In Winter Snows by Jesemie's Evil Twin jesemie@hotmail.com Disclaimer: Not mine. But thanks for letting me play. Category: Mild Oddness, Story, UST. Christmas, pre-"Millennium", with no spoilers really. Feedback: Nicer than homemade jam cake and warm coffee. Mmm. Please and thank you. jesemie@hotmail.com Thank You to Shari, Liz, Liza, Caz, and Jess, for all the kind and wonderful help. Happy Holidays, belatedly. - - - I look at gold and world and see children's trinkets and sand. - Catharina Regina Von Greiffenberg - - - The cold metal spike of her spine continues to chill his palms two days later, as he stands at her apartment door with his hands plugged in his coat pockets. Erratic DC weather curls ribbons of snow through the unnaturally twinkling streets. The hallway jingles with wind. He has no idea what he is going to say. She unlocks her door slowly, the chain bolt rattling like Marley's ghost. He can still feel the small shackle links of her bones under his hands, each vertebra distinct and hard as an ice cube; she was in shock, he knows that much. But somewhere inside her frozen daze, he is also sure, she was seething. The flash-fire scorch of that anger is extinguished now. Her eyes fall away from his like a bullet, and the soft shadows beneath them remind him of the dim room where she pulled the trigger. Memory as a self-contained explosion, an isolated ricochet. The comet trajectory of the shot drew an invisible exclamation mark dotted bright red across the room. The murderer sagged to the floor like an empty department store sack, groaning, her hands pressed to her chest, her own gun clanging on concrete. Scully's arms remained outstretched. He believed he could see the gun handle bend in her grip, and prying the weapon from her caused something stone and coal to form in his throat. He thought of the victims on the autopsy gurneys, death-gray bodies scored with small scars like lash-lines of closed empty eyes. He could do nothing but pull Scully into a corner and refuse to stop touching her, rubbing the length of her back while she stood ramrod in his loose embrace. The electricity and heat in the building were off. He wondered where her coat was, wondered why she'd chosen to wear the thin and light blue cashmere sweater, a layer of ice between her skin and his. He thinks now that he may have been in shock too. Anger sat inside him, stillborn. Without a moment's pause he bit at anyone who approached. The hinge of his jaw aches, sympathetic to the remembrance of her curbed voice from which even the loudest cop could not at the time pull a verbal statement. No one expects to shoot anyone two days before Christmas. According to the doctors, the perpetrator will live, and Scully can speak tonight, could speak for herself a mere hour later. Crisply recovered, the eloquent good doctor and good agent and damn good shot. She is fine and self-redeemed, in charge, independent. No need for him at all. She does not move out of the doorframe, does not step backwards to let him inside. "Mulder, what are you doing here?" There are six bodies in a morgue, a closed file, field comments with his handwriting and her handwriting overlapping like tangled string on the spiral-bound notebook paper, a near-dead woman, possibly a trial lingering in the distance. With Scully's logic, he has no reason to be standing at her door. Accept this, he thinks to himself. He shakes his head, cowed. He starts to turn and stops. After everything that has happened this year, he will not let this unstitch them. He takes his hands out of his pockets and holds out a small flat red and green package. "It's Christmas Eve, Scully." She looks stricken for a second, pain scraping her features. It occurs to him that she has not once this season mentioned Christmas. It occurs to him that he has been too afraid to ask why, even before the week's events. He sees that fear reflected in her eyes now. "Oh," she whispers, taking a shaking breath. She smiles just a little, crooked. "Would you like to come in?" He nods. She opens the door wider. "Can I have my present?" Her voice is soft and ungreedy. "Can you have it now or can you open it now?" "Yes." She slips her warm right hand into his cold left one. He steps inside the apartment. "Then, yes." - - - Miri, dusk was a mosaic, color bleeding into the forest horizon like a crumbling kaleidoscope. Nostalgia always makes night look like a darkening rainbow, right? And later, the stars freckled the flat face of the sky. Dana and I sat at Sarah's feet. Missy was still mad about the flypaper incident; she kept rubbing her head where the copper hair was ripped clean. Billy was muttering something about