TITLE: Torn and Most Whole

AUTHOR: Rae Lynn (xraelynn@gmail.com)

**DO NOT ARCHIVE AT GOSSAMER**

DISCLAIMER: All the characters contained 
within are the property of Chris Carter 
and 
Ten Thirteen Productions.  No profit will 
result from this story and no copyright 
infringement is intended.

TIMELINE/SPOILERS: It's Christmas in 
whatever 
season you believe Mulder and Scully are 
experiencing a Rift.

SUMMARY: Before the baby, before the 
biogenensis, before the bee, Christmas 
was a 
time for angst and redemption for Mulder 
and 
Scully.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This story is not new.  It 
was 
first posted in 1999, under a different 
name.  
As it's been seven years, I figured I'd 
post it 
again, with some minor alterations to 
excise 
the overwrought prose of the high school 
author 
(who is now the proud owner of a shiny 
new 
master's degree).  I hope no one minds; 
it's 
quite different from anything I'd write 
nowadays.  

* * *

"This is the time of tension between 
dying and 
  birth
The place of solitude where three dreams 
cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-
tree 
  drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply."
--T.S. Eliot

* * *

Once, long before I ever knew how much 
I had to lose, Mulder asked me what it 
was I missed the most.  At the time, I 
assumed he was being facetious, the way 
he often was on stakeouts when I began 
to nod off and he was bored of 
murmuring to me the Shakespeare and 
Tennyson he had once stored in his 
adolescent memory.  

So my reply, when it came, was drowsy 
and indifferent, formed from the 
growing list of things I never would 
have said to Mulder while the sun was 
up and the dull fluorescent lights of the 
basement office still cast shadows onto 
his 
face.  

"My Mrs. Beasley doll," I said to him 
between yawns, watching as he cracked 
another sunflower seed between his teeth 
and 
rubbed a hand over his eyes.  A slow 
smile spread across 
his face at my answer.  

"Your what?"

"My Mrs. Beasley doll," I repeated, 
shifting in the car's passenger seat.  
"Buffy had one on 'Family Affair.'  I 
got mine when I was three.  My, uh...my 
father brought it home for me."

Something in Mulder's eyes smiled, 
though his mouth was still crunching 
hard on seeds, so I plunged on despite 
the absurdity of my confession.

"She was the one exception to my tomboy 
childhood," I explained.  "She had a 
blue polka-dotted dress and curly 
hair...and glasses.  She looked 
just like my grandmother.  I took her 
everywhere.  She talked, too -- I used 
to...I used to let her whisper in my 
ear when I was mad at the rest of my 
family."

I wondered if Mulder could picture me as 
easily as I pictured myself, a chubby 
three-year-old redhead with a fierce 
attachment to a grandmotherly doll.

"That's what you miss most in the 
world, Scully?" he asked, some of the 
charm gone from his voice.  At the 
time, I gave it more thought than any 
grown woman should to an 
inquiry about a twenty-year-old rag 
doll, but even then I knew when 
Mulder's frame of mind had changed from 
playfully curious to wistfully serious 
in the splintering of a sunflower seed.  
So I considered what he was saying, 
probably more carefully than I should 
have.  Because years later I still 
consider Mulder's question that night, 
more than anything else he's ever 
pondered aloud about conspiracies and 
aliens and even truth and 
trust, the most fundamental question he's 
ever asked me.

What do you miss most in the world, 
Scully?

I ended up telling Mulder the 
truth about Mrs. Beasley, though I 
didn't think even his brilliant 
mind could fully comprehend 
the depth of a little girl's 
relationship with her first doll.  
What I told him was that Mrs. Beasley 
was comfort lovingly stitched into 
cloth, and that when you're a little 
girl in a house full of rowdy brothers 
and a know-it-all big sister, a Mrs. 
Beasley doll can be the only thing that 
stands between you and complete 
alienation.  And -- though this I didn't 
dare tell Mulder -- Mrs. Beasley was mine 
in a 
time when dolls could still make me feel 
safe in the dark, in a way that all the 
credentials in the world will never be 
able to 
do.

