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Title: Another Summary: What would happen if Scully were to find other Emilys? Notes: Well, I've been telling you guys...Happy Muse and Angst Muse worked out their differences amicably, and now I'm writing a wee bit o' both...though this is definitely the Angst Muse's influence... Let me tell you - I cried writing some of this. Now, that might not mean much as I cry at TV commercials and sappy Mother's day cards (you all would have been embarrassed to have known me when I went to CVS to find one last week - and graduation cards for my friends? Whhoooboy) Anyway.
May 12th I sat on a bench on the sand by the sea and watched blue green waves crash against the shore. It was overcast, grey and chilly but those pounding waves were almost preternaturally colored, fiercely hued in the otherwise grim world I inhabited. I was as entranced by their worlds as I was by their strong, cresting glory, and I could have sat and watched them forever... I don't know, in fact, how long I did sit there, how long I watched the waves and waited for something that I couldn't explain...it might have been days before I became aware of the presence at my side, it might have been seconds - there was no time in my world then other than that of the waves, echoing my heartbeat like a drum. But gradually...so slowly, I became aware of that presence, silent and still beside me on the bench, disrupting anyway the meld of sea and sky I lived in. Somehow...I knew who it was, and I didn't want to look, I didn't want to see... I didn't want to be crazy. But the demand was there, as inexorable and undeniable as the silence between us, as the wash of water on rock and shore, and I turned reluctant eyes to my watcher. How much like me. I thought, gazing into eyes as blue as my own, as deep as mine - but ages more worldly and centuries wiser. How like me...how different and how lost... Emily. Our eyes locked for long moments and it was like looking at a version of myself that has never existed but was still *me*. Eerie, and infinitely confusing. She was so comfortable with her state, with her loss, with the world's loss...and yet still so haunted that my heart, aching and cracked already from her loss, from years of hardship...my well-tried heart broke, and a rush of tears blurred my vision. I fight against ephemeral fate and delicately woven lies, I fight and fight and lose more ground every day...I fight my heart for her, I fight my soul, I fight my life for hers...and only then did I realize that I was not fighting for those wise eyes, but for myself and my need to atone. My needs. My fight against his most crushing trial... My daughter is dead. She is dead, and I am alive. So shouldn't I not see her? Isn't it impossible? "It's not impossible. You should know by now that anything can happen. And anything that can...well, it will. You should *know* that." Her voice was that of a child, a light sound that slid into my mind like the song of a snake charmer, and the oddness of talking to her faded... I nodded. Who was I to argue with a spirit, with a figment of my imagination risen to torment me at a time when I needed it least? Besides - I desperately wanted to believe that I could sit down, that I could talk to my Emily, that I could get to know her in a way there wasn't time for in the brief seconds I knew her. "This isn't the time for that! There are far more important things for you and I to talk about. Like...the others. My sisters, my brothers..." The eyes that held mine were shadowed now, deeper than before - but a light shone in them, fiercer even than the light in Mulder's, and I was so lost in the glow that seconds passed before I realized - others? There are *others?* Instinctively, my hand rose to cover my womb, to press against the tender raised scars that still cover it after my last bout with a bullet, and I feel that place where my babies should have grown - and one of the many who was stolen from me glared. Disgusted with my apparent slowness, preoccupation, Emily sighed through her teeth and shook her head of baby fine blonde hair. "Of *course* there are others - there are many. All look like me, all ill like me...the ones still alive that were born early like me are all very, very ill. The ones born since...they fare better. But all are ill, and all...well, I do not doubt that they are *all* dying." I sat in shock, staring at my child with a lip caught between my teeth - more of my children, out there, hurting...the image of a dozen, a hundred, a flood of children crying out to me for help invaded my mind and I think I came as close to losing it then as I ever have in my life... But Emily didn't let me go into shock. She kept my gaze, adding to it a measure of sadness and a measure of joy. "We are *many*. And we are yours - but all I can tell you is to find the rest. Find them, and help them." How can I help them? I couldn't save you, I couldn't help you...I can barely help myself! How can I save them... Another sigh rippled across the salt torn air. "You did help me. You can help them the same way." Her small body inched closer to mine on the roughly hewn bench, and I fought the urge to just reach out, to reach out and grab her... "You saved me. You let me go...when I didn't want to go on anymore, when I was tired of the pain - you let me go. That was the closest thing to love anyone had really ever shown me in my life." A chuckle floated the same way the sigh had, cracking the air and mending it in it's wake, and Emily followed the sound out to see with her eyes. For a long moment we sat. She in a