TITLE:             How We Are
AUTHOR:        nikki, 2/01
ARCHIVE:       Gossamer, Xemplary yes.  Others, please let me know--I 
like to come visit.
KEYWORDS:   Mulder, Teena Mulder
SPOILERS:      Sein Und Zeit, Within
RATING:           PG-13
CLASS:            V, A
SUMMARY:    Is protection nothing more than lies and denial?  A 
mother and son, each wanting to protect the other-but will their 
actions serve to cause more pain and confusion in the end?
THANKS:        Heartfelt thanks to Gerry, Suzi, Sarah Ellen, 
M.Sebasky, and Marianicole for thoughtful insights and marvelous 
suggestions.  Any errors and weirdness that remains in this story is  
due solely to my own stubbornness.  More notes at the end.
DISCLAIMER:    They're not mine.
FEEDBACK:    nikoleaw@aol.com
    More of my stories can be found at 
http://www.geocities.com/the_xproject



Despite her numerous reassurances that his presence wasn't necessary, 
he'd come. She was moving out of the house he'd spent his later teen 
years in, but had never truly come to think of as "home."  He'd come 
because he'd wanted to say goodbye.

Teena gave him a quick kiss on his proffered cheek and a warm smile 
that belied the exasperation in her voice.  "Fox, I told you there 
was no reason for you to come all this way."

Giving her the shy boyish smile that even now, only she could elicit, 
he answered, "And I told you it's no big deal.  You shouldn't have to 
move all this stuff by yourself."

"It's not as if I'm going to actually be moving it myself.  That's 
what I hired the movers for."

Her words stimulated his memories of  the last time she'd moved.  
He'd been 14 and unexcited at the prospect of leaving behind all of 
his friends and familiar places, despite whatever memories they may 
have held.  She'd swept in with grace and a gentle imperiousness that 
day, commanding the movers as if she was born to it. He'd been 
shocked, as her behavior ran completely counter to what he knew of 
her. Even as a boy, he'd felt the need to protect her.  As the years 
went by, he'd had further glimpses of the self-assured woman he'd 
seen that day.  Nonetheless, he'd stubbornly clung to his belief 
in his need to shelter her from knowledge and situations that he 
feared might upset her.  Though a part of him desperately wished it 
could be otherwise, he knew that today would be no different.

Following her into the house, he saw the foyer lined with packed and 
labeled boxes. Though they'd already had this conversation, he 
couldn't help but ask again.  "Mom, are you sure about this?"

Teena stopped and waited a moment before turning to face him.  Her 
rueful smile spoke of the daughter they both knew would never come 
home for a visit, of the grandchildren that would never fill the 
house with their laughter. "Yes.  I told you, this house is too big 
for just me.  And you know how drafty this place is.  No matter how 
much insulation I have put in, the heating bills just get higher 
every winter.  Every time I pay it now, I feel guilty, like I've just 
wasted away more of your inheritance."

Mulder gave her an incredulous look.  "Mom!  Don't be silly."

Teena gave a small chuckle, "I'm an old woman now, Fox.  I can't even 
see two feet in front of me without my glasses.  This is the time of 
my life when I'm supposed to worry about silly things like that.  And 
like whether or not my son is taking care of himself."

She stepped closer to him and reached up to lay a gentle hand on his 
cheek. "You're still so pale.  Isn't there sunlight in Washington?  
Or are you back to working so hard that you never see the light of 
day?"

He was momentarily taken aback by her reference to his mysterious 
illness earlier in the year.  An illness and equally mysterious 
recovery about which they had never spoken.  But more than his 
surprise, was his sense of unease that she thought he was pale.  He 
began to question the wisdom of coming after all.  His mind briefly 
flashed back to his memory of Margaret Scully, her sad and haunted 
expression as she sat with her younger daughter during what, at the 
time, they had all believed to be Scully's final days.  The 
mental image was replaced by that of his own mother, sitting at the 
foot of his hospital bed earlier that year.  Though they would never 
speak of it, he had seen the hospital surveillance tape.  He knew 
that she had sold another part of her soul to buy what she thought 
was his recovery.  He would not, could not, bear to have her, or 
Scully go through that again.  He had made a promise to himself then, 
and had the appropriate notations made in his medical file.  Too many 
times, he had been asked to make an impossible decision or to suffer 
silently as a helpless bystander.  This was a fate that he wanted to 
protect her from.  If he could have any say in the matter he would 
never again force his mother, or any other loved one to contend with 
the awful knowledge that they were literally watching him die.  