stupid girls; he kept rubbing his arm, where a welt from Missy's fist was forming. It was all entirely normal, entirely magical. Childhood on my grandmother's porch. Sarah had told the story a dozen times. That evening, she made sure we listened. Missy believed it, in that literal way of hers. Bill did not, and Sarah said she didn't mind. I told her I didn't get it at all. She said, "Charlie, no one is whole without other people. That's what it means. Sometimes you pay a very high price for love, but real love is always worth it." Her words meant nothing to me. I was six; she could have told me that the story explained why cheese grew on Saturn and I would have just nodded. She turned to Dana, who was plucking at a cricket. "Do you believe it, Dana?" Sarah asked. Dana looked up at her and seemed to think about it, a scientist even then, all serious concentration and calculatedly eliminating by process. Dana said, "I don't like boys. I don't think the queen should have gotten married, grandma." Sarah chuckled. "I'm afraid that wasn't the point, dear." Dana frowned. She did not like to be wrong. Sarah leaned down to whisper in Dana's ear. I could hear what she said, but only because I was sitting right there too. Sarah said, "Someday, you will return to someone very special something very essential that he has lost. And then he'll belong to you, and you'll belong to him." Dana shook her head, not understanding. For the longest time, Miri, I didn't understand it either. I found the house. Well, I found the house's ghost, you might say, in a clearing the landowners seem to keep mowed fairly often. The porch slab is all that remains, an uneven cold slate with a serrated gash halfway down the middle and a broken rail post on one end casting a shadow the shape of Bart Simpson's hair. Behind it, the shape of the long-gone small house is outlined in a loose base of rocks and red clay brick. I walked the perimeter, trying to place in my memory the exact position of the stairwell. A tree branch overhangs what used to be the living room at an altitude that might be about right for a ceiling, or, as I recall more vividly in my most surreal nightmares, the scary trellis of wooden planks that made up the precarious floor of the attic. The back door would be there, near the edge of the well. That's where the logs were always stacked. A few logs were rotting by the phantom back door. That's where I found the key, half-obscured in the first snow that has melted and refrozen five times and feels like papier mache or a dried spread of marshmallow cream. I dug into the chunky ground with the window scraper I keep in the glove compartment. The box was buried two feet deep. Funny. I was actually going to enjoy the peace of being home alone on Christmas. I swear. Miri, it's snowing, and the roads have gone to ice. Since I finished the book early, I came out here for lack of anything better to do, if you want the truth. But I was bored, not suicidal. Michelle and the boys are probably having a blast at Richard and Laura's, but the in-laws' House of Violence and Sarcasm is further away than home. Maryland is closer than either. Maryland it is. Besides, my sister will want to know what I found inside the rust-edged tin. Someday, I promise, there will be a fairy tale for you, too. - - - "I thought maybe you'd be at the Gunmen's Paranoiacs United Christmas Eve shindig. But Byers said he and the guys called you this afternoon and you said you might spend Christmas with your brother in New Hampshire." He pauses, then continues in a nonchalant-sounding tone. "Did Bill switch coasts?" She knows Mulder knows she lied about her plans, but with her back to him she believes she is obligated to at least attempt to maintain the sloppy fib. "No, Charlie lives there now. His wife transferred. So." She yanks a rumpled candy cane-patterned blanket off the couch and begins to fold it. "So I guess you'll be leaving bright and early in the morning to drive up?" He has made himself comfortable on her sofa with such ease she almost feels silly for putting the blanket in a shallow oak trunk instead of just tucking it around his feet. "Scully?" Trigger along the wire of her finger like the springy button of a retractable ball-point pen. A compulsion to click. Frost in the air, an insulation against pure rage. The woman's eyes meaner than a sociopath's, cut-glass cruelty, lead crystal poison. Put her down. The puncture of gunfire swinging through the room, chirping the way a scale screeches when she places a glistening motionless heart on it. "What did the Gunmen get me?" she answers, picking the flimsy package off the coffee table. He snatches it away