yellow sundress, I in shock, gazing at the sea. The eyes that met mine were this time coated in tears. "You saved me when I no longer wanted to fight to live as some kind of...halfling. And you can do the same for Them, for the others...or you can heal them." Hope shone, a smile in eyes that hadn't had time to dim with age, a belief...in me...that I couldn't resist... "*Could* you heal them?" Oh, that voice...the last bits of my heart that had remained whole shattered into slivers that pierced my soul, and I could do no less than promise... Oh, Emily...I can try, my little lost soul...I can try. I was silent, but I made the promise to *try* with all the strength I had...and she searched my eyes for only seconds before being satisfied. She slid off the bench, chubby little girl legs finding delicate balance in the shifting sands and she began to walk away. I choked on my need to hold her, my arms raising to her of their own volition... "I'm lonely," she murmured, pausing in her dreary trudge away from me. "I'm lonely...I'd love to have more with me...but if you can save them - do it. That will...ease me, you healing them, more than having them with me ever could..." And this time, once she started walking away, she didn't stop. She had never looked back, and she didn't stop. I watched till she was a bleary, tragic shadow on the horizon, then I went to the waters edge with my arms wrapped around me to hold my soul in, to keep it from flying free of my body to chase hers...because I'd made a promise. One I wouldn't break... The cold water numbed my legs, numbed the remains of my heart. Knee deep in the cold violence of the water, I realized that I had yet to speak...and I let the waves pull me out, I let them was over my head and fill my lungs with the abrasion of salt water...I let the darkness settle in... And I awoke, damp with sweat and tasting the salt of my tears in my mouth, the salt of my blood - I had bitten my tongue, and the sharp pain was fitting company... In the long hours of stillness after that dark awakening, I knew what I had to do, and I began to plan. I had to find the other Emilys.
4 months later... "Mulder? Mulder, it's me. I need your help." Somehow I wasn't surprised by the phone call that came at three in the morning - don't the calls that change your life forever always come in the dark of night, when you can't prepare for them and you're least able to deal with them? But I was surprised that it was Scully doing the calling - and asking for help, no less. Worry niggled it's way into my heart, and I cleared my throat - I had only been up a few seconds, the phone had rung once and pulled me from sleep, twice and pulled me to sit and find it, three times before I turned it on and barked my name apprehensively, and I could still feel the fog haze of sleep covering my mind. But I was lucid enough to grunt, and that was all the encouragement Scully had needed. "Mulder - I found another Emily." Her voice was so cool and aloof that I had a hard time believing what I'd heard. I looked at the phone cradled in my hands and blinked before mustering the control to reply - "What the Hell did you just say?" Anger now colored her tone. "I told you, I found another Emily. Another child with her disease, with no parents...another child who looks just like me as a child, who looks just like Missy - God, Mulder - she looks so much like Emily..." Her voice trailed off, and I could tell she'd closed her eyes, tightened her hand on the phone and curled herself a little tighter into her own body. "Emily." she whispered, and I had to press my hand to the heart that felt a stabbing pain with that additional whisper of the lost child's name... "Scully," I whispered quietly in reply, just that, her name, because I couldn't think of anything more to say... "Mulder...just meet me. I'll pick you up...get a flight to Phoenix, Arizona. I...I have to go. Call me when you figure out when and where I need to get you." She rattled off a number as coolly and professionally as an operator and I wrote it down mechanically, already planning, already wondering... Already hurting. She disconnected without a goodbye, and I placed my phone slowly and gently down into the cradle. Then I slid slowly down off the couch onto the floor, resting my head against the cushions and looking through the shadows painted across the ceiling. Another Emily. Images played across my mind - somber eyes that invited teasing, funny faces, ridiculous feats attempted only in the hope that they might spark a smile from too-tired eyes. A limp, overheated body that felt so light in my arms as the strength of fear pulsed through my muscles, a face pale and shining with pain...a cross glowing on the pulsepoint, counting the thumps of a heart too weak, too tired to continue pounding... A pile of ashes in a coffin that should never have had to exist - not for her, not for any child... And a stone, small and square, set into the earth of an old-fashioned, slightly ungroomed cemetery. Scully, kneeling in the sun, a hand on the stone, soaking in the chill of it. Mulder? Did I do the right thing? A whisper, a fear, a regret that nearly broke my heart. Don't you know, Scully? You're her mother...don't you know if it was right? Moments freeze in time and burn in the mind, waiting to be recalled in times of joy and pain. This moment...the moment I knelt beside her, placed my hand over hers on that stone beside the small torn up patch of grass...her pause, her thought, her whisper, raking it's pain across my skin like a thing with teeth... Another Emily...could Scully survive? Could we?
