for the words that would fix this, that would bandage the wound and make everything right again. But she knew there were no such words.
A few tears began to trickle down her face and she wiped them away. "I'm not going to see each him again," she whispered. "I want to start over. I know you're angry with me, that I've done a terrible thing, and for what it's worth, I'm sorry. But I chose to stay and I want to try to make it work."
John still said nothing.
"I love you," she said. "I love you and I don't want our marriage to end. We have a child; we have so many years and so many memories together."
He rose from the couch. "What if I don't want to be your consolation prize, Dana?"
She sighed. "Whatever we have to do to make this right again, I'll do it."
"I can't think about this right now," he said, grabbing his wallet off the coffee table and stuffing it into the pocket of his jeans. "It's just too much to deal with." He turned, heading for the front door.
"Where are you going?" she said in alarm, jumping up from the chair. "We have to talk about it."
"I need to think," he said. "I'm going to go for a walk and then pick up Julia at Mike and Jody's place and take her out for some dinner."
She stood in the middle of the room, fighting the overwhelming urge to pitifully beg her husband to stay.
"Just remember that I love you," she said.
He nodded and headed out the door. She knew he didn't mean to do it, but he slammed the door shut behind him.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
She had to get out of here. Everything in the apartment was oppressive to her, the photos of their life together reminding her of what a failure she was, what a terrible wife she'd become. The walls actually felt as if they were closing in and choking her.
As soon as she walked out into the hallway, Dana realized she had nowhere to go. Her friends, even Meghan, would not understand what she'd done. She couldn't see Mulder. She was utterly alone.
She leaned against her door and shut her eyes, breathing hard and trying not to cry. But the tears came all the same, breaking over her as she squeezed her eyes shut and bent over with the force of her sobs.
If she had still believed in God, she would have prayed just then. But it was difficult to believe in a higher power after the world had ended.
Dana heard the door open across the hall and music blared. It sounded as if a cat were being strangled while hoodlums beat aluminum trash cans with baseball bats.
Evan's voice was soft as he touched her shoulder. "Dana, are you all right?"
My knight in shining armor, she thought as she sniffled. She shook her head.
"Another migraine?"
She shook her head again, unable to form a coherent sentence.
He took her by the hand and led her across the hall and into his apartment. "Whatever's wrong, we can fix it," he said.
Dana wiped her eyes and smiled. She'd always thought of Evan as a sweet, but immature, boy, but he was truly a man.
He turned off his stereo and turned the lights up. His apartment was a mess, as usual, scattered with papers, takeout boxes and soda cans. On the futon in the corner was a slim young woman with long dark hair, sprawled on her stomach and wearing only a pair of black lace panties. Dana saw that she had an intricate tattoo of a vine that began on her left ankle and wound its way around and around her leg up to the top of her thigh.
Evan's dark skin flushed red. "That's Kitty," he said. "Don't mind her, she's kind of out of it." He covered her with a dark red quilt.
"Is she all right?"
He shrugged. "Yeah. We went clubbing last night and she did too much MZ." Evan snorted. "Drugs-strictly for amateurs."
Dana bent and touched the girl's back under the comforter. Her respiration appeared to be regular. "You don't think she's overdosed, do you?"
"Nah, she'll be okay, she just needs to sleep it off. She's been up to pee a couple of times, cranky as hell."
He led her into the kitchenette, where the sink was overflowing with dishes and the garbage can was on its side. "Sorry about the mess," he said. "The maid never shows up."
She found the strength to laugh at that.
"Can I get you something to drink? A beer?"
"No, I shouldn't have any alcohol with all the migraine drugs in my system."
"I know what you need," Evan said, grinning. "You need hot chocolate."
"Hot chocolate?"
"Cures all that ails you. Sit down on the couch and I'll nuke us a couple of mugs."
Dana cleared a stack of fanzines off the couch and sat down, shaking her head in amusement at Evan's lifestyle, which was miles away from her orderly little life. Or how her life had been... She pinched the bridge of her nose to stave off a fresh onslaught of tears.
Evan returned with two steaming cups. "I even washed the mugs for you, Dana, cause you're an honored guest. And the cocoa has little marshmallows."
She sipped the hot, rich liquid, thinking about how this was Julia's favorite drink. She called the marshmallows "mushamellas."
He touched her arm. "Want to talk about it?"
"Not right now," she said, setting down her mug on the one place on the coffee table that wasn't taken up by half-full glasses and scattered disks.
"Okay," Evan said agreeably. "Then how about this-I just went looking for your friend."
She felt an erratic little flutter in her heart. "Did you find anything?"
He grinned with impish glee. "Oh, I found something, all right. Come on..." He stood and motioned her over to the computer, dragging an extra chair up to the desk.
As he madly tapped away on his keyboard, Dana sat next to him, feeling her breathing quicken with anticipation.
