Chapter Text
I will no longer repeat unspoken words.
But in memory of that non-meeting
I will plant a sweetbriar.
There the miracle of our meeting shone and sang,
I did not want to go back to anywhere from there.
Putting happiness before duty was my bitter joy.
I talked with someone I shouldn't have
I talked for a long time.
Let passions which demand an answer choke those who are in love,
but we, my darling, are just souls at the edge of the earth.
Anna Akhmatova
One night, just after her daughter Julia was born, she couldn't sleep. In the dark she heard John roll over and knew he was still awake, too.
"Honey?" she said to his still back.
"Yeah?" he mumbled thickly.
She didn't know why she asked it. It was something that was never talked about. You just didn't mention it.
She flopped onto her back and blinked in the darkness. "What do you remember," she whispered. "What do you remember of Before?"
John's breath came out in a long trail of air but he said nothing. She touched his shoulder and he jerked.
"What do you remember?" she repeated.
"I don't remember anything."
Just then she heard Julia's cries from the baby monitor and she sat up. "I'll go," she said and left the room.
She never mentioned the subject again.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
She walked across the deserted Plaza of Heroes, her heels tapping on the immaculate squares of concrete. It was still early and the square wasn't yet crowded with people heading off to a day's work.
Sipping her thermal cup of tea, she considered the question she'd asked John two years ago.
What do you remember?
What do I remember?
She remembered the smells of the street, the exhaust from passing cars, a stand selling greasy hot dogs, the stench of overflowing trash receptacles.
She remembered noise, the babble of many languages on the streets, snatches of rock music from open windows in an apartment building, the wail of police cars.
She remembered herself, very young, dressing in a suit and staring at herself in the mirror, wondering if she presented a professional image.
Bits and pieces, scraps and rags of memory. Nothing fit.
It was like that for everyone else, she knew. But it didn't make it any easier.
She sighed and entered the glass doors of the East Side Health Building, striding purposefully to her destination.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dr. Hanley poured a cup of coffee and offered her one. She sat in the leather chair near the window and shook her head, pointing at her mug of tea.
The doctor sat behind her desk and brushed some flyaway strands of blonde hair out of her face. "How has this week been, Dana?"
She sighed. "It's been okay. Work has been stressful. We've encountered some problems in the lab with our protein samples, but it seems to have straightened itself out."
"And life at home?" Dr. Hanley tapped something into her notebook.
"Fine," Dana said. "I haven't seen much of John lately, with the late hours in the lab, but we're doing okay. Julia has been having a lot of temper tantrums again, and it's probably because I haven't been spending enough time with her."
"Are you planning on changing that?"
"Tonight I'm taking her to the park after work. John is going to pick up dinner and then we can all eat together like a normal family. And I've told Harold that I'm going to take a few afternoons off this week so she doesn't have to be in Primary Care all day. Even though I know it's a great facility, I don't like her to spend all her time there. She's not even three yet."
Her therapist smiled. "It's tough balancing a career and parenthood. It sounds like you are taking some positive steps to get it all together."
Dana nodded. "I try, but it's hard. Sometimes I feel like John spends more time with Julia because of his career and the fact that he can do some of his work at home. And sometimes I wish my mother was around to give me advice."
"I think we all wish our mothers were around." Dr. Hanley had two young sons herself, Dana knew. Their photograph was sitting on the desk, two cherubic boys grinning and holding footballs.
Leaning back into the leather of the chair, Dana shut her eyes. "I had another one of those dreams last night."
The doctor's voice was soft. "Tell me about it, Dana."
"I'm more and more convinced that it's not just dream imagery, but something from Before, leaking in. It's been nearly the same dream every night for a week."
"What happens?"
"I'm standing in a hallway. It's a hospital or a clinic of some kind, I think. I mean, it looks different from any hospital I know, but it has that atmosphere, you know? I can smell the antiseptic. In the dream I'm in a bathrobe and I'm so cold and I'm shaking from fear and sorrow."
"What are you sad about?"
She shook her head. "That's just it-- I have no idea. I'm terrified and my mouth is dry, but then he comes and holds me, stroking my hair and somehow I feel better. I say something to him, but I can never remember what, and then he says something back. And then he kisses me on my forehead, very softly, and I always wake at that point."
"Who is the man, Dana?"
"I have no idea." She bit her lip in frustration. "I can't really see his face. He's tall and has dark hair,
but that could be anyone. All I know is that I trust him and his presence is comforting to me."
Last night, after she'd had the dream, she climbed out of bed and went into the living room, pacing the small space over and over again, trying to think, to force her brain to recall his face. It didn't come and finally she'd fallen asleep on the couch, with one of Julia's baby blankets pulled over her body.
No one talked about it, so she had no idea if others had the same dreams of the past, the same struggle to remember.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The official line was this—the treatment for the Plague had the side effect of erasing much of their memories of the past. The Survivors could not mourn the past. Wives, husbands, children, gone forever.
As she entered the Tube after work, Dana considered it for the eight thousandth time that week. Nearly ten percent of the world had survived, but they did so with only fragments of their memories.
She'd had a mother, a father, perhaps sisters and brothers.
Maybe a husband. Not a child, for her gynecological exams before getting pregnant had shown she'd never given birth before.
She'd been a doctor; she knew that, a pathologist. Her training and skills had been intact when she'd awakened after her treatment in the Clinic.
She knew she was forty years old and her birth date was February 23, 1964.
Once she'd lived on the East Coast, in a city called Washington D.C. It was the capitol of the United States of America. She could still remember the stately buildings and monuments, seen through a car window.
