TITLE: In the Attic AUTHOR: Abra Elliott CLASSIFICATION: MSR; bittersweet? Not angsty so much as sad, but not bad-sad. Good sad. (Me Jane, you Tarzan...). William POV. SPOILERS: through Existence; vague reference to the idiot brain-disease story arc of Season Eight. Hey, I don't write this stuff, I just try to work with it... DESCRIPTION: I'm terrible at description. Just read. Please. RATING: PG-13 DISCLAIMER: All characters are borrowed from Team Carter, which isn't on my s***list after the wonder that was Existence...some liberal theft of script material from Memento Mori and Sixth Extinction as well - which I am happy to state, for the record, I did not write. Blame CC. FEEDBACK: Love it but I'm terrible at responding in a timely manner...recommendations, however, make my day! ARCHIVE: Wherever - just let me know so I can visit! Mail me at xilerui@hotmail.com NOTES: Is it still 'babyfic' if William is all grown up? This is my first foray into post-Existence fanfic...please let me know if it satisfies! *** It's raining outside; the heavy drops pounding against the roof seem to echo in my heart. Mom's been gone a month now, but I ache for the sound of her voice as much now as the day she died. Dad is inconsolable...he sits in the old rocker by the window and stares silently, his eyes pale in the cold light. I couldn't leave him here at the old house alone, but moving him to my place doesn't seem to have made much difference. He's still slipping away, and I'm powerless to stop it. I've been dreading this day. I don't know which is worse - burying someone or dredging up scenes from your life with her. Them. I hate this. The sound of ripping cardboard breaks the quiet of the musty attic as I open boxes of my mother's things. Her cinnamon scent seeps, ghostlike and uninvited, into the still air. My father's things now...a faint musk rising to join my mother's autumnal fragrance, the two scents commingling in a memory of family and home. I close my eyes and breathe deeply, tears stinging as I fight to keep my feelings at bay. Dipping into one dusty box, I fumble through silk scarves and soft sweaters until my fingers bump up against something less pliant. I pull out a fat black book, its pages yellow with age. The cover crackles as I open it, and the faint, familiar scent of my mother's favorite cologne rises up to embrace me. I turn the frontispiece and her handwriting greets my hazy gaze. *** ...I feel time like a heartbeat, the seconds pumping in my breast like a reckoning. The luminous mysteries that once seemed so distant and unreal, threatening clarity in the presence of a truth entertained not in youth, but only in it's passage. I feel these words as if their meaning were weight being lifted from me, knowing that you will read them and share my burden, as I have come to trust no other. That you should know my heart, look into it, finding there the memory and experience that belong to you, that are you, is a comfort to me now as I feel the tethers loose and the prospects darken for the continuance of a journey that began not so long ago, and which began again with a faith shaken and strengthened by your convictions, if not for which I might never have been so strong now. As I cross to face you and look at you incomplete, hoping that you will forgive me for not making the rest of the journey with you... *** Wiping my eyes, I look up into the dimming light of the attic. I can barely reconcile this purple prose with my mother. I see her with my mind's eye - beautiful, vibrant...but never this eloquent. Never this unguarded. Don't misunderstand me. My mother wasn't a cold woman by any stretch of the imagination. Some of my earliest memories are of sitting on the sidelines of one or another debate between Mom and Dad, contentedly eavesdropping as they dissected problems as monumental as government conspiracy, and as mundane as pizza toppings. No, not cold. But she was...careful. Precise. And not generally given to displaying her feelings for the world to see. Even with us she rationed her passion. I suppose it might have seemed almost miserly to some...hell, even I got frustrated with her terseness sometimes. But - mostly - its rarity always seemed to make her moments of uncontainable excitement all the more valuable in my eyes. I couldn't wait to do that one thing that would make her eyes light up, her mouth break into a wide, silly grin. This was something altogether different. A peek into her soul - its secret, dark places. A glimpse at her hopes and happiness and fears. Especially her fears; as I leaf through the brittle pages, line after line of sorrow and anguish floods my disbelieving eyes...her terror at a cancer worming its way into her life...shock at the discovery of a child - a daughter - she never knew she had...fear for herself, and for my father... *** ...I came in search of something I did not believe existed. I've stayed on now, in spite of myself. In spite of everything I've ever held to be true. I will continue here as long as I can... as long as you are beset by the haunting illness which I saw consume your beautiful mind. What is this discovery I've made? How can I reconcile what I see with what I know? I feel this was meant not for me to find but for you ... to make sense of -- make the connections which can't be ignored... connections which, for me, deny all logic and reason. What is this source of power I hold in my hand - this rubbing -- a simple impression taken from the surface of the craft? I watched this rubbing take its undeniable hold on you, saw you succumb to its spiraling effect... *** She writes to my father. The more I read, the more I realize that this book is less journal than confession. I can count on two hands the number of times I heard my mother tell my Dad she loved him; it wasn't her way. Yet, 'love' barely seems adequate to describe the depth of feeling she reveals here. Only the slightest of gossamer threads separates the writing woman and the man to whom she writes. My parents - who always occupied distinct, if not opposing, places in my own universe - are written as one: one mind, one heart. Did my father ever read this? Does he know this wordy woman who was willing to sacrifice safety for catharsis? I don't doubt that he knew the depth of her love for him; the way he pines now is a testament to that truth. Yet, I wonder if he ever heard these words...if he ever opened these same covers to read my mother's heart? *** ...One life given and another taken from me, all in the space of a breath. I cannot believe you are gone; I feel your heart beat in time with mine, and I know that, wherever you are tonight, we are bound together in space and time. I want to borrow your strength, but I know that you need mine more if you are to survive the ordeal you are undoubtedly facing. I cannot think otherwise; to imagine that you have succumbed to pain and fear