But the timing for this visit had been right.  She'd provided him 
with a ready-made reason, and he'd known that in light of the 
infrequency of their visits, that this would most likely be the last 
time he'd see her.  Before he'd made the decision to come, he'd 
rationalized to himself that regardless of what the doctors said, he 
still felt fine. He needed to rest a bit more now than he had in the 
past, but he was getting older and he'd been through some harrowing 
events healthwise over the last few months. He'd reassured himself 
that if he could conceal his illness from Scully, who saw him every 
day, then he could certainly keep the news from his mother. What he 
hadn't counted on was the fact that although theirs had never been an 
ideal parent/child relationship, Teena had always been able to tell 
when he was ill.  

His lack of a response prompted her to continue.  "That's what I 
thought. You should take some time off.  Spend a week down at the 
farm.  I was down there just a few weeks ago and it was wonderful.  
It would do you a world of good.  And I know that Caroline would love 
to see you.  She even commented that you haven't been down to see her 
in nearly ten years."

He was surprised to hear that his mother had gone to her old family 
home. For as long as he could recall, his mother and her older sister 
Caroline hadn't been on speaking terms with one another.  Apparently, 
that status had changed.  Although he wondered what had prompted the 
reconciliation, he suspected  it would be useless to ask.  He still 
wasn't sure why they'd stopped communicating, and he knew that the 
odds of getting a straightforward answer to either question weren't 
in his favor.

Nonetheless, thinking about his mother and her sister together caused 
him to grin. Both in relief that her questions about his health 
seemed to have ceased and because thinking about his Aunt Caroline 
always made him smile. 

Although older than her sister Teena, Caroline was someone determined 
to remain forever young. While Teena had left her southern roots as 
far behind her as she could, Caroline had remained, cheerfully taking 
over the tasks of maintaining the enormous antebellum mansion and the 
surrounding lands, just on the outskirts of Raleigh, where she and 
her sister had been raised.  

Seeing his grin, she added, "Fox, I'm serious.  You should go.  
Despite her insistence to the contrary, Caroline won't be around 
forever."

Mulder's expression changed to one of concern.  "She's not sick is 
she?"

Teena's eyes momentarily focused on some unseen point in the 
distance.  "No. She's as healthy as she's always been.  But she's 
getting older."

Mulder nodded.  "I know.  I was just thinking about the last time I 
was down there. She threw so many parties for me to 'meet nice young 
women' that I was exhausted by the time I got back home."  

Teena couldn't help but laugh at the mental image of her sister 
determinedly parading group after group of hapless young women before 
Fox for his approval.  "Well, that's just how she is.  But I'm sure 
if you tell her that you'd just like to come down there and rest for 
a few days, she'd be willing to limit the number of events held in 
your honor." 

Wanting to change the subject, Mulder gestured at the boxes and 
asked, "Is there anything that you wanted to move over there now?  
Stuff that you didn't want to put in the moving van?"

"I'd been planning to take the plants over in my car."  Teena glanced 
first at her watch and then at a row of potted plants lined up on the 
otherwise bare kitchen counter. "The movers aren't scheduled to 
arrive for another hour, so that should be more than enough time to 
take them over and get back. Why don't you put as many of them as you 
can in your car, and I'll put the rest in mine and you can follow me 
over there." 

****

With the furniture in place, her new apartment looked even smaller 
than it was.  It saddened him in some indefinable way that his 
mother, who had always loved large, spacious homes with sprawling 
gardens, was now living in an apartment smaller than his.  Her prize-
winning flowers had been culled down to include just a few potted 
plants that he'd hung by her kitchen window. 

But his biggest surprise had come when he saw just how few of her old 
furnishings she was having moved, and he found that he couldn't 
refrain from commenting on it.

"Mom, what did you do with the piano?  And your antique desk?  And 
all the guest bedroom stuff?"

Teena's answer was slow in coming.  "Well, I knew that I couldn't fit 
it all in here. After I'd spoken with you about storing your old 
things at the summer house, I decided to have them move some of the 
more sentimental pieces there as well.  As for the rest of the stuff, 
most of it was just junk, so I got rid of it."  She would not tell 
him that like the house, she'd "gotten rid of it" by selling it, to 
pay her ever-increasing medical bills.

