CODI By Maren skeptic78@hotmail.com **************************** CLASSIFICATION~Vignette, plenty o' DAL, nuggets of angst. RATING~PG SPOILERS~Set post-season six, with the assumption that pretty much everything from "Biogenesis" on didn't occur. DISCLAIMERS~They ain't mine--too lazy to bother making my own characters up. Apologies to Chris, 1013, Fox, etc. *BRIEF* INTRO~I'm supposed to be working on my WIP, but a book I was reading gave me the idea for this story, and, well, you know how it goes. Bad, naughty muse! Note: Upon later reading, I realized that I've messed up a bit on the pre-XF timelines, but I *really* liked the way a certain paragraph read, so I'm sorry, but the obsessive nit-pickers (of which I am generally one) are just going to have to lump it. Plus, it's not like the real writers are into consistency, or anything. Ten points and a cookie to anyone who figures out the goof-up. Twenty points and a pack of Morleys to anyone who can come up with a better title--the working one was "Codi" after the character who inspired this, but that was a little obscure even for X-philes. Feedback gobbled up with delight, and archive wherever you choose, just give me the URL. ***************************** So we're not going to talk about it today. She has just squeezed past me, trying to get into the small ante-room to retrieve some obscure case file, and if that moment of physical contact in a small area wasn't enough to spark The Discussion, nothing's going to. Maybe nothing will ever spark it. I'm not stupid. Whatever names I might have been called in the past few years--notably, "paranoid," "nuts," and "spooky"--none of them have ever been deprecating towards my intelligence. On the contrary, I'm known for my razor-sharp wit, and uncanny knack for getting straight to the heart of matters. Who else would see seven fingers in a photo and think "gravestones"? So she knows I know. And I know she knows I know. It's our usual game. The other rule of Unspoken Communication For Two is simple--don't ever say a word. About anything. Which means I have to sit here at my computer, watching her painfully work her way through the maze of furniture crammed into our tiny space(that extra desk hasn't helped any, although we have yet to play Battleship), and pretend I don't notice anything. Like the fatigue and strain which closes her face to me, and contrasts with the radiant glow which has begun to transform her features. I'm not blind either. I *know*--at least half the story that she tells me with everything but her words. I'd give anything in the world to hear the full recital, given in that sweet voice of her which has grown harsh with stress in the past few months, give anything to know that she trusts me enough to let me in on her big secret. I had thought we were at that point. After six years of being at cross-purposes, I had decided that we were now going to be totally honest with one another, that we had let the mysteries of our hearts remain mysteries for far too long. I don't mean *that* mystery--we know we love each other. I came to terms with that fact so long ago that it's a non-entity, something taken entirely for granted. Just because we love each other doesn't mean we have to do anything about it, and I like it that way. Safer. Easier. More comfortable. And on the lonely nights, it's nice to know that you're lonely by choice, that if you really felt like it, the most perfect woman in the world is waiting just twenty minutes away. And unconsummated love is so sweet--I'm sure my dreams are a thousand times better than the real thing. Because in my dreams, you see, she trusts me. I guess maybe I haven't given her too many reasons to do so. After Antarctica, and all the events surrounding it, it seemed that we had reached some sort of understanding. Then Gibson Praise happened again, and the subsequent baggage with that case. I know she doesn't understand my thing with Diana. I wish she did--she might understand my thing with *her* better. I love strong women. My mother's twenty-year retreat into depression has left me always searching for someone to keep me in line, someone to hold me and dry my tears and make me a better person with her love. Diana did that for me, in her way. She didn't set my heart on fire and then rip it to tiny shreds, like Phoebe, and she wasn't my soulmate or the absolute completion of me, like Scully, but she was there for me. Because she was with me in the beginning, I feel a loyalty to her which is almost filial --never mind later events. For one week of our relationship, I wore a gold band on my finger, trying to imagine wearing it for life. Knowing that it meant I would be hers, that she and her unconditional love would always be waiting for me. She wore hers for a day, and then accepted a job in Berlin. C'est la vie. But once again, the No Talk rule has prevented me from explaining this to Scully, and hence has widened the gap between us. I knew what she thought of Diana the first day they met, without needing Gibson's mental powers. And I know that every time they've encountered each other since, the hostility has grown. I'm ashamed to admit I haven't tried to intervene in any way--it's embarassingly flattering to a lonely single guy approaching forty to have two professional beauties fighting over him like cats in heat. Well, maybe not in heat. So I guess I have only myself to blame for the fact that she won't talk to me, and that I have absolutely no right to try and force her secret from her. I've always respected her privacy, as she has mine, and that has been a corner-stone of our relationship. But now I'm tired of respect--we're