From: DashaK@aol.com
Date: Sat, 27 May 2000 16:15:24 EDT
Subject: NEW: Alunakanula by Dasha K. (1/1) Requiem spoilers
Source: xff


Alunakanula by Dasha K.

This story can be archived at the Spooky site.  If you'd 
like to archive anywhere else, please ask me first.

Summary: The moon has vanished.
Rating: NC-17 for adult themes.  If you are under the age 
of eighteen, please read something else.
Classification: SRA
Keywords: Mulder/Scully romance
Spoilers:  Big, fat ones for Requiem.  If you read this 
you're going to be spoiled like a quart of old milk.
Disclaimer: They are *so* not mine!
Email: Feedback would be just wonderful, at dashak@aol.com


The moon has vanished behind the clouds. 
 
Above her head, the sky is rich black velvet.  There is not 
a single star in the sky.  Scully has never seen a darker 
night in her life. 

She lies back in the chaise lounge in her mother's yard and 
stares up at the night sky.

Where are you now?

What terrifies her the most, makes the breath catch in the 
back of her throat, is that she may never know the answer 
to that question.  Will she spend the rest of her life 
searching the skies?

No.  She shakes her head.  She will not have so little 
faith.

She scans the heavens for something, anything at all.

Scully has fled to the security of her mother's house.  She 
has to think, calculate, and come up with a plan of action.  
Really, she should already be out in the field, should be 
hunting Krycek and Marita and shaking them down for answers 
when she finds them.  But she needs to stop for a moment to 
catch her breath and marshal her forces.  She'll need to do 
this right.

I will, she thinks, gritting her teeth.  I have to.

She was surprised to find her mother not at home, until she 
remembered that it was the night for her St. John's Guild 
meeting.  Scully let herself in with the key Maggie 
innocently keeps under the flowerpot to the left of the 
door and headed straight for the refrigerator.  As long as 
Scully has been able to remember, her mother has always had 
a pitcher of lemonade in the fridge and a jar full of 
cookies.  She poured herself a tall glass of the lemonade 
and grabbed a cookie like a little girl who needed a treat.  
This time the cookies were thin sugar cookies, light brown 
at the crisp edges.

Now matter how insane her life is, Scully can always count 
on lemonade and cookies.  It's a small thing, but 
comforting.

She's trying to comprehend it all, to take the double 
whammy of events and shape them into something she can 
understand, but it's too much.  It's huge.

Her arms feel empty and weightless.  If only she could wrap 
them around his familiar form and whisper the surprising 
news in his ear.  Scully imagines his eyebrows lifting and 
his mouth opening, the believer unable to believe.  "That's 
impossible," he'd say and she'd nod her head in agreement.

Impossible is an understatement.

The first time they made love, Mulder reached into the 
drawer of his bedside table for a condom.  "We don't need 
one," she whispered in his ear.  She'd seen their blood 
work and they were clean.  Pregnancy wasn't even in the 
realm of possibility.

From the time she became sexually active at the age of 
eighteen, Scully conscientiously avoided pregnancy.  For 
years she took a birth control pill every morning with her 
orange juice.  Later, as sex became fraught with greater 
risk, she toted around condoms and foam in her purse.  And 
then, for a long time, there was nothing because she had no 
one.  The condoms in her linen closet expired and she 
tossed them out.  She figured she could always buy some 
more if it looked like she was about to have sex sometime 
in the near future.

Then there was the afternoon when she sat stiffly in the 
chair in her doctor's office, listening as Dr. Bailey 
gently explained that she'd never have children of her own.  
She remembers driving home in a daze, too shocked even to 
cry about the fact that this, too, had been taken from her.

She grew to accept, if not like, the fact of her 
infertility.  Yes, she was angry.  Yes, she felt the keen 
loss of the choice of motherhood taken from her without her 
consent, but there was nothing she could do about it.  
Wallowing in the pain and loss wouldn't do anything.  She 
had to move on.

Still, sometimes she held a baby and smelled its sweet, 
soft skin and felt the ice pick of pain stab her straight 
through to the core.  Scully bounced Theresa's baby on her 
lap and felt Mulder's gaze on her.  She imagined she could 
read his mind-- if only, Scully.  If only.

If only they'd know then what she knows now.

Her hand drifts to her belly, still fairly flat, and she 
imagines for a moment that she can feel her child moving in 
there.  She closes her eyes and pictures the baby, swimming 
in its amniotic sea.

