Disclaimer:  They aren't mine.  OK?  None of them!!  I
wish they were (well, some of them at any rate).  Mulder,
Scully, The X-Files and any recognizable (that's the key
word here, kids) situations or events belong to Chris Carter,
Surfer Dude.  Oh, and 1013 Productions has a little stake in
it too.  Me?  I just take these characters out for little drives
around my imagination every once in a while.  Glad you
decided to come along this time!  FYI, though the title may
titillate some of you and lead you to believe that M&S tie
the knot, let me assure you that is not the case...

Rating:  PG

Classification:  V, A

Summary:  Mulder ponders a little something he finds in a
drawer.

Spoilers:  "Travelers"

Thanks: Mare for a take on the idea that made a little more
sense than my own.  Ashley for cracking the whip even
though I already have no less than 15 projects on my plate,
begging for attention.  Mare again for not killing me
because of my short attention span with one of the
aforementioned projects.  Teresa because I know she'll
always be there to laugh with (at?) me when I get on a roll.
And as always the Bear, for making all my dreams reality.

"Band of Gold" (1/1)
By Jennifer Mauricio

He could still see her face the day they got married.
Shining, bright eyed, full of love.  Love for him.  For a brief
moment, he had actually owned a little piece of happiness.

Happiness for him had lasted three months, two weeks and
one day.  He used to know the hours-minutes-seconds
count, too.  But time had washed that much of his memory
away.  Sure, he could figure it out if he really wanted to.
Why torture himself with that old tune when there were so
many new songs on the play list?

"The Fox Mulder Hit Parade," he mumbled, staring at the
plain gold band on his dresser.  He took it out every once in
a while, when he thought things were going bad.  This
always put things in perspective.  At her funeral, he had
been told at least twice, "It's better to have loved than
lost..."

What a crock.

He had looked at the faces of the people there to pay their
last respects.  Many of them had stood in the same church
only a few months before for their wedding.  How fitting
that a few of them were wearing the same outfits they had
worn that spring day.  He wondered if they knew that, if
they had planned it.

He laughed, he'd been paranoid, even back then.  Not that
1990 was all that long ago.

In the near decade that had passed since her death, he
hadn't spoken to anyone about her.  There had been a few
well-meaning souls at the Bureau who tried to approach
him, and offer support.  But he'd thanked them politely for
their concern and sent them on their way.  Even Skinner
knew not to mention it.  Try as he might, though, Mulder
had never been able to erase the memory of her death and
the pain that had followed.  That pain was too deep, too
personal to share with anyone.  Anyone.

His marriage was the one part of his past he had never
shared with Scully.  Not that he was ashamed or trying to
keep it secret from her.  It just didn't have anything to do
with their relationship.  Samantha's story was different, it
had direct bearing on their work.  Andrea was...well, she
was his and his alone.

There were other reasons, too.   As the years had passed,
and the friendship he and Scully shared had deepened
exponentially, he had thought about telling her.  But the
events of the past year and a half made him all the more
reluctant to tell her about his Andrea.


***

The couple had honeymooned in Florida.  Two weeks in
the mid-September sun.  The trip had been heaven, and
ended all to soon.  Not that Fox and Andrea were too
terribly upset.  They didn't need golden beaches to be
happy.  They just needed each other.

One early October morning, just as Andrea was stepping
out of the shower, a bolt of pain flashed through her
midsection.  Doubling over she cried out for her husband.
He rushed in, only to find her bent over the toilet, sobbing.

"Ow, dammit, it hurts!" the tiny brunette cried out,
moments before vomiting violently.  When she was done,
she turned to him, with, of all things, a huge smile on her
face.  Jumping up, she ran to her bedside table and looked
at her calendar.

"Are you ok?" Mulder asked, following her to the bedroom.

She giggled at him.  "I wasn't quite sure what to make of
that at first, but I think I have an idea."  Her eyes sparkled
as she gazed up at her husband.

"Already?"  Not that he didn't want kids, or plan to have
them.  He just never thought things like that happened
immediately.  He put on a smile quickly as he watched her
face fall in dismay.

"It would be great, but let's not get our hopes up," he
cautioned.  "After all, it could be some bad cheese or
something."

She smiled, the clouds disappearing from her eyes.  "There
is only one way to find out."  Picking up the phone, she
called her doctor and made an appointment, the glee
evident in her voice when she specifically told the nurse
she was coming in for a pregnancy test.

Fox floated on a cloud the rest of the day.  Nothing the
Behavioral Science Unit threw at him could dampen his
spirits.  By five o'clock, he was damn near skipping to his
car.

As he pulled the car to the curb, he glanced at their
apartment.  Not a light to be seen.  Not that this was
unusual.  Andrea sometimes liked to go out with friends
>from work to unwind.  But today of all days, he thought for
sure she would be waiting to tell him what news the doctor
had given her.

As he walked in, he called her name softly.  Pausing to
listen, he heard water sloshing softly in the bathroom.
"Honey?" he called out again.  No answer.