And her name was Dana Katherine Scully.
These rags of memory had survived intact. There were very few official records left, of course. They'd gone up in flames.
That was about it, she thought with a sigh as she sat in one of the blue plastic seats of the Tube car and it took off with a whoosh. That was the sum of thirty-five years.
There had been a war, between Earth and the Enemies. It had been a speedy thing, destroying much of the world in a few days of fire. Disease spread like wildfire, picking off more of the survivors of the fighting. And then the Others came and saved them all.
She could remember none of this. Her life began the morning she woke in the Clinic, blinking at the artificial sunlight.
In truth, she was only five years old.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
She got off the Tube at Morningside Station, pushing her way past the crowds on their way home. Outside the station, the street was as light as day, but if she looked up she could make out the starry sky outside the dome of the city. She always wondered what night smelled like.
It was February, which made it winter. Sometimes she could recall playing in snow as a child, gathering handfuls of the white, fluffy stuff into something called a snowball and throwing it at other children. Of course, the city was climate-controlled. There was no winter in a dome.
Dana couldn't really remember how cold felt.
The street was crowded with pedestrians, still wearing suits or work unit uniforms, talking and laughing and planning tonight's dinner. There was a line outside the takeout deli, which meant that not many people were in the mood to cook tonight. She knew she wasn't. Dana was tired and her feet ached after standing over test tubes for much of the day.
At Primary Care Number 32, a crowd of mothers and fathers stood with their progeny in hand, gossiping and patting small heads. She stopped off for a brief chat about shoes with Joanne Ling and then went inside to get Julia.
Her daughter was playing with a yellow dump truck, pushing it back and forth on the bright red carpet with vroom-vroom noises. Leilah, the teacher of the two year-olds, came forward and smiled. "She had a good day, Dana. We did some dancing and she pretended to be a frog."
Dana smiled at the young woman with long dark hair. "She saw a frog in the park last weekend and couldn't stop talking about it."
Julia looked up and smiled, tiny white teeth flashing in her rosebud mouth. "Mommy!" she shouted and ran to wrap herself around Dana's gray trousers.
She stroked her daughter's light brown hair and thought, at least you'll grow up to remember your mother.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The park was small, tucked between two towering apartment complexes. There were other, larger parks in the city, but she liked the intimate feel of this little park. It was just two blocks from her own apartment and she frequently came with Julia.
Dana spent a while pushing Julia on the swing and then she let her daughter run off with a little boy her own age to get thoroughly dirty in the sandbox. It meant she or John would be scrubbing sand out of the tub that night, but Julia loved to dig holes in the sand.
She settled on a bright orange bench and enjoyed the sensation of simply sitting and reflecting. It had been so hectic lately, with the demands of her growing child and the always-frantic pace of the lab. It felt peaceful to smell the greenery of the park's trees and watch Julia laugh with her new friend.
There were few people in the park. Often she ran into neighbors here and spent a companionable time discussing child rearing. Tonight there was just a lone woman across the park, reading a magazine, and two men pushing babies in strollers over by the jungle gym. She could hear the crack of a baseball hitting a bat and some boyish laughter from the field behind her.
She looked up in surprise at the sound of a male voice. "Do you mind if I sit here?"
He was a tall man, slender, dressed in a sober gray suit. "Of course not," she said.
"This is the best spot to keep my eye on Adam. He's the one in the sandbox."
She laughed. "So I won't be the only one digging sand out of fingernails tonight. He's playing with my daughter, Julia."
The man smiled, a warmly crooked smile that illuminated his handsome features. Dana guessed he was her age, or a few years older. He had smile lines around his gray-green eyes and a few strands of gray in his dark hair. She had a few gray hairs, herself, but her hairdresser covered them with Warm Auburn once a month.
"I'm glad to see Adam making a new friend. We just moved here a month ago, and he's having a hard time adjusting to his new Primary Care. He loved his old teacher and the change has really thrown him for a loop."
"Where did you move from?" For some reason, this man made her feel curious. She wasn't one to ask a lot of personal questions of strangers, but the question had come out of her mouth before she'd thought about it.
"Boston," he said, adjusting his metal-rimmed glasses. "My wife is the new Dean of the School of Education at the University. We hated to move, but then again, the cities are all pretty much the same, aren't they?"
"Yeah, I guess so," Dana said. She'd only left the city a few times, once for her honeymoon at Miracle Beach and twice to conferences in Chicago. But he was right—one domed city was like the other. Quiet, clean, peaceful. "What do you do?"
"I'm a developmental psychologist. I work with school-age children, and I was able to transfer to the school system here when Sarah got her new job. How about you?"
She turned to him and surreptitiously studied his face. Something about it reminded her of her husband, perhaps the intensity of his eyes, or the curve of his lower lip. Interesting, Dana thought. "I'm a medical researcher. I work in a lab that's studying congenital birth defects, the legacies from the Plague."
"That has to be fascinating," he said, nodding.
"It is." And then a wail emanated from the sandbox as Julia clopped the little curly-haired boy on the head with her plastic shovel.
"Julia!" she shouted.
"I guess this is our cue," the man said and rose to soothe his son.
She sighed and went after her seemingly homicidal daughter. The terrible twos, she thought ruefully.
As she left the park with Julia in tow, it occurred to her that she'd never learned the man's name.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
After Julia had been bathed and put to bed, Dana curled up on the couch and started clicking her way through the family photo album on the telescreen. Tonight the apartment seemed especially cozy for some reason. The drapes were shut against the winking night-lights of the city and the living room was lit by lamplight. From the open bathroom she could hear John cleaning out the tub. He'd drawn the short straw.