from her, the abrupt demonstration of frustration startling her. Something scours her vision. She shivers as though stung. He says her name in that horrifying gasp of clamped panic, and she looks up, frightened for a moment that he will touch her face and pull away to show her his bloody fingertips. But he stands instead, like a child being sent from the room, prepared to take the punishment for disobedience. "I'm sorry," he says. "Here. I should be going. It's getting late." "Mulder, I -- " The knock intrudes on her apology. Wary, she walks to the door. She peeks through the fisheye. The convex view of a towering, skinny man with wind-skewered and white-flaked red hair wavers in her sight. She opens the door. Mulder has sneaked up behind her, and when she takes a step backwards, she steps on his foot. Which causes her to stumble and him to yelp. Which causes her to reach up in assistance and him to reach out in receipt, which would be great if either of them had decent aim. Which they don't. Five seconds later, Scully is aware that her younger brother is brushing snow off his shoulders and failing to contain a vicious bout of snickering while he remains smugly, if safely, in her hallway. Her partner is rubbing his eye and lacking any self-control, practically giggling on the floor where he's landed. Her shoulder hurts with a vague ache, like she's been stabbed with a spork. "No wonder you're always in the hospital," Charlie quips, good-natured, tossing aside his coat and bag. He hooks his hands under her arms and zips her to her feet. Her hand catches Mulder's, and she tugs him up, smiling, feeling something surrender, calm and mostly happy inside her. Forgiving. "Charlie," Scully says, "this is Mulder." "I gathered." She is hemmed in by the two men, both significantly taller than she, as handshakes are proffered. Charlie combs snow off his head with his fingers. There's a minute of auspicious if awkward silence. Mulder breaks it, grabbing his jacket from a chair. His touch is light on Scully's unbruised shoulder. "I really should be going. Enjoy the McDonald's bucks, or whatever they're called. I'll talk to you when you get back." "Where," Charlie says, with glittering eyes, "are you going, Dana-dear?" He narrows his eyes and thins his lips into an evil sort of smirk. If he was a cat, Scully thinks, his ears would be laying flat. She mimics his exaggerated expression and shrieks when he pounces at her. "Charlie, stop it! I'm tired." Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Mulder, his face full of growing concern as she scampers away from her brother. "But Da-na," Charlie sing-songs, "I've come allll this waaay to seeee yoouuu." He catches her quickly, wrapping her in a hug that squeezes her ribs. His knuckles rub the top of her head, fierce motion causing her hair to ruffle with static. "Must you always do this?" she laughs. "Can't you just say hello like a normal person?" "As opposed to a raving lunatic?" he says, releasing her. "I thought you'd be used to in-san-i-ty, Danes," he prods, pinching at her to punctuate his syllables. She settles down, glancing at Mulder. His expression has faded to curiosity, but beneath it is a held breath. "I love my job, Charlie. I wouldn't trade it just for the promise of less wackiness." Charlie grins kindly in approval. "What would you trade it for?" The question is a usually well-hidden wound, and Mulder's voice so terribly quiet; a voice which could be stolen too easily, she thinks. The fear of that potential loss rushes at her in this fallen spot. Charlie looks back and forth between her and Mulder like a kitten watching ping-pong. He sighs pointedly. "Mulder," he says, "I don't think you have anything to worry about." Charlie grabs his solemn sister around the waist and lifts her off the ground. "Hey!" Scully kicks, her eyes wide. "Absolutely no picking me up." Charlie puts her down gingerly in front of Mulder. "Keep her," Charlie says, "I need to pee." And he trots down the hall. "To think, I used to consider him the poet in the family." Scully readjusts her twisted knit top. She looks up at Mulder, hoping she doesn't seem as ungraceful as she feels. He smoothes her hair in an affected manner, as though he's simply another brother. But it's too soothing, and his eyes never leave his shoes. "You didn't answer my question," comes the bodiless voice from the bathroom. "What did you ask?" Scully calls. "Where are you going?" Charlie shouts over the sink water. Scully looks at Mulder. "Nowhere," she says tenderly. "What are your holiday plans?" Charlie hops into the room like a toy-crazed kid. He plucks at his purple wool sweater. "What do you think about