Author: Nat

Title: Knotted

Classification: V, A, pre-Requiem.  

Rating: PG for some curses

Spoilers: A teensy one for Requiem and some very 
vague spoilers for S8. But, if you're trying to 
remain spoiler free I don't think reading this will 
change anything for you. 

Archiving: Gossamer I'll do myself, anywhere else 
please ask.  I always say yes, but I like to know.  
Thanks.   

Disclaimer: Apparently they belong to some guy named 
CC, what a shame, I was planning on having so much fun 
with them. 

Summary: We can't choose our families, but that doesn't 
mean we can leave them behind.  

Feedback: But, of course.  Soccerdev1@aol.com

Notes: My apologies as always.  




Knotted


"Though leaves are many, the root is one.
Through all the lying days of my youth
I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun
Now I may wither into truth"
 - Yeats, "The Coming of Wisdom with Time"



The drive up is lonely. 

I try humming for awhile, but the slight purr only 
magnifies the silence. So, I drive in silence, wishing 
I had asked her to come.  Next week I'll do the same 
thing, go through the same routine, but I never change 
it. 

The wishing is part of the process.  

Part of the cycle.  The clerk is part of it too. He 
lets me in, each time checking for ID before allowing 
me into the graveyard.

"We've had problems with people desecrating the 
graves recently." He explains. 

"Fetishists?" I ask, intrigued.  

"Nah just rowdy kids."

I wonder if I look like a rowdy teenager, but decide not 
to ask.  I can save that question for next week, when 
we'll inevitably go through the same procedure, maybe 
with a slight variation.

"Can I see some proof of I.D, please?"

"So I still look like a teenager huh?" I say.

The clerk gives me a blank look.  

"Oh, never mind, here it is. See?"

He opens his mouth but I cut him off sharply, "Yes, I 
know security problems."

The clerk watches me suspiciously as I walk into the 
open graveyard.

When I reach her headstone I pick up the wilted bouquet 
from last week, before placing the new one down.  I do 
it gingerly, as if the extra weight of the flowers 
could crack the stone and send the petals and dirt 
flying down to her corpse. 

"Hi." I say out loud.  Out of the corner of my eye I 
spot the clerk watching me, as if he suspects I might 
loose my temper and wreak havoc.

To hell with him. 

I continue talking to her, but not about this past week 
or even my years on the X-files. I tell little anecdotes 
of my years at college.  I talk about Scully, Samantha, 
old professors, memories.  I carefully avoid mentioning 
anything about the conspiracy.  

"I'm not even sure if you can hear me, wherever you are, 
if you're anywhere at all."

I remember Scully talking about my mom, "She wanted to 
know you better Mulder."

Too late, Mom.  We're both too late. I know you 
loved the ocean, sailing, skiing, herbal tea, chicken, 
Sam, and me, and that's it. That's the accumulation 
of a lifetime. In fact until recently I wasn't even 
sure if the last two were true. 

I'm still not. 

Sometimes I wonder if the mother I'm talking to now 
is even close to the actual reality.    

 
I always thought my parents were a little surprised by 
their kids.  The pregnancy was planned, but they 
didn't seem ready.  They were ok when it was just 
sleepless nights, feedings, carefully organized 
schedules.  But they fell part when it turned out 
that babies have personalities, that some day those 
same eating, sleeping machines would be people in 
their own right. 

Sometimes I felt my father watching me, a perplexed 
look on his face, as if he was wondering who this 
person was and where they came from.

Which isn't to say he didn't try. He would bring me 
to father son games and slap me on the back, his 
hand unnaturally heavy.  I would pout and shrug 
him off. 

Sam and I were left alone most of the time, allowed 
to wander the beaches by ourselves, explore the vast 
dunes.  We would play tag, racing in and out of small,
sandy shrubs and fish on rainy days.  As we grew older 
I lorded over her, but she had my heart in her hand. 
I was obnoxious, I slapped her, I didn't let her come 
with me and my friends. But, one truly hurt look and 
I was sand seeping through her fingers. 

She loved torturing me with my name.  She would buy
me stuffed foxes for birthday presents, little glass 
foxes for Christmas and Hanukah.  She would draw 
pictures of foxes, some being hunted by stick figures
with disproportionate guns, others with thin foxes 
lying on rocks in the open sun, their noses too 
pointed, their eyes wide as saucers. 