friends, if not lovers, and I want to know more about her than I do. I think I deserve to know. But I can't ask, and she won't tell, and the silence hangs between us, as big as the bulge which shows beneath the long, flowing dresses she has recently taken to wearing. The notion that she would even attempt to hide anything so obvious cracks me up sometimes--who the hell does she think she's kidding? And then it isn't funny anymore, because the absurdity of her desperate subterfuge is heartrending. She isn't stupid either, and the fact that she goes to such great pains with such little result speaks volumes. She's just maintaining face, trying to keep up her professional demeanor. And if wearing peasant dresses and never saying a word to me helps her feel that she is succeeding, that she can deny the reality of her situation, far be it from me to interfere. Because I love denial too. x*x*x I never even knew his name. It was at a party, a silly "retro" bash at the house of some friend of a friend of a friend, where seventies dress was de rigeur and the stereo never stopped playing disco all night. I was there by default, a women's health group meeting having gone awry due to a mostly absent membership. Someone knew someone else who was going to this "thing" somewhere, so we all piled in a minivan and drove into some suburb of DC. I was still wearing work clothes, three-inch heels and all. It was *that* kind of party--which is to say, not my kind at all. Dana the Party Animal is a breed which died out about six years ago, around the same time as my innocence, naivete, and sense of world order. Not to mention my father. But I'd had a lousy week, and they were making daquiris. *Potent* daquiris, I later realized, but they tasted too damn good for me to notice or care. At some point in the night they announced that, in order to make this a truly authentic seventies bash, they were going to pass around the basket. All males please deposit your keys. And when the basket came around to me, I reached in giddily and pulled out a set with a Dodge keychain and a rabbit's foot attached. Lucky me. He was actually sort of cute, in that oh-my-god-I'm- drunk-and-naked-with-a-stranger-what-are-the-guys-going- to-say-tomorrow-at-the-watercooler sort of way. He had red hair and freckles and a surprisingly toned body, along with the most unimaginative set of seduction techniques I have ever encountered. I think he was a sportswriter. I know Mulder wants me to tell him. He knows already, of course, but what he wants to hear are the words. As always. But what *are* the words? "I got smashed at a party with a bunch of twenty-somethings and had lousy sex with a stranger"? "I'm about to become the modern cliche, the single woman with a baby"? "I thought I would never have children, and this child is such a miracle, I couldn't bear to part with it"? Because despite the sordidness of the situation, this child *is* a miracle. Watching Emily die was the hardest thing I've ever done--I'd have endured chemo and my own slow demise a hundred times over again in order to stop hers. And this life inside me now is like a light, a beautiful gift I thought I'd never receive. I don't care how cheesy that sounds. No matter how loveless my child's conception was, his or her life will be sweet perfection. I'll make sure of it. And I hate to say it, but I can't imagine that life without Mulder in it. Whatever strange thing is between us, I know that I couldn't find a better father for my child. He's insane, he's heedless and reckless and lives entirely in his own head, but he's also selfless and giving and generous and good. He's loved me all these years without saying a word--whether through shyness or apathy, that has to count for something. I'd never blame him for his inaction, seeing as I've made no move myself, but I wish at times we could take our relationship to the next level, if only so we could stop lying to each other and ourselves. Because what has kept me from him all these years is the fact that, despite his dedicated pursuit of the truth, he rarely extends that same courtesy to me. If one more old girlfriend crawls out of the woodwork, if one more detail about my abduction is revealed in front of a stranger, if I find myself in one more god-forsaken place on god knows what wild goose chase, I'll... All right, I'll never leave. But how can I trust him with the most important news of my life, when he still won't believe that that bitch Diana is in the starting lineup for the wrong team? I admit it, I hate her. I'm jealous. I feel all the stupid little petty emotions I thought I had squashed in myself sometime in the third grade. And we aren't even lovers. I just can't stand to see that look in his eyes, that puppy-dog adoration making him melt into a malleable little puddle of Muldermush at the first coy cooing of the word "Fox." Sometimes I wonder what the hell kind of hold she has over him, whether he's not the one with the microchip in his neck. I could do that too, I think, if I hadn't been told six years ago that nothing but his surname would do. It's taken me all this time to figure out that I'm the *only* one who calls him that, except for the Gunmen. Which is sort of pathetic. So I'm standing here at the filing cabinet, and I want nothing more than to turn around and say, "I'm seven months pregnant, Fox, and I wish it was your child." I can just imagine his face. Shock, horror, fear... "That's--that's great, Scully. Um...are you all right?" And I know just what I'd answer, too. "I'm fine." x*x*x If I had any sense at all, I would have had it out with her months ago. If I'd had any *guts* at all, I would have had it out with her years ago. Sometimes I think I'm 'less of a man' in many areas beside porcine-induced excitement; areas like honesty, communication, and plain old-fashioned romance. Look at me--pushing forty, and my two best prospects for a meaningful relationship are my emotionally closed-off partner, who has me to blame for all the terrible things that have happened to her in the past seven years; and a woman who--I admit it--has recently become (always been?) a pawn of the Dark Side. Mortal enemy and the Ice Queen. 