Title: Rest in Peace
Author: Justine D.
Written: October 1999
Spoilers: One Breath, Milagro.
Category: S, Angst, M/S UST
Rating: PG-13 Archiving: Anywhere is okay, so long as my name is attached.
Feedback: JustineD99@hotmail.com
Disclaimer: It's Halloween, so I'll conjure up a spell to make them my property.

Note: Despite the title, this is not a character death story.

"Do you remember the first time you were ever in a graveyard, Scully?"

I glanced over at him. In the darkness of the car, Mulder's face was dark, as if he'd pulled a hood over his head. The streetlights hit his face at just the right angle to make him appear like something from a child's slumber party, where a kid would hold a flashlight to her chin as she told scary stories. I wondered how a child would react if we told him some scary-true stories of our own.

But his question was not a child's, and I pulled out a mental shovel and pick to excavate some memories.

"I don't know. I was around six or seven, I think. I'm pretty sure I'd been to some funerals beforehand, but my parents would keep us away from the graveside services. In retrospect, I'm glad that they did. The sight of gravestones is too much for a young child to handle."

He didn't turn to look at me, instead staring straight ahead at some fascinating sight only he could see. "What was it like?"

"For me? All I really remember is the rain. We were stationed in San Diego at the time, and it was my grandfather who had died. I barely remembered him, since they lived here in Maryland and we only saw them at holidays." I squinted my eyes as if doing so would help me to remember him, to create some sentiment for a man I hardly knew.

"I remember being so surprised by all the rain.

It'd been raining since we'd gotten off the plane, and my first impression of the East Coast was that God must have been mad at these people.

I kept looking around the cemetery for a giant ark."

Mulder chuckled softly, but it was a serious laugh, not one to share in the quirks of a childhood memory. I wanted to ask him what was so serious, but I kept from doing so. Some things we just don't discuss with one another. We can talk about somber memories of things like funerals, but asking one another about our feelings is a beast we've yet to tame.

I must have remained silent in my musings for longer than I'd realized, because in a gently chiding voice, he murmured, "Go on."

"Well, it was right after Easter, I remember that too. I wasn't a particularly mature child -- I suppose that didn't kick in until I was around ten. We were in my Great Aunt Olive's car, and I was eating Easter candy. Mom kept turning around and yelling at me for getting chocolate first on the upholstery, then on my dress. I spent much of the funeral fuming at her. Then when we'd parked the car and got out, the cemetery was muddy, and I ruined my white Mary Jane's which I'd worn the day before to the sunrise service. So instead of mourning a grandfather I hardly knew, I felt guilty that I'd ruined my pretty blue outfit. All in all, not a successful day." I gave a short laugh. "I wish I could say that it was a profound, life-altering experience, but I can only look back on it in embarrassment."

I sat back in the car's bucket seat, suddenly surprised that I'd said so much. Despite their prominence in how we lived our lives now, we seldom talked about our childhoods. Perhaps that was because they -- mine, at least -- seemed so irrelevant, as far removed as I was from who I had been before I became an adult. Mulder's childhood was inexorably woven into his psyche, and if I looked at him at just the right moment under just the right conditions, I could catch a glimpse of the boy he'd been before everything had changed one Thanksgiving.

Sometimes, in those moments between turning out the light and falling asleep, I allowed myself to wonder what the childhoods would be like for any children I might have. In rarer, more fanciful moments, I wondered what a child born of Mulder and myself might be like. Would he be blissfully normal, with snips and snails and puppy dogs' tails, or would he be forever haunted by things he believed he could have done better? Of course, those were the thoughts which ran through my mind before I could smother them, and the only control I had was to keep from thinking them too often.

Dreams like those were not meant for me, or for the two of us together.

I was glad that we were spending this year's Halloween staking out a cemetery in a quiet, urban part of Baltimore, far away from groups of trick-or-treaters led by doting parents. The only thing we had to fear here was the odd gathering of teenagers, hell-bent on causing graveyard mayhem on the one night of the year society seemed to deem it acceptable. We'd gotten a lead on our current case suggesting that the killer would attempt to bury alive his latest victim in this cemetery at midnight. He didn't seem to realize that at midnight it would be November 1st, a decidedly less-than-spooky date outside of Latin America, with its Dia de los Muertos. Killers are not often known for such logical thinking.

Besides, it seemed only fitting that we would spend Halloween with the dead.

Mulder's silence continued, and I had to say, "Why do you ask?"

"No reason," he replied. "Just making

conversation."

I didn't believe him for a second, as is my wont.

But it was not in my nature to press him for further explanation, especially when his voice was as dark as it was. It felt natural for us to undergo this emotional role-reversal on Halloween, as if we'd chosen as our costumes the other's mantle. An image of Mulder walking into a costume shop and saying, "Yes, this year I think I'll be a reticent-to-a-fault skeptic, with a side of red hair and eight inches lopped off my height."

entered my mind, and I didn't bother to smother a half-smile. Why couldn't we just be a fireman and a black cat for the holiday this year?