"It was easy to get in," he said, with evident pride. "Now that no one's really minding the store, the FBI's security protocols are child's play."
Screens flashed until he reached one that said Human Resources.
He turned to her. "So, yeah, I found some stuff. Their files are a real mess, though. A lot of things are missing, destroyed, I guess. But there's still some information there."
She nearly screamed with impatience. "You found my friend?"
Evan's smile grew wider. "Not exactly."
"What do you mean?"
"I ran the name Fox Mulder through and came up with nothing. I even tried variations of the name, but he didn't appear in any of the surviving files. I thought my Crawler program might not be functioning, so just for fun I ran your name."
Dana touched her chest. "My name?"
He tapped in some more commands and a file came up. "You were in the FBI's Human Resources files."
Stunned into silence was an understatement.
"This is a medical claim, dated February 16, 1999, to your insurance carrier. It seems you were shot in the line of duty that January."
This is not possible, she frantically thought, but she moved closer to read the words on the screen. Dana Katherine Scully, the claim said. It had her birth date, her Social Security number, a Georgetown address. Special Agent Dana Katherine Scully. Her emergency contact person was listed as Margaret Scully, relationship: mother.
Her hand reached down to where she knew the scar on her torso was. The claim read, "for payment for treatment of gunshot injury to lower abdomen...surgery performed at New York University Medical Center."
She turned to Evan, who was still grinning at his prowess. "This can't be real," she whispered.
"Need more proof?"
He brought up another page and she gasped aloud.
"This was on the Public Relations page," Evan said.
The page was titled "Washington D.C. Agent Wins Prestigious Pathology Award." There was a photograph on the page, undeniably of her, looking young and serious in a black suit with a white blouse, a pair of glasses on her face. She was standing at a podium, apparently giving a speech.
She scanned the text. "Special Agent Dana Scully was awarded the Harrington Award for Forensic Excellence by the National Society of Women in Pathology on June 2, 1998."
It was real. She blinked at the screen, staring at her own image, at the Dana Scully of almost seven years before. She hadn't changed much in all those years. She still wore the same type of suits, given small changes in fashion, and her hair was even now worn in the same short bob.
"Didn't mean to shock you," Evan said softly. "I was surprised as hell to see you, too. Do you have any memories of being an agent?"
She shook her head. She didn't have a single one.
"I found a cache of pictures related to this page," he said. "They were the ones that weren't used. You want to see them, see if anything jogs your memory?"
"Show them to me," she said.
It took a moment for the new page to load. "The server is all wonky," Evan grumbled.
Three photos came up on the screen. The first was another shot of her on the podium, accepting a plaque from a woman with short gray hair.
The second was of her shaking hands with a tall, broad-shouldered man, bald and wearing glasses. "Does he look familiar?" Evan asked.
"No," she said. "Scroll down to the last picture." Only the top inch of the image was visible on the screen.
She made no sound when she saw the final photo, but she now understood how some people could faint at unexpected news.
In the picture, she was holding a glass of wine, apparently at the reception after the award ceremony. She was no longer wearing the black jacket and was smiling broadly for the camera. A man was standing at her side, his arm around her. He was grinning just as widely as she was.
A tall man with dark hair. Full lower lip, largish nose, sleepy eyes.
It could not be real.
It had to be some elaborate hoax, a prank on her friend's part.
But she knew it wasn't. Evan wouldn't do that to her. Besides, there was no way he could. He had never laid eyes on the man in the photo with her.
She took a deep breath, considering the implications of the picture.
For the man in the picture with her was unquestionably Fox Mulder.
End of Part 5 of 6.
SUMMARY: What are we, but the sum of our memories?
RATING: NC-17
PAIRINGS: Mulder/Scully, Mulder/other, Scully/other
DISCLAIMER: These characters are the creation of CC and company. I have borrowed a few elements of the setting from Marge Piercy's novel He, She and It. She freely admits that she borrowed from William Gibson, so I figure it's all up for grabs.
WORD COUNT: 49,000
DATE POSTED: November 1999
Later, Dana would be unable to recall much of the trip to the Emergency Clinic in a taxi. She only had fleeting images of pressing a wad of tissues to her nose and trying to breathe evenly through the throbbing pain. She couldn't even remember John and Julia being in the car with her, or the route they took.
Things became clearer when they reached the clinic. The waiting room was mostly empty but the triage nurse told her, after he gave her a brief exam, that the wait might be a long one. "I'm sorry," he said, shrugging his broad shoulders apologetically, "we're short-staffed tonight and we have a heart attack, a burn case and a drug overdose."
They settled in their seats, John laying a sleeping Julia down across two chairs, her small face buried in a pillow the nurse had given them. It was just after four in the morning and John hadn't wanted to wake any of their friends to watch Julia.