The pictures began right after she'd met John. There were photos from their dating days, the two of them at parties, at concerts, grinning at each other at the public pool.
It had been fast, their courtship. In those early days, when everyone in the city was so desperate to connect, to have a family, there had been a three-month waiting list to have a marriage ceremony at the Hall of Magistrates. She'd met John at a Social in August and they were married in December. In the pictures she looked radiant and slightly embarrassed in her long white dress, clutching John's hand outside the Marriage Chamber. They both looked drunk and flushed at their wedding party, surrounded by their work friends.
Her face was serious in the photo of them signing their Marriage Contract. Even though she and John decided to get married just a month after meeting, she took the commitment seriously. When she'd sworn before Magistrate McLean to love, honor and cherish John Rosen, she'd meant it.
He was all she had, after all.
Dana flipped forward to pictures of herself sitting in the park, huge with pregnancy. She'd ached for the mother she couldn't remember during those months. It was scary to be responsible for her unborn child's life, to know that soon she would have the awesome responsibility of being a mother. How could she be a mother to her baby, when she couldn't even remember what it was like to have a mother?
And then there were literally hundreds of photographs of Julia. They showed her growing from a goo-covered screaming little creature in the Maternity Clinic to a little girl with straight brown hair cut to her chin in a bob, sticking her tongue out at the camera.
John padded in the room and sat down next to Dana. "God, she's beautiful, isn't she?" he said in a tone of awe.
She turned to John and traced the line of his cheekbone with her index finger. "Who do you think she looks like, you or me?"
He grinned. "She has your smile, but my nose."
"Thank God," she laughed. She hated her nose and had considered having it taken care of at one of the new surgical boutiques that had popped up. It seemed vain, though, so it was merely a fantasy.
"I love your nose, Dana." John kissed it at the bridge and she sighed in pleasure. It had been weeks since they'd made love. Their schedules had just left them too tired for anything but half-hearted cuddling at night.
She flicked off the telescreen and turned to her husband, smiling at the way his brown eyes were sleepy and aroused at the same time.
"Let's go to bed," she said.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
That night she had a new dream.
She was making love, but it wasn't with John. It was another man, the faceless man with dark hair and gentle hands.
It was morning and they were in a bed that was unfamiliar to Dana, but it smelled like home to her, like her own body and perfume and the smell of his skin. He smelled like sleep. God, he felt so good, touching her lazily in the early sunshine, kissing her with lush lips. She loved him. Oh, how she loved him. Only him.
The man held her and kissed her after they'd both come and said, "I'll never forget this, Scully."
Strange, he called her by her last name.
She woke then, sitting stark upright, her heart drumming away. After a few disoriented minutes, she climbed out of bed. John, who could sleep through anything, didn't stir, even after she stumbled over her running shoes on the floor.
In the bathroom she brushed her teeth and drank a glass of water, and stared at her reflection.
I wonder how many lovers I've had, she thought.
For all intents and purposes, John had been her first and she, his. But it had felt instantly familiar as John had entered her that first night; the rhythm felt like one she'd known before. And as she'd arched against his body and cried out with her orgasm, she'd felt the sense of deja vu that had haunted her in the months since she'd awakened at the Clinic.
Dana shook her head and vowed to stop obsessing about the past. It wasn't healthy, it wasn't fair to John and Julia and the new life she'd managed to build for herself in the last five years. Other people were living their lives and building their own new memories just fine. She needed to do the same.
I don't want to remember you, she silently told the man from her dreams.
She climbed back to bed and moved against John's warm, bare back, clutching him like a security blanket.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
On Sunday morning Dana awoke to bright, false sunshine streaming in through the windows and John's arms around her. He was humming something under his breath, a song she found familiar, but couldn't name.
"What are you singing?" she mumbled and buried her face in his sandy hair, which smelled like chamomile shampoo.
John shook his head. "I don't know," he simply said.
It was funny how things like that would simply come. One night, a few months out of the Clinic, she'd been at a Social at the Fellowship Hall. There was a piano there and fascinated by the ivory and ebony keys, she'd sat down and laid her fingers on the cool keyboard. Suddenly, her fingers began to move and shape a song. She could play piano. Somewhere in her past, she'd taken piano lessons.
Dana stretched and yawned, enjoying the sensation of not having to get up for work. They'd taken Julia to a barbecue given by Deborah, the head of John's office, and hadn't gotten her to bed until nearly midnight. Normally her daughter would be up and hollering for attention, but she could hear Julia's even breathing through the monitor.
With a morning-stubbled face, John nuzzled her neck and she growled, feeling her nerves begin to spark to life.
His voice was so quiet she almost didn't hear him. "Are you happy, Dana?"
Her eyes opened wider. "What do you mean?"
John pulled away from her and sat up, staring out the window. "Are you happy? With me, with us?"
She sat up, too. "What are you talking about? You know how happy I am with you."
"It's just..." His voice trailed off and he turned to her with his brows knitted together. "You've been having so many bad dreams, you've seemed so lost in your thoughts in the last few months. I worry that you're no longer happy."
She wasn't as good an actress as she liked to believe.
Wrapping the quilt around her, she lightly touched his bare arm. "I am very happy with you, John. Nothing has changed. But I've been having these dreams and I think they're about Before."
He nodded. "I wish you could let it go."
"The past?"