She wouldn't have believed it if she hadn't seen the test 
results, both urine and blood, and hadn't had a thorough 
pelvic exam from a respected OB-GYN.  Even though she'd 
been feeling dizzy and vaguely nauseated, pregnancy had 
never entered her mind.  Her period hadn't been what you'd 
call regular since her abduction, so missing it for two 
months meant nothing at all to her.  You could call it 
denial, but she calls it simple logic.  It was impossible 
for her to get pregnant, therefore those symptoms did not 
mean pregnancy.

It's a warm, lovely May night but Scully shivers all the 
same, thinking about how she might have to go through all 
this alone.  And she keeps wondering how, endlessly running 
the possibilities through her mind.  Could a few eggs have 
been missed when the laparoscopy was done on her ovaries?  
Could something have been done to her while she was in 
Antarctica?  What about the time she spent with the Smoking 
Man?  

Bile rises in her throat and she washes it away with a 
swallow of lemonade.  No, she would have known if that man 
had done something to her while she was with him.  She 
would have felt it.

Two months, the OB told her at the hospital with a broad 
smile.  More or less, Scully is two months pregnant.  She's 
due in early December.

She tries to envision the cold air of December, possibly a 
little snow on the ground, as the labor pains hit her and 
she walks alone into the hospital to deliver the baby.

She can't.  She can't see having the baby without Mulder.

I'll find you, she whispers into the dark yard.

Scully thinks back two months, trying to pin down when 
their child was conceived.  March-- let's see, what 
happened in March?

She shuts her eyes, takes a deep breath and remembers a 
weekend in March when they spent the entire time at her 
apartment. There was no case, no paperwork and the icy rain 
that never let up left little incentive for them to 
actually go anywhere.

Before that weekend, she and Mulder had been together only 
a few times since their first time, on the morning of the 
new year.  There was never any free time to spend together.  
It wasn't professional while out in the field and it never 
seemed like the right time when they were home.

Looking back, she can admit that a large part of it was 
simply that they were not used to being together, that they 
were shy in their new roles as lovers.  It wasn't like the 
movies where two friends fall in love and all is bliss and 
rainbows thereafter.  The few nights they spent together 
always seemed like a happy accident.  "Oh, I wanted to show 
you the autopsy report."  "Scully, did I leave my jacket 
over here?"

That weekend, the second in March, was when all their 
inhibitions were stripped away.

She remembers endless lovemaking and their surprise and 
delight in it.  Hours and hours of it, from hot, fierce 
Friday night on the couch to lazy Sunday evening in the 
bathtub, slopping water and bubbles on the tile floor and 
bathmat.  They were suddenly insatiable, driven together 
again and again like hormonal teenagers after the Prom.  
She wouldn't have believed that Mulder, nearly forty, could 
keep going, but he did.

That weekend she felt alive, surrounded by the lush 
textures and smells of sex, finally experiencing it in its 
multicolored, three-dimensional form.  She was finally free 
of the bonds of guilt and inhibition.  Sex with Mulder was 
free and natural; they just fit together, despite their 
difference in size.

There were many new discoveries.  She could come, from his 
hands, his mouth, his cock, again and again until she 
feared she might burst a blood vessel in her brain from 
rolling her eyes back in her head.  She loved having Mulder 
squirming under her while she took his cock in her mouth 
and teased him with slow, slow movements in and out.  She 
could touch herself while he was inside her and he wasn't 
offended, didn't take it to be a comment on his prowess.  
It only made him even more aroused.

They couldn't seem to stop as the rain continued to batter 
the windows.  They ordered in pizza and Thai food, gulped 
down orange juice and beer to rehydrate, and now and then 
took a catnap.  Every time they tried to innocently sit on 
the couch and watch a movie, the dialogue and music just 
became the background noise to their escalating moans and 
groans.

At one point Mulder looked at her, his face flushed and 
sweaty, his hair standing up in damp spikes and gasped, 
"What's happening to us?"

She laughed and said, "This is lust, Mulder."

They'd had the love for a long time, now was the time for 
lust.

But now they were free to speak of love, too.

"I love you, I love you, I love love love love you," Mulder 
chanted in a strained voice as he thrust deeply into her 
from behind, his hands on her thighs.

When they were sore they didn't stop, but simply went 
slowly, only touching each other with gentle, lubricant-
coated fingers, mouths and tongues melding together.

They constantly kissed-- during the opening credits of "The 
Matrix," while trying to make some eggs, in the shower, 
while checking their office voice mail.

Now Scully can't remember if they ever put on clothes that 
weekend. 