Dana felt fairly foolish, sitting in the clinic in her pajamas, with a jacket thrown over them. She formed the tissues into a ball in her hand. The bleeding had stopped. It hadn't been a heavy gush of blood from her nose, just a slow trickle most of the way to the clinic.
She didn't know why this nosebleed filled her with a creeping sense of terror. She was a doctor, used to seeing blood all the time. Granted, she was a researcher, not involved in the primary care of patients, but she could remember a time when she'd done forensic pathology, cutting into the dead without a second thought.
The pain in her temples had finally faded somewhat, enough that she could think coherently again. Even though the waiting room was designed to be as cheerful as possible, with fish tanks built into the walls, comfortable chairs of plum and royal blue and a shelf of toys for children, Dana found it depressing. There was an elderly couple in the corner, heads together and whispering in desperate tones. A moan of pain echoed from down the hall and the room smelled of hospital disinfectant.
John excused himself and went to make a phone call, no doubt expecting a long morning at the clinic and making plans for Julia and rearranging early meetings via Messenger.
She wondered if it had hit John yet that this was where she'd been taken for her two miscarriages. Both times she'd been at work and had suddenly started hemorrhaging, both times brought there by an ambulance and rushed to a cubicle only to be told by the doctor that it was too late-the baby could not be saved. Dana reached over and stroked Julia's fine hair, her survivor, the one who'd hung on long enough to emerge bright pink and screaming at the indignity of being forced into the cold, bright world of the birthing room.
It was out of these glass doors that an orderly had wheeled her to a waiting cab after her second miscarriage, John at her side. Pale and still weak, she'd silently sat in the car and stared out the window, feeling crushed by her failure to hang onto this baby, too.
John had patted her hand and smiled at her. "It'll be okay, Dana. We'll just have to try again."
She'd shuddered, then, restraining herself from screaming at him. Try again? She wasn't going to do this again, wasn't going to lie on another table for a D&C, numbed with sedatives while the resident OB-GYN scraped the rest of her child from her uterus.
Never again.
Six months later, they went to the Fertility Clinic for another round of IVF.
"Dana Scully?"
She looked up to see Rebecca Haugen, the Emergency doctor who'd seen her for both miscarriages, the one who'd had to gently break the bad news to her. She wondered if the doctor would remember her.
She did. "Fancy meeting you here," the short, heavyset doctor said. "I understand you're having a bad migraine."
"Yes," Dana said, standing a little too quickly, which made her nearly black out.
"Careful," Rebecca said, taking her arm.
John returned and sat next to Julia, giving Dana a little farewell wave.
"She's a gorgeous girl," Rebecca said with a smile. "I'm glad it worked out for you."
In the examining room, the doctor looked at Dana's records on her computer and then gave her a quick but thorough exam, catching up on her recent medical history. "What did you eat yesterday?" she asked.
Dana struggled to remember. "I had some toast in the morning and blueberry yogurt. No lunch; I was working and forgot to eat."
"And what did you have to drink?"
"Um...let me see...a cup of English Breakfast tea in the morning and then some coffee."
The doctor's dark eyebrows rose. "How much coffee?"
"I'm not sure." Dana shrugged, unable to remember how much her office carafe held. "Four, five cups, I think."
"Dana," Rebecca said with a sigh, "you're a doctor, you should know better. With your history of migraines, you can't have more than a cup or two a day, and then only if you're eating properly."
"I've been busy lately; I needed the energy."
"Well, your health has to take top priority. Now, you say your Migranex inhaler didn't help much this time?"
Dana shook her head. "I had two doses, but the pain was nearly constant, even after I took them. I got sleepy, but my head still hurt."
"Resistance to Migranex has been noted in a few journals. There's a new drug, Madorex, that's been very successful with severe migraine pain. I'm going to give you a dose, but only after we've gotten an IV into you. You're clearly dehydrated from the vomiting and lack of fluids."
She was afraid to ask the next question, but she had to know. "What about the nosebleed?"
"Nosebleeds aren't common in association with migraines, but they are known to happen. Extra pressure in your capillaries... But I noticed on your chart that Dr. Young has never given you a full brain scan. Any idea why?"
"He said my presenting migraine complaints were so textbook that he didn't want to give me an unnecessary test."
Dr. Haugen smiled. "Ah yes, socialized medicine. Although I probably would have done the same thing. Still, it's best to rule out certain things. I'm willing to bet a week's pay that your migraine was brought on by caffeine, lack of sleep and stress."
Stress was a mild word for the last week of Dana's life.
The doctor continued, "I'm going to have the nurse come and put the IV in and I want you to rest for an hour or so while you rehydrate. Then we'll get you upstairs for the scan. I don't want to give you the pain medication until after the test because it'll knock you out for a few hours." She companionably squeezed Dana's shoulder. "Think you can take the pain for a bit longer?"
