Title: Choices II: Ghosts Without Names 
Author: Eve11
Email: rlw146@psu.edu
Category: SA
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Emily. Pretend the season 6 finale didn't happen yet.
Archive: Yes, but please tell me where it's going!
Summary: One year has passed, and we are again in the early summer.
Scully's thoughts are drawn to her choice made fifteen years before,
and actions open fresh wounds.

Author's note:  This is a short sequel to a piece I started a year ago 
(and posted in September) called "Choices."  "Choices" is a necessary 
read in order to understand this one.  I am posting it along with the 
sequel so nobody has to hunt for it, but it can also be found at

http://www.personal.psu.edu/rlw146/Eve11.html .

Please be warned! There is adult content, dealing with abortion.  

Send me feedback; I thrive on it!  I revel in it!  I write back to 
everybody!

Disclaimer: All characters within are property of Chris Carter and 1013
productions.  Use is unauthorized but hopefully not unnoticed.


Ghosts Without Names
by Eve11


June 15th, 1999
3:20 pm


He didn't expect that he would have to find her here.

There was a swift breeze, scrolling the clouds in the sky enough so if
he looked up for too long, he had the sensation he could actually feel 
the earth turning below him.  It was both dizzying and captivating; the
azure sky drew his gaze and fixed it, upward, searching.  

On days like this, he felt the power of the wind rushing against his 
face, and he felt the power of the earth humming under his feet. 

She was sitting on a slate bench made to blend in with headstones.  
Her purple suit stood out from the flat gray seat like a flower on a 
sidewalk, and in the sunlight it seemed she was glowing.

Her eyes were downcast, oblivious to the sky above, and she looked
small.  He approached, eyes drawn to the stone in front of her, though 
he already knew what was written there.

                           Emily Sim
                        Beloved Daughter
                           1994-1998 

A simple grave.  No angels, no flowery quotes to bemoan the loss of a
child.  As with all her tastes, her grief was expressed in demure
elegance.  There were no figurines, no words she could find that truly
encompassed her feelings, and so she made her sorrow starkly clear in 
the hard, geometric edges of cut granite. 

She heard his approach and turned, her face a perfect pale mask.

"Hi," he said, and she looked away again.  "I, uhm, I wasn't sure where
you went."  Actually, he'd been worried to death when she didn't return
from her lunch break.  It was a streak of paranoia, not necessarily 
unjustified.  He was sure she saw past the nonchalant remark, and he 
hoped she wouldn't be angry at his concern.

He saw on the edge of her cheek the signs of a smile, and he took it
as an invitation to join her on the bench, which it was.  He sat down
beside her, and she spoke.

"I didn't know where else to go.  This was as close to it as I could 
come.  Sometimes, they're one and the same to me."

He stayed silent, trying to decipher the meaning of those words without
having to ask.  When the meaning finally came, he took a deep breath
and let it out slowly, remembering the night a year ago when she had
cried, it seemed for hours, trying to come to terms with the guilt and
sorrow of a choice made fourteen years before.

Abortion.  Abort.  Like a secret mission gone awry, they had never 
spoken of it again after that night.

"June 12th," he said, his eidetic memory offering up not only her
words, but her tear-streaked face, the feel of her bare skin, and
the alcohol on her breath as she said them.  "That was this past
Saturday.  Did something happen over the weekend?"

She didn't answer for a while, and when she did, it was a meandering 
reply. 

"I sometimes feel," she started, and paused.  She sighed, her eyes 
looking everywhere but at him, passing over objects without 
recognition, before settling back on the stone.  "I feel like I have
this little nameless, faceless ghost following me around, and only I
know she exists.  Only me."

She paused again, but he knew it wasn't for an answer from him.  He
listened, taking in their surroundings, taking in her mood.  This day 
seemed a brilliant foil to that wet night a year ago, and her grief as 
well was transformed.  She had gathered it up from where it had spilled
out; she had sculpted it and crushed it, letting it run through her 
fingers again.  She had tied it up in little packages and filed it
under 'familiar.'  

Now, it was pretty.  Even poetic.  