this color, Mulder? Is this a color a guy with a wife and three kids and a decent job and a beautiful, elegant sister should be wearing?" Mulder squints at him. "Um. I don't know. I'm colorblind." "Just tell him he looks like a dancing vision of sugar plums. He's fishing for a compliment," Scully says warmly. "Nice sweater," Mulder decides. Charlie stomps through the living room. "You still have not answered my question, Danes. Little birdie told me you bailed - discreetly, of course - on mom-o and Billy-boy and the joy that is Mrs. Tara Scully, not to mention Matthew, The Smartest Child in the World. You weren't going to spend the most wonderful day of the year alone, were you? Were you?" Despite the laughter she cannot contain, she doesn't answer. "Answer me, dammit, or I'll drink all your nog." "I don't have any nog." "No nog?" Charlie is aghast. "No nog?" he repeats, voice rising. "My goodness. Things are awfully grim in your apartment. No tree," he gestures, "no presents, save for this tiny thing." He nudges the Gunmen's gift. "No carols on the CD player." He sniffs as if insulted. "I am," he declares, "officially appalled. You better have a good reason for your bah-humbugging." Scully shakes her head. "I'm not wholly anti-celebratory." Mulder snorts. "Well, I don't have to be." She bites her lip. Charlie bounces once before flopping on the couch. "Bad week?" Mulder answers. "Bad week." "Bad week out of a slew of bad weeks?" Charlie no longer sounds like a hyperactive five-year-old. His concern is genuine, Scully knows, and deep. She sits down beside him. "A veritable bumper crop of bad weeks. It hasn't been all bad, though," she says, most definitely not looking at Mulder. From a chair by the window, Mulder echoes, "Not all bad," most definitely not looking at Scully. Charlie smiles his enlightened smile, and reaches into a glossy paper bag covered with pictures of turquoise and pink ornaments. "At least you're already here, Mulder. Saves me the trouble of convincing her to phone you." He puts a dirty, eroded box in Mulder's lap. Scully breathes, "Charlie, is that-- " "Right where she said she buried it." "But why-- " "Boredom. Sheer boredom." "And it was still there?" "Yep. We're lookin' at it." "Wow." "Yeah. Wait 'til you see what's in it." Mulder squirms. "Is it going to explode or something? What is this?" Charlie pushes at her elbow. "Go on, Da-na. Open it with him." She moves to crouch beside Mulder. For just a second, her gaze catches on his. She thumbs open the unlocked latch on the box and watches his face as the lid is lifted. "We kids made our own treasure chest," she tells him. "Welcome to Our Childhood. It was a very cheesy place," Charlie says. "Yeah," Mulder says, holding up a crayon drawing of four monster-sized stick-kids with shocking orange hair scribbled beside a tiny brown house, "but I bet you really wish you still lived there." "Only sometimes," Scully says, sensible and careful. "And only if I could bring a friend." "Ditto," Charlie says. "Though maybe I'd return sooner if they made Play-Doh taste as good as it smells." - - - My sister is combing her troll. My little green soldiers have formed a fort. Missy's homemade hippie beads fascinate me - they seem to glow. Mulder keeps stroking Bill's miniature teddy bear, sly glee in his expression. "Would you think less of me if I told you that seeing this goes a long way towards relieving the occasional evil thought I have about your brother?" Mulder asks Dana. "Only occasional? I have them all the time," I contribute. "We all do," Dana agrees. "It's what's held the family together all these years." "Ah." After a minute of contemplation, Mulder speaks again. "So you came all this way to bring her a box of old toys?" "Yeah, Charlie. Not to sound unappreciative, but why tonight?" "I'm a cheap bastard who soundly refused to shop? I'm proud, however, to discover that I am apparently not alone in my grinchdom." Silence again. These two are moodier than a movie star. Miri, sometimes Dana gets the saddest expressions, and it's all I can do to not start sobbing. "I know," she says. "I didn't buy anything for anyone this year." She makes a funny noise, like a pre-chewed laugh. "You've even developed an allergy to all the seasonal greetings and salutations," Mulder offers, not harshly. She considers the issue. "Should I work on that?" "Probably. Would make you seem less like an android," I say. "You do not seem like an android," Mulder defends. "Thanks." "You're more like a soulless shroud of a woman," I say melodramatically. "A husk of a human," she nods. "A zombie," Mulder says. "Zombie? Too lifelike," I say. Dana sticks out her tongue at