Dana nodded. "It's not as bad as it was before."
"Good," Rebecca said and left the room.
Dana lay in bed, listening to the bustle of the clinic around her, the IV dripping clear liquids a vein in her left hand. Monitors beeped and the PA system kept announcing, "Paging Dr. Patel to Radiology. Dr. Patel to Radiology."
The more anxious she became, the more the pain worsened, spiking jolts into her temples. Slow that adrenal system down, Dana told herself, nice, slow breaths from the diaphragm.
She tried to remember her disjointed dreams from earlier in the night, but they were just beyond her reach, like old song lyrics only half-remembered.
I want to remember something good, she thought, staring at the tiles in the white ceiling. I want a sweet memory, not a disturbing flash of remembered pain. I want it whole and beautiful...
Dana closed her eyes and willed her brain to bring something tangible to her.
For once, it worked.
She took a deep breath and remembered.
The dishes are cleared off the table and put in the dishwasher and the leftover turkey and stuffing is packed neatly away into Tupperware. Tara and Sally put on their coats and leave for a walk around the block and sister-in-law gossip. The men take their pie and coffee into the living room to watch the game. Judging by all the shouting, the Redskins are winning.
Her mother brings out the bottle of Bailey's and pours a healthy slug into their coffee. They sit down at the big wooden kitchen table, the site of every childhood meal Dana can remember.
Maggie gives her a look that tells Dana they are going to have A Talk.
"Tell me about him," her mother says, sipping her coffee.
Dana grins. "I already did."
"Sweetie, announcing the news to me that you're a couple five seconds before he and everyone else arrives does not constitute talking to me about him."
She notices how wonderful her mother looks today in her sapphire blue dress, her hair waved around her face. During the horrible years, when Melissa and her father died, when Dana went missing and was so ill, Maggie had taken on a haggard, haunted look. Now her face is flushed and pretty, and she is clearly content to be surrounded by her loved ones on Thanksgiving.
Dana reaches over and cuts herself a slice of apple pie. "What do you want to know, Mom? I mean, you've known him almost as long as I have."
"Sure, I know him; I like him. But almost every time I've dealt with him it's been in a crisis situation." A flicker of pain crosses Maggie's face. "What I want to know is how is he with you now that you're together?
Stalling for time by eating pie, Dana tries to think of what to tell her mother.
She doesn't want to tell her mother about waking in the big bed at the Vineyard house, after their first night together. She opened her eyes and saw their bodies were entangled like conjoined twins. Her head was on his chest and she turned it to take a deep sniff of his morning scent, realizing she'd always known how he would smell the morning after they'd made love.
She doesn't want to tell her mother how surprised she'd been to discover how tender they could be with each other. That's too personal. She'd been so sure that all they'd seen and endured had beaten all the sweetness out of them. Instead, Dana has found out that underneath their cynical and jaded exteriors, they have a deep reserve of reverence for one another.
She doesn't want to tell her mother how alive she's felt in the last month. She's found herself wearing brighter colors, higher heels, and singing in the car on the way to work to old pop songs from the early 1980s. Somehow she has more energy, no longer feels crushed by the fight.
She doesn't want to tell her mother that she's learned that being his woman doesn't change being his partner. She'd worried about that, that they'd lose their edge, the yin and the yang that makes their partnership so successful.
And she especially doesn't want to tell her mother that despite her newfound happiness in their union, she still fears that it will all come crashing down upon them one of these days. She's learned that happiness is often fleeting.
"I don't know what to say, Mom," she finally answers, toying with the tiny silver demitasse spoon. "I'm just happy with him, that's all."
"Well, as your mother, it's my job to ask if we'll be planning a wedding soon."
Dana groans. "Mom, we haven't even discussed it. I mean, we have, but only in the abstract. We've still got so much to do, so many things to learn, before we can look that far ahead."
"You're not getting any younger, sweetie." Maggie clucks her tongue.
She rolls her eyes at her mother like an indignant teenager.
"I just want to see you standing in front of Father McCue, wearing my veil. I've dreamed of that since you and Missy were born."
Dana pats her mother's hand. "I know you do, Mom. But I don't know if that will ever happen. For one thing, he's not Catholic. And at my age, I'd look kind of ridiculous in a full-length wedding veil. I'm a woman in her thirties, not a virginal girl of twenty."
Her mother raises her hand. "I do not need to hear that, Dana."
Something rebellious flares in Dana. "You can hardly expect that at my age..."
"A mother can always hope," Maggie says, demurely folding her hands on the table.
Dana just snorts at that.
But then her mother surprises her with a mischievous smile. "Although he is a good-looking man. If I were you, I probably wouldn't be able to resist his advances, either."
