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Title: Trust VIII: Soul Summary: When all is said and done, there's still the tale to be told. The old sleeplessness is back tonight. No great surprise. It never leaves me for long. Lately, though, many nights have gone by during which I've spent no more than half an hour staring at the ceiling. I recognize those nights for the blessings they are, but I don't expect them. Peaceful nights are not for troubled souls. Scully would kick my ass for being so morose, so I try to save the melancholia for my solo, late-night wanderings. Like tonight. This house is so quiet that I can hear the branches of the big maple in the yard scraping against the wall in the warm midnight breeze. It's a clear night and the moon is nearly full, so I don't bother turning on any lights. The silvery shadows suit my mood. I wander into the dining room, where Scully has left medical charts in neat stacks on the table. She sat here for hours after dinner tonight, catching up on her work, checking the endless autopsy reports that now pay most of our bills. There's very little here to intrigue or challenge her. None of the truly bizarre medical mysteries Scully used to face as an FBI forensic pathologist. In those days, even the ones that had nothing to do with the X-Files were no doubt more interesting than the vast majority of these: vagrants found dead under railroad trestles; victims of collisions with drunken drivers; depressed housewives with bellies full of Valium. I know if I ask her, she'll say she's damn glad to be where she is, doing what she's doing. But I know a woman of her intelligence and skill gets frustrated when things are too easy. She could determine cause of death in these cases with her eyes closed, her hands cuffed and her brain tripping on acid. Now there's an image to make a grown man weep. Of course, she probably feels just as sorry for me, and it's just as unnecessary. Yeah, the boys in VCS would bust a gut if they knew ol' Spooky was teaching third grade. But the average eight-year-old is much better company than 99 percent of FBI agents, and besides, it leaves me plenty of time for extracurricular activities of the paranormal kind. Anyway, I've discovered that, next to doing Scully, coaching pee-wee basketball is the most fun a man can have without using a controlled substance. Jesus. This life has such a patina of normalcy. No one would guess what lies underneath. When we traded in our careers as international fugitives eight years ago, it was one of the most surreal days of our lives. There's a photo on the mantle commemorating the event. Scully, her auburn hair bleached orange by years of exposure to the tropical sun. Ariel, barefoot and tanned so brown she looks like she was born on that sun-baked island. Me, mouth smiling for the camera, eyes haunted with the years of worry that no place was far enough away to keep my baby girl safe. And Skinner. Skinner, who'd strode into that God-forsaken village like a ghost from the past and told us he'd traveled halfway around the world because he knew we wouldn't believe him otherwise. And he was right. We wouldn't have. He told us that there had been big changes, mostly as a result of the events we ourselves had set in motion years earlier. That it was now safe for us to come home. We listened to the details, unwilling to allow ourselves the luxury of credence. It had taken him half the day to convince us. We came home and moved into this house weeks later. I suppose I've been as happy here as I know how to be. The two people I love - I can sat that now, after years of practice - are with me, and we've built a life together. Well, they'd call it a life. For me, it's more of a life raft. A precarious refuge in a stormy, threatening sea. Because no matter how many uneventful days, weeks and years go by, I can't bring myself to believe that a wild, raging ocean has been magically transformed into a glass-smooth pond. It keeps me up nights. My nocturnal perambulation has taken me to the kitchen, where I stand idly considering making myself a sandwich. The thought of food awakens my senses, and I frown. I smell something I shouldn't. Smoke. But he's.... Before I can finish the thought, I spot a dark shape moving on the back porch, and my ears ring with the adrenaline I'm suddenly pumping. I move silently to the door, turn the knob and realize it's unlocked. With a sudden jerk, I fling it open and throw myself toward the figure standing outside. We go down in a confused tangle of limbs. "Goddammit! Get the fuck off of me!" "Ariel?" I pick myself up off my extremely annoyed daughter. When she stands up, I see a broken cigarette dangling from her half-moon lips. She spits it out in disgust. "Jesus, Dad! What the fuck is wrong with you?" At fifteen, my sweet young thing uses the language of an inebriated longshoreman. But that's not the battle I choose to fight. "You're smoking? Since when?" The kitchen light snaps on, and Scully appears in the doorway wearing a terrycloth robe and a ball-shriveling frown. "What the hell is going on here?" "Your daughter's been sneaking cigarettes out here," I inform her, my eyes locked with Ariel's. Her gaze darts down and away as she brushes a fringe of dark curls off her forehead. She doesn't stand a chance going eyeto-eye with me, a fact she knows and hates. "Dad jumped me," she sulks. "He's fucking insane." Scully shakes her head in disgust. "Come inside, you two." Ariel slouches into a kitchen chair, crosses her arms over her chest in the universal gesture of adolescent defiance, and stares at the crumbs that litter the table. "No smoking, Ariel," Scully begins calmly. "Ever. It's non-negotiable. It's dangerous and it's addictive. You know that." "So what? Who cares, anyway?" Ariel replies in a supreme display of baffling teen-age unreason. "Ariel, we're not trying to ruin your life. We're trying to