me. "See? There you go. For a sec there I thought you were real." "She's not a real girl?" Mulder sounds defeated. "You're not a real boy." Dana sounds delighted. "You'll help me practice mortal euphemisms, right?" "Right," he answers. "I'm sure a case will turn up just in time for us to ring in the New Year in a rental, staking out some ho-hum but supposedly haunted establishment, or Skinner will have a top-priority gory autopsy for you to perform - which will drag you away from that big falling-down-drunk party you're probably planning to not invite me or your hardy brother to - or the world will end and you'll be the only person capable of securing mankind's survival. There will be, therefore, the oddball chance that you'll have to interact with humanoids again before MM." They're code-talking, Miri. I know this. It's performance art. But it makes such perfect sense to them, you can tell, that the only thing to do is listen. Or interrupt. "Aren't you going to open the little box?" I whine, pointing at the tin. "What? Oh. What's this?" Dana picks up the small cardboard cube and shakes it. "What's in there?" "Give it to him," I say. She hands it to Mulder, who wants to know, "How can this be mine?" "I didn't make the rules. It just probably is, okay? Geez. Open it." Dana looks at me, puzzled. Mulder is holding a black plastic spider ring and a folded piece of paper and looks equally baffled. "Have I mentioned I don't like insects?" Mulder asks. "Read it!" I yell, impatience rising. Dana removes the paper from Mulder's hand and unfolds it. She reads it to herself, her eyes growing wide and bright. She looks up at me and smiles. "'Dear Dana,'" she reads out loud, "'once upon a time, a lonely but noble count went riding in the woods. He stopped to let his horse drink from a dazzling green pond. The water was beautiful, and the count could not resist skimming his hand along the surface. When he did, a tingling sensation raced up his fingers and his arm. It was most peculiar. That evening, a great congregation of sparkles rose out of the forest and spilled into the courtyard, where the count was watching the moonlight. He found himself surrounded by fairies, who parted to present a most exquisite woman, their fairy queen. "'In her lovely hand was a gorgeous ring. She had come to return it to the count and to apologize for what she believed was the mischievous nature of one of her humble servants. It was a solid gold band, Dana, an impressive ornament for a wealthy count but a fortune for a fairy, even one who was a queen. Because she was herself noble, this queen gave the count his ring without hesitation. The count knew then that he had found someone who honored the truth. And because the count was indeed admirable, he would not accept the piece of jewelry. "'It was not his ring. "'And as soon as he told this to the queen, he saw something new in the queen's eyes. He then knew that she saw something truly noble in him as well. The queen had found the ring, had searched for months and could not find anyone else to whom it might belong. Many counts and princes, warriors and knights had claimed the ring belonged to them, but it always got stuck on their first knuckle or glided off their greedy, toothpick fingers. "'She slipped the band on the count's finger. It was neither too tight nor too loose.'" Dana pauses, never taking her eyes from the letter. I can see the mirror version of our grandmother's knurly penmanship on the yellowed page my sister holds. "'I found your grandfather's first wedding ring in a field he plowed for my father when I was fourteen and still believed completely in happily-ever-afters. But I didn't want to wait around for Mr. Charming to rescue me, though I wouldn't have minded Cinderella's big pumpkin carriage.' "Sarah always did love gourds, didn't she?" Dana says. I chuckle with the memory. "'We never knew where the ring came from, and for a long time Paul insisted I keep it or sell it - but not give it to him. I can't tell you how much that it would've been worth to a poor farm girl if she'd sold it or traded it or used to it to charm a richer boy (there were a few on the other side of the hill). I can tell you that what I found in your grandfather was worth more than a dozen, rings or boys. "'I enclose the spider ring I gave him when we sold that first ring on a cold Halloween afternoon years after your father was born. (Trust me, there isn't an ounce of gold in this world prettier than the sun setting behind a Brazilian beach. But that's not the point.) "'Dana, it is not merely that I gave the band to your grandfather or that you will, I hope, one day give to someone in whom you find