She has to laugh, thinking about how in the end, she was the one who made the advances. She was the one who'd kissed him on the beach, who led him by the hand up to the house and into the bedroom, who'd whispered in his ear how much she wanted him, here, now, inside her, inside her now. Dana can still, if she listens hard enough, hear the squeaking of the bed frame as they moved together.
"You're terrible," she says to her mother, still grinning. For the first time, she feels as if they're not just mother and daughter, but two grown women, friends at last.
Maggie squeezes her hand and smiles back.
Dana opened her eyes and brushed away the small tears oozing down her face. Her mother. She could see her mother now, Maggie's lovely face. She could see Maggie's eyes in Julia's face.
It felt like a rare and precious gift.
She still couldn't recall the face or name of her lover, but for a moment, despite the pain and the fact that she was in the clinic with an IV in her hand, she basked in the love they'd once shared, and the love she could still feel for her mother.
Now she had a story she could tell Julia about her grandmother.
A nurse in purple scrubs came in. "We're going to unhook you and take you upstairs now."
When she was wheeled past the waiting room, Dana saw John slumped over in his chair, sleeping. Julia was gone; Meghan must have come to take her to Primary Care.
Dana lay in the scanning tube and held her breath, fighting the claustrophobia. Over the last years, she'd been subjected to all sorts of painful procedures, but none had ever filled her with stark fear like this. My brain, my brain, she frantically thought, resisting the urge to get out of there, what the hell is going on in my brain?
The machinery hummed and clicked to life and her heart rate escalated to nearly intolerable levels. Please don't let it be cancer, not a tumor.
Why was she thinking of a brain tumor? She wasn't one to imagine the direst consequences; she was too pragmatic for that.
The scan ended and she moved out of the tube, sighing in relief.
Dana was sent back to the same room and an orderly brought her a large glass of apple juice and a bowl of hot oatmeal. "Dr. Haugen wants you to eat," he said.
She ate slowly, her stomach still feeling vaguely upset and the act of chewing making her head hurt.
As she was finishing her breakfast, the doctor came in and started punching keys on the computer, bringing up a three-dimensional image of Dana's head on the screen. Dana leaned forward to see the screen, but without her glasses or contacts, she couldn't make out the fine details.
Rebecca sat down. "Everything looks good, Dana. I can see no abnormal growths that could have caused the bleeding or the migraine."
Relief flooded every cell of her body.
"I did find something rather interesting, though." The doctor made a few clicks and the image rotated to show the back of Dana's head.
The sensation of relief abruptly ended.
The doctor pointed to the base of Dana's skull on the monitor, where her head met her neck. Dana couldn't see what Rebecca was pointing out.
"There's a tiny piece of foreign matter right here."
Dana's mouth opened. "Foreign matter?"
"It seems to be metallic, judging from the resonance. I don't think it's anything to worry about, though. It's probably some kind of debris or shrapnel, most likely from the Invasion. I've seen a number of patients with old injuries they weren't even aware they'd had."
Her hand rose to the nape of her neck. "Do you think it should be removed?"
"It's not a bad idea," the doctor said, shrugging. "But not today-you've been through enough for one day. I suggest you see your family doctor in a few weeks and have it taken care of."
Dana sighed. She would be all right.
"How is the discomfort now?"
"Better, but it's still there."
Rebecca rummaged in a cabinet and pulled out a small box. "Madorex comes in inhaler form, just like your Migranex. I want you to only take a single dose; it's very strong."
Dana took a hit. It tasted even worse than her old medication.
The doctor got a serious expression on her face. "Dana, I know you're a doctor and know all of what I'm about to tell you, but I find that doctors, including myself, are often the worst at following common sense advice."
She grinned self-consciously, knowing that what Rebecca said was all too true.
"A migraine is often your body telling you that you're under too much stress. You need to sleep more, eat better and reduce your stress level. I don't care if you jog, take up yoga or get a weekly massage, but you have to take care of yourself."
"I will," Dana said, feeling cowed.
"Now, go home and get some sleep and I don't want you at work tomorrow, either."
"But I have-"
"I don't want to hear it. Whatever you have on your schedule, cancel it. You work with doctors, they'll understand. Spend the day in the bathtub or lie on the couch, reading."
Dana suddenly became so dizzy from the drugs that the doctor had to fetch a wheelchair for her.
In the waiting room, she loopily smiled at John, who was awake again and sipping coffee.
He rose and kissed her cheek. "Are you going to be all right?"
"Yeah, I'm fine," she slurred, chin dipping to her chest.
As the cab pulled out into the street, she leaned into John's solid side and smiled.
He touched her cheek. "What are you smiling about? Or is it the drugs?"
Her eyes were already closing. "I remembered my mother, John. When I shut my eyes, I can see her face."
John only said, "Oh."
She fell asleep in the car and the next thing she remembered was waking from a dreamless sleep in her bed at home. It was six in the evening and already dark.