"Yes. Dana, it doesn't do you any good to think about it, to try to remember it."
Closing her eyes, she wished she could simply make it stop. But she couldn't. It was beyond her control.
It took her a while to find her words. "John, don't you ever want to remember?"
Her husband didn't even hesitate in his answer. "I don't want to mourn what I can never have again."
Not for the first time, she wondered if John had had a wife, a family. She wanted to know what he'd been like as a boy, who the first girl he'd kissed was.
John leaned over and kissed her cheek. "You have to let it go, Dana. You have a new life now. The past should remain in the past."
She nodded and smiled at him, the features that had become so familiar and beloved to her.
Still, as they lay back down and cuddled under the quilt, the same questions continued to run through her mind.
Who did I love, Before?
Who were you?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Julia listened attentively as Dana read Jerry the Blue Spaceship to her. With chubby fingers, she pointed to the proper pictures when Dana asked her which was the satellite, which was the launching pad and which was the moon. Watching her daughter's intelligence grow daily was astonishing. It was hard to believe that the sturdy little girl by her side, wearing red corduroy overalls, had begun as a single cell in Dana's body.
Across the room, John sat in the black leather desk chair, his eyes closed and the connect cable clipped behind his ear, deep in the Net. Nothing short of an elbow in the ribs would rouse him as long as he was in full immersion.
Dana turned to the last page. "And then Jerry flew high in the sky and the moon began to clap for him." Julia applauded along with the moon. It was her favorite story.
With a disgruntled sound in his throat, John hit the disconnect button on the computer and unclipped the cable.
"Something wrong?" she asked from her seat on the rug.
He stood to his full, lanky height and began pacing the living room. "It's the team in Sao Paulo. They've fucked it all up."
"John!" She pointed at Julia, who appeared fascinated by the new vocabulary item from her father.
"Sorry." He sat down on the floor with them and pulled Julia's red-ribboned ponytail. "Dana, there's major problems at the site. They need me to fly down tomorrow."
While John's career as an industrial engineer meant he could do a large amount of his work from home through the Net, he also had to spend time at his sites. Dana accepted this as a fact of life, but still she groaned. "For how long?"
He shook his head. "I don't know. A week, maybe two weeks."
"And there's no way around it?"
"There's no way." He kissed her cheek. "I'll make it up to you when I return. Maybe we can both take a few personal days and spend them together."
Dana forced a smile. "You'd better make it up to me"
"All the more reason for me to hurry home," he laughed and swung Julia into his lap.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Later in the afternoon, after John took Julia to buy supplies for dinner, Dana hopped on the Tube to the river for a run. Located on the far eastern end of the city, the river was her favorite spot for a solitary run.
She didn't get many chances to exercise anymore, not since having Julia, but she loved to push herself and feel completely alive as her body moved down the running path.
The riverside was crowded with runners, families on bikes and couples pushing strollers in the Sunday afternoon sunshine. Dana reflected that most children were under the age of five, the product of the new families that had sprung up after the Others had come. Very few children younger than late teens had survived the War and the Plague.
Now the city was in full family frenzy. Everyone wanted a baby. At her lab, coffee and lunch breaks were taken up with discussions of breast-feeding, infertility treatments and potty training. Lately, Dana's entire social life seemed to be taken up with baby showers and naming ceremonies.
Dana walked to the tree-lined bank of the river, watching it lazily flow below her. The river came from Outside, but it first went through a treatment plant to remove pathogens and impurities.
Looking to her left as she did her quadriceps stretch, she spotted a familiar-looking figure, also stretching out. It was the man she'd met at the park last week.
She walked over and tapped him on the shoulder and he turned and grinned in surprise to see her. He was wearing a rather tatty navy blue t-shirt and sweatpants that looked like they'd seen better days. Dana rather liked that, that he didn't feel he needed to wear a perfectly coordinated exercise ensemble like so many other of the runners at the river.
"I know you," he said, and extended his hand. "But I never got your name."
"Dana Scully," she said, shaking. "And you?"
The man let go of her hand and lunged into a stretch. "Fox Mulder, but you can call me Mulder. I don't like my first name much."
She grinned. "Fox," she repeated. "You're right, it doesn't really suit you for some reason. Have you thought about changing it? I mean, it's not like anyone is going to get upset over it."
He looked up at her with astonished eyes and her face began to color. She knew better than to even suggest Before. It was highly impolite. But Mulder just smiled wryly and moved out of his stretch. "Nah, I'm too lazy to get used to a new name."
"How far are you planning on running?" she asked.
"I'm kind of out of shape. Haven't had a chance to run since we moved, so I thought just three miles or so. You want to run together?"
"Why not?"
"All right, let's do it."
They stretched for a few more minutes and then took off at an easy pace down the winding trail. She got the feeling he was running more slowly than usual for him, but she was glad, for it gave them a chance to talk without getting too out of breath.
"I was hoping I'd run into you again, Dana," he said, deftly weaving around a pregnant woman with a small boy in a carriage. "I wanted to ask you for a date."
She nearly stopped running and felt her left eyebrow, of its own accord, begin to rise. "A date?" She'd mentioned she was married, right?
"Yeah, a play date. Adam and Julia seemed to get along pretty well."
"Until she smacked him on the head with her shovel."
"Adam likes aggressive ladies."
"Then he'll love Julia. She can be a terror at times."
"Nah," Mulder said. "She's just exploring her autonomy over the world right now. Classic behavior for a two year-old."