'Having it out' used to mean sitting down and actually discussing our relationship, revealing the motivations behind all our furtive touches and glances, the tender little moments that spring up without warning. Deciding where we are, and where we're going. And, above all, admitting what we've both known forever--that we're in love. Now 'having it out' means getting her to admit what she has been trying so fruitlessly to hide, forcing her to share her secret with me so that we can deal with it together, as a team. But I have to confess that 'we' seems to have faded in the past year, dissolving into 'me' and 'her.' Or rather, 'me' and 'them.' Even seeing Emily never made Scully-as-mother a concrete image for me. Their bond was immediate and obvious, but she has always formed deep connections with the children who've had the misfortune to be involved in our cases. However, it's a totally different thing to watch her form *this* connection, to see life grow within her, filling her with a peaceful, vibrant radiance that belies the reserved, unemotional facade she presents to me these days. Has always presented to me. I want to share this with her. I want to watch her come alive, not just as a detached observer, but as an active participant. I want to measure her growth in inches and contentment. I want to help her make painstaking, joyful preparations for the arrival of her child, painting walls and purchasing tiny articles of clothing. I want to mark off calendar days and attend doctor's appointments and childbirth classes and search through name books and rub her feet when she's tired. I want this to be my child. Most of all, I want to go stand behind her at that filing cabinet, slip my arms around her and rest my hands on the fullness of her belly, feel the warmth inside which is both her and an extension of her, and bury my face in the sweetness of her hair and neck. What a sap I am. What a stupid fool--yearning after the things I could have had years ago. There was a time--I *know* there was--when things might have worked out for us. Sometime before my supposed death in New Mexico--before her abduction--before we lost the X-Files for the first time--no, it was too early then. Suffering had not brought us as close as we are now. And after New Mexico, we were so far apart...when we drew together again, it was only when our lives were threatened, first by our little game of Russian roulette with Modell, then by the discovery of the women in Allentown and their terrible prophecy. We lost each other again after that, somewhere in the heartwrenching mess compounded by Melissa Ephesian and Ed Jerse. I thought her cancer would be the last straw, the monumental event which would finally force us to acknowledge our commitment. Instead she only pushed me farther back. I let her. We're stupid that way. And nothing after that has managed to reach through the protective shells we've built around ourselves. Not Emily, who only reinforced all the pain I'd brought her, all the terrible things that had come to her through me. Not Diana, whose sudden presence and inexplicable insistence on bringing up the past contributed to what was already a bad situation. Not The Bee, that devil-sent version of winged evil, whose unfortunate intervention destroyed what seems at times to have been our only chance of happiness. I think I could've withstood this past lousy year--punctuated with 1930's lookalikes, matchmaking weathermen, sexually charged undercover assignments, and lovestricken neighbors with strange powers--if that brief moment outside my apartment hadn't ruined everything. Now I know what I could have had--and my life is that much emptier. I wonder sometimes when it happened, what traumatic event caused her to let down her carefully-maintained guard, and succumb to a night of uncharacteristic abandon. Was it Padgett? Did his intimate knowledge of her make her realize how alone she really is? Or was it one of those cases that gives me a sick feeling at the malignancy the world holds, something that terrified her into trying to deny her own mortality, reaffirming her life and humanity? I have to think about it like that, because I just can't face the idea that it might have been an act of love, that she gave not just her body but her soul to some man I've never met. That perhaps he isn't the absentee six-second sperm donor I envision him as, but someone as committed and involved as I want to be. How would I deal with meeting Mr. Right, the man she had chosen to share her life and genetic material with, the one who completes her? Could I attend her wedding, watch her raise not just this child but a family of offspring, a brood of uber-Scullys with her red hair and his green eyes? Could I go to Memorial day barbecues, send anniversary cards, watch them grow old together and see her fade from my life? That's all bullshit, I know. She's good at hiding her personal life from me, but she's not *that* good. I know there's no fiancee giving back massages and assembling nursery furniture, just from the exhausted look on her face. Yet another reason I want to be there for her--I have a feeling that there's no way she's going to be able to handle this on her own. Of course, I know this solicitude is entirely unwelcome, that there's nothing Scully hates more than any insinuation that she is weak, or needs help. I've learned at least that much over the years. As the poet says, 'Do I dare, and do I dare?' I approach her--I broach the unspoken thing--I drag it into the open--force her hand. 