The pain was gone. She wanted to exult at the sensation of freedom from the nagging ache and the fact that she didn't feel hungover from the drugs, either. Instead, she was clear-headed and starving.
She took a shower, appalled at the way she smelled, and changed into jeans and her oldest black turtleneck. Dana walked through the dark living room and into the kitchen, where she devoured a container of yogurt and some leftover pasta, and drank nearly a quart of Julia's apple juice.
The apartment was silent and she wondered where John and Julia were.
She stepped into the living room and stopped in her tracks when she heard a small cough in the darkness.
Dana fumbled for the light and gasped as she saw John sitting on the couch, his face shadowed with stubble and his eyes red.
On his lap was her journal, the one Mulder had given her for her birthday.
She forgot she even knew how to breathe.
John lifted his head and looked at her, brown eyes boring straight into hers.
When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet but laden with both sorrow and anger.
"Who is he, Dana?"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Once upon a time, there was a woman named Dana, who'd stood in front of her mirror on her wedding day. She'd stepped back to appraise herself in the full-length glass. From the satin shoes on her feet to the white empire waist dress to the pearl cluster earrings, she'd been every inch the radiant bride.
She'd had no reason to doubt she would have a perfect marriage.
On that day, Dana had believed in her marriage as firmly as she believed the earth was round and rotated around the sun.
She'd believed in words like love, honor, cherish and forever.
Dana had believed in fairy tales. John Rosen was Prince Charming and she was his princess and their wedding meant happily ever after.
Yes, on that day she'd believed in all those things. It had seemed so simple. They'd found each other, literally picked one another out from across a crowded room. The first time she'd kissed John, Dana had thought, "Now I'll never have to be alone again." The gaping emptiness she'd felt ever since her awakening in the Clinic to a brave new world would be replaced by the security of belonging to another. She'd never again wake in the middle of the night, gasping for breath and wondering just who the hell she was.
Once upon a time, she'd believed in fairy tales.
Dana sank into the chair behind her, every bone and muscle liquefied.
Only one thought penetrated the noisy buzz in her brain-oh no, oh no, oh no...
"What are you doing with that?" she said, looking down at her hands, at the band of braided gold on her ring finger.
John's eyes had been shining when he'd slid that ring on her finger. "With this ring, I marry you," he'd said in a clear, joyful voice.
He touched the book. "I went in your bag to get out the Madorex inhaler, in case you needed it."
She couldn't think of anything to say. She couldn't really be angry that he'd invaded her privacy.
"Who is he?" John said again, this time his voice a mere whisper.
Dana couldn't, wouldn't look at his face; she didn't want to see the naked expression of pain and confusion he wore. Yes, confusion. It had never occurred to John that she would stray.
"Please, Dana. I have to know."
No, you don't, she thought. We need to rewind the tape, erase the last five minutes and carry on. In time, I'll forget Mulder and we'll live our life as before. We can have a sister or brother for Julia and watch them grow and flourish. But you don't want to know, John.
He had to know, though, Dana understood that. If the situation were reversed, she'd want to know. John deserved the painful truth.
It took a moment for her to get her voice and when she did, it was unsteady. "You don't know him. I met him shortly before you left."
"That was fast..."
She nodded.
"Of course, that's how you operate, isn't it? I mean, it didn't take very long for you and me, either."
Dana folded her hands in her lap. John didn't mean what he was saying, she told herself. It was his anger talking and he certainly had a right to express it.
This time, John's voice was gentler. "Why?"
She shook her head. "I don't know."
Dana heard him stand, heard his feet pacing on the carpet. "I don't know," he said, repeating her words. "That's all you can come up with to explain why you betrayed our marriage?"
She looked up and saw his back as he stood at the window, staring at the city lights.
Her mouth was so dry. "John," she said, "I don't have a good reason. I met him and it was so...so powerful. I've never felt anything like that before."
As he turned around and she caught the expression on his face, Dana wished she'd chosen her words more wisely. He ran his hand through his pale brown hair. "Never, huh? Do you love him or was this just some kind of fling?"
Lying would be so easy, she thought. If she said it had been merely an affair, one hot, drunken night, they could probably survive this more or less intact. It would take John a long time to forgive her, but he would. But to love another man, that was unforgivable.
To lie or not to lie, that is the question...
Dana was tired of dishonesty, tired of the bitter taste the lies she'd told John left in her mouth.
She looked up at John and their eyes met. I used to treasure those brown eyes beyond measure, she thought.
"Yes," she said, her heart pounding. "I love him."
The expression "he looked crushed" was one she'd heard before, but she'd never actually seen someone look crushed until she told her husband she loved another man. His handsome face went white and she watched his shoulders and back slump at her words. He sat down, as stunned as if he'd received a blow to the head.
It was John's turn to look down at his hands. "Why, Dana? I've tried so hard to make you happy, to be the best husband I could be."