They continued down the path for another mile, and then looped back at the Monument to Lost Souls. She was glad they didn't linger there. For some reason the giant granite statue of a man and woman looking at the sky, mourning their lost loved ones, made her shiver.
When they reached their starting point, they bought bottles of water at a refreshment kiosk and sat on a low stone wall that overlooked the river.
"I like it here," Mulder said, wiping sweat from his brow. "It's one of the few places that feels real."
"What do you mean by real?" Dana had an uneasy feeling she knew what he was talking about.
"Yeah, real, like the world must have been at one time. It feels like memories I have of running Before."
Her breath came out in a whoosh. "No one ever talks about Before."
He nodded. "I know. Classic denial mechanics at work. It frightens people to delve into their pasts, to sit down and think about the fact that they had lives before this one. It just seems so huge."
She nodded.
"I'm sorry," he said. "We don't have to talk about it if it bothers you. I mean, we don't know each other very well, and here I am, going off about sensitive issues."
A small smile began to form on her lips. "No, it doesn't bother me, not really. I just don't ever talk about that kind of stuff with anyone. My own husband won't even discuss it with me."
"Neither will Sarah. I just get this stony look if I bring up the subject. Sometimes I look at her and wonder what, if anything, she remembers."
Dana watched a small group of teenagers from one of the Youth Homes, dressed in hiking gear, being led by an athletic young woman who looked rather harassed by her charges. "Is every relationship like that," she said. "One person looking at the other and wondering, who were you before I knew you?"
"I wish I knew who I had been," Mulder said and drained his water.
"So do I."
They stared at each other for a long, uncomfortable moment, as if aware they had just shared confidences that weren't really appropriate for new acquaintances.
Mulder hopped off the wall and checked his watch. "I really should get back. What's your number? We can set up that play date."
"I don't have any paper to write it down."
He flashed her a crooked smile that made him look a decade younger. "I've got a good memory, I'll remember it."
She told him and he took off towards the Tube station with a jaunty wave.
For a long time she sat on the wall, stunned into near paralysis.
Before, she thought. He wanted to talk about Before.
She wasn't sure if it was fear, or hope, she felt.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
That night, after John and Julia went to bed, she sat down at the desk and started a list.
Things I know:
-- My name.
-- My birth date.
-- The city I once lived in.
-- My medical skills and knowledge, but not where I got them.
-- I had a major injury once, to my abdominal area. I have a scar and it appears to be from a gunshot wound.
-- There is a small tattoo on my lower back, of a snake eating its own tail.
-- I never was pregnant before Julia.
-- I can play piano, but not very well.
-- I'm not a good dancer.
-- I'm right-handed.
-- I must have studied German at one time, because I understood a lot of that tele-program that was filmed in what was once Germany.
-- I once played in snow.
-- I think I once had a lover who had dark hair. He called me by my last name.
-- I like to read, especially novels and medical journals.
-- I've always liked my coffee with cream, no sugar. Once there was a way of making coffee called a latte and I really liked those, but I can't remember what's in it.
-- I like spicy food, especially Chinese food.
-- I enjoy running and it seems to be something I used to do frequently.
-- I feel the most peaceful around water, especially the river.
-- I knew how to cook and still can remember recipes.
-- I might have been religious once. Sometimes a line or two of a prayer will come to me.
-- I wore suits to work Before.
She stared at her list, trying hard to remember more. There were other things she'd remembered here and there, but they'd been brief flashes that had lasted only a moment.
Is that it, she thought. The sum of thirty-five years?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the morning, she took a shower and began to dress for work. She had a routine, a rhythm to her mornings that was so deeply ingrained there was no need to think about it—she simply woke up and got going.
Before she'd taken a shower she'd made a pot of coffee. Now she sipped from her blue and gold Mexican mug as she chose a black suit and a cream silk shell to wear. NPR prattled along in the background as she slid on black nylons and buttoned her jacket.
Her hair took a bit longer. It had an annoying tendency to wave and she had to comb in styling lotion and blow it straight with a round brush to keep it in the neat bob she preferred. Finally, she patted her face with matte powder, brushed on some brown mascara and stained her lips with a natural beige-pink. Earrings, watch and she was ready to go.
Suddenly, awareness dawned and her hand rose to her throat. Her necklace, her tiny gold cross on a chain--where was it? She never took off her necklace, not even to sleep or shower.
There had only been two times in her adult life when she'd gone without her cross. Both times he'd found it and kept it safe for her.
Panic bubbled in her throat as she searched the top of the dresser, the bedcovers and the bathroom. The chain and cross were nowhere to be found.
This can't be happening, she thought. My mother gave me this cross for my fifteenth birthday. It's the only material object I truly value.
She could remember resting against the pillows in the hospital, touching the familiar coolness of the cross at the hollow of her throat and thinking, he kept it for me all this time...
And now it was gone.
The world shifted and melted and Dana found herself in a bed, her bed, her husband anxiously patting her shoulder.
"Are you awake now?" he asked, his eyes large and alarmed.
She blinked through matted eyelashes, utterly disoriented. What was real and what was the dream?
Yes, it had been a dream, she thought, another possible memory disguising itself as a dream.
John turned on the bedside lamp. "You were talking in your sleep again, mumbling something about losing your necklace." He kissed the top of her head, which was damp with night-sweat. "Did you dream you lost your coral necklace?"
She shook her head. "No. It was a small gold cross on a chain. My mother gave it to me."
"Your mother?" His dark eyebrows lifted.
"I think my dream was another memory from Before."