is to sign my own death warrant... *** ...our baby...our baby...I can scarcely bring myself to even think the words that I long to believe. A futile hope made real. The proof of your unflagging faith in a kind of eternal justice - your optimism and fundamental belief that what we've done is right and good. In the face of all that is wrong, we have this right thing...made tangible now. I find my hands sliding over my still-slim belly, coaxing that first kick, aching for a sign that life goes on. I long to share these moments with you...I pray, incessantly, that you will return to me...I haunt the aisles of my church, more than a widow, less than a wife...lonely, but for this life we have...please, share it with me... *** ...I'm going tomorrow to clean out your apartment, Mulder. The guys are begging me not to go...they're afraid for my safety, and I think they've already been ahead of me. To move things out of harm's way. Kitchen knives. The weapon you keep in reserve. Anything that might tempt me...God help me, I love them, but they're fools. If I were going to die, my broken heart would have killed me already. But, then, they don't know our secret...they don't know that you live in me...that to do harm to myself would only be to kill you again. But, even more than that...I'm a fool. I know it, yet I persist in my foolishness. At night, Mulder, I feel you. Your arms, wrapped around my cold shoulders. Your lips pressed to my cheek, whispering love. I feel your heart beating, Mulder. That heart which was still in the body I held in my arms...I still feel it beating. I can't sense its passion and still believe that you are gone from me. It begs me...I feel your heart pleading with me, to give it the love I held back for so long...and all I can do is have hopeless faith that, somehow, you will come back to me. It makes no sense - there is no logic in my fruitless longings - but I pray, and my prayers are always the same...let me tell you I love you. One more chance...all I ask is one more chance to show you my heart...don't leave me like this, Mulder. Please... *** The tears trickle down my cheeks. I've heard the story, of course. It isn't every kid whose father has returned from the grave, and my parents were never ones to keep secrets. But my knowledge was restricted to history - to events. My mother's outpourings reveal a side to this piece of Mulder family history that I never even imagined. Do children ever understand the romance of their parents' lives? Or am I simply the inheritor of a natural reticence and innate respect for the privacy of others, no matter how close we may be? This delicious discovery. Here in the dusky darkness my mother is reborn to me. More than that, really; she at once comes alive and is made complete. The woman I knew and loved makes room for this writing woman, both becoming one in my healing heart. Yet I ache for her. I know the end of this story, and it's happy enough to satisfy all but the most uncompromising romantic. But I understand this pain she felt at withholding her feelings from my father...this is the woman I knew all my life. I just never knew what it cost her in regret. As I shut the book, an envelope drops to the floor. Reaching down I pick it up, and find the word "Scully" scrawled across it in my father's hand. I pull an aging sheet of loose-leaf paper from within and read... *** Scully, You've just left and the gray morning sky is beginning to lighten. You thought I was sleeping...that's my fault. Just as you left without a word, I let you go without words. I wasn't ready to speak, and I can only assume that you feel the same way. Someday soon, I hope, we will begin to make sense of what happened here last night. But...things happen to us. All the time. I can't be sure that we'll ever have that conversation. There are things going on with me that you know nothing about...that's my fault, too, but I've barely been able to acknowledge them to myself, much less to you. I've come to you broken and beaten down so many times before that I can't bear to cause you additional pain. While the chance exists for me to get better, I'll maintain my silence. But there's one thing I can't be silent about. Whatever may happen to us, to *me*, I want you to know that this - tonight - was not a mistake. It wasn't a fluke, it didn't 'just' happen. I meant everything I said and everything I did with you tonight. I need you to know this. It was love, Scully. There, I said it. And yet (you're saying to yourself) I didn't. Well, let me say it here, in no uncertain terms. I love you, Scully. I think I always have...but I know I do now. Always. But it's also important that you know that I know you love me, too. I don't know when - if ever - we'll talk about this. Sooner rather than later, I hope. When we do...well, let's just say I'll make sure we know where we stand. But, just in case that conversation never comes...Scully, I saw it in your eyes. Your lips were silent but your eyes...they spoke volumes. Like always. Never think I didn't - *don't* - know your feelings, Scully. Never torture yourself for your silence. We don't talk, we act. We always have - it's just who we are. I wouldn't have it any other way. You'll tell me when you're ready...I have a sneaking suspicion that that day is closer than ever. But just in case, Scully...just in case. I know. Don't ever doubt it. - M. *** The house is dark when I arrive home, my mother's journal in hand. My father still sits by the window, his face fading in and out of view as heavy clouds drift by, blocking the pale moonlight that illuminates him. I turn on the small lamp on the bedstand and sit beside him. He turns to me and smiles softly. "Will...when did you get home?" "Just now, Dad. I went over to the house to get some things..." He turns back to the window, his eyes scanning the horizon, always searching for something he's lost. I hesitate a moment before speaking again. "Dad...have you ever seen this?" I hold out the black book for him to see. He takes it in his shaky hands and opens to the first page. As he reads silently, I see tears spring to his eyes. He closes the cover and hands it back to me. "I saw this...years ago, Will. At the office...or in a hospital, I think. Your mother...Scully was so sick, and we didn't even know...I read a little, but she said she didn't want me to." Dad falls silent again, and I think he's lost his train of thought. But, a moment later, he adds, "I was sure she threw it away." We sit together for quiet moments. Finally, I open to one entry a little further into the journal. The words describe what was apparently the best un-birthday present an FBI agent ever got. I clear my throat and begin to read aloud. As my father listens, I see a smile steal over his face. He turns away from the window and closes his eyes. For the first time since my mother passed away, he knows peace. *** ~finis~