"I know you have," she said softly.
His voice again gathered strength as he looked at her. "Then why love someone else? What does he give you that I can't?"
Her mind flashed back to something Mulder had said when they'd first walked into the hotel room.
"Before," she said. "He gives me Before."
John exhaled. "Oh God, is that what this is all about? Because I don't want to go into the past?"
Dana thought about her words before she spoke them. "John, I lived for more than thirty-five years before I met you. I had a life-a family, friends, a career, a man I loved. I don't want to be a clean slate. I want to know who I was."
He nodded, digesting her words.
"Maybe you can just move on, but I can't," she continued. "I used to think I was selfish to feel this need for the past, but not anymore. I think it's healthy to want my memories."
"And...and this other man feels the same way?"
"Yes."
"If I could talk about it, I would, Dana. But I don't want to know. I just want to move on."
And that's our fatal flaw, she thought.
"I know you do, but I can't. Yesterday, I had a wonderful memory of my mother and I was so happy, because I could someday tell Julia something about her grandmother. She deserves to know who she is, where she came from."
John said nothing, simply sat on the couch like a shell of a man, staring at a point just above her head.
She felt desperate for the words that would fix this, that would bandage the wound and make everything right again. But she knew there were no such words.
A few tears began to trickle down her face and she wiped them away. "I'm not going to see each him again," she whispered. "I want to start over. I know you're angry with me, that I've done a terrible thing, and for what it's worth, I'm sorry. But I chose to stay and I want to try to make it work."
John still said nothing.
"I love you," she said. "I love you and I don't want our marriage to end. We have a child; we have so many years and so many memories together."
He rose from the couch. "What if I don't want to be your consolation prize, Dana?"
She sighed. "Whatever we have to do to make this right again, I'll do it."
"I can't think about this right now," he said, grabbing his wallet off the coffee table and stuffing it into the pocket of his jeans. "It's just too much to deal with." He turned, heading for the front door.
"Where are you going?" she said in alarm, jumping up from the chair. "We have to talk about it."
"I need to think," he said. "I'm going to go for a walk and then pick up Julia at Mike and Jody's place and take her out for some dinner."
She stood in the middle of the room, fighting the overwhelming urge to pitifully beg her husband to stay.
"Just remember that I love you," she said.
He nodded and headed out the door. She knew he didn't mean to do it, but he slammed the door shut behind him.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
She had to get out of here. Everything in the apartment was oppressive to her, the photos of their life together reminding her of what a failure she was, what a terrible wife she'd become. The walls actually felt as if they were closing in and choking her.
As soon as she walked out into the hallway, Dana realized she had nowhere to go. Her friends, even Meghan, would not understand what she'd done. She couldn't see Mulder. She was utterly alone.
She leaned against her door and shut her eyes, breathing hard and trying not to cry. But the tears came all the same, breaking over her as she squeezed her eyes shut and bent over with the force of her sobs.
If she had still believed in God, she would have prayed just then. But it was difficult to believe in a higher power after the world had ended.
Dana heard the door open across the hall and music blared. It sounded as if a cat were being strangled while hoodlums beat aluminum trash cans with baseball bats.
Evan's voice was soft as he touched her shoulder. "Dana, are you all right?"
My knight in shining armor, she thought as she sniffled. She shook her head.
"Another migraine?"
She shook her head again, unable to form a coherent sentence.
He took her by the hand and led her across the hall and into his apartment. "Whatever's wrong, we can fix it," he said.
Dana wiped her eyes and smiled. She'd always thought of Evan as a sweet, but immature, boy, but he was truly a man.
He turned off his stereo and turned the lights up. His apartment was a mess, as usual, scattered with papers, takeout boxes and soda cans. On the futon in the corner was a slim young woman with long dark hair, sprawled on her stomach and wearing only a pair of black lace panties. Dana saw that she had an intricate tattoo of a vine that began on her left ankle and wound its way around and around her leg up to the top of her thigh.
Evan's dark skin flushed red. "That's Kitty," he said. "Don't mind her, she's kind of out of it." He covered her with a dark red quilt.
"Is she all right?"
He shrugged. "Yeah. We went clubbing last night and she did too much MZ." Evan snorted. "Drugs-strictly for amateurs."
Dana bent and touched the girl's back under the comforter. Her respiration appeared to be regular. "You don't think she's overdosed, do you?"
"Nah, she'll be okay, she just needs to sleep it off. She's been up to pee a couple of times, cranky as hell."
He led her into the kitchenette, where the sink was overflowing with dishes and the garbage can was on its side. "Sorry about the mess," he said. "The maid never shows up."
She found the strength to laugh at that.
"Can I get you something to drink? A beer?"
"No, I shouldn't have any alcohol with all the migraine drugs in my system."