For all his faults, that night, 
Mulder seemed to understand.  "I 
think," he said slowly when I was 
finished, another self-incriminating 
childhood story fallen victim to 
Mulder's traditional stakeout 
curiosity, "I think Samantha had a Mrs. 
Beasley doll."  

He glanced at me sideways.  "I 
don't think she ever practiced 
autopsies on hers, though," he said.  I 
smiled, a drowsy nighttime smile.

"Maybe, but she probably had to 
result to extraordinary defense 
measures to keep it from her nosy older 
brother," I said.  "And I speak from 
experience."

"Whatever happened to Mrs. 
Beasley?" Mulder asked after a moment 
of quiet, unwilling to let our 
conversation slip away with me into 
sleep.

"Whatever happens to most little 
girls' dolls, I suppose.  I've never 
really thought about it.  She 
just...faded away."

This time, Mulder's quiet lasted 
until dawn, and when I awoke to find 
him brushing away the last sunflower 
seeds from his pants, our suspect still 
MIA, my first instinct was to smile at 
him in the almost-dark.  But that was 
weeks or months or years ago, when 
Mulder and I could still talk to each 
other about childhood memories 
on midnight stakeouts...when Mulder and 
I could still talk to each other at 
all.  

Christmas time is slow time for 
aliens and mutants, and no one knows 
this better than the man who spends 
every Christmas dredging up some excuse 
to come to work.  This year, Mulder 
didn't even try to protest when I told 
him I was taking the day off; he just 
nodded in that defeated way I've become 
accustomed to lately, as if he's afraid 
I'll take his head off if his attempts at 
holiday cheer go over the wrong way.  I 
never imagined I'd live to see Mulder 
assent without argument, accept without 
questioning, let my case vetoes slide 
without pointing out the twelve different 
ways he could make this one more case -- 
cow mutilations in Wyoming, fuchsia 
lights over the water in Nebraska -- 
worth my scientific while.  

I need this time apart from Mulder, I 
tell myself; I'm tired of the way he's 
always here and caffeinated when I arrive 
in the morning, the way the burden of 
proof always falls on me to disprove his 
latest outlandish theory.  When I met 
Mulder, the childishly eager way he 
prodded at everything until it fell 
apart was endearing, and his enthusiasm 
for our work made even the most routine 
cases seem exciting and adventurous.  
Field work was a challenge after 
Quantico, and Mulder was, too -- someone 
I could argue with, someone who was 
unbelievably skilled at debating even 
matters about which he knew virtually 
nothing.  

Dozens of cases later, those 
heated arguments have turned into limp 
fights.  Our case histories are 
littered with Mulders who have 
alienated every law enforcement 
official from here to Seattle, Mulders 
who were so overcome by a noble sense 
of heroism that they went after 
dangerous men without backup, Mulders 
who stubbornly refused to listen to 
reason and got themselves half-killed 
in the process...Sometimes, I think in 
exasperation, Mulder seems to have aged 
twenty years in the time that I've 
known him, but he's managed not to 
mature at all.  

If Mulder and I were a married 
couple, we'd call this a "rut" and 
visit a psychologist, who would comfort 
us with platitudes about the need for 
great sex and healthy communication.  
But Mulder and I chase monsters, not 
rainbows, and Mulder wears his self-
pity particularly well at 
Christmastime.  My request for a few 
days off was met with a slow nod and a 
look that probably meant that the last 
great crusader wasn't about to keep his 
selfish quest from interfering with my 
gratuitous need for eggnog.  At the 
time, I was so absorbed in completing 
the last of my paperwork before I took 
off that I barely heard Mulder mention -- 
as casually as possible -- that he was 
loaning himself out to the ISU for 
Christmas.  At the time, I thought, 
Don't do it, Mulder, this is bad news, 
but I didn't say anything aloud -- how 
could I, when we hadn't held a decent 
conversation in weeks? -- as I 
practically 
flew out the door.  ISU cases *were* bad 
news, particularly for Mulder, 
especially on Christmas, but the last 
thing Mulder needed, I told myself, was 
another mother, when his first one had 
failed him so miserably.  And, I was 
reminded, Mulder hadn't seemed to need 
very much of me at all lately, least of 
all my compassion on top of my 
scientific analysis. 