"Oh, Dana," John sighed and drew her closer into his sturdy arms. "I don't like to see you suffering like this."
"It's okay." She took a deep breath of his familiar smell and her heartbeat began to slow. "I think I want to remember."
I hate being a blank page, she thought.
John nodded. "I don't understand why you want to remember. I want to understand, but I don't."
"I know you don't," she whispered. "I know it scares you. It scares me, too."
"Then why do it? It's not healthy. And it's not fair to Julia and me, or yourself. This is your life now."
A brief flash of anger stabbed through Dana. She remembered what Mulder had said after their run—it's just too huge. Yes, it was huge to consider a whole life erased, but why couldn't John understand her desire to know?
She wondered if her husband truly knew her, after all.
Still, three a.m. was no time to discuss this topic, especially with John leaving for Sao Paulo in the morning. The adrenaline had burned itself out in her body and she suddenly felt exhausted. All she wanted to do was get back under the quilt and sink into mindless and blank sleep.
Dana slid down onto the mattress and closed her eyes. "Let's just go back to sleep, John."
She prayed she wouldn't dream.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
With a gleam in her gold-brown eyes, Julia expertly shot a bit of cheese omelet across the room from the tines of her plastic kiddie fork. "Julia," John admonished, his brows knitting, but Dana simply sat back, sipping her coffee and smiling.
After they'd woken, John had accessed the airport from the Net and discovered that his flight was delayed three hours due to bad weather. Outside the dome, threatening-looking storm clouds roiled overhead and looked ready to dump snow on the clear, rounded surface, where it would melt and slide away.
With some time to kill, they'd walked seven blocks to the Greenlawn Corners Cafe. It was a cozy space, with only twenty or so tables. They rarely had a chance to eat out together as a family, but this was a place casual enough to accommodate a noisy, messy toddler and the kitchen served a mean plate of huevos rancheros. And Dana liked the back-talking waitresses and the cheesy holograph of monkeys gamboling on vines—it gave the restaurant a cartoonish jungle feel.
She looked across the room at a young couple, looking rumpled and flushed, as if they hadn't gotten a whole lot of sleep the night before. The woman facing her was tall and gorgeous, with a mane of black hair tumbling down her slender back. She smiled with bewitching sensuality at her lover, a smaller woman with cropped blonde hair.
I remember those heated days of first love, Dana thought, stabbing at the yolks of her eggs and watching them pool with the bright red of the salsa.
She touched John's hand. "Do you remember the first time we came here?"
He set down his coffee cup and blinked at her. "The first time?"
Fighting the urge to roll her eyes, Dana said, "You know, the first time..."
A look of panic crossed his face, as if he knew he was about to get into trouble. John shrugged his broad shoulders. "The first time?"
She swatted at his hand, which made Julia begin to giggle from the high chair.
"Dana, you have to help me out here," John said, conceding defeat. "You know I'm bad with that kind of stuff."
"The first time," she repeated and dropped her voice as if Julia really could understand them. "Think about it, John. Remember your old apartment, before we got married? Remember how it's just around the corner from here? Come on—Chris, Mike, and you and a whole lot of dirty clothes on the floor?"
John's eyes opened wider and he began to chuckle. She popped a forkful of eggs and tortilla in her mouth and smiled triumphantly.
"Now I remember," he whispered. "The first time we came here was after the first time we were together."
They'd been so like those two lovers across the room then. Giddy with it, with discovering that pleasure could be theirs. And amazed that despite the vacuum that was their histories, they could, and had, found love.
"And then we came here right after we found out I was pregnant," Dana said.
John put more pieces of egg on Julia's plate. "For a little corner restaurant, there's a lot of memories here."
She nodded and poured more coffee in their cups from the carafe on the table.
"Speaking of pregnant," John said, pushing away his plate. "Have you thought more about having another?"
Any remaining hunger fled at John's words.
Even though he'd been with her for the tests, the endless rounds of doctor's visits, holding her hand during the laparoscopic treatments and the cell therapies, she sometimes wondered if her husband understood how painful the entire process of trying to get pregnant had been. So much had seemed at stake then. She'd hated to have to disappoint him with her failure to have a child.
She could still remember, with perfect clarity, lying on the table after the third IVF attempt, gritting her teeth and chanting silently, IwillIwillIwillIwill...
It hurt to want something that much.
And it was perhaps even more painful to realize how much of herself, and her marriage, had been wrapped up in the effort.
Dana put down her fork and touched John's hand, which was resting on the shiny black table. "I think about it a lot," she said, keeping her voice even.
His expression was expectant. "And?"
I wish I could be like you, John, she thought. Your mind goes neatly from point A to point B and arrives at point C, completely decided. At heart, you're a mathematician. While I need logic and reason to carry me through the day, life is more tangled for me.
She looked down at the ruins of her breakfast. "No," she said. "No conclusions. I don't know if I want to go through all that again. I don't know if I can."
I don't know if I can stand feeling like a failure when my period comes, she thought. I don't know if I can take being rushed to the Urgent Clinic with another early miscarriage. I don't know if I can spend all my time berating my body for betraying me.
Dana looked at Julia, who was kicking her feet in the confines of the high chair in a desperate attempt to escape and running egg-covered fingers through her hair.
She looked at her husband and gripped his hand. "I don't know if I can," she repeated.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
All down the long hallway, Julia hopped like a frog. It slowed their progress somewhat, but Dana didn't mind. Her daughter's ribbiting provided comic relief.
