Title: Momma 2 (1/2)
Author: RocketMan >lbontger@wmcstations.com<
Disclaimer: Mulder and Scully belong to CC, 1013, and Fox. No
infringement is intended.
See Momma 1 for other.
Character is dead. Future.

Momma 2

Dad sat across from me in the extra bedroom, the box labeled Margaret
Scully beside him, and Momma's belongings in his hands.
She was shaking a little bit and he was biting his lip.
I knew he was afraid.
But I wasn't sure of what.
Maybe me.
"Love, did you see this?" he asked and pulled out an envelope.
I shook my head and he handed it to me.
My name was written in a steady, neat handwriting.
A letter from the dead.
"She worte this for me?"
He nodded. "I found it in the box last night when I looked for more
journals. I guess your grandmother didn't realize what she had."
I felt my own hands shake at reading something expressly written for me,
from a mother I did not know.
"Are you going to tell me about her, Dad?"
He nodded but did not begin.
I stayed silent, I knew this was how Dad began his long hard speeches.
ike the one he had to give me on puberty and all that. He was a wreck.
Dad wasn't cut out to talk to a girl about being a woman.
That was the first time I ever really wished I had my mom instead of my
Dad. I felt bad for thinking it afterwards, but then, I was embarrassed
and frustrated.
Dad sighed and I knew he was getting ready.
"Do you remember anything at all?" he asked first.
I frowned and squeezed my eyes shut to think.
My eyes popped open and I nodded. "I think so. But it was a dream I had,
so I don't know if it's right or not...."
"Tell me."
"Well, I dreamed that I had a bad dream and Momma came in to soothe me,
and she couldn't even pick me up because she was so weak, but I crawled
into her lap."
Dad sighed. "Yeah, that's right."
I beamed and he smiled slightly at me.
"Scully was really weak after you were born, love. She could hardly get
out of bed some days and those were her good days. But one week, when
you were about eighteen months, she heard you crying and I moved to get
up, but she stopped me. She struggled out of bed, didn't even let me
help her and went as quickly as she could to your room. It hurt her that
she couldn't hold you, but she hurt even more when she couldn't comfort
you."
I nodded and Dad sighed again; I could see tears in his eyes.
I took a breath and then made a decision.
"Dad, you don't have to tell me this if you don't want to." I said.
He looked at me, and seemed very tempted.
But then he shook his head.
"No, you deserve to know her."
And he proceeded to tell me about the X-Files.

