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Title:
The Next Morning Scully
awoke slowly, unwilling to come back to reality after the escape of sleep.
The sun shone as brightly as a promise, but her limbs felt heavy,
her eyelids leaden, swollen from crying so hard...after the funeral.
There it was--the thought she'd been avoiding.
Had it only been yesterday? It
was still so hard to accept they were...her mind shied away from it again. It
had all seemed so unreal, standing there in Arlington, those three still
coffins before them...faceless, anonymous, characterless.
So hard to believe they could hold the bodies of the three
most...colorful individuals she'd ever known.
Too hard to believe their quiet, tireless support and friendship
was truly gone forever. It
had always been there so completely she hadn't really considered it,
taking it for granted, until it was so suddenly and irrevocably gone...
She hadn't cried at the funeral. It
was too impossible to wrap her mind around, her heart too numb to contain
it. Seeing the tears Lois--or
Yves, as she preferred to be called--tried to conceal at their graveside
had not moved her. Watching
Skinner and Jimmy drink themselves into shared oblivion at the wake,
trading reminiscences and grievances alike, hadn't moved her.
Doggett and Reyes had been saddened, and even that *weasel* Morris
Fletcher had been subdued...but it hadn't really touched her, hadn't
really seemed real. Until
she had gotten home. Until
she walked in and saw the table she and Frohike had sat at, years ago when
they thought Mulder dead (the first time), where they'd talked and drank
in mutual comfort until dawn. Until
she turned away, eyes burning, and saw the computer science book Byers had
loaned her, trying to bring her up to speed on some hacking
sleight-of-hand they'd pulled to aid them in a case--hopelessly confusing
to her, of course, but so typically kind of him.
Until she dropped her gaze to the tapes and CDs Langly had given
her on her last birthday (copied illegally off Napster, no doubt) lying
dusty on a shelf, and her throat closed in grief.
Until, stumbling away in useless flight, she saw the gifts they'd
brought William, forlorn and lifeless... only then did she break down and
sob like a lost child, crumpling to the floor and bawling her eyes out.
Only the baby's cries of distress had brought her out of her
heartbreak, just long enough for her to dazedly take care of its
needs...wondering how she'd explain his three kooky "uncles" to
him when he was older. How in
the world was she going to tell *Mulder*?
What would she do without the Lone Gunmen?
With those thoughts--and bittersweet memories of them--chasing
through her head, she'd finally cried herself to sleep. Slowly
she became aware of something else--a sudden muffled *thump* in another
part of the house--and an unexpected noise in the background. What the hell-- First
she grabbed her gun, then her robe. Scully
eased quickly but noiselessly to William's crib, heart pounding--but the
child was fine. More than
fine--he'd been freshly, if clumsily diapered and tucked in.
Who...had her mother come over without her hearing?
She might have decided not to wake her daughter, knowing the tough
time she'd had (again her mind danced away from that harsh reality)...but
Mom would have been scandalized at leaving any grandchild of hers like
that. What else could it be,
she wondered, almost welcoming the distraction from her pain and more than
willing to take her grief out on--wait, that noise again...from the
bathroom?!? She
silently crept closer and closer, sneaking up on whatever menace had snuck
into her apartment. She
slipped the safety off her Sig, braced herself--and rushed the door. She slammed through--straight into a blinding cloud of steam.
She nearly choked on it, fighting to see the threat...until the
steam cleared, and Scully finally saw the cause of all the sounds. Her
eyes widened. Her
jaw dropped. Her
gun clattered to the floor, forgotten. "Oh
my God..." The
steam had come from the running shower, and the noises from the three men
inside it. Three naked men,
slathering themselves in suds (how did they all fit in that one little
shower stall?), shifting every so often for one or the other to rinse
themselves...three wet, soapy, very naked (oh my God *indeed*, she
thought), but oh-so-***ALIVE*** Lone Gunmen. "Hey
Langly, quit hogging the shampoo!" "I'm
not hogging it, Do-Hickey! And
it's not like you need that much anyway." "Why
you little punk--" "Watch
those elbows, you two, and quiet down.
Do you want to wake Scully?"
Byers hissed. "Maybe
she'd want to join us," Frohike answered with a leer in his voice. "Yeah,
right, and then Mulder would kill us," Langly answered, only slightly
garbled by the flow of water spraying over his face. "But
what a way to go," Frohike replied wistfully. Amazement,
relief, and a sure and sudden joy broke through the numbness and grief
Scully had felt ever since she'd heard of their death--reports that were,
it seemed, *extremely* exaggerated.
She didn't care *how* they'd survived, or how they'd wound up
inside her house (and her shower.) It
didn't matter. They were
alive--and safe. Unable to
decide whether to laugh or cry, Scully gave in to the happy emotions
rushing through her and did both. ******Yes,
I know, very "Dallas" of me [the show, not the Screen Name :^D
], but somebody had to do it.
Be gentle, it's also my very first completed
fanfic. (Wow!)
Shame it took something like this to bring out the writer in
me...****** Feel
free to distribute this far and wide, just keep my name (CrusherJen)
attached as the author...and enjoy. And…
consider me an Ex-Phile until
those @$$#*!% writers take back that ending! |