THE MISSING HEART (1/1) BY: Annie Sewell-Jennings (auralissa@aol.com) DISCLAIMER: The characters of Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, and Walter Skinner are the property of Chris Carter and Ten Thirteen Productions. So is the character of John Lee Roche, though he rests in peace with all of the other characters killed off in "The X-Files". SUMMARY: The last victim of John Lee Roche is discovered by accident, and her parents have an odd request concerning their lost daughter. CATEGORY: VA, M/S UST RATED: PG-13 (violence, vague mention of child molestation) SPOILERS: "Paper Hearts", "Christmas Carol", "Emily". Before "Sein Und Zeit" and "Closure". DISTRIBUTION: ATXC and PhoeniXFic, http://members.aol.com/auralissa/index.html, and yes to Gossamer and Spooky Awards. :-) AUTHOR'S NOTES: I feel like revisiting the fourth season, which explains the post-"Memento Mori" piece I've been writing. It's all because FX keeps airing all of the good fourth season episodes. I loved "Paper Hearts" and wanted to write about Mulder and Scully finding whom that enigmatic last heart belonged to. Also, I wrote this piece a while ago, but I felt like posting it. Thanks to Heather for beta-reading this piece! :-) ***** THE MISSING HEART ***** SCULLY: Mulder, it's not Samantha... and whoever that little girl really is, we'll find her. MULDER: How? SCULLY: I don't know... but I do know you. --"Paper Hearts" ***** Her name was Sara. Sara Katherine Ryan, actually. Her school photograph showed an elfish young girl with becoming gold hair that still possessed that baby-fine, sugary curl to it, tied back with a slip of a pastel ribbon. She was remarkably beautiful in a smocked white dress with a pattern of rosebuds across the chest, with an eyelet lace collar and sleeves that looked like angel's wings. A shy, sweet smile stretched across her face, with that becoming little curve of her chin, her mouth rosy and ripe and revealing two missing front teeth. She probably had an adorable lisp. The faded photograph showed a cherubic little creature with the face of an angel. And twenty-seven years later, when the hunting dog found her skeleton in the middle of the woods in Massachusetts, she did not have a face at all. The body had been found by accident, which was the only way for it to have ever been found at all. Two hunters had been looking for deer when their dog caught a scent and ran off. When they found him, he had pulled up one skeletal finger, the pinky still wearing a small gold band engraved with the initials "S.K.R." She was found buried underneath a patch of wildflowers that had just begun to sprout for the springtime, all in a multitude of color and texture. The body had decayed and decomposed so that nothing remained but her bones, grayed and covered in upturned soil by her shoddy burial. A rotted cotton nightgown patterned with lilies and baby's breath hung in a fragile, yellowed state, her lace collar stiff and brittle, and her ribcage exposed by a missing piece of cloth, cut in the shape of a heart. They received the telephone call five days after the body had been discovered and three days after the girl had been identified, all thanks to her slender gold pinky ring and a missing children's list from twenty-seven years ago. The day had been so simple, nothing more than an uncomplicated day in March, where the snow had drifted like frozen ash from the clouds and the sky was the same color as paper. The call was shocking. The sixteenth Roche girl had been found in Massachusetts, Sara Ryan, after her molester and murderer was dead and all of the other little girls' bodies had been found. The last heart. There was no discussion, no disagreement. They simply booked the flight and left for Boston. Mulder had no choice to make when considering whether or not to return to the Roche case. The final child had been found, and he still had penance to pay for his recklessness that had almost added a seventeenth heart to Roche's grotesque collection. Guilt returned to darken his skies, and it had been raining a cold, freezing rain after they landed in Boston. Sleet showered on them in a torrent of frozen precipitation, and soon snow would fill the cavity of Sara Ryan's exposed grave. The paisley-patterned curtain fell gently as Mulder turned away from the window, concealing the cloudy night and keeping the artificial streetlights from filtering into his plain hotel room. It had not begun snowing yet, but soon it would, according to the Weather Channel and Sara Ryan's father. Richard Ryan was a tired man, with features that were worn by years of grief and loss, and eyes that had cried too many tears to shed now for the truth about what had happened to his daughter. The wife, Leila, had simply sat in silence, rolling her lost little girl's slender golden ring between her fingers, her fingertips caressing the engraved initials as though she could invoke her murdered daughter's spirit. The sound of the rising wind pushed at the window, and freezing rain pebbled the glass with its rhythmic white noise. It was soothing, comforting; the slow turning from numb to frozen, and Mulder pushed up the sleeves on his long-sleeved black tee shirt to below his