preserve it," I offer. "Oh, yeah. Like you care." "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" I can see a flood of anguish dammed up just behind her petulant fa=E7ade. I have no idea what it's all about. A boy? A class? Something worse? Scully and I stand mystified, helplessly watching this bundle of hormone-driven, emotionally volatile youth. "What's bothering you, Ariel?" Leave it to Scully to try asking a direct question. But my daughter's next words make me wish Scully had just grounded the kid and gone to bed. "Did you love my mother?" she says, eyes raised to mine with a challenge I've never seen before. "What?" Brilliant, Mulder. Retreat and regroup. "Which part didn't you understand?" "I understand the question. Not the reason for it." "Does there have to be a reason?" Oh, God. I don't have the energy for this now. I will never have the energy for this. I want to get up and leave the room, leave Scully to deal with this. But I know that, if I do, I will lose something important. I don't know what, exactly, but I feel sure I would miss it if it were gone. "It's not important whether I loved your mother." Wrong answer. "You fucking asshole!" Her words are a white hot ball of anger that smack me in the face. There are tears and betrayal and confusion all wrapped up in those inarticulate obscenities. She continues her verbal assault. "What? So I suppose I was some accident that just happened after a one-night stand. Like a piece of old furniture you drag home from the trash." The analogy is imperfect, but the image is painfully obvious. How long have these thoughts been eating away at my intelligent and honorable daughter? I have no idea. We've never hidden from her the truth about her parentage. A photo of Rachel has always stood by her bedside. She knows her mother died when she was three. But she doesn't know how. Or why. There was no easy way to tell her, and she didn't need to know. Or so we thought. I close my eyes and try to collect my composure. "I'm sorry, Ariel. That didn't come out right." I pause, thinking carefully about my next words, trying not to repeat my mistake. "I don't think I loved your mother the way I love Scully. But she was very important to me. I trusted her." "You trusted her? What the hell is that supposed to mean?" "It's complicated." "Complicated? I'll bet. You were cheating on Mom with my mother. You trusted her not to blab the whole thing. How touching." "No!" Now I'm angry How could she think that? "You don't know what you're talking about." Ariel jumps to her feet, throws me a look meant to do mortal damage - something she picked up from Scully - and storms out of the room. "Good job, Mulder," Scully says it quietly, in her most disappointed tone of voice. I hate that tone. It makes me feel like I'm ten and I'm wrong. "Well, what do you want me to say? It's not like she asked why the sky is blue or where babies come from." "No. She asked something much more important." "Well, I don't know the answer." "Yes, you do. You just don't want to talk about it." I rub my eyes hard, trying to wipe out the images that are forcing their way up out of the recesses of my brain. "I can't talk about this. I won't." I expect Scully to be angry. Instead, she kneels beside me and pulls my hands away from my face, holding them in both of hers. "We have to tell her," she says firmly. "Tell her what?" "Everything." "No! For God's sake, Scully, why burden her with it?" "Because she has a right to know. Because it will eat away at her if she doesn't know. Her soul is deeply troubled, Mulder. Do you want her to feel about you and your secrets the way you feel about your father and his?" "I'm not my father." "No. You're hers. The only way to prove to her what you are - what her mother was - is to tell her the truth." I stand slowly and cross to the window, staring out at the dark shape of the old maple. "I don't let myself think about it most of the time," I say quietly. "I know," she says, coming up behind me and wrapping her arms around my waist. "I'll help." I wait a long time. Maybe a meteor will land in the back yard and distract everyone. Maybe I'll have a stroke. Maybe a passing spatial anomaly will bend light and warp time. Or not. We walk together into the living room, Scully and me, to confront the past. We've never actually talked about any of it. Just always gone on from day to day, doing whatever needed to be done. Do both of us even have the same story to tell? I don't know. We stand for a moment watching our beautiful daughter. I think about how she came into my life, so unexpectedly and with such sorrow. I remember the early days, when Scully and I dragged her to the other side of the globe to keep her safe. She never asked us where we were going or why. She only asked one question, the same one, over and over. "When is Mommy coming back?" Again and again we told her that Mommy wasn't coming back. That she had to go far away, but that she would watch over her little girl every day. That Mommy loves Ariel forever. I realize that, as the days went by and Ariel truly became my daughter in all the ways that matter, I came to believe what I'd told her then. Love like this lasts forever. And Scully is right. She needs to know the truth. "Ariel?" She refuses to look at me. "I'm sorry, Ariel. I want to explain to you about your mother. The thing is, there's so much to tell. It's such a long story. Long and sad. I think you'll find it hard to believe." Her face softens and I see tears on her cheeks. "Tell me," she says. I sit beside her. I want to speak, but a baseball has lodged itself in my throat, making it too difficult. Scully begins. "I met her at the gym. Looking back, I'm surprised I didn't read more into it at the time. But I had no way of knowing how important she was to become to me..." End of the Trust series. Parting is such sweet sorrow.
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