So I returned to a Scully household that 
didn't stop for serial killers or alien 
mutants, that still found humor in TV 
sitcoms and embraced me as the baby 
girl with the big FBI job.  Medical 
degree and federal badge 
notwithstanding, no one in the Scully 
family was ever going to call on me to 
rescue them from military bases in the 
dead of night or treat a bloody 
laceration with nothing but a flashlight 
and a motel bar of soap.

Then again, I find myself 
thinking as the Scully world revolves 
around me, no one will ever need me to 
brew coffee after a nightmare, either, 
and judging from Bill's continued 
insistence on referring to me as 
"Squirt," I am certainly not my 
brother's one in five billion.

I do my damndest not to think 
about Mulder, but it's virtually 
impossible.  For years thoughts of Mulder 
have settled around me like a second 
skin.  By the time I get through to him 
on Christmas Eve -- for once he's managed 
to keep the batteries on his cell phone 
charged -- even Mulder's raspy post-
profile voice, the one I've privately 
labeled as Yellow Light, Proceed With 
Caution, sounds beautiful.

"It's Scully," I say when he 
answers the phone.  "Did I wake you?"

"No," he lies.  "I'm just surprised to 
hear from you," he continues, his voice 
strained.  

"How's it going in the ISU, 
chasing bogeymen?" I ask finally.

His response, in a low voice, 
makes me wish I hadn't taken the week 
off.  "Not bogeymen, Scully.  
Monsters."

"What's this case you're working 
on?" I ask.  

"You don't want to know, Scully.  
Not tonight."

"I'd like to be able to help you, 
if I can.  You sound like you need 
some sleep."

"What I need is a handle on a 
murderer," he snaps, and then lets out 
an explosive sigh.  "I'm sorry, Scully.  
Look, it's...four eight-year-old girls, 
Caucasian, all in the Maryland and 
Virginia area over the past several 
years.  He rapes them, keeps 
them alive for a couple of days at the 
most, then dumps them."

Eight-year-old girls, on 
Christmas Eve.  I fight to keep from 
shouting at him.  What were you 
thinking?  How could you have possibly 
thought this would be okay? 

"What's the M.O.?" I ask, my 
voice neutral.

"He beats them," Mulder 
answers flatly.

"But...?"

"But he keeps the hands," he 
finishes.  "Look, Scully, I know what 
you're thinking.  Don't...There are 
thousands of dead eight-year-old girls 
in this country," he trails lamely.

I try to make my voice sound 
firm, but I can feel my resolve 
slipping away, as it always does when 
Mulder approaches me with his sister's 
blood on his hands.  "I want you to fax 
me the file."

"No, Scully."

"Mulder -- "

"It's Christmas, for Chrissakes.  
Look, I'll -- "  He hesitates.

"Why did you take this case, 
Mulder?" I ask softly.
	
"Because I can stop it," he 
hisses fiercely.

"I know what I'm doing here," 
Mulder says finally.  "Scully, 
I...Everything's fine.  Go enjoy your 
vacation."

"Mulder.  I want to help you."

His words sting.  "I don't need 
your help.  Not on this." 

There's another beat of silence, but I 
don't let this one linger.  "I'm at my 
mother's," I say, "if you need to reach 
me."

In the dark, I can almost imagine 
that his sigh is an apology, his answer 
a blessing.

"All right.  Merry 
Christmas."

"Merry Christmas, Mulder," I say, missing 
the soft sounds of his breath in the 
dark.  But he's already hung up.

After everything you've lost, 
Scully...what do you miss the most?

That night, I dream that Mulder 
hands me a 302 which consists solely of 
a farmer's account that his prized cows 
were abducted by a large hairy being on 
foot surrounded by an unearthly light.  
"Mulder," my dream-self says as we 
stand knee-deep in a muddy field, "this 
is ridiculous -- *you* are ridiculous."  
Dream-Mulder looks wounded.  "I just 
wanted to find the truth," he says.  

"Well, I'm sick of arguing with 
you, Mulder," my dream self retorts, 
beginning to stalk off.  "Can't you for 
once find truth in something human?"  
Without warning, Dream-Mulder begins to 
cry.  My dream self gapes.