elbows, raking a hand through his hair as he approached the bed. There was an ice storm approaching, one that would leave the fresh-grown lilies that had sprouted from Sara Ryan's decayed body shattered and coated in fragile frozen glass. The trees would be coated in icicles, like tears that had frosted over while sliding down a child's cheek. Everything that was regarded as strong and stable would turn weak and brittle, and something was bound to snap... With a sigh, Mulder leaned back on the pillows, covering his socked feet with the thick green comforter, pulling the sheets tightly around his tired body, but not yet surrendering to sleep. Whenever he closed his eyes, he saw the photograph of Sara Ryan imprinted on the backs of his eyelids, engraved into his slumber and etched permanently into his heart. The rounded shape of her young face, the sugary curls of pure gold and the angelic wings of crocheted lace... All rotted and decomposed into nothing, her heart torn out and her innocence robbed. A knock sounded at his door, and Mulder propped himself up on the pillows, knowing who stood outside and wondering why she bothered waiting for his permission to enter. Their privacy was merely a formality at this point in their partnership, something that was rarely enforced or even respected. "Come in," he tiredly called to his partner, and certain enough, it was Scully who walked through the door. Ice crystals had already begun falling from the sky and had congregated in the interwoven threads of her copper hair, and they shimmered in the cheap motel lighting like diamonds. More bits of sleet and frozen rain clung to the collar of her wool peacoat, and she swiped at the glimmering precipitation with her bare fingers. Tightly, she smiled at him, shaking off her Doc Martens and running her fingers through her hair. "I thought that you'd still be awake," she said, and Mulder nodded, not indulging her in a smile, not even the bitter one she'd been expecting. "There's going to be an ice storm tonight," he murmured, his voice low and gruff even to his ears. "Flights have been canceled, including our own. We may be stuck in Boston for another few days." He paused for a moment before continuing. "I was in an ice storm once when I was a kid," he said pensively. "We were still living on the Vineyard, when a blizzard passed through New England." Quietly, Scully approached the bed, perching herself gingerly on the foot of it, melting ice crystals moistening her fine copper hair. "The sound of it on the roof was like wind chimes hailing... And it lasted for three hours. Then the moon came out, and everything was coated in ice. Power lines fell, the roads were like mirrors, and our windows were frosted over." Mulder shook his head, momentarily lost in memory. "God, it was beautiful." Her hushed contralto rippled slightly across the distance between them. "It sounds beautiful," Scully softly said, her own frosted blue eyes melting along with the ice crystals interwoven into her auburn hair. It was always odd to him, melting Scully with words or a gesture, but it could be done. He could utter a memory or a cry and she would burn, or he could touch her arm or hold her hand when she was in pain and she would soften. Then she leaned forward, tilting her head to the side and smiling quietly. "But I doubt that you were up this late because of an impending ice storm." There was no need to congratulate her innate ability to read him; he was an open book on this case. She had commented to him three years ago that he had been wearing his heart on his sleeve when concerning the Roche case, and he now donned his old accessory again. Guilt and anguish, pain and regret... All were well-worn ensembles in Fox Mulder's emotional wardrobe. Quietly, Mulder shook his head. "No," he said in a hushed voice. "I was thinking about sharing a hotel room with Roche three years ago." Scully flinched, obviously pained by the jump back into the past and Roche's mind games. "It's better not to think about what cannot be undone now, Mulder," she said, and Mulder dryly noted how she did not offer him any empty promises that he had not made any mistakes with Roche. He had. His errors had been potentially deathly ones, ones that could have left a cherubic little girl named Kaitlyn dead on an abandoned bus. It was a miracle that she had lived at all, considering how close it had been... Just a few more seconds... Gently, her hand brushed his face, a sudden movement that was startling and sweet. Her bare fingers were chilled from the cold, and they made his skin jump to life from the frosty temperature of her skin. Her fingertips trailed down his cheek in soft brushes, like fragile snowflakes, and the look on her face was compassionate and strikingly warm when compared to the frigidity of her hands. "There's no point in regretting what you can't change," she repeated, her voice smooth and soothing. "What's done is done." But what had been done? He had put his heart on his sleeve, just like all of those other little girls, and true to his M.O., Roche had tried to steal his as well. He'd used him, manipulated him, and tore him into shreds, all for his own vicious entertainment and cruel wants. Mulder