September 30th She was waiting for me when I got off the plane, single duffel in hand and sunglasses already donned against the fierce light of the sun. She was waiting as she has waited for me a thousand times before, a welcome visage mixed in with strangers and. And I could tell from a hundred feet away that she had been busy building walls I could never hope to scale. This too was as it had been with that first child. I went to her slowly, as she did not come to me, and I kept my eyes behind my glasses trained on hers. When I was close enough, when I could judge that she had not slept, that she had probably not eaten, I dropped my bag. Stepping closer to her, stepping into her face, I crowded her back against a wall.Anger pulsed through my veins, borne of fear and masquerading as righteousness. "So, sleeping and eating aren't too important, huh Scully?" My voice was low, gentle, and I was satisfied, proud of my control. Her eyes met mine, closed off yet somehow beseeching. "Mulder - I've been out here only two days. You didn't even know I was gone. Don't criticize how I've been caring for myself till you sleep more than three hours a night. And certainly don't criticize me for not feeding myself right. Just...accept it. And come with me." Nothing to say in rejoinder to that - she was right. So I picked up my bag, and I followed her casually clad figure away from the hustle of the busy airport and out into the even brighter sun of midday. We didn't speak on the way out to her rented car, and we didn't speak for long moments of the drive. But when I had twisted myself around to watch her drive - when I had stared at her till she was frustrated enough to kill me - she started talking. "Mulder - for four months now, I've been watching. I've had feelers out in every hospital in the United States, I swear it, and I've been informed everytime a child with Emily's illness shows up, for one reason or another, in the system. So far...it's been a bust. But last week, an orphan was admitted to a hospital here - right age, right physical, right situation..." For a brief second in her monologue, her eyes flashed to mine, and they were diamond hard in the light. "She's one, Mulder. One of my children. And I want to save her." "Scully - how can you be so damned sure? It could be a hoax, a ploy to draw you out, into a trap. It could be anything...anything." I wanted to believe that with all my heart, wanted to believe that the one death suffered through would be the only one...but even as I said it, I knew I was wrong. Scully would not risk being wrong about something like this. She would not, she could not. The scientist in her wouldn't permit it - I think the mother in her wouldn't allow it either. And like with Emily, she wouldn't call me to be with her unless she was deadly certain... Unless she had a plan, a plot. A course of action... "I know, Mulder," she murmured to the road, keeping her eyes away from me, keeping her mouth mostly closed and her hands clenched on the wheel. "Trust me, just for now - I know." A bitter laugh slid free of her throat, and I shivered under it's emptiness. "I know, and you will too, the minute you see her." I settled back into silence, watching her out of the corner of my eye as she drove competently, as she sat with tight lips and tight eyes behind the wheel, and I pretended to sleep. She knew, she had to know, that I was feigning it - but I don't think it mattered to her at that point. To be honest, I didn't even know why she called me at that point. She obviously didn't need convincing, or help... I just had to hope she needed, and wanted me to be there for her. I had to believe she wanted my help. By the time we stopped, I very nearly was asleep, but the change in speed of the car sent me sitting straight up. "We're here," she murmured and climbed from the car. "Here" was a children's hospital. Too familiar to the one her daughter died in, too familiar, too close - how did she deal with it? I looked at her again from the corner of my eye and understood - she was treating this as a mission, a duty. As close as she was...she was also detached. My heart ached for this woman who has felt so much for so long hat she can detach now from what is probably the second most painful experience in her life... The halls of the hospital were painted, bright with designs and murals, and I smiled at the whimsy of them - a flying unicorn painted like a zebra, cats with horns playing poker with dogs who had little lizard wings, row after row of characters from children's novels - but then we reached the ward where this new Emily apparently lay, and the decor changed. Angels flew here, cherubs giggled and a slew of gentle saints held court over flocks of lambs... The message was clear. These children in this ward...they did not have long to live. Scully did not seem to notice the change, not outwardly, but her body tightened against the outrage of finding yet another child to lose... "That's her, Mulder," Scully whispered abruptly, holding a hand briefly to my arm to catch my attention. "That's my other daughter - Sara. Sara Anne." Reluctantly, I turned my eyes to the window left unblended in the light of the beautiful day, and I felt sucker punched - The girl was a ringer for Emily...at her sickest. She did not have long to live. Even I could tell that. How many times can the heart break before the soul dies? I wondered even as I turned from the wraith in the bed to the woman who watched her with a light in her eyes. "Oh, Scully...I'm so sorry," I whispered, gathering her into my arms and curling her into what I hoped would be the comfort of my embrace. "I'm not, Mulder," she whispered against my chest as she turned her head to watch the ill little fledgeling in the window. "I'm not - I found her. I can *save* her, even if I can't heal her." I hugged her tightly, kissing the top of her head, knowing she didn't feel me at all - she barely knew I was there, her focus was entirely on the girl behind the glass... "I can save her." The determination in that whisper sent a chill up my spine, one that lodged in the base of my skull and could not be abated. But who will save you? I wondered as I tried to warm myself with the warmth of her body though it was as cool as that gravestone in the sun... Will you allow yourself to be saved? The End
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