"I know what you need," Evan said, grinning. "You need hot chocolate."
"Hot chocolate?"
"Cures all that ails you. Sit down on the couch and I'll nuke us a couple of mugs."
Dana cleared a stack of fanzines off the couch and sat down, shaking her head in amusement at Evan's lifestyle, which was miles away from her orderly little life. Or how her life had been... She pinched the bridge of her nose to stave off a fresh onslaught of tears.
Evan returned with two steaming cups. "I even washed the mugs for you, Dana, cause you're an honored guest. And the cocoa has little marshmallows."
She sipped the hot, rich liquid, thinking about how this was Julia's favorite drink. She called the marshmallows "mushamellas."
He touched her arm. "Want to talk about it?"
"Not right now," she said, setting down her mug on the one place on the coffee table that wasn't taken up by half-full glasses and scattered disks.
"Okay," Evan said agreeably. "Then how about this-I just went looking for your friend."
She felt an erratic little flutter in her heart. "Did you find anything?"
He grinned with impish glee. "Oh, I found something, all right. Come on..." He stood and motioned her over to the computer, dragging an extra chair up to the desk.
As he madly tapped away on his keyboard, Dana sat next to him, feeling her breathing quicken with anticipation.
"It was easy to get in," he said, with evident pride. "Now that no one's really minding the store, the FBI's security protocols are child's play."
Screens flashed until he reached one that said Human Resources.
He turned to her. "So, yeah, I found some stuff. Their files are a real mess, though. A lot of things are missing, destroyed, I guess. But there's still some information there."
She nearly screamed with impatience. "You found my friend?"
Evan's smile grew wider. "Not exactly."
"What do you mean?"
"I ran the name Fox Mulder through and came up with nothing. I even tried variations of the name, but he didn't appear in any of the surviving files. I thought my Crawler program might not be functioning, so just for fun I ran your name."
Dana touched her chest. "My name?"
He tapped in some more commands and a file came up. "You were in the FBI's Human Resources files."
Stunned into silence was an understatement.
"This is a medical claim, dated February 16, 1999, to your insurance carrier. It seems you were shot in the line of duty that January."
This is not possible, she frantically thought, but she moved closer to read the words on the screen. Dana Katherine Scully, the claim said. It had her birth date, her Social Security number, a Georgetown address. Special Agent Dana Katherine Scully. Her emergency contact person was listed as Margaret Scully, relationship: mother.
Her hand reached down to where she knew the scar on her torso was. The claim read, "for payment for treatment of gunshot injury to lower abdomen...surgery performed at New York University Medical Center."
She turned to Evan, who was still grinning at his prowess. "This can't be real," she whispered.
"Need more proof?"
He brought up another page and she gasped aloud.
"This was on the Public Relations page," Evan said.
The page was titled "Washington D.C. Agent Wins Prestigious Pathology Award." There was a photograph on the page, undeniably of her, looking young and serious in a black suit with a white blouse, a pair of glasses on her face. She was standing at a podium, apparently giving a speech.
She scanned the text. "Special Agent Dana Scully was awarded the Harrington Award for Forensic Excellence by the National Society of Women in Pathology on June 2, 1998."
It was real. She blinked at the screen, staring at her own image, at the Dana Scully of almost seven years before. She hadn't changed much in all those years. She still wore the same type of suits, given small changes in fashion, and her hair was even now worn in the same short bob.
"Didn't mean to shock you," Evan said softly. "I was surprised as hell to see you, too. Do you have any memories of being an agent?"
She shook her head. She didn't have a single one.
"I found a cache of pictures related to this page," he said. "They were the ones that weren't used. You want to see them, see if anything jogs your memory?"
"Show them to me," she said.
It took a moment for the new page to load. "The server is all wonky," Evan grumbled.
Three photos came up on the screen. The first was another shot of her on the podium, accepting a plaque from a woman with short gray hair.
The second was of her shaking hands with a tall, broad-shouldered man, bald and wearing glasses. "Does he look familiar?" Evan asked.
"No," she said. "Scroll down to the last picture." Only the top inch of the image was visible on the screen.
She made no sound when she saw the final photo, but she now understood how some people could faint at unexpected news.
In the picture, she was holding a glass of wine, apparently at the reception after the award ceremony. She was no longer wearing the black jacket and was smiling broadly for the camera. A man was standing at her side, his arm around her. He was grinning just as widely as she was.
A tall man with dark hair. Full lower lip, largish nose, sleepy eyes.
It could not be real.
It had to be some elaborate hoax, a prank on her friend's part.
But she knew it wasn't. Evan wouldn't do that to her. Besides, there was no way he could. He had never laid eyes on the man in the photo with her.
She took a deep breath, considering the implications of the picture.
For the man in the picture with her was unquestionably Fox Mulder.
End of Part 5 of 6.