had become an odd combination between victim and killer, as his heart was ravaged and ruined and he became so consumed with the need to know that he stopped caring about every other human life in the balance. Roche could have killed, nearly did kill, and it was all because of Mulder's carelessness and selfishness. The light glimmered across Scully's shimmering hair, damp and slightly curling due to the melting moisture sluicing through her vermilion locks. "This was the little girl that I was trying to find, Scully," he murmured, and she furrowed her brow, slightly confused. "I thought that I was looking for my sister. I thought that I was searching again for Samantha, but it turned out to be Sara Ryan. So while I thought that I was sacrificing everything for Sam again, trying to find the truth about my sister, it was all for this little girl instead." Understanding glowed in the confines of her sharp blue eyes, and she nodded slightly to herself. "So you keep thinking that all of your effort was for Sara and not for Samantha," she murmured. "I think that I see where you're coming from, Mulder." It only took a glance to know that she did understand his guilt and his remorse. He was wondering if everything would have been different if he had known from the beginning that it was not Samantha Mulder but Sara Ryan. If it had been this little girl's heart instead of his sister's, would he have acted differently? And he knew in his heart that he would have. And that made him ashamed. A silence passed as the ice began to fall, in the same beautiful sound that reminded him of his childhood ice storm. Fragile bits of frozen rain shimmered to the ground, creating a sound like collapsing wind chimes, weaving a tapestry of delicate music that was hauntingly beautiful and ethereal. Scully sat down on the bed, her leg pressing subtly against his, just a slip of her warm thigh giving him solidity and solace through the fabric of their clothing. His gaze slipped away from her, turning across the room to look at the cascade of crystal rain outside, the hollow sound of ice hitting glass echoing through the wintry night. The light shifted, and Mulder saw their reflections in the frosted glass. They created an oddly poignant portrait, both dressed in black, his skin pale and his eyes weary, and ice glowing in the indigo fire of her hair. Captured in the glass like a framed photograph, separated from the haunting ice storm only by a breadth of wall, his eyes gazed out in the distance, but hers remained on his face. The sharpness of her profile was outlined and highlighted in cool shades and tones of deep blue and violet, and there was an unfathomable sorrow and aching that was painted on the lush boysenberry ripeness of her mouth. "This may not be the best time to tell you this, Mulder, but the Ryans have made an unusual request of us," she murmured, her voice low and subtle, adding another eerie element to the haunting melange of ice and wind outside. He turned his eyes away from their projected image to the solid woman in front of him, the one who glowed with a softer flame. Like a candle melting frost. "What do they want?" Mulder asked, his voice soft and roughened. She paused, looking down at her cold hands before returning her eyes to his. "They want their daughter's heart." For a moment, Mulder was puzzled, and then he understood. They wanted the cloth heart that John Lee Roche had cut from Sara Ryan's nightgown after he raped her and killed her. For some horrible reason, they wanted their daughter's flannel heart returned to them, and Mulder's heart tightened with a strange, clinging sense of fear. "I..." He paused and then started over. "Of course they can have it. There's no reason for it to be kept as evidence. All of the other bodies have been found, and Roche is dead. I'll file a request-" Scully shook her head, a droplet of melted ice slipping down away from the crown of her hair to fall on the collar of her peacoat. "Mulder, you kept the heart after Roche died," she gently reminded, her fingertips reaching out to touch his wrist gently. "Remember?" Slowly, Mulder nodded, remembering placing that last aging flannel heart in his drawer, wondering who it belonged to, and wondering for the last time if John Lee Roche had been speaking the truth. Then he banished his self-indulgent stupidity from his mind and began paying his penance for his foolishness and for nearly killing another little girl. "Yes," he murmured. "I'll send it to them when we get back to-" He cut himself off, suddenly realizing what he should have instantly remembered. "The fire." The conflagration inside of his office had destroyed his desk and the last little cloth heart, with the fine pattern that Sara Ryan had worn, incinerating it and turning it into nothing but charred ash. Pained, he buried his face in his hands. "Oh, God, Scully..." She shook her head, obviously wracked with her own form of guilt. "I debated whether or not to tell you at all, Mulder," she said. "There's nothing that can be done about it. But I thought that maybe you would want to know." Her slender shoulders shrugged under the slender black coat, and she continued to gaze out the frosting window and at the