end part one
adios
RocketMan


Momma 2

"She came in and I thought she was a spy. A spy." 
Dad chuckled and fingered the soft material of the journal cover then
looked back to me.
"I tried my hardest to make her want to quit, ask for reassignment, just
leave. I didn't want to share, and I thought, well, I thought she'd hurt
me. Make fun of my reasons. She didn't do that. I told her right off why
I was with the X-Files and she listened. That's it. She didn't say I was
right, or depressed, or crazy. She listened. I guess that's what touched
me the most about her. She was so willing to give. Everything. For me,
for others, for you."
That was the most I'd ever heard about Momma in one sitting. I've caught
ideas and thoughts, but never actual events or whole sentences even.
"Well, she became very important to me. And so she got taken one night
while we were separated."
"What?"
Separated?
"See, the X-Files got shut down because we had been finding out too much
of the truth. And she was abducted by a man named Duane Barry, who gave
her to the aliens instead of himself."
Dad must have seen my face, because he nodded and shook his head. "My
own flesh and blood, and not a Believer." he murmured.
I laughed and said, "It's the Scully in me."
He smiled but his face went pensive again.
"She had some bad things done to her, love. Bad things that were never
resolved. She got cancer because of it. She was even infertile."
"But-"
"Wait." he said sharply and I shut up. Dad doesn't like to be
interrupted.
"Anyway, she had cancer. Inoperable. All that. Crushed me, but I was
stupid and foolish and I ignored it, thinking that eventually, if we
found the ultimate truth, we'd find her a cure too."
I looked at him with disdain, but the pain on his face made me stop and
take his hand.
He'd been punished for that thinking over and over no doubt.
"But she got worse . . ." His vocie stretched thin and I shuddered,
thinking of all this in the past that I hadn't been a part of, yet had
effected me so drastically.
"She got worse and I got crazy. I did really . . . suicidal things to
find the truth. I hurt her a lot. And then one night, after one
particularly stupid thing, she exploded at me. Actually, it was a very
quiet explosion at first. She started by talking quickly like she did
when she was angry, telling me that what I was doing wasn't going to
save her, that miracles are found in my belief, but in her science. She
said I had to believe in her, in us, to make it. She was telling me *I*
had to make it, like she had already given herself up for dead. I got
angry at that and we fought. Loudly, quietly, hurting each other. But at
the end, she was crying. I had only seen her cry twice I think. Once
when her father died, and once after she'd almost been killed by a
serial....."
Dad trailed off, seeing my face. 
"Uh..."
"Dad!" I yelled. "A serial killer!"
He frowned. "Yeah, with a fetish for fingernails and hair. And Scully's
hair was beautiful...."
"A serial killer?"
"Yeah.....why?"
"You *never* told me what the X-Files were! Serial killers?"
"And mutants, aliens, paranormal activity...."
"After all this Momma still didn't believe?"
He snorted and tousled my hair, as he had when I was littler.
"That's the Mulder in you."
I smiled and he continued.
"Anyway. She was crying. For me. I didn't know what to do. We never got
very personal, really. I mean there were times when all we had was eahc
other, but it wasn't.....it wasn't sexual attraction. It was spiritual.
And so here was my strong, capable Scully, crying in front of me and I
freaked out. I grabbed her and tried to make her stop crying. I kept
saying 'Don't cry Scully. Don't cry.' Then she started laughing, and
that scared me even more. Until she explained that she was laughing at
me, at how frightened I was."
Dad smiled ruefully and rubbed a thumb across the journal again, as if
he were stroking Momma.
"Well, we ended up talking. Like we needed to from the very start. And
the talk healed us. We realized that we had this connection, and she let
me share her fear, her sorrow. I let her love me, she let me love her. I
was never one for feelings, or actually showing them. She showed me that
love isn't a bad thing. We got married as soon as possible. She knew she
didn't have much time."
Dad stopped and looked away from me, his next words showing me the
feelings he'd had then. How much he wanted her to live, and me to die.
"She told me she was pregnant; I asked her why the pill hadn't worked." 
He drew in a shaky breath and looked at me apologetically. "She said she
had decided I needed you for when she was gone. I told her that she
wouldn't die and that I'd . . . I'd hate any child that had killed her."
My face paled and I had to swallow down the urge to throw up. His words
hurt me, and I knew he didn't mean it, but had then.
"Oh, babe, I'm sorry I ever felt like that. But you deserve to know the
truth. I'm big on that." He smiled hopefully and I smiled back, but
there were only tears behind it.
"She really didn't take to that idea. She wouldn't let me near her for a
week. And then I got caught up with an X-File and things got very tense
within the government, and I . . . well, I realized that I needed her.
Stupid me forgot in the first place. I apologized and she took me back.
Always giving....."
He trailed off, lost in some image, some memory that I wish I had known.
"It got worse, she hurt more, but she was determined to see through the
pregnancy. She always wanted a baby girl, a family, and she wanted it
for me too. It got so bad that a few times your heart stopped and scared
us to death. The doctors were telling us that there was no way you'd
make it. And that there was no way she'd make it. And I was telling her
she didn't have to do this; we could start over as soon as she was
better."
"But Momma wasn't getting better...." I said softly.
"No, and she knew it. Scully got so weak and sick that it began to
damage your health and so we had a C-section a month before your due
date. Everyone was afraid neither would make it."
He looked lost and I crawled up into his lap like I did when I was a
child.
He absently began to rub my hair and I close my eyes. My Dad was always
a good storyteller.
"I saw Scully the day after, finally. They wouldn't let me in before.
Actually she wouldn't let me in to see her; she said later that she was
truly sick, pale, wanting to die because she was in so much pain. She
wouldn't let me see that. So, I saw her the next day; I came in holding
you and she smiled so brightly, and I told her that I felt ashamed for
everything I'd said and I asked her for forgiveness."
Dad took deep breath, stopping as if his tale was finished.
"Go on, Daddy."
"No, love. I think you should learn her side before you do mine." Dad
nodded to the envelpoe and I remembered that fleeting dream of a weak
woman coming in to hold me after a bad dream.
"She loved me alot, huh?" I said, because I needed to know that.
"She fought for two years to stay with us, babe. Two years."
I nodded. So I was two when she died..... I never got memories of her
because of that.
"How did she die?"
Dad shuddered. "How about you read that and give me some time, huh?" he
said, and the joking manner he put it in gave way to the real fear
behind his eyes.
I realized why he was afraid.
He'd just conquered the sorrow, he'd just made it bearable and here I
was dredging that old, painful river.
"Okay Daddy. Maybe later then, right?"
"Sure babe. Later."
I waited, but he stayed and I realized he wanted me to leave him alone
with the remnants of Momma.
I left and bolted for my room.
The letter tumbled out and in it I found a necklace.
A cross necklace.
"Daddy?" I called.
"Yeah, love?"
"Where'd this come from?" I said, walking back to him.
His face went white and he shook.
He trembled.
"Daddy!"
He stopped me and took the necklace from my hands.
"Where'd you get this?"
"In the letter."
"Oh....God....." he whispered.
"Dad?"
"I'm okay. I just thought it was lost. I'm glad it's not."
He was more than gald. He looked like a huge weight had just been lifted
from his shoulders.
"It was Scully's. I found it in the trunk of Duane Barry's car . . .
it's almost a symbol to me, of her trust in me...."
I nodded. "Here, then."
"No, you wear it. You're the Scully."
I smiled and put it on, the gold cross shimmering a bit in the new light
and fresh air.
"Looks good," he said roughly.
I left him then to the tears, and the mastering of his sorrow.
I read the letter in my bedroom, fingering the cross.

end Momma 2......he he he..now you have to read Momma 3 to know what's
in the letter......=-P
adios
RocketMan