And my mom would smile and pin them all over the 
house, so wherever I went I would find foxes glaring 
down at me.  

Then she disappeared and the house went from hollow 
to empty.  I ripped the pictures down in a moment of 
fury, and carefully, calculatingly smashed all the 
glass animals.  I threw the stuffed animals into the 
ocean, where I watched them bobbing along, deep into 
the night.

Too late I regretted it.  The glass had been swept 
away, the pictures burnt, the dolls absorbed into 
the black depths of the ocean.  


I remember coming home from Oxford, telling her 
about professor Voight, the woman who had taken me 
under her wing.  I was so lonely there, lonely and 
home sick.  But, not for my family, for the way the 
light filtered through my window.  I missed the 
giddy feeling of the salt dancing in the air, the 
burning sand under my curled toes. 

"She's my mother surrogate." I wanted to hurt her, 
make her cry, "She's the mother I never knew."

"I'm glad," replies my mother.  Remembering 
conversations like this one makes me wonder if 
the reason I feel closer to her after her death is 
that she can't answer back.

"Glad that you've been replaced?"  I wished those 
words could come back, that I could pluck them from
the air.  But, I couldn't and they lay between us, 
cold and stifling.  

To my surprise she laughed softly, "Oh Fox, if you 
want me to care then I haven't been replaced.  Some 
day you won't give a damn, you'll come in here and 
tell me nothing.  And that's when you'll know that I 
don't matter anymore."

That day never came.

She could always hurt me, clutch my heart in her 
fingers and squeeze, the skin breaking like an 
over-ripe plum. 

I didn't come home for four years and when I did 
everything was different.  She was tired, so 
exhausted.  She didn't want to fight; she just wanted 
to be left alone.  She pushed me away.  

"I just don't have the energy for this anymore." She 
said.  And I wondered what this was, me? Life itself?


So, I left, turning only occasionally to look back.  


Bitterness morphed into gentleness after her stroke.  
She's just an old lady, she couldn't hurt me anymore, 
I thought.  

How wrong I was.  

She died before I could learn anything; before I 
knew her, before I stopped caring.  There was so 
much she knew, so much information, so many memories 
that died with her.  

In her will she asked to be buried in Raleigh, 
North Carolina.  I'll never know why.  



My phone rings, startling me out of my reverie.  

"Mulder."

"It's me.  Where are you?"

"Oh, you know, just the normal lazing around."

"Where? I'm in your apartment and you're not here."

"I went out for a drive."

I can almost feel her eyebrow raise.  

"Well, get back here, Skinner just called.  
Apparently we're being audited tomorrow and he 
suggests we organize a few of our files."

"Damn, I'll be there as soon as I can.  Traffic's 
pretty bad." 

She doesn't believe me and I realize I should tell 
her.  I'm not committing a crime. I'll tell her when 
I get back and next week we'll go together. 



"Forgive her." My father told me after their divorce.  
I ignored him and concentrated on the barely 
noticeable rise and fall of the cigarette perched on 
his lips, always dangerously close to falling off.  

"Fox." I looked up. 

"She wasn't made for this, it's not her fault she's 
the way she is.  Promise me you'll forgive her."

I promised, but I didn't forgive either of them.  
Not my busy tired father with his trembling hands, 
my bitch mother with eyes like melting glaciers.  

I never forgot either.  Never forgot that my mother 
was flawed, that some how we had all gotten tangled 
up in something bigger than our selves. Never forgot 
that my father had for one brief moment lost his 
self-conscious focus on things besides his family.  

Knotted up in a silver thread of fate, that both held 
us together and kept us apart.  For most of my life I 
thought that I would be the person who freed us, but 
after college I knew it was Sam who would come and 
change everything. Most recently I thought that time 
would be our rescuer. Time, give us time. Always 
time. 

Maybe I'm still right and that some day, many years 
from now I'll escape and stand up, but until then I remember.   

And one strand breaks. 


-                        -


Feed the monster, send feedback.  

And thanks to everyone, who has been sending me
such lovely notes, I hope this qualifies as 
non-angst.  Someday I'll get around to writing 
something longer...really!

An immeasurable amount of thanks to Ikkle, the 
master quote seeker and taskmaster, who held my 
hand, whispered words of encouragement, and even 
thumped me on the back when necessary.  


~Nat

Soccerdev1@aol.com