beauty of the freezing night. It was another error that he had thoughtlessly made in the Roche case, keeping what he had thought may have been Samantha's heart. It was a stolen memento, no matter what permission had been granted to him in regards to Roche's cloth hearts. He had not kept it in the event that the girl would actually be found one day, though that had been a small piece of his reasons for keeping it. He had kept the heart because of his own personal anguish and agony. He had kept it because it was a piece of Samantha. And because of his stolen heart, the heart that he had taken to remind him of Samantha, he had nothing to give Sara Ryan's family but an apology that would mean nothing to them. His voice sounded hoarse and choked to his own ears when he spoke, and he knew that she would hurt at the sound of his strained voice. They always made a strange, bitter banquet of each other's anguish, feasting on their shared grief, until it culminated into agony and torture. "Why would they want the heart, Scully?" he asked. "Why would anyone want a reminder of their daughter's murder?" This was what bothered him now. He could not help but wonder why any parent would want a memento of a child's torture and death. He could understand their request for their daughter's ring, but wanting the cloth heart that their daughter's murderer had stolen... He shook his head, searching for answers. And Scully gave him the answers that she had, in the quiet, gentle fashion that was hers and hers alone. Her slender, precise and nimble fingers slowly reached into the inner pocket of her suit jacket, withdrawing her black FBI badge and wallet. Silently, Scully lay the badge on the bed, abandoning it for the wallet, and then her cool fingers unfolded the small leather square and unzipped the change pocket. Scattered change chimed in unison with the sound of the falling ice outdoors, and her manicured fingers procured a small, slender plastic bracelet from the pocket. Puzzled, Mulder looked at the bracelet, and Scully quietly spoke. "It's Emily's hospital bracelet," she murmured. Scully's daughter. The child that she had only known for days before her merciless death. The only child that she would ever have and the child that she never should have had in the first place. "I always carry it with me, along with my badge, my license, my passport and so on. I keep it with the rest of my essentials, the rest of my identifications, because it is essential to me and it is part of my identity." Slow fingers began caressing the circumference of the laminated bracelet bearing her child's name, and her eyes roved over the label as she read the identification for herself. "You see, Mulder, I was a mother once. It may have only been for less than a month, but I still had a daughter." Her smile was tinted with pain and violet ice. "Her name was Emily Simm, and this was the proof of her existence and the proof of her death. This was part of who and what she was, and so this is something that I preserve." She passed the tiny bracelet in his direction, offering the memory of her daughter for him to identify, and yet Mulder did not take only that. His large, slender hands cupped her palm and bracelet in his own, the chilled fingertip and bracelet warming in the engulfing heat of his own skin. Curiosity and concern marred her smooth skin, but Mulder shook his head, looking at her with dawning understanding. "They should have had their heart, Scully," he murmured. "I should have been able to return that part of their daughter to them, and because of my error, my selfishness and my mindless quest for my own evidence, they won't ever have her." It was the missing heart, the daughter that would forever be remembered in an innocence that had been stolen from her, and in a way, John Lee Roche had won from beyond the grave with the incineration of that last cloth heart. Scully shook her head at him, holding his hands in her free one, looking at him with eyes the color of fathomless seas. "I'm sorry, Mulder," she apologized, her voice trembling slightly from a guilt that darkened her eyes and weighted her voice. "I shouldn't have brought it up. There's nothing that you can do about it now-" Agonized, Mulder shook his head. "But there was something that I should have done about it then," he whispered, looking into her eyes and pleading with her not to forgive him. He wanted this guilt, wanted to feel this sort of remorse, because he deserved this sort of punishment. He deserved to be punished for his sin. His quest for Samantha had collected a wake of dozens of victims, from the possibility of little Kaitlyn's death to the lack of resolution that Sara Ryan's family would have to cope with. And the victim who had suffered the most because of his selfishness, Dana Scully, could not forgive him so easily for his calculated cruelties. She could not let him off the hook before he had hung himself. Her fingers slipped away from their intertwined hands and wrapped around the nape of his neck, her cool but warming fingertips cupping the base of his skull and her fingers brushing through the fine fringe of brown hair that hit the top of his spine. "I need to finish, Mulder," she murmured. "I