"What's human can hurt us, 
Scully," the dream Mulder sobs, his 
weeping the comical melodrama of a 
televangelist.  "The real danger lies 
within."

My dream self opens her mouth to 
ask Mulder if there's anything else his 
Oxford psychology professor wants her 
to know when the furry creature we've 
come to investigate unzippers the front 
of its chest and steps out of it to 
reveal a man.  Dream-Mulder springs 
into action.

"Scully, run!" he commands, 
completely in control.  But I can't 
run.  I'm sinking, deeper and deeper 
into the mud.

"Scully!" Mulder shouts.  "Grab 
my hand!"  His strong arms reach for 
me, his hand (hands, Mulder said he 
keeps the hands) no more than a few 
inches away, but I can't reach.  Mulder 
grunts in desperation.

"You have such small hands, 
Scully," he muses, his fingers dangling 
inches in front of my face.  My dream 
self is bewildered.  "Mulder," she 
commands.  "This is no time to be 
thinking about my hands!"

"But he keeps their hands, 
Scully," Dream-Mulder replies.  "He 
keeps them because they're perfect, 
because they're so small and gentle.  
They have his mother's hands."

"Mulder, please," I say as I sink 
deeper, but Mulder is no longer 
listening.

"His mother hurt him with her 
beautiful hands," he says as I fall 
into the dark.  "She hurt him and she 
healed him with her hands.

"You should have told me sooner, 
Scully.  You should have told me you 
could reach me with your human hands."

"Dana?"

I gasp into awareness.  "Dana."  My 
mother's voice.

"You must have fallen asleep 
under the tree.  You were dreaming," my 
mother says, her own hands warm on 
mine.  "Was it a good dream?"

I think of Mulder's anguished 
face, his hands groping despairingly at 
nothing.  "Not really," I say.  

My mother nods, but doesn't press 
for information.  "Your cellular phone 
is ringing," she says, nodding toward 
the upstairs banister.

The voice on the phone begins to 
speak before I've even said a word in 
greeting.  

"Agent Scully, this is A.D. 
Skinner."  Dear God.  "I'm sorry to 
bother you so late at night on 
Christmas."

My words tumble out in a rush.  
"That's all right, sir, is Mulder 
okay?"

"Mulder's fine," Skinner says.  
"He's banged up, scrapes and bruises, 
nothing that a day of rest won't cure.  
The case is closed.  But..."

"But what, sir?"

Skinner chooses his words 
carefully.  "Mulder has been having 
some...difficulty...this past week.  
The case didn't end as we had hoped.  I 
know you and Agent Mulder are close; I 
didn't think you'd want to see 
him...distressed...on Christmas."

In the morning, I think, I will 
look back on this, and Skinner will 
seem more like an assistant director 
and less like the Ghost of Christmas 
Present.  For now, though, I appreciate 
his suggestion.

"You're right, sir," I say.  "I 
wouldn't want that.  Where are you 
now?"

The Hoover building is completely 
dark by the time I arrive, but I could 
find my way to Skinner's office 
blindfolded.  The A.D. is waiting for 
me, his hands clasped pensively 
together.  Idly, I wonder if he has 
anyplace to be on Christmas, if he had 
plans before a child murderer with a 
hand fetish got in the way.
	
"Scully," he says as he rises in 
greeting, in a voice that means 
everything that will take place here 
tonight is off the record.  

"Sir," I nod.  "Where's Mulder?"

"He's inside.  Scully -- " Skinner 
stops me.

"I assume you must suspect the 
degree to which this case affected 
Mulder."

I avoid his gaze.  "Mulder and I 
haven't...spoken very much lately.  
We've...disagreed, to an extent, on 
what cases we should be focusing on."

"That's understandable," he says, eyeing 
me intently.  "Have there been any 
significant problems between you and 
Mulder that I should know about?"

"No, sir," I respond pointedly, "has 
Mulder exhibited any significant behavior 
on this case that *I* should know about?"

Skinner sighs.  "Agent Scully, I 
first met Mulder when he was a rookie, 
fresh 
out of the Academy.  He was a 
kid, cocky as hell and passionate as 
the devil.  He functioned on sheer 
adrenaline.  I'm sure you've noticed 
that's...changed, in recent months."