At end of the hall, they stopped and rang the door chime for 1582. After a moment the door opened to reveal a tall woman with an athletic build and short, curly brown hair. The woman wore a pale cream pantsuit that set off her olive skin and dark eyes. She smiled. "You must be Dana," she said in a low, melodic voice. "I'm Sarah Morelli."
"It's nice to meet you," Dana said and they shook hands.
Sarah dropped to a crouch so that she was eye level with Julia. "And this is Julia, I presume?"
Julia made an anguished face and hid her head in the folds of Dana's skirt.
"She's shy with strangers," Dana said apologetically.
"I can understand that. So am I." Sarah rose and pushed the door open wider. "Come on in. The place isn't quite put together yet. We've been so busy since we moved in."
The living room was much like Dana's own—a medium-sized room with a small nook for the computer desk, beige carpeting, and a full wall of windows that showed off the glittering lights of the city at night. There were still a few packing cartons stacked against one wall, and the room had a bare feel to it. There were no pictures hung on the walls and very few ornamental objects that would indicate long residence in the apartment.
"Honey," Sarah called out. "Dana and Julia are here."
Mulder loped out of the kitchen, wearing a pair of worn jeans and a paint-splattered gray t-shirt, his short hair sticking out in every conceivable direction. "Hey," he greeted her. "Sorry that the place is a mess. I got domestic today. For some reason I had the bright idea I knew how to install kitchen cabinets."
Julia continued to cling to her leg like lichen, staring at the strange people around her.
"Is this a bad time? We can come back another night."
He shook his head. "I just finished up. Adam's excited to play with Julia."
As if on cue, the little boy appeared from the hallway, running up to Julia. He stared at his new friend with chocolate brown eyes that looked just like his mother's.
"Adam, do you remember Julia?" Sarah asked, running her fingers through her son's curls. "She's here to play with you."
"I have tools," Adam announced to Julia, who began to bounce up and down on the balls of her small sneaker-clad feet.
"Go show them to Julia," Mulder said and gave him a small push. The two children ran out of the room.
"He's been obsessed with tools lately," laughed Sarah. "We've been doing all this work on the apartment and he kept taking off with the tools, no matter how well we thought we'd hidden them. We kept finding them in his bed. As a compromise, we bought him a set of plastic toy tools and that seems to be an acceptable substitute."
"Adam still sleeps with his tools," Mulder said and made a face.
Sarah picked up a brown leather briefcase from the end table. "I've got to run," she said. "Dana, I wish I could stay, but the Trustees are meeting tonight at the University."
"We'll have to do this again, after John has come back from his business trip," Dana said.
"Sounds great." Sarah lightly kissed her husband on his evening-stubbled cheek. "I have a feeling we're going to run late, so don't wait up for me."
Mulder smirked. "My wife is too important for words."
"And don't you forget it for a minute," Sarah warned as she walked out the door.
The door closed with a thunk and Mulder said, "Let's go see what our horrible children have gotten themselves into."
Adam's small bedroom was painted light blue and held a small youth bed covered with a comforter decorated with garish cartoon mice. On the floor, the two children were banging colorful plastic blocks with their tools, to the accompaniment of much shouting. They were so engrossed they didn't even look up at their parents.
"They haven't killed each other yet," Mulder said in a martini-dry tone. "I guess it's a good sign. Why don't we have some adult time? If we hear screams of agony, we can always run in."
In the small kitchen, Mulder showed off the new white cabinets with bashful pride and put the kettle on for coffee. "I'm glad you could come," Mulder said, searching in the refrigerator for milk. "Sarah and I haven't made that many friends yet. It was hard to leave our circle back in Boston."
"I can't even begin to imagine having to uproot myself." She made an awkward gesture with her hands. "This is...this is all I know now."
The shiny black kettle began to shriek. Mulder turned off the heat and poured the hot water into a glass pot filled with an inch of ground coffee. The room filled with the savory scent of coffee as steam rose from the top of the pot.
"It's nice to finally have real coffee again," he said, pushing down on the plunger to filter the grounds out of the coffee. "The synthesized stuff we got from the Others never tasted quite right."
Dana nodded in agreement and followed him out into the living room, where they settled on the brown and white striped couch.
With a small sigh that Dana couldn't quite read, Mulder poured her a cup of coffee and handed it to her, allowing her to add her own milk. He glanced around the room and said, "Ah, domestic bliss."
Dana blew on her coffee, allowing herself an appreciative sniff. Coffee had only been widely available for the past year, and she still considered it a treat.
"Is it?" she asked. "Is this domestic bliss?"
She couldn't figure out exactly why, but Fox Mulder made her want to ask personal questions.
He leaned back against the cushions. Dimly, Dana could hear their children, still smacking blocks with tools and giggling.
"I suppose it is domestic bliss in way," Mulder said.
"In a way? What is that supposed to mean?"
Mulder grinned and set down his cup on the coffee table. "I have a wife I love, a beautiful son, work I find interesting and challenging, but..." His voice faded out.
"But?"
"You mind if I get personal for a moment, Dana?" he asked, leaning fractionally closer to her. She imagined for a moment that she could smell his skin.
"No, I don't mind."
"See, I have this way of putting people off. I scare them by asking the wrong questions and saying the wrong things." His lips stretched into a grimace. "I don't want to do that to you."
"You're not putting me off," she said. "I tend to have the opposite problem. It's hard for me to open up."
Mulder looked at her in mild disbelief. "Really? You haven't seemed that way to me."