understand why the Ryan family wants Sara's heart. I understand their need for that piece of their daughter. But the fact is that it's just cloth. They have a thousand and one memories of her from when she was a child, and those are memories that John Roche never could steal from them. Those are what will immortalize their daughter for them, not a little scrap of cotton." He was aware that he wanted to cry, but he bottled his tears. He was not worthy of sharing the Ryan family's grief, not when he had been the cause and contributor to so much of it. And he didn't deserve this sort of compassion from a woman who had also suffered because of his damnable search. He was inadequate, worthless, and lame before this childless mother's touch and judgment. Anguished for all that he had done to her, Mulder turned his eyes away and looked at the reflection painted in the window. Ice was falling steadily now, raining down from the heavens and coating everything with its delicate beads of frost, turning even the most strong of items into fragile and frail glass. There, set against the background of the beautiful play of violets and blues, was them. Her hand was clasped between his, her hand trailing up and down the nape of his neck, and her fingers threaded on the short strands of hair that fringed the base of his skull. The pleading in her eyes, the pain, and everything else... "What do you have, Scully?" he whispered, looking at the glass reflection of her rather than the solid reality. "Other than a plastic bracelet and a handful of days, what do you have of your daughter?" What did she have that he hadn't selfishly stolen away? What cure, what truth, what sort of hope had he not given her? What future and what possibility had Fox Mulder raped from Dana Scully? The glass Scully, painted in shades of late night and falling ice, leaned closer to the glass Mulder, her lush and generous mouth dangerously close to his ear. A fragile lock of moist vermilion caressed his cheek, and he felt the faint tickle of her hair on his skin. From the reflection in the window, they looked sensuously intimate, intertwined so intricately that they were nothing more than melding and melting ice. Mulder became so mesmerized by their projected image on the glass that her words were startlingly real. "I have the memory of a sunny day just after Christmas, where my daughter sat and played with paper dolls like any other child," she murmured, her lips caressing his earlobe in an electrifying and soothing motion. "I have the memory that my daughter was happy before she died, and the knowledge that she had been happy for the short breadth of her strange existence." Her voice lowered slightly. "And that's enough for me." Then her eyelashes caressed his cheek as she craned her neck around, landing delicate butterfly kisses on his face, before she pressed a soft, aching and wondrous kiss on the corner of his mouth. Then the length of her slender body curled against his as she laid on the bed, the fingers of one hand tangling through her daughter's hospital identification and the fingers of another fanned out on his chest. Subtly, her palm pressed against his heart while his pulse slowed and sleep began to tug at him. Slowly, he closed his eyes and the picture of Sara Ryan came to mind. Innocent, bright, naïve and lovely, with the comely cherub's face and the hair of spun sunlight. That was the child that the Ryans would remember. That was the little girl that they would always carry. And then another photograph came to mind, and it was of Emily, the girl that his partner had loved and he had loved in turn. The captured still of her, sitting on the floor, coloring pictures and charming him with that rare smile that her mother had always charmed him with. And that was Scully's daughter. The ice continued to fall, scattering across the pavement like bells ringing, and the lights flickered faintly in the darkness, threatening to fall into darkness as the electricity began to fail. "If the power goes out, it'll get cold," Scully murmured across his chest, and he nodded in return. "Maybe I'll just..." She didn't finish; he had already wrapped the comforter around her and blanketed her in warmth. She did not speak again before slipping away into sleep, still loosely holding her daughter's bracelet in her slackened fingers. Mulder himself closed his eyes, and instead of seeing children or memories, all that he saw was darkness, and all that he felt was warmth. Mistakes were made. Errors were committed. And sometimes, hearts were lost. But it wasn't the mistakes that were remembered, nor should they be. It was the good. It was always the good. As the ice storm began in full, he fell asleep, protected by the good of his partner and the warmth of her body, lulled to sleep by the fragile fall of frost outside and nothing else, as his heart slowed and a blissfully dreamless slumber overtook him. And all was well. ***** (end) ***** Feedback would be muchly appreciated at auralissa@aol.com. I'd love to hear from you! :-) ***** ---------- "And I'm just supposed to do this out of the evilness out of my heart?" --Spike ---------- Fanfiction Archive: http://members.aol.com/auralissa/index.html