all things worthy and real something inexplicable, wonderful and unexpected. The point is, in a manner of speaking, quite plain, dearest: if you want proof that you have found someone noble and true, the ring must fit.'" My sister's voice is hushed, but she meets Mulder's gaze with unmistakable strength. "'Love, Sarah,'" I finish. Dana cocks her head. "I read the letter." She shakes her head in mock dismay. "Hey, I thought maybe it was for me." My jacket begins to trill. I answer my phone and have adolescence blasted into my ear. "Hi, dad!" someone shouts. "Hello?" "Charlie, it's me." Michelle sounds exhausted but happy. I can picture her clamping her hand over someone's mouth. "I called the house and got the answering machine. Everything all right?" "Fine. I'm at Dana's." "Really? You drove down. Huh. Pete, put the cookie down right now, don't make me come over there. Say hi for me and give her a kiss from the boys. No, mother, I'm talking to Charles. Yes, I'm sure he misses you as well." "Like crazy," I say into the phone. "Hey, I called because I got the amnio results." "Yeah? What's the verdict?" "Clean." "Completely?" "Healthy as a bean," Michelle says. "And?" "Girl." I lower my voice, turning away from Dana and Mulder. "They're sure?" "Yep," Michelle says. "We won't have to raise another little drag baby like with Lily-- I mean, Jimmy." "Right." Michelle's glad. I'm glad. "Good deal," I say. "I've got a name all picked out." Miri, I knew it was you all along. I look over at my sister, my beautiful barren sister with the dead daughter, the dangerous job, the remissioned cancer, the shadows in her face, my sister who is sitting next and talking to her best friend, who if I'm recollecting correctly almost died - again - this year but who is in turn looking at Dana like -- And I think, calm down, Charlie-boy. They're just talking. It isn't like she's pregnant. Hell, they probably haven't even kissed on the lips. But Miri, I recognized them. I saw me, and Michelle, who by the way has never liked to be called mom. You, and the boys - you guys were in there somewhere too. And Missy and Bill and Emily, and Mulder's sister, wherever she is-- all of them, right there too. Sarah and Paul, mom and dad, everyone who came before Dana and Mulder. Everything that meant something, they were discovering it. Family is where you find it, yeah, but Miri, it's always a gift. - - - Charlie is asleep at the kitchen table. "He used to sleep at the desk in his bedroom all the time," she tells Mulder. Her voice gets softer and lower as the night lengthens. "He'd wake up and have comic book ink all over his chin." "I should go," Mulder says, trying to sound unimposing. He doesn't really know what to do. On an end table, the spider ring rests, plastic legs displaying a fragile silhouette in the flicker of a tealight. "I'm sorry I don't have a present for you, Mulder." Scully sounds miserable. "No, no. I'm the guest. I'm supposed to give you a present. For instance, I should let you get to bed before Santa gives up on you." He stands, his legs like lead. "You didn't bring me a real present?" She now sounds amused in her half-sleep. He leads her into the bedroom and drops a kiss on her forehead. She curls into a ball on top of her comforter. "Langly says I can go halvesies with them on the Mickey D's dollars." "Hmm." The distant growl of Charlie's grinding-gear snoring causes her to snicker like sleigh-bells. "Goodnight." "Mulder," she says before he reaches the door. She stretches out but then sits up, scooting to put her feet on the floor. She stares out the window at the intensely white but lazy-eyed moon that pops out of a chimney of cloud before being enveloped again. "Could I request a present?" "Sure," he says, shuffling forward, suddenly nervous at her anxious posture. "Could I hold you?" She whispers it so delicately for a minute he believes he must have imagined it. But she is perched on the edge of her bed, looking at him with an expression purer and more gentle than anything he could ever dream. He kneels, and her hands are warm in his, and she grazes her mouth at his temple, his jaw, before wrapping her arms around him fully. And it is not a fairy tale world, where they are - he knows this, knows how scary, wrong, temporary and hurtful this mundane realm can be - but for this moment, this sweep of wonderland snow-- He fits. - - - An end. Author's Note: I used my own variations of two folk tales in this story. The title came from this traditional Christmas greeting - Sing hey! Sing hey!/For Christmas Day/Twine mistletoe and holly/For friendship glows/In winter snows/And so let's all be jolly. No infringement intended.