In the past, she'd always needed to have sex in the dark.  
She didn't like the sight of her body and didn't want 
anyone else to be subjected to it in the unforgiving glare 
of daylight.  Her legs were small and stubby.  One breast 
was slightly larger than the other.  Her belly was scarred 
from being shot.  Sometimes she had a pimple on her butt.

But Mulder worshipped her body that weekend, kissing and 
licking every inch, groaning about how he'd always dreamed 
of kissing the soft insides of her elbows.  He went on for 
so long about the beauty of her breasts that she smacked 
his bare bottom to shut him up.  He spent a long time 
between her legs, licking her with languorous finesse, 
stopping to comment on how good she tasted and how much he 
loved to eat her and wanted nothing more than to spend the 
whole day there.  

She watched as they made love in front of the mirror on the 
back of her bedroom closet.  How beautiful we are, she 
thought.

She caught herself strutting around her apartment without a 
stitch on her body, feeling proud as a queen.  Scully knew 
she was far from perfect, but in Mulder's eyes that 
weekend, she was flawless.

And she gave as good as she got, standing back in the 
shower to watch the water running down his broad chest and 
strong thighs.  She even loved the scar under his shoulder.  
Like the scientist she was trained to be, she watched his 
cock thicken and rise at her touch.  She kissed the mole on 
his cheek and the tip of his strong nose, the nose she knew 
he secretly hated.  Never had she imagined that a man could 
have such soft lips.

They shared a few secrets, drinking wine in front of the 
fire, wrapped in her comforter, which smelled like their 
bodies.  It wasn't easy, for they weren't used to speaking 
of things so personal, but the stories came out slowly and 
haltingly. Old loves, disappointments past, humiliations in 
the name of romance.  They held hands and watched in a daze 
as the flames danced in the hearth.

She woke in the middle of the night and found their fingers 
were still entwined and resting on the sheet between them.  
His hand, large and brown, hers small and white.  Their 
hands were together, even in sleep.

Even then, as she was immersed in the moment, she knew it 
wouldn't always be this blissful, this hungry and untamed.  
They were spending this weekend sealing the deal, 
reassuring one another that they were loved.  It was the 
turning point they had so badly needed.  After this it 
would no longer be so awkward.

On Sunday night, Scully kissed him at the door and watched 
him walk, somewhat bowlegged, down the hall to the front 
door.  She shut the door behind her, leaned against it and 
smiled.

Now she suspects, with a growing certainty, that by the 
time Mulder left her apartment she was pregnant.  While she 
grinned and flashed on some of the more ecstatic moments of 
the weekend's bacchanal, cells were rapidly multiplying and 
life was forming.

Alone in the back yard, Scully feels tears approaching and 
wills herself not to cry.  She can't afford to.  Now she 
needs to be strong, in control, powerful.

If Mulder had known she was pregnant would he have gone to 
Oregon?  She shrugs at her own rhetorical question.  What-
if situations never do anyone any good.

She wonders if Mulder felt like this after she'd been 
taken, this dull ache, this empty hollow in his chest.  Her 
hand reflexively reaches for the gold cross around her neck 
and she finds it's not there.

Of course it's not.  She gave it to Mulder.

Their farewell was brief, which was somewhat of a mercy.  
She and Mulder never did goodbye scenes well.  

Mulder and Skinner had to race to make their flight to 
Portland.  Down in the office Mulder gathered a few things 
and stuffed them into his briefcase-- files, books, some 
strange-looking equipment she'd never seen before and a 
toiletry kit he kept in his desk.  Scully stood by the door 
and watched him with a numbed fascination.

He turned to face her and cleared his throat.

This is not our goodbye, she thought.  He'll be back in a 
few days.

She forced a smile on her face.  "Are you sure I can't talk 
you into letting me come along?"

Mulder raised his hands in a gesture of appeasement.  "We 
can't take that kind of risk."

She nodded and kissed him, gently, and felt something break 
inside of her.  A little whisper in her head told her that 
Mulder wouldn't be returning.  He was racing towards a 
destiny that had begun seven years ago in that little town 
in the Oregon woods.  They'd come full circle and here was 
where they parted ways.

Scully chose to ignore the whisper.  Mulder would be fine.  

Her fingers clumsily undid the clasp on the gold chain that 
held her cross and the links pooled in her hand.  She held 
it out to him like an offering.

"I want you to wear this," she whispered.

"Scully," he said in a raspy voice and turned his head from 
her.  She wondered if he were blinking away tears.