"He's not a young man anymore, 
sir," I say levelly.  Skinner looks 
away.

"No," he says.  "None of us are.  
Good night, Agent Scully."

"Good night, sir," I say quietly.

I find Mulder in the inner 
office, where the lights are off and my 
partner lays draped across Skinner's 
leather couch, his hand over his eyes.

"Mulder," I say.  He doesn't look 
up.

"Skinner didn't think I was okay 
to drive," he says.  "I'm sorry he 
dragged you all the way down here."
	
"Would you rather have tried to 
hail a cab?" I say.  "Why didn't 
Skinner want you to drive home, 
Mulder?"  

He doesn't answer.  

"So tell me about this case," I 
say.

"There isn't much to tell," he 
says flatly.  "The fifth victim was 
dead by the time we got there."

"Did you apprehend her killer?"

"Somehow I doubt that will make 
her family's Christmas any merrier," he 
snaps.  He flinches as he slowly sits 
up.  "I'm sorry," he says in a low voice, 
"you didn't deserve that."

"We've both been through 
a lot that neither of us deserve," I 
say evenly.  

"He kept their hands, Scully," he 
says, staring vacantly at the wall 
behind me, his own hands drumming 
absently on a box at his feet.  "He 
beat them to death but he kept their 
hands.  Because his mother -- " 

"Because his mother abused him 
but tended to his wounds with the same 
hands?" I finish.  

Mulder stares at me.  "How did 
you..."

I shake my head.  "Not...not 
tonight, Mulder."  

We sit in near-silence.  "Why 
have you been choosing obviously 
ridiculous cases for us to 
investigate?" I say finally.  Mulder 
looks at me in surprise.

"I don't...You think they're 
ridiculous?"

"Mulder, you have more 
investigative talent than most of the 
Bureau's agents combined.  Why would 
you want to waste it chasing after 
swamp gas in Mississippi?"

Mulder looks down at this and 
studies his hands.  "Compared to the 
work I've done this week, swamp gas 
feels safer," he says in a low voice.  
"I didn't know you minded."

"I mind when my intelligence is 
being insulted by deluded farmers," I 
say.  "Mulder, if I had wanted to be 
kept safe from monsters, I would have 
never joined the FBI."

"But aliens aren't exactly the 
monsters you thought you'd be 
fighting," he says flatly.

I sigh.  "Mulder..."

"It was their hands," he says 
softly.  "I kept thinking that I could 
be reaching out for you and killing you 
with the same hands."

"Mulder," I say.  "I've put my 
life in your hands because I choose to.  
And any monster that I encounter, human 
or otherwise, I can fight with my own 
hands." 

Scully, I think, Mulder's voice echoing 
in my mind, Scully, what is it that you 
miss the most?

But Mulder seems unconvinced, and then he 
looks away, into the dark, his hands 
still absently tapping on the box at his 
feet.  He glances back at me, following 
my gaze.

"Merry Christmas," he offers lamely, and 
I tentatively take a seat next to him on 
the couch.

"What's in the box, Mulder?" 

He shifts uncomfortably, his response a 
low murmur.  "A Mrs. Beasley doll."  

I stare at him.

"What?"

"I, uh...I called your mother," he says, 
stumbling over the words.  "She...she's 
kept it in her attic all along."  His 
voice drops.  "I didn't know any other 
way how, I just...I wanted to give you 
back something you missed."

The room is still.  Perhaps Mulder is the 
one in my dream, I think, who needs the 
saving.  Perhaps my hands are the ones 
reaching for his.

"Mulder," I say softly before I can stop 
myself, "what is it you miss the most?"

A sound cuts deep in his throat, like a 
sob.

"You," he says, his hands pulling from 
mine, and the pulse in his fingers echoes 
against the space in between us, and the 
blood rushes through my palms and stings 
my hands in the dark.



* * * 
END.

Happy holidays!

Tell me what you thought and I will pass 
the message on to my 16-year-old self: 
xraelynn@gmail.com

"Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole"
--T.S. Eliot