Title: STRESS FRACTURE
Author: Jean Robinson (jeanrobinson@yahoo.com)
Disclaimer: Characters from the X-Files are the property 
of Ten Thirteen Productions and the Fox Television 
Network. No infringement is intended. 
Rating: PG
Classification: V, A
Archive: Please ask permission first.
Spoilers: Christmas Carol/Emily
Summary: In the face of the unbearable, something has 
to give.
Feedback: To jeanrobinson@yahoo.com
Author's notes at the end
*****************************


STRESS FRACTURE 
By Jean Robinson


She is waiting for me in the church, standing behind the 
small white coffin that should not have been there. Her 
comforting family has left her in my care, uncertain and 
apprehensive, but willing. Her mother, at least, 
understands the peculiar bond between us. Her brother 
knows only what he's seen of me in those brief times of 
crisis. He associates me with all things dark and gloomy, 
a harbinger of evil omens and bad luck. His wife, Tara, 
seems to have no opinion, but the glances she gives me 
are curious and askance, as if she can't quite see the 
horns and tail that her husband insists I have. I think 
she'd like to like me, but she doesn't quite dare.

Scully is alone when I arrive to place a small bouquet of 
white flowers on the closed lid. I did the same for her 
sister at her grave when I met Scully there months after 
Melissa's funeral. The irony does not escape her; even at 
this miserable time she summons up a small smile, but 
it quickly fades. Perhaps because she remembers that 
my gesture then was accompanied by unwelcome news 
concerning the case against her sister's murderers; there 
would be no trial, no closure, and ultimately no justice 
for Scully or her family. And she senses now that I am 
bearing similar bad tidings regarding Emily and those 
who caused her creation, her suffering, and finally her 
death.

She is not wrong. I wish she was. How I wish she was.

It doesn't take long to explain how the cover-up is 
proceeding. How evidence is disappearing even as we 
stand here bathed in the light from the pretty stained 
glass windows above us in this peaceful sanctuary. How 
once again, those whom we sought to bring to the light of 
public scrutiny will continue to remain safely ensconced 
in the shadows, protected by others with an agenda more 
powerful than anything we can muster as an isolated 
duo.

Scully remains rigidly composed. "There is evidence of 
what they did," she says steadily, and walks slowly 
forward. Toward the coffin.

I know what she's going to do. I know what she'll see. Or 
rather, what she won't see. I want to stop her more than 
I have wanted to do anything else in my entire life. In my 
mind, I see myself reaching out and grabbing her arm, 
holding her back, preventing her from continuing her 
journey towards devastation. Protecting her.

But I don't move. I've already made a nearly 
insurmountable error in trying to protect her during the 
last year. Never mind that I did what I did out of a desire 
to shield her; I should have foreseen that it would 
eventually cause her more grief to find out the reason for 
her infertility later rather than sooner. But she was dying 
at the time I first learned of it myself, and it seemed 
altogether too cruel to roll another crippling boulder of 
knowledge onto her already mountainous burden. Oh, 
Scully? Not only do you have a fatal illness, if somehow 
you do manage to survive, you'll never have children. 
Because someone else wanted to steal your children first, 
to use them in an obscenity masquerading as something 
you hold sacred, namely scientific research. 

I just couldn't do that to her. Not then, maybe not ever, 
even if I had the chance to do it over again. So at the 
time, I withheld the information, and now I am paying 
the price by letting her go to the coffin unimpeded. It's 
killing me to know how much she is about to suffer in 
the next few seconds, but if I stop her now, she will never 
trust me again.

How ironic that I have to hurt her so deeply to prove to 
her how much I do care.

She removes my flowers with one hand and starts to 
raise the coffin lid with the other.

I can't bear to watch her and turn away, looking up, 
trying to keep my tears back by the sheer force of gravity, 
biting on my lower lip to keep my own sobs locked in my 
throat.

There is a small click as she unlatches the lid. Then 
nothing. Utter silence.

My partner is a mouth breather. The faint but audible 
sound of her respiration, even at rest, has become the 
muted background music of my life during the five years 
we've been together. It is the sudden absence of this 
soothing and familiar lullaby that causes me to turn 
around.