Taking a sip of coffee long since turned lukewarm, I glanced out the window, half-heartedly looking for our suspect. A woman, obviously too young and the wrong gender to be the suspect, cycled past, a few strands of mousy hair peeking out from under a hooded sweatshirt. Cemeteries and hoods... a memory of last April and Phillip Padgett's fourth victim floated into my conscious mind. Had he gotten his wish, I'd be visiting a cemetery like this on a more permanent basis. Were this six months ago, those memories would come by force and I'd let them play, to paraphrase his ridiculous manuscript. I'd read it in its entirety late one stormy night, its chilling words haunting me as surely as any Poe tale. But I'd made my peace with it since then, mentally filing it away into the growing cabinet of dark X-Files with my name proudly featured in the cast of credits.

Mulder was still silent, a feat quite unusual for him. I gave him his silence, raising him a quiet of my own. We sat there, the lack of speech a security built over years. His only movement was to turn a few knobs on the dashboard, and I soon felt the swirl of warm air over my feet and deflecting off the defrosting windshield. Then Mulder spoke.

"I helped choose a gravestone for you."

I caught my breath, not so much from the shock of the words, but from the way he said them. I have never been a poet, and couldn't create a beautiful description of the tone of his voice. It was just... sad. The sadness one hears during a eulogy.

My silence was meant as an encouragement for him to continue.

"When you were missing, I went with your mother to choose a gravestone. I remember being surprised that she'd already had it engraved with your name and dates. I was furious with her. It seemed so soon." He seemed like he wanted to say more, but he ceased his talking, as if overcome by the memory.

I felt the sudden need to rationalize my mother's actions. "She --" I paused, uncertain how to explain what I knew must have been going through her mind. "She was a Navy wife. When someone is missing in the Navy, it's usually seen as final.

They're not coming back. Unless the country is at war, people don't disappear. She probably believed that my being gone meant that I wouldn't return."

"But she gave up on you!" His voice cut off the last word, like he'd realized that he'd said too much, or else said it the wrong way. I listened to him take a deep breath. I wanted to look at him, but that seemed too intimate a thing to do, so I remained staring ahead into the darkness broken by a few streetlights. "I was just shocked. Perhaps this was something natural for her, but in my life I've learned to never give up on the dead, because they might come back someday." Without saying her name, I knew he was thinking of Samantha.

I had no good reply for him then. Mulder and my mother truly did come from two separate universes: one taught the living to make peace with their loss; the other taught the living to never say die, no matter how futile the dream might be. And I was caught somewhere in the middle, wanting to accept loss but also knowing that hope can be sustained as long as the heart wants it so.

Mulder's emotional floodgates had loosened with those first words, and he kept speaking. "It was like -- a part of me knew that you were most likely dead. That was the sane, rational part of me you'd created in the two years I'd known you then. The other part of me wanted to keep you with me forever, and seeing that gravestone was like the book being closed. 'No, sir, '" his voice changed as if mimicking an officious clerk," 'She's not coming back so you might as well just stop living too.'"

His last words made me catch my breath. I'd known that Mulder and suicidal thoughts were old friends, but as much as I knew the depth of his feelings for me, I'd never allowed myself to believe that he could be brought so low by the thought of losing me. Since my return five years ago, I had seen his heart torn asunder by threats on my life, especially my cancer, but perhaps I'd always thought that it was Mulder's emotional hyperbole and that he'd never give serious thought to those heights of despair.

And now, knowing that he'd felt that way all those years ago when we weren't nearly as close as we are today, I was shocked. My family excepted, I'd never had someone whose emotional well-being was so reliant on my own, my*life*. It was

flattering in a macabre way, but it was also truly terrifying. It made me realize things I'd rather not think about -- that Mulder's life would cease to have meaning if I were not in it. That his life would essentially end with mine. I'd never felt such unbearable responsibility... or such love.

I turned to look at him, but his face remained turned toward the side window, as if he simply could not look at me. Reaching over, I took his hand from where it rested on the bottom of the steering wheel, and placed it in mine, his fingers threading with my own with some reluctance.

He finally turned to look at me. Even in the darkness, I could see the color had drained from his face, and his eyes shone like glass in the greenish glow of the dashboard lights. Written in the wrinkles that had appeared as we aged were all the words he had said. Terror. Loss. Love. I hoped he could see the same on my own.

We held each other's gaze for a long time, a passing car's headlights moving over us like a baptism, yet they couldn't wash away the pain.

I finally glanced over at the clock, which read 11:05. We still had plenty of time before our suspect might arrive. But even though we still had a while until our mission was over, I glanced over at Mulder, still looking at me with the same sad, heartfelt expression. I believed then that our evening had been a success.

Halloween is the night of the dead, but for us it had been a night for the living.

The End