And still grief.

"I mean, I know I told you, but. . . I don't want to talk to you about 
this."  She had yet to meet his eyes, and she did nothing to change 
that now.  "Please don't take that the wrong way, Mulder.  It's just,
I acted on instinct that night.  Calling you.  I. . . I don't think I'd
do it again if I had the choice."

"I understand," he said simply, and he did.  "Do you want me to leave?"

She looked up, eyes swallowing the sky in bounds until the azure was 
reflected perfectly in the blue of her irises, surrounded by white,
travelling clouds.  "No."  A sigh.  "How did you find me here?"

"Last place I looked," he said, because it was true and because he 
hoped it would make her smile again.  She did, a fleeting turn at the
corner of her mouth, and he took it as a sign to continue.  "I looked 
around, called your place, called your mom.  No luck."

The smile vanished, and she turned her gaze back to the stone, closing.
Retreating.  He'd said something wrong, he knew it.  But she didn't ask
him to leave.  He put one foot forward, as much as he dared.

"What happened over the weekend?" he asked in a quiet monotone.  "You
don't have to tell me if you don't want."

She gave a small scoff, laughing at some irony only she knew, and then,
finally, she looked him in the eye.  

"I told her.  My mom." 

His stomach sank.  Maggie Scully was a brilliant, wonderful woman, and
yet he had a feeling. . .

"She didn't take it well," she stole the words out of his mouth, adding
a mirthless laugh.  "I don't know why I even bothered."

They were silent.  He stared at the grave, imagining a flat, unmarred 
stone with no words for a nameless, faceless ghost. 

"Yes I do," she said finally, almost defiantly.  "I do know why.  Mom 
wanted to know why I had to bring it up now, why couldn't I just leave 
her in blissful ignorance, why," her voice almost broke, dry, and she 
covered it with a cough.  "why'd I have to make her think of her baby 
girl like that, with that sin.  Not like she could change anything."  

She paused.  Then, "I told her this child needed a memorial from 
someone other than me.  I screamed it at her.  She said I better not
blame her or my father for what I did."

He tried to imagine Scully screaming at her mother.  He tried to 
imagine those bitter words between them.  He found he couldn't.  He 
didn't want to.  It was like a sick parody of his own home life; all 
the usual players, but in red-haired Irish Catholic masks. 

"I don't blame them," she said quietly, and he focused outward again.    
"I just needed to tell someone.  I needed her to know."

She stood up, bringing a hand forward to caress the blank top of the 
stone.  How many reasons were behind that need?  It was hard to 
quantify; it danced around his grasp, flowed through his fingers, and 
he saw the same raw understanding in her own words as well.  Later, 
she would dissect and reconstruct this need, mold it and tie it in 
pretty packages.  Now, it was still bare and unnamed.

She turned to go, and he stood.

"Mom said I owed her an apology," she said tiredly.  "'Just be glad 
your father isn't alive to hear this,' she said."  The breeze blew, 
ruffling her hair as they walked down the solemn little path to her 
car.

"Give her some time," he said softly, finding his voice in the wind.
"She won't be angry forever."

"I know."  She stopped and took a deep breath, and it seemed to him she
was waking up.  The trees were green, the grass was green, and the
earth, mottled as it was with gray and brown granite, was singing.

"I came here to talk with Ahab, too," she said, her voice growing 
stronger. There was no shrine to her father here.  His ashes had been 
spread at sea, and yet he knew she found it easier to think of him in 
some places than others.  

"To apologize?" he asked.

She looked up, her eyes focusing on the scrolling clouds, and said 
simply.  "No.  Just to tell him."


End
*********************

End notes:

I don't know what prompted me to write this.  I was looking for 
inspiration for a long piece I was writing and ended up going over 
some of my old stories.  Then I realized it was just about one year 
since the events in "Choices."  This story practically wrote itself.
Who knows, maybe if I'm still writing fanfic in another year, this will 
become a tradition.

Tell me what you thought!  Please!

Eve11
rlw146@psu.edu
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"A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems."
                            -- Paul Erdos

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