He approaced the bathroom cautiously.  Pushing the door
open, he saw his wife, still clothed, immersed in a bath.

"Andrea, what is it?"

"It's bad, Fox.  So bad.  I am not pregnant, for one."  She
shuddered with a fierce sob.

"That's okay, it's only been a month since we got married.
We have the rest of our lives to have kids!"

"No, you don't get it.  The doctor...he found, he found a
lump, when he was feeling for my uterus.  And he was
worried about the placement, so he ordered an ultrasound.
In the...in the ultrasound, it showed that there wasn't a
baby.  It's a growth.  He took a biopsy.  It could be..." her
words faded out.

Mulder's horror grew with every word his bride uttered.  He
had no idea what to say to her.  Sinking to his knees, he
drew her into his arms, tears falling into her soft, chestnut
hair.

Over the month, the doctors threw so many different
theories at them about her prognosis.  One thing was
certain.  Andrea had a rather advanced case of Ovarian
cancer.  The scar tissue had built up enough on both sides
to end any chances she had of conceiving a child.

That news had been hard enough to take.  When they found
out that the cancer had spread faster than anticipated, and
that the doctor had missed a few spots on an ultrasound,
Mulder felt his world crashing down around him.

Andrea withdrew from him - from life - completely.  By
early December, she was a shell of the woman who had
walked down the aisle to his side.  The cancer had
not only destroyed her reproductive organs, but had started
to move out aggressively.  Worst of all, it had destroyed her
love of life, and her will to fight.  He lost her before they
ever got the chance to start their life together.  And while
he was ready to take this thing on head first, Andrea just
seemed to curl up and accept it as her fate.

She died three days before Christmas.  The doctors had all
said that things were looking up and her tests were showing
promising results.  Again, they were wrong.  He would
never be able to shake that day from his memory.

He'd gone out to get the biggest tree he could find.  She'd
been to tired to come along.  this was nothing unusual.
When he finally got it upstairs, she was waiting to decorate
it, smiling wistfully.

"It's beautiful."

"So are you."

She merely smiled again and turned away, looking tired
and sad and happy all at the same time.

When the tree was done, he had gone into the kitchen for
some hot tea for the both of them.  He stared at the
medications on the counter, his heart growing heavy.  He
hoped tonight would be easier.  If what the doctors said
was true, things were really looking up.

He stacked the tea cups on a tray and walked back out into
the living room.  Andrea was sitting in the couch, her eyes
closed, a small smile on her lips.  She was clutching the
Angel tree top he'd bought for her a few days ago.  When
he brushed his hand across her forehead, it was alarmingly
cool to the touch.   Panic set in, rising as he grabbed her
wrist, feeling for a pulse.

"Andrea?  Andrea, please!  Not on Christmas, please, NO!"
Kicking the tea tray aside, he grabbed the phone and called
9-1-1.  Choking as he pleaded with the dispatcher for an
ambulance, he kept rubbing Andrea's hand, hoping to bring
her back with the mere touch of his skin to hers.

The rest of the night passed in a blur.  People coming and
going.  Talking to him, and about him.  The day after her
funeral, he'd gone in and requested that they reopen the
X-Files, and assign it to him exclusively.  The change of
pace would help ease his mind, he claimed.  Not to
mention, it would  be temporary; something for him to
keep his skills sharpened until he was ready to go back to
full duty.

Little did he know what await him in the basement of the J.
Edgar Hoover Building.

***

No matter how much he wanted to tell Scully about his lost
wife, he never could.  The double whammy of his wife's
infertility due to cancer was nothing she needed to hear;
her wounds were still fresh, and did not need to be
reopened.  True, the experience explained many things
about him.  His unwavering devotion to his sister (at least
there was always a chance she was alive), why he slept on
the couch, when there was a perfectly good bed in the back
of his apartment ( he hadn't slept in that bed since the night
before she died), and his obsession with The X-Files.  They
had given him something to go after, something he stood a
chance against.  While Scully, of all the people he knew,
would understand the best, this was his burden to bear, and
he would never foist it off on her.

When Scully was at her sickest, he'd actually brought his
dead wife's ring to the hospital with him.  He didn't know
why, for it was indeed a strange thing to do.  Maybe if
Scully had died holding something that had been Andrea's,
the two women would find each other in the afterlife, and
maybe then, he wouldn't have to worry about the two of
them being alone.  But this time, he'd given up on her too
soon, underestimated her will to live.  If only Andrea had
possessed half of that desire to go on.

He dropped his ring into the velvet bag he kept it hidden in.
Back into the sock drawer it went.  The band of gold, the
circle that had represented the happiest time of his life, was
now nothing more than a cold, hard piece of metal.  Andrea
had died, and for a long time since, he'd been dead, too.

He thought of something that Maggie Scully had told him
when Scully was fading fast.  "Life is for the living, Fox."

It sure as hell was.


end.