He bent his head and she fastened the chain around his 
neck. It was a little tight, but it would do.  She tucked 
it under his shirt.

Mulder gripped her hands, his eyes soft and bright with 
tears.  "I love you, Scully."

"I love you, too."

There didn't seem to be much more to say.  She turned away 
and walked toward the desk.  Behind her, she heard his 
footsteps down the hall to the elevator and then nothing at 
all.

"Dana?"

Her mother's voice jolts her from her reminiscence.   Her 
eyes open.

"Yeah, Mom, I'm out here."

"I thought that was your car out front . . ."

Scully can hear the grass rustling as her mother walks 
towards her.  Her stomach lurches and threatens to close in 
upon itself, nerves working overtime.  She has a lot to 
tell her mom.

One afternoon, when she was a teenager, Scully heard her 
mother say to a friend on the phone, "You know, Dana is the 
one child I never worry about."

She felt proud of that, for some reason.  She never made 
her mother worry.

How times have changed.  These days, Dana is probably the 
only child her mother worries about.

She hates to tell her mother more bad news.

She fears telling her mother the good news.

Her mouth goes dry and Scully takes a steadying sip of 
lemonade.  She wishes she could have a nice, safe life 
where she could tell her mother nearly everything and her 
mother would understand.

All the things that have happened over the last seven 
years--abductions, shootings, cancer, infertility, 
Melissa's death-- have made Scully a better and stronger 
person, but they've also alienated her from her mother.  
She never wants to worry her mother more than necessary, 
which has meant some judicious editing when talking to her.

But she can't do it now.  She can only be honest.

I'm sorry, she thinks, silently addressing her mother.  I 
never wanted to hurt you like this, to make you lose sleep 
and peace of mind worrying about me.  She feels like a 
teenage girl, about to confess her boyfriend got her 
pregnant and ran off.  Seduced and abandoned, the oldest 
theme in literature. 

She feels ashamed, proud and afraid.

Scully swings her legs over the edge of the chaise lounge 
so Maggie can sit next to her.

"Are you all right?"  Her mother touches her face.

Her resolve not to cry crumbles at the gentle tone of her 
mother's voice. The tears are already beginning to slide, 
warm and sticky, down her face.

"No," she says, hugging her chest and looking at her lap.  
"I'm not all right."

As her mother wraps her arms around her, Scully lets it all 
out in a jumble of tears and words.

Maggie says nothing, just rocks her daughter, crooning 
something wordless and comforting. In the back of her mind, 
Scully wonders if it will be like this with her own child 
some day.  Will she have to provide comfort and security 
while her heart breaks for her child?

When she's done telling her mother, Maggie wipes away her 
own tears and says, "Dana, why don't you stay over tonight?  
We still have so much to talk about."

Scully nods.  

"We can go to Mass in the morning."

She can thank God for a miracle and pray for another one.

Maggie stands and takes Dana's hand, trying to tug her up.  
"Let's go inside.  It's getting chilly."

"I'll be there in a second," Scully says.  "I just need a 
moment alone."

Her mother walks towards the house and even in the dark 
Scully can see how her posture is slumped.

She looks at the sky one more time but sees nothing.  The 
moon is still hidden.


It takes Scully a long time to fall asleep.  She's not 
accustomed to spending the night in her mother's cheerful 
guestroom with its rose-sprigged wallpaper.  The mattress 
is too soft for her taste and she's unnerved by the silence 
from the lack of street noise.

For a while she flips through a magazine to relax, but she 
finds herself scanning the glossy pages without even really 
looking at them.  She thinks about how when her mother was 
pregnant with her, her father was at sea, fighting in 
Vietnam.  Maggie had no idea if her husband would ever 
return, if he would leave her alone with three young 
children who would grow up never knowing the extraordinary 
man who was their father.

In the morning, she'll have to ask her mom about that time 
in her life.

As the hour turns very late, she realizes she's afraid to 
turn the light off and try to sleep.

When she finally snaps off the lamp, all her fears are 
realized.  She tries to shut her eyes and pray, but the 
words won't come.  Tonight, she feels no connection to God.  
Instead, she thinks terrible thoughts-- babies with green 
hybrid blood, babies sick like Emily was, never seeing 
Mulder again, raising her child alone, Mulder strapped to a 
table and enduring terrible tortures, labor pains, bloody 
miscarriages, Mulder dead, babies with horrible 
deformities, babies crying and crying and crying...

