by Livia Balaban
Rated PG = V, A [11k]
Spoilers: Post-Biogenesis
Summary: After the events of "The
Ultimate Betrayal", Mulder ties up a couple of loose ends, after
he recovers from his illness. Namely, he goes to see his Mom. The resolution
of the story.
I thought I understood my mother until I told her the truth about Samantha.
I hadn't known what to expect. She'd been distant and cold for so long, I'd lost track of who she was and what we had meant to her, my sister and I.
I'd thought she might deny it, claim it wasn't true. The truth was horrible enough to *want* to deny.
I'd thought that maybe she would weep and wring her hands, make some tea and cry out about the injustice of it. But that's not my mother either.
When the moment came, I was humbled.
"Of course she was," Mom stated calmly.
I was incredulous. "What the hell do you mean 'of course she was'?" I snapped. "This isn't a joke, Mom. Diana Fowley was Samantha. She was your daughter. My goddamned girlfriend was my own sister."
"I know she was." Maddening.
"What are you talking about?" I was furious.
"Fox, you saw her out of context. Think of my first encounter with her."
"No more riddles, Mom," I barked. I'm sick to the teeth of them. "No more half-truths or veiled confessions. I want to know, in clear and explicit terms, precisely what the hell you're telling me."
She sighed and looked at me as if I was the single stupidest creature who'd ever slogged its way out of the primordial soup. "She was in my home, Fox. I paid attention."
She folded her hands and sat down in the corner chair. It was an old thing, a tall, overstuffed straightback monstrosity upholstered in a faintly-striped antique fabric. Twisted silk cord trimmed its edges, including the rolled arms and the front edges of the seat. Samantha used to love that chair. She'd sit sideways in it, her legs wrapping leisurely over one arm, her head nestled comfortably on the other, her attention focussed almost exclusively on her book of the week. She was an omnivorous reader.
"This was her chair, Fox. She sat in it."
I looked at her pointedly.
"I tried to ignore Diana's attention to the little personal details in the room, but it was clear certain objects held more fascination for her than others. The pictures of your father held little interest for her, but that little cup and saucer," she said, indicating the little Chinese set Dad had brought back for Sam from San Francisco, "held her attention for a good long while. As did that pile of books by the fireplace she'd always tried to put away. She stared at them with something like contempt."
The books. Ever since Fire Marshall Newton had visited her school and lectured on fire safety, Sam had been convinced that the pile of books at the very edge of the hearth would spell disaster for the family. Mom had kept them there at first to keep the cat away from the fire - apparently one serious tail-charring was not enough of a lesson to the poor dim-witted creature that fire was an unfriendly force of nature - but eventually the books remained because they were a perfect complement to the thick soft rug we'd kept there. A fire, a soft rug, a book, and a mug of something warm and sweet - it was one of the only truly comforting memories of my childhood.
Okay, so Diana had admired the cup and saucer, and disdained the books by the fireplace.
"What about the chair, Mom?" I asked impatiently, waiting for my mother to finish.
"She sat in it."
"You said that already."
"It wasn't the fact that she sat in it, Fox, it was the *way* she sat in it."
"Mom, I would have remembered if she'd draped herself over the way Sam used to."
"All right, Fox. If you remember your visit so well, you tell me what she was doing with her right hand while she sat in this chair."
I honestly couldn't picture it. I guess I hadn't been paying attention. In all fairness, I was pretty nervous. I hadn't brought anybody to meet mom since high school, so I was on edge pretty much the entire time.
"I don't remember, Mom. What was she doing?"
She shook her head and - very slowly - reached her right hand over the arm of the chair, and began to toy listlessly with something under the rolled arm.
Oh. My. God.
It wasn't visible from the front or the sides, but if you reached your fingers in *just* far enough, you could feel one strand of the twisted silk cord that had come loose from the trim along the length of the underside of the rolled arm. She would only know to play with it if she'd known it was there in the first place.
With a book in her left hand, Sam used to reach her right over the arm of the chair, and endlessly play with that little loose bit of silk.
It was then I'd remembered something I'd hidden away - like most children - something I'd filed away under "unimportant crap" the very adolescent moment I realized my parents were absolutely full of shit.
I'd forgotten that intelligence is hereditary.
"Jesus, Mom. Why the hell didn't you say anything to me?"
She gave me *the look* again - what is it with me and women capable of shriveling glances? - and retrieved her hand from the side of the chair. "Would you have listened? Did you really want to know that?" She shook her head. "I thought it would be better not to know than to know *that*. I felt horribly for you. Eventually there came a point when it was just too late to say anything. I supposed I'd hoped it would never come out, and you'd find a way to move on with your life."
A slow, ironic half-smile grew across her face - it looked familiar - and she made her ultimate opinion clear. "You still haven't determined how to do that, have you, son?"
"How to do what?"
"Grow up." I bristled as she rose from the chair, and joined me on the sofa, taking my hands between hers. "Most men never grow up. Your father never did. Overtaken by delusions of grandeur, all of you."
Her simple honesty was devastating.
"I don't know if I can ever forgive you and Dad for what you did."
"I know. I've spent more than twenty years trying to forgive myself. I'll let you know how that turns out."
I gave her a pained smile, and told her softly, "I'm still angry, Mom. I don't think I'll ever get over that. But, for what it's worth, I still love you."
"I love you too, Fox. You know I do."
Mom never wore her emotions pinned to her sleeve like a banner, the way I did. But I think somewhere along the line, drenched with fury and feelings of betrayal, I'd forgotten that. I'd thought her cold and unworthy of her only son's love.
And I'd forgotten what the warmth of a mother's love felt like. Unconditional, 'I'll-love-you-even-when-you're-bad' love. Every love offered to me since Samantha's disappearance bore ties to specific motives: Kelly liked that I was tall; Sarah thought of me as the resurrection of Will, her first (and evidently only) love; Trudy thought my intelligence would rub off on her (she was wrong); Phoebe needed control and dominance; Colin was...well, Colin was a brief post- traumatic 'experiment' - and a failed one at that; Diana wanted...well, it was obvious what Diana wanted.
And Scully.
I know she loves me, the kind of love granted to a friend and compatriot not through conscious choice, but rather through the long and slow evolution of trust and the shared nightmares of battle. But I can't say if it's unconditional. What would I have to do to drive her away from me?
Not a whole hell of a lot, I think. One more ditch, a big one, and Mulder the Partner is history.
Scully's non-confession confession in the hospital was an eye-opener for me. Maybe it took all these years to dredge through years of trauma and loneliness in order to understand what I had: The strength and comfort of my partner, my mother's love, and a long way to go before I grew up.
"Do you want to know where she is now?" I asked my mother.
"No."
"I honestly don't know who that creature is who calls herself Diana, but she isn't my sister. I think Samantha died the moment they began their work on her." Mom nodded almost imperceptibly. I hoped she would be receptive to my suggestion. " I want to order a headstone for her and place it next to Hanna's and Milton's graves. Is that all right with you?"
She spoke plainly, without inflection. "Yes. I think that's a good idea."
"Wanna come with me?"
She smiled softly. "Do what you need to do, Fox."
I nodded and rose to leave.
"Come back for lunch?"
I nodded again and smiled.
* * * * *
It's a small black stone, the shape and size of the arm of that chair she loved so much. It's low to the ground, and edged with a carving of that loose silk cord trim.
It sits nestled in the shade an old Russian Olive tree in the Boston cemetery where my Father and his parents, Milton and Hanna Mulder, also lie.
On the stone, next to a small engraving of a windmill, it reads:
=====
End.
