TITLE:  Sunday
AUTHOR:  Keladry, keladryb@aol.com,
http://members.aol.com/keladryb
SPOILERS:  Big ones for Requiem.  Tiny blink-and-you'll-miss-it
Tooms reference.
RATING: PG?
SUMMARY:  Grief leads to faith and friendship.  And cheesy summaries.
DISCLAIMER: If you recognize 'em, they belong to CC, 1013,
FOX, etc.  If you don't, they're mine.
ARCHIVE: Go right ahead
FEEDBACK:  Feeds the soul of keladryb@aol.com
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Um...Post-Requiem.  Thanks to Joey for the
beta.

As a child, I was fascinated by the stars. Unlike most
children, I held no fanciful notions of them granting
wishes, and I knew very early on that they weren't actually
shaped like the stars we learned to draw in school. What
fascinated me was the notion of giant balls of gas floating
out there in space.

As an adult, my affection for the stars remains, although
in recent months it's turned to a more mystical one: I wish
on them, now. I gaze out my window and wish for his return.
I promised to find him, to set right what I have done
wrong, yet I don't know where to look.

Agent Scully has, unsurprisingly, returned to the Church.
While I find little comfort in Catholicism, I accompany her
to Mass every Sunday. Whatever peace she finds seems to
pass through her to me, and in the end her prayers on bent
knee are no different than the wish I make each night.

We are united in our grief, and in our feelings of guilt.
Together, we sleepwalked through the meetings, hearings,
reviews, and committees surrounding Agent Mulder's
abduction. The internal audit of the X-Files division has
been, largely due to my testimony, forgotten. No
disciplinary action that might have been brought against
Agent Scully has been taken, as that responsibility falls
to me. I cannot discipline a grieving woman, at least not
this one.

After being released from the hospital, Scully insisted on
returning to work. While her primary focus is on finding
Mulder, she recently requested some local assignments. I
objected, on grounds of both her physical and emotional
condition, but she looked at me with those intense blue
eyes and said "I need to work, Sir. I have to feel like I'm
accomplishing *something*."

In the end, I pulled a few strings and got her assigned to
the task force currently investigating the Potomac Electric
Power Company and the recent disturbances in Washington's
sewers. Several Georgetown manhole covers exploded into the
air in January, and the report issued by PEPCO was
unsatisfactory to some of the city's higher-ups, who happen
to be friends with some of the bureau's higher-ups. It's
busy work, and she and I both know it. Yet her scientific
expertise has given some interesting insights to the case,
and she's able to work as much or as little as she feels
the need to. In the end, she puts in more hours than any of
her new coworkers.

I too, have found myself needing to work. I now devote
more attention to every aspect of my job, working ninety
hours a week. At least half of those hours are devoted to
Mulder, although that number is slowly decreasing. There is
no one we haven't talked to numerous times, no favors I
haven't cashed in on, no lead we haven't thoroughly
investigated, and nowhere I haven't flown at my own
expense. Although we won't say it aloud, we both feel as
though we're beating a dead horse.

When all available avenues of investigation have failed
us, we turn to faith. In God or in the stars, it's faith.
So I spend my Sundays on hard pews, listening to words of
encouragement from Father Jason McCue, and to a
congregation's prayers for those they fear for. Wedged
between her mother and me is the woman I now think of as
Dana, who seems paler and smaller than Scully. Looking at
her in church, I can see why she needs the distraction of
work.

I can think of Scully as being Dana when I think about
Sundays. For years I've referred to her as such whenever I
was discussing her latest medical condition with her
mother, and Sundays are so different from work days that it
seems appropriate. I suppose she thinks so to, as she's
recently taken to calling me 'Walter' outside of work. Once
I asked her if she and Mulder used first names when they
were alone. She laughed and shook her head, "Mulder once
told me he even made his parents call him Mulder. That's
bullshit, but even so, my mother's the only one who can
still get away with 'Fox'. 'Dana' always sounds choked when
he's saying it. For a while, he seemed to think he *should*
call me Dana, and I had to ask him not to." The lines of
worry that have taken up residence on her face had
momentarily disappeared as she smiled at the memory.

Despite the emotional toll of Mulder's absence, she keeps
herself in excellent physical condition. Prior to the
discovery of her pregnancy, she ate sporadically, and
often meals of greasy burgers and french fries on the road.
Her vertigo just before Mulder disappeared was due, it
seems, to low blood sugar. Through a haze of tears she told
me she knew better than to skip meals, and if she'd simply
taken care of herself, Mulder would still be here. Now, for
the sake of their child, she swallows more prenatal
vitamins than I knew existed, and I could probably set my
watch by her meal and exercise schedule.

Part of that schedule includes jogging five miles a day,
and somehow my presence while she jogs after Mass has
become a natural extension of my presence at Church. We
both return home to change from suits and skirts into
sweatpants, shorts, and tee shirts, and then we meet at the
same bench by the reflecting pool. I'm dead certain that
this bench is somewhere she and Mulder met countless times,
and that certainty both pains and comforts me. Even through
the pain of his absence, she's able to find pieces of him
in small places. Like his shirts, which seem to be an
essential piece of her jogging uniform. Last week it was an
Oxford tee-shirt, and the week before that a parody of an
FBI shirt reading "FBI: Female Body Inspector". We both
laughed at that one, and she told me she'd forbidden him to
wear it outside of his apartment. I didn't need to ask
which female body he was inspecting at home.

The first week of our jogging she explained, almost
sheepishly, that on Sundays she usually jogged across the
Arlington Memorial Bridge to her mother's house, where the
two of them ate a leisurely lunch. I replied, somewhat
impulsively, that I could join them, and before I could
apologize for my breech of her privacy she smiled and said
"That would be wonderful." Nothing the woman does is
without careful, meticulous thought and planning. I have
always known this about her, yet it still manages to
surprise me at times.

Lunches are always a happy affair, where we remember
joyous times and discuss Scully's pregnancy. No sooner had
it been agreed that I would join the Scullys for lunch than
Dana informed me that she didn't want her mother to be
burdened with the full extent of her pain, and that if I
wanted to be welcome, I was to do the same. I'm slightly
amused by Scully's protectiveness of her mother: Margaret
Scully has a deep well of inner strength from which to draw
on, one that she passed on to her daughter.

At work, we remain impersonal, perhaps more so now than
before we started our Sunday ritual. Every Monday we pass
each other in the hall or elevator and exchange curt nods.
We haven't discussed it, but I imagine similar exchanges
between her and Mulder after spending the night together. I
imagine her slipping out of his apartment before the sun
has completely risen to shower and dress in her own home. I
remember him mumbling "Good morning Agent Walker, Agent
Mullins. Agent Scully. Good morning *sir*," as we waited
together for the elevator. In retrospect, I can also
remember the self-satisfied smirk he wore as he greeted us,
the smile that said 'I have a wonderful secret.'

While sharing Sundays together is a far cry from
lovemaking, I often wonder if I wear a similar smile when I
encounter her at work.  Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I have a
wonderful secret.  I have Dana Scully's friendship.  And
while the circumstances surrounding it are painful, it's
something I treasure.

Yet my treasure is not without its price, and I would
gladly give it up to remove the remorse from her face, and
from my soul.  When Mulder returns (I can't allow myself
the doubt of 'if'), I know our time will end, and despite
holding the moments Scully and I share more precious than
words can express, I still kneel each night in front of my
window and wish for his safe return.

---
keladry
http://members.aol.com/keladryb/
"20th Century Fox doesn't allow us to have writer's block.
It's in our contract.  And we are summarily executed upon
display of any symptoms."
   --Chris Carter