Dana shifted uncomfortably in her seat. There was no logic to explain why she was unusually at ease and willing to talk to this man. There were people in her life with whom she'd instantaneously clicked. Meghan, her lab partner, was one. John was another. Perhaps it was a matter of some arcane interpersonal chemistry.
She decided to bring the conversation back around to the original subject. "So, you were talking about domestic bliss..."
Mulder looked down at his hands, spread across his knees. They were large hands and looked as if they were strong, a pale gold color and knotted with prominent veins.
"I should be happy," he finally said. "I am happy, most of the time. But lately I've been sinking into these funks. I can't tell you why. I look around at my life and everything's just fine, but inside, it's as if I'm in deep mourning for something."
Her breath came out in a rush. "Or somebody."
"Or somebody," Mulder repeated. "It's frustrating not being able to remember. Part of me desperately wants to know and the other part—"
"Needs to move forward," Dana cut in.
Mulder looked at her with astonished eyes. She noticed how the ring around the iris was a dark green, but the color was made up of the tiniest flecks of gray and gold, like the colored shards of plastic in Julia's kaleidoscope.
"That's exactly it," he said.
Her voice came out in a whisper. "I feel the same way, Mulder."
He nodded. "We live in a world in denial. Everyone is living their everyday lives and trying to pretend the past is irrelevant. The Enemies never came, the war and the Plague never happened. We've always living in these cities and the Others have always been our allies and trading partners. Who cares what happened to us Before?" His voice had an edge to it as bitter as the coffee Dana was sipping.
She was stunned to hear the thoughts that had been going through her mind for so many years finally articulated by another person.
"Hey," he said, touching her arm lightly. Dana could feel the heat of his palm though her sweater. "I'm sorry. I tend to go off on these rants. Usually Sarah's here to shut me up."
"It's okay. Really. It could have been me, saying the very same thing."
Dana watched him nervously run his tongue along his lower lip. Mulder looked down at his hands again. "I just need to know the truth. It probably wouldn't change anything, or make me any happier, but at least I'd know."
An outraged shriek emerged from the bedroom and Julia came running out, her pigtails flying behind her, to bury her head in Dana's lap.
"What's wrong?" she asked, rubbing her daughter's back and stifling a sigh. It was hard to go from talking about Before to full Mommy-mode.
Julia looked up at her with teary eyes. "He took my blocks!"
Mulder shook his head and stood. "It looks like adult time is over—all ten minutes of it."
She smiled, knowing just how rare those times were.
He started off for the kitchen. "The only thing that will end this squabble is cookies," he said over his shoulder.
Looking at her daughter's round face, Dana nodded.
Yes, domestic bliss indeed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It was two o'clock and she couldn't sleep. After another futile change of position in bed, Dana sat up and switched on the bedside lamp.
The apartment was too quiet without John's presence. It was difficult for her to sleep without the warmth of his body next to hers. Or perhaps it was the coffee she'd had at Mulder's. Either way, her mind wouldn't quiet enough to allow her to slide into sleep.
For a moment, Dana considered using one of the sleep derms Dr. Hanley had prescribed. They were non-addictive but still had the nasty effect of making her groggy in the morning. She had a full day of intricate lab work scheduled for tomorrow and it wouldn't do to be yawning and disoriented for them.
She wondered if John would be upset if she called him in the middle of the night at his Sao Paulo hotel. With a sigh, she decided he would.
Her doctor had given her some mental exercises to try when she had one of her bouts of insomnia and Dana figured it wouldn't hurt to give one of them a shot.
She turned the light off and rolled onto her right side, curling up in the fetal position.
Allowing herself to take slow, easy breaths, she tried to remember a time when she'd felt utterly calm and at peace. A time when she'd been nothing but happy.
Inhale. A happy place.
Exhale. In this very bed.
...lying, almost half-asleep, drugged with the aftereffects of pleasure and fatigue. John's warm body next to hers, still slick with sweat, his chest against her back, one arm draped over her body and his hand resting on the small, swelling globe of her belly.
And her eyes struggle to remain open, to remember and savor the sweet contentment of this moment, his warm breath tickling her ear, her body still glowing from her orgasm. Finally, finally after nearly a year of trying to get pregnant, of often-painful tests and procedures, experimental ova regeneration therapy, now their baby is growing and thriving in her body, almost five months old now. And once again lovemaking can be about sharing affection, the give and take of pleasure, not the business of procreation.
She listens to John's breathing drop into a sleep pattern-long inhale of oxygen, slow exhale of carbon dioxide.
Finally, finally...
Dana felt sleep reaching for her as it had that lovely night years before and a faint smile curved her lips as she began to sink. Lower and lower, darker and darker, sleep had finally arrived.
...not tonight, Scully, it's not time, let's just keep each other warm, please, for me, one more night, I want to see another morning with you...
Her eyes snapped open in the black of the bedroom and she struggled for breath. What, what, what the fuck was that? It had been a low, raspy male whisper, as if someone had been in bed with her.
Her stomach lurched painfully. She climbed out of bed onto shaking legs and made it to the bathroom just in time to vomit in the toilet.
Resting her cheek against the cool of the white bowl, she shut her eyes and fought off the lingering wave of nausea.
I don't want this, not tonight, she thought. All I want is to sleep.
Finally, she stood and brushed her teeth and drank a glass of cold water.
She didn't want to think anymore.
Conceding defeat, she opened the medicine cabinet over the sink and pulled out the box of sleep derms.
Ten minutes later, the drugs had entered her bloodstream through the skin of her inner arm and she lost herself in heavy, dreamless slumber.