'And what if one, setting a pillow behind her head, should say, "This is not what I meant at all. This is not it at all"?' And I lose. 'I should have been a pair of ragged claws, scuttling across the floors of silent seas.' x*x*x I spend my days wishing I were someone else. I spend my nights wishing I were somewhere else. The somewhere is easy--in his arms. The someone is harder. It's not that I have any self-esteem problems. I like myself just fine, thank you very much. Intelligent, fair-minded, organized, loyal--not to mention better than average looks and a great body. Well, usually. But the someone I've worked all my life to perfect doesn't seem to fit into that life anymore. That's a paradox for you--strive for the circumstances you desire, only to find you're not suited to them. Am I really where I want to be? Another question I ask myself a lot. I'm glad I chose not to practice--I think I have too much need for recognition to toil quietly in a pathology lab or even my own office. Teaching at Quantico was always too routine, and I never intended to spend a lifetime there. Special Agent Dana Scully, M.D.--there's the title that seemed to fulfill all my aspirations. And it did, for a while. At first I couldn't get over the thrill of flashing that badge, of having an office full of files to call my own in residence, if not in name, of being allowed to enter morgues across the country and having the first crack at whatever odd corpse Mulder had procured for me. I was as green and giddy as goddamn Peyton Ritter--just with better aim. The basement has worn me down. So have the alien abductions, family deaths, dead ends, confusions, confoundations, complications, and commiserations that Mulder and I have shared. We've shared everything over the past seven years--everything but our feelings. I have to have something to hold onto, to call my own. I tell myself that this is where I want to be--by his side--because I don't know how to get anywhere else. I tried, once. Salt Lake City proved too much for me--something about all those Mormons. That's a lousy joke *and* a lie. It was him. I couldn't stand to leave him alone, especially not when he was saying those wonderful things to me. No matter how many times I've told myself how glad I am to have at least one man whose fidelity I could depend on, whose feelings for me were not compounded by sentimentality, I've known what I wanted from him. But the question isn't have to get it--showing up in his motel room some night with mosquito bites and terrycloth robe ought to do it--but how to receive it. The me that risked two FBI careers for an illicit affair with Jack Willis and went on more blind dates than I can count has disappeared. I'd put out an APB, except that her occasional resurfacing, especially at retro parties, reminds me from time to time that I'm better off without her. So romance seems to be out. It's all about control again--falling in love means dependence and trust. Of course I trust him. I'd be a fool not to, considering his admittedly decent track record--for god's sake, hasn't that man overspent his allowance of being right? unless he's been dipping into my account. I think he's been tapping my woman's intuition as well--*how* could I have been so stupid as to have left Gibson alone? And it's that very intuition I want him to employ now. Can't he see that I *can't* tell him the obvious? that I can't ask him to be supportive, to stand by me, to hold me and comfort me, to-- To love me. That's what I want. What I need. What my child needs. I know he can give it--there's so much intensity and devotion in him, so much misdirected passion. It *is* misdirected--the X-files are only paper. I'm real. I'm here. And so is he. And goddamnit, now I'm crying, just like any hormonal pregnant woman might, except that these are real tears with a real cause and no end in sight. I feel like I'm in a long, dark, narrow tunnel, no light, no air. I'm alone. I don't want to be--I have to get out of here--but I made this tunnel myself and somehow forgot to leave myself a doorway. An exit. An escape. Yet against all the laws of nature this tunnel is suddenly wider, and I can breathe. He stands behind me with his arms around me, and I think he's crying too. His hands slide down to cradle the child inside me, and through my tears I see the tunnel fill with light. With great effort I turn to face him, and realize that the light comes from his eyes, from somewhere inside of him that matches perfectly with a place inside of me. I'm falling now, held tight and warm and safe inside his arms, and as I am blinded by the light, I think I hear him say something about love. And I am reborn. *************** You hated it, right? Tell me you hated it. Write a long, venomous e-mail to skeptic78@hotmail.com about how implausible the plot is, how bad I am at characterization, how many good examples of fourth season UST I forgot, and by the way I misspelled fourteen words. Hah! Tricked you into sending me feedback! =) *************** Author's note: In keeping with the theme of copyright infringement which permeates this piece, lines from T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock" have been stolen willfully and gleefully.