She's staring into the depths of the coffin, and the 
expression on her face defies all description. She reaches 
into the box and comes up with her cross, the necklace 
draped around her fingers. It dangles in front of her eyes, 
which close as I watch her. Sparkles of light dance and 
flash around the church as the cross swings slightly on 
its chain, catching the sunbeams.

I would give anything on earth to spare her this moment. 
My life, at the very least.

She has literally stopped breathing, as I thought. One 
hand is resting on the side of the empty coffin, which was 
supposed to cradle her daughter and instead is weighted 
only with sandbags and her crucifix, the life symbol she 
gave to Emily because the child admired it and Scully, in 
the age-old tradition of all loving mothers, wanted her 
little girl to have anything her heart desired.

The hand on the coffin suddenly grips it with knuckle-
whitening tension, and the hand holding the cross falls 
as if the fragile bit of jewelry is made of lead instead of a 
light, precious metal. She sways on her feet, and her 
knees buckle.

I'm beside her in two quick strides, catching her against 
me as she collapses, easing her to the floor. She hasn't 
fainted; her body has simply given out. For the first time 
in her life, I think Scully has given up.

She is the physicist, not me, but I know perfectly well 
that for every action there is an equal and opposite 
reaction. Some reactions are instantaneous. Others take 
a very long, long time to manifest themselves. I've heard 
it called the breaking strain. That point at which 
something irrevocable snaps, and the long-awaited 
reaction comes crashing through. The stronger the 
person, the longer the wait. And the longer the wait, the 
more spectacular the reaction.

Scully has hit the breaking strain. The straw that broke 
the camel's back. The final straw, as it were. This has 
been building since the day Duane Barry carted her off to 
a fate she should never have had to endure. But she did 
endure it. With a courage and a strength I could never 
have marshaled.
 
As much as I want to believe, I often wonder what I will 
do if I am confronted with those little gray men I'm 
supposedly chasing. Until this day, I was completely 
certain that my intrepid partner would simply introduce 
herself and initiate a scientific study. In the last five 
years, I've decided she is capable of withstanding 
anything. I've seen her do it. I've been in awe of her 
ability to maintain her calm, her objectivity, her 
concentration. No matter what. The loss of three months 
of her life didn't faze her visibly. A terminal diagnosis 
brought out her medical determination. She bore my 
apparent death on two occasions and survived. Even the 
knowledge that she was barren did not destroy her. If 
these trials had befallen me, she would be visiting me in 
a mental institution, if not the morgue.

But this is different. As I cradle her tiny frame against 
me on the floor of this sun-washed little chapel, I wonder 
if this is the mortal blow from which she will simply not 
recover. Ever. She may eventually get up and walk away 
under her own power, but she will not be the same Dana 
Katherine Scully. She will not be the resourceful partner 
who was once bold enough to shoot me and then fearless 
enough to hold her own superior hostage. The one who 
herself faced the Grim Reaper and came back from the 
precipice twice. If Death comes looking for her again now, 
however, I fear she might just surrender to it willingly.

If the Consortium was looking to damage her irreparably, 
they've finally found the way to do it. It took them five 
years and innumerable tries, but they've finally hit upon 
the right solution to the problem of her presence and her 
effect on me. The death of an innocent. Her innocent, to 
be specific. The neat, bloodless removal of Emily's body. 
And witnessing what this is doing to her makes me want 
to kill them all, one by one, in ways far too gruesome to 
detail.

Her body is shaking uncontrollably; she clutches double 
handfuls of my suit jacket, the thin gold chain still 
wrapped in one small fist. She is not crying, but she has 
at least started breathing again. Head down, she is 
heaving for air, sucking in great white lungfuls as shock 
settles in for a long-term visit.

I realize she is not only breathing, she is talking. Rather, 
she is gasping out a phrase, repeating perhaps the only 
two words in the English language sufficient to express 
this kind of ultimate distress, this wrenching sorrow.

"Oh, God, oh God, oh God, oh God. . ."