He nodded in understanding.  He too had recently begun to sift 
through his belongings and had been amazed at the sheer quantity of 
stuff that he'd managed to accumulate over the years.  But he chose 
not to share that information with her, for fear that it might lead 
him to say too much.  

"Fox, have you seen my purse?"

After Mulder quickly located it for her, she reached in and withdrew 
her wallet, causing a bottle of pills to fall out.  Teena's 
expression was unreadable as Mulder retrieved the fallen container 
and returned it to her.

Mulder's voice conveyed his concern.  "Diazepam?  I thought you 
stopped taking those a few years ago.  You said that after the 
stroke, you didn't have any problems sleeping."

Teena relaxed with the realization of which medication had been 
revealed. She'd been terrified that it was the vicodin she was taking 
to control her pain, or the actinol she was taking to try and slow 
the growth of further painful bone deformities.  Though she'd joked 
earlier about old age causing her to need glasses all the time, the 
truth was that calcification on her skull was pressing into her optic 
nerve and gradually reducing her vision on an almost daily basis.  
All were results of her rare cancer, the knowledge of which was a 
burden she had not wanted to share with her son.  She had failed 
to protect him from so many horrible things in his life-she would not 
add her newest sorrows to his suffering.  "I didn't for a while.  But 
then the insomnia started up again.  The doctor told me that it's 
normal to need less sleep as you get older, but he prescribed those 
for me just in case it got too bad."

Handing him some bills, she quickly went on.  "There's a nice deli 
about two blocks from here.  We passed it on the way in.  Why don't 
you go down there and get something for us to eat?"

When he returned, he found her in the bedroom, carefully arranging 
photos along the edges of her mirror frame.  He walked over and 
carefully fingered one.  A photo of him and Samantha, taken when he 
was 10 and she was 6.  They were making Christmas cookies and they, 
and everything around them was covered in flour.  Underneath that one 
was his first grade photo and below that one, a picture of him 
showing off the empty space where his two front teeth should have 
been.  Looking over to her night table, he saw an identical 
twin to the photo that he kept on his desk at home, of he and his 
sister in front of the giant oak in the yard of their summer house.  
As he removed his high school graduation photo from her mirror, he 
laughingly held it out to her and said, "You can't possibly want this 
picture to be one of the first things you see every morning."

Teena took the photo back from him and returned it to its new home.  
"Of course I do!"  As she gestured to her makeshift gallery, her eyes 
softened as she went on. "I'm very proud of you, Fox.  Of the man you 
grew up to be.  And these pictures, they're all I have left of you.  
Of you and your sister.  I will always want them to be the first 
thing I see every morning and the last thing I see at night."

Mulder swallowed against the unexpected surge of emotion her words 
brought. Mutely, he turned away from the mirror and pointed towards 
the couch in the adjacent room.  A few seconds later, when he could 
trust his voice, he quietly said, "I hadn't realized how late it is.  
I've got a flight out of Hartford in about two hours, and with rush 
hour traffic..."

Teena nodded in understanding.  "You'd better go then."

"I, uh, I got you a salad.  It's in the bag in the living room."

She smiled in gratitude.  "Fox, thank you for coming.  I know you're 
busy..."

He stepped closer to her and engulfed her in a hug.  Speaking into 
the top of her head, he answered, "Mom, you know that if you need 
anything, you just have to call."

"I know, Fox.  It's just that..."  She stepped back and looked into his 
eyes. "Well...you know how we are."  Her eyes spoke silent apologies 
that her mouth couldn't form.

He met her gaze with an equally contemplative one.  "Yeah.  I do."  
He leaned down and kissed her cheek, then turned and silently let 
himself out of her tiny new apartment.  

It wasn't until he was sitting in his too-small seat on the commuter 
flight back to D.C. that he realized that they hadn't said "goodbye."

END

This all happened because I just had to come up with some explanation 
for why Teena was suddenly living in a tiny Greenwich apartment 
instead of that lovely home she'd been in for the previous 5 
seasons.  For some reason, the idea that Mulder was dying of a 
mysterious brain ailment was much less disturbing to me than the idea 
that Teena had inexplicably moved.  But then, I'm still foaming at 
the mouth about Scully's various apartments, why Mulder told the 
cabbie in FTF to go to Arlington when he lives in Alexandria, and 
don't even get me started on Mulder's second bathroom and it's 
ability to relocate to different parts of his bedroom...

Send me feedback and we can discuss these and other important issues. 
Nikoleaw@aol.com