She doesn't cry, alone in the dark bedroom.  There aren't 
any tears left to shed.

After a long time, she drifts off into an uneasy sleep.


It's the middle of the night and the sound of wailing wakes 
her.  In a gesture that is now automatic to her, she rises 
from the bed, turns on the light and walks across the room 
to the bassinet.

She lifts her baby up and gathers him in her arms, amazed 
as always that he's so small, so light, that he's hers.  
She takes a deep whiff of the sweet, milky scent of his 
head.

She lays him down on the changing table and peeks in his 
diaper.  He's dry.  "Hungry, are you?" she asks him with a 
grin.

In some ways, this is her favorite time, when it's dark and 
quiet outside, when nothing in the world exists except for 
the two of them.  But it's also the loneliest time, when 
she keenly feels just how alone she is with this child.

She settles in the rocker by the window and unbuttons her 
nightgown.  The baby latches at her breast and begins to 
suck greedily.  Looking down at his tiny head, she notices 
how his hair is becoming thicker and darker every day.  His 
eyes, blue at birth, are beginning to turn a gray shade and 
she wonders if they'll someday be the same color as his 
father's.

Stroking the downy cheek of her baby, Scully bites her lip.

She turns off the lamp, preferring a blanket of darkness in 
the bedroom.  But it's not completely dark.  There's a 
silvery light flooding the room, casting deep shadows. She 
looks outside the window and sees a huge full moon, glowing 
supernaturally bright in the sky.  For some reason, the 
sight of it makes her smile.

After he's drained her dry of milk, her son gives a 
resounding belch and drifts back off to sleep.  Instead of 
putting him back to bed, Scully holds him against her and 
slowly rocks, humming a song with no words.

She never knew she could love like this, hold her baby in 
the middle of the night and sing to him.

Scully starts as she hears the bedroom door creak open.  
Her entire body goes rigid and she wonders how she can go 
for the gun in her bedside table drawer as fast as she can.  
But despite all her training, she finds herself unable to 
move or breathe.

A man walks through the door.  In the moonlight she sees a 
tall figure, skinny, with disheveled hair and a beard.

Time stops..

"Scully," he says in a rough, scratchy voice.

No.  She's dreaming, she's still sleeping, she'll wake in a 
moment and find herself alone with the baby in the rocker.

But she doesn't wake up.

Her lips form the word, but no sound leaves her mouth.

Mulder.

No, he's gone, he's never returning, it's a dream, a dream.

Never before has her heart beaten so rapidly.

He crosses the room and kneels by the chair, his eyes large 
in his thin face.

This time the word comes out.  "Mulder," she gasps, 
reaching to touch his hair.

He touches the sleeping baby's head.  "Is it?" he whispers 
hesitantly.

She nods.  "Yes," she says.  "He's yours."

Mulder's head drops.  "Oh God, I didn't know."

The baby wiggles in her arms, now awake.  She lifts him off 
her shoulder with her trembling hands and lays him in her 
lap.

"I didn't know," Mulder repeats.  "If I'd known, I wouldn't 
have..."

She interrupts him.  "It's all right, Mulder, you're back 
now."  Tears are blurring her vision and running down her 
face.

Mulder leans forward and wraps his arms around her.  She 
touches his face, his hair and his back to make sure it's 
really him and not another dream.

He's back.  He's alive and whole.  He's real.  It's Mulder.

They stay frozen in their embrace for a long time, the 
three of them, while the moon shines through the window.


And Scully's eyes open and she finds herself still in her 
mother's guest bedroom, still alone. Her cheeks are wet 
with her tears.

She wonders how many dreams she'll have like this.

She gets out of bed and walks over to the window.  It's 
still dark outside and there's no moon or stars in the inky 
sky.

Touching her belly with her hand, she leans forward and 
presses her forehead against the cool glass.

She looks up at the sky and wishes for the moon. 

END


Note: Alunakanula is a Russian palindrome, created by the 
poet Andrei Voznesensky, that means, "the moon has 
vanished."  I've always loved a good palindrome (my brother 
had this *freakish* talent for creating them when we were 
kids) and I read about this one the same day I watched 
"Requiem."  For some reason, it seemed like a nice fit with 
the theme of the episode.

Much gratitude to Plausible Deniability for being the 
Master of My Beta Domain.  He is truly the god of all that 
is grammar and word usage and a great friend, too.  Thanks 
also to Jerry, for being a wonderful pal and helping me 
during some confusing and crazy times.

And big love to L., for showing me beauty in all things...