'Oh, God' is right, Scully. If it would erase the events of 
the last few days I would strike a deal with any deity you 
want, including Satan himself.

The words eventually do give way to tears, the kind of 
deep, soul-cleansing weeping that Scully rarely, if ever, 
allows herself. The kind of crying she did after her near-
fatal encounter with Pfaster, an event so far behind us it 
almost seems like another lifetime. In fact, that may be 
the only other time I've seen her like this. She was 
composed for her father's death. She was shuttered for 
Melissa's. She was teary but determined for Penny 
Northern's. 

For the loss of Emily, however, there will be no holds 
barred. I know that she cannot do this in front her 
family, especially now, when they are understandably 
happy for the healthy new son and grandchild. They 
want to revel in the joy of a new life, not dwell on the sad 
end of a life that they didn't expect and couldn't fully 
comprehend. Only Scully can mourn Emily's passing. 
And only I, the believer in extreme possibilities, will be 
permitted to see how this is shattering her.

It's a privilege I would have gladly forsaken.

I feel helpless. There are no words to assuage this kind of 
pain, no pill to dull this type of agony. I can only hold her 
and pray that it will be enough. That my partner will 
somehow survive, tattered and torn but hopefully intact 
enough to march onward.

She's exhausted; I doubt she's slept more than four 
hours since her arrival in San Diego, the day the phone 
first rang and brought her ordered universe crashing 
down around her in a chaotic tangle. The soft, 
shuddering sobs gradually subside and she is quiet, half 
lying in my arms on the floor next to the coffin. I've been 
gently rocking her and murmuring to her the entire time, 
employing a long-dormant technique that I vaguely recall 
using with my sister in times of childhood trauma, when 
our parents started shouting and doors started to slam. 
Samantha would creep to my bedroom and I'd hold her 
close, whispering the nonsense words of comfort.

It seems that those meaningless mumbles still retain 
their magical powers to soothe. Scully's respiration 
slowly returns to a normal rate, although it is abnormally 
loud thanks to the tears that have plugged her nasal 
passages closed. I cautiously wait to see if she'll make 
the first move toward recovery, and when she doesn't, I 
chance it myself.

I shift my body and hers at the same time, propping her 
in an upright sitting position so I can look her in the eye. 
She stares blankly at a point somewhere over my left 
shoulder, mouth slightly open for air. The tears have cut 
tracks through her light make-up, but the damage is 
minimal. Scully does not wear enough cosmetics to show 
the ravages of this kind of crying. There is a small 
smudge of mascara trailing down from the outer corner 
of one eye, and her eyes and nose are red, but otherwise 
the only obvious sign of what has just happened is her 
complexion. Always a fair Irish colleen, Scully now 
redefines the word pale. Anyone else would be pink and 
flushed from such exertions, but Scully's face seems 
almost translucent. It is as if she is actually fading away 
under the strain.

I take my hand and place it on her jaw, marveling for a 
brief instant that my fingers don't just pass right through 
her. I gently turn her head so that she is really looking at 
me, not past me. I don't want to see the tragedy in her 
eyes, but I have to. I have to know if there is any hope for 
her to pull through this. And I can only know that if I can 
get her to look at me.

Her red-rimmed blue eyes meet my hazel ones, and there 
is a subtle but noticeable shift in her gaze as she focuses 
on me for the first time. It's a good sign; she is actually 
seeing me and recognizes me.

We stare at each other for what seems like a very long 
time, but in reality is less than a minute. Scully blinks 
once, then again, the second time more slowly; it's a 
conscious lowering of her lashes rather than a reflexive 
ocular motion. In another context, it would be considered 
a coquettish gesture on her part. Now, it is simply a 
signal of surrender, defeat.

Or maybe not. Maybe I am mistaking sheer weariness for 
capitulation. I hope so. She sits with her eyes closed, her 
dark lashes resting on her pallid cheeks in vivid contrast.

"Scully?" I'm afraid to trust my own voice, but her name 
comes out without a telltale squeak. Sometimes I do get 
lucky.

Her lips remain slightly parted as she breathes, eyes still 
closed. "I'm okay, Mulder." Her voice is thick with the 
tears past and those yet to come. I sense that in the next 
few days she will shed a lifetime of silent, private tears 
for herself and her daughter. For what could have been.

She opens her eyes again, and those crystal blue irises 
are shiny with the next upcoming wave of emotion. She 
has about a minute, I estimate, before it'll come tumbling 
out. She releases my suit jacket; I'd forgotten she was 
still grasping it. Her arms go around my waist and she 
rests her head on my shoulder. I reciprocate, using one 
hand to hold her around her back and the other to 
stroke her hair. "They didn't have to take her," she says 
in a muffled voice.

"I know. But you knew they would, didn't you? You knew 
they wouldn't take a chance that we would just bury her 
and let it go." Although we would have. I admit I had 
some doubts, up until the time in the hospital when 
Scully told me that even if she had the means to treat 
Emily, she wouldn't do it. That she refused to subject her 
child to a lifetime of misery and pain. If we'd had the 
body, we would have buried it and gone home to DC 
without bothering to threaten Prangen Pharmaceuticals 
anymore. It wouldn't have gotten us anywhere, anyway.

I still harbor three uncomfortable secrets from Scully - 
the vial of her ova stolen from the Lombard Research 
Facility nearly a year ago, the bottle of unidentified 
serum from the nursing home, and the knowledge that 
there are more partially-formed children, some of which 
may be hers, which have undoubtedly now been spirited 
away to another hidden facility or destroyed outright. If 
Scully hadn't told me her intentions, I might have 
disclosed their existence as bargaining chips at some 
point, more smoking guns in our unholy war for the 
truth. Now they'll remain known only to me. I can only 
hope that hiding them from her will not cause her more 
pain at some future point. That I'm really doing the right 
thing this time.

God help me if I'm wrong again, because if I am, it really 
will kill her. And me.

Scully hugs me tighter. "I knew. But until I saw it, I 
didn't believe. I didn't believe they would really take her 
and leave me with nothing." She starts to cry quietly 
again, her tears soaking the shoulder of my suit jacket.

"She'll never be just nothing to you, Scully. You have a 
memory of her that they can't take away." Even as I say 
it, I regret the hollow sentiment. She and I both know 
these people are experts at memory disruption. If they 
want to, they could wipe Emily from her mind as easily 
as a sponge mops up a milk spill.

My partner, however, is an expert in her own right. She 
accepts the statement in the spirit in which it is 
intended, and ignores the foul truth of how the 
Consortium could pervert it at their whim. She cries for 
another few minutes, then sniffles to a stop and drops 
her arms. Looks at me calmly and says, "I'm ready to go 
home now."

"Okay." I help her to her feet and put my hand in its 
customary place at the small of her back to guide her 
out. She stops me.

"Wait."

"What, Scully?"

She takes my hand and drops something into my palm. 
It is her cross, warm and slightly damp from her grip. 
"Would you put this back on me, Mulder?" She turns 
around and brushes her hair aside with one hand.

I clumsily undo the tiny catch; the fine chain has been 
forged with small, delicate female fingers in mind, not 
large, unwieldy male digits. I loop it around her neck and 
fasten it, making sure the little ring is securely hooked. 
She turns back to me and says, "Thank you. For coming. 
For being here. For doing this."

I hug her to me. I said I was in awe of her strength, and I 
still am. That she could think to thank me, the most 
frequent cause of all her woes, at this time of terrible 
personal sorrow, is incredible to me. And now I am sure 
she will be all right, or as she would say, fine. Maybe not 
today, and maybe not tomorrow. But she will recover. 
Dana Katherine Scully will survive after all.

She slips her arm around my waist and I put mine 
around her shoulder, and together we turn our backs on 
the small white coffin and leave the church.

End


Author's notes: Like so many people, I have a number of 
bones to pick with these two episodes. Suffice to say I 
sleep better at night if I tie up at some of the loose ends 
CC and 1013 like to taunt us with. :-) I thank my beta 
reader Jill, who tolerates my Mulder without complaint.

Feedback: Send to jeanrobinson@yahoo.com