Title: Cold Comfort
Author: Flywoman
Rating: PG (mature content but no explicit language)
Classification: SA
Spoilers: "Paper Clip" (major) and "A Christmas Carol" (minor)
Synopsis: Scully struggles with sibling survivor guilt that first night
after the events in "Paper Clip"
Keywords: Melissa/Scully relationship

Disclaimer:  They aren't mine, never were, never will be.  Not only that,
but I lifted an entire copyrighted scene out of "Paper Clip," one of the
best episodes of the third season, no doubt mangling it irretrievably in
the process, and another out of "A Christmas Carol." But be generous with
your creation, Chris.  Recall the old saying about imitation and content
yourself with being flattered.  Also, I owe the idea for one scene to
Debbie Gramlich's story "Sisterly Love," borrowed without permission with
apologies to the author. 

Repost/Archive: Yes, with prior notification and my name and addy
attached.  Note: This is a 5/98 revision of a previously archived story.

Feedback: Kind comments and constructive criticism welcome at
emarin@biomail.ucsd.edu

Dedication: To Linda, my own long-suffering little sister, and to Bertha
Remedios, who came with luck and left with love.



Washington D.C. General Hospital
7:00 pm

They say that in that still, clear moment in which you hang suspended
between your whole history and an approaching death, your life flashes
before your eyes.  I always wondered what this meant, whether it would be
a single blinding illumination, in which I would see the shape and pattern
revealed of what I had experienced only as random tangled threads, and
cry, "Of course!" or whether, on the contrary, I would be hit with a rapid
fire series of vignettes, in which I saw myself growing young again,
dwindling down to a curly-haired freckled girl in grubby overalls, and
then into a red-faced squalling infant with a smooth head covered in
silky down.  In the three years in which I have worked with Special Agent
Mulder on the X-files, I have faced the possibility of my own death many
times, but I have never encountered this phenomenon, this smoke and mirror
trick of memory, until now.

I stand just outside the operating room at D.C. General, my ragged
breath fogging the smudged glass.  Surgeons and nurses spin, reach,
thrust, in a frantic and intricate dance, made more eerie by the complete
absence of sound.  Because of their masks, I cannot even read their lips,
but I can imagine what they must be calling to each other as the EKG on
the monitor bobbles and dips:  Clamp, quickly!  Increase oh-two to
100%.  All right, people, let's *move*!  And they do: the only person in
the room not operating at breakneck speed is my sister Melissa, face still
and wilted-lily-pale beneath their flashing instruments.  Animated by the
ventilator, her chest rises and falls serenely, while I breathe in
irregular gasps, my heart fluttering in my throat like a trapped wren.
Beside me, our mother watches with eyes the color of despair, gripping my
arm so tightly that it has long since gone numb.  We have been standing
here together for nearly an hour, since my first steps through the ICU
double doors were met by a team rushing my older sister up to surgery.
There wasn't time for me to so much as touch her cheek, whisper an
apology... say goodbye. 

"She was doing so much better..." my mother says softly now, glancing at
me quickly and then turning back to the glass so that I have no time to
respond, to correct her.  We both know, I with my medical training and
experience and she with some inscrutable maternal instinct, that this is
the last time we will ever wait for Melissa in the corridor of a hospital.
At least Mom hasn't tried to suggest that I would be of more help to my
sister inside that sterile little room, laying hands on her, making good
use of my expensive education.  She knows that I am a forensic scientist, 
not a brain surgeon, although I am sure that the thought has crossed her
mind more than once despite her intellectual grasp of the situation, 
of my inadequate skills in these circumstances.  I wish that I could offer
myself, these willing hands, to Melissa.  Instead I settle for clasping my
mother's fingers, feeling the smooth ridge of her wedding band dig into my
palm, and continue to stare straight ahead at the futile performance in
the next room.  A sharp buzz begins to swell behind my raw eyes.

This is how it begins: suddenly I am still staring through the glass, but
now I stand in a brightly lit emergency room in San Diego, watching my
older sister get her stomach pumped on the other side, great gouts of a
thick tarry substance erupting into the vacuum trap while my mother
presses a handkerchief to her mouth beside me.  Missy is sixteen.  It's
the night of the senior prom, and she is still mostly clad in a crushed
burgandy velvet dress stained with liquor and vomit.  Her date, Jim
Mullen, stutters loudly in a corner of the waiting room, towering over our
balding father, trying to apologize, trying to explain.  I know that this
isn't his fault, not entirely, anyway.  Missy confided her plans to me
last night, while she was trying on her dress and I was studying for a big
AP Biology exam.  This was her first big opportunity to explore, to escape
the narrow confines of her strict Catholic upbringing and her rigid
conscious mind.  It will not be her last.  I crane my neck and stand on
tiptoe in a hopeless attempt to catch a glimpse of Melissa's face.  She is
so white, so still...

The scene changes, and Missy is still in her velvet dress, now clean and
well-worn, but she is sprawled on her rumpled bed in the room we share,
crunching an apple over a Carlos Castaneda novel.  "How was your date?"
she mumbles brightly around a mouthful of fruit without looking up.

It has taken almost all of my strength to push our door open, thin though
it is.  Now with the last of it I stumble across the room to my own bed,
swollen and aching.  As I sink onto the mattress I gasp with the sudden
dark surge of pain.  Missy glances up sharply from her book, then drops it
with a muted cry of alarm and fairly leaps to my side.  "Dana, what
happened?"  I hear her voice from a great distance.  So cold.  I wrap my
arms more tightly around my traitorous breasts, clenching my thighs
together so hard that my battered pubic bone burns between them.  "Dana,
did he hurt you?"  

I shake my head numbly, force speech between bruised lips.  "Missy, help
me... I'm so cold."  My teeth are clacking painfully against each other.
Missy swiftly draws my favorite throw blanket around my shoulders and sits
down on the bed next to me, pulling me close.  *Panic*.  

I start to struggle, trying to break away, a whimper building deep in my
throat, but Missy is stroking my hair tenderly and murmuring, "Shh, Dana,
it's all right, it's Missy, I'm here, you're gonna be okay," and after a
few long seconds my heart stops pounding quite so hard and the darkness
recedes a little and I lean rigidly against her, grateful for her
reassuring warmth...

Abruptly Melissa is gone and my father sinks heavily onto the edge of the
bed beside me, running a hand through the thinning red fringe of his hair.
"Listen, Starbuck," he begins in a conspiratorial hush, "you've got to
talk to your sister for me.  Make her realize that she needs to try harder
and get her grades up.  She's too bright to be dreaming her life away like
she does.  Lord knows I've tried to talk to her-" he crosses himself
absently "-but sometimes I think she'd flunk out just to spite me.  And of
course your mother's no help at all with these things."  I toy with my
pencil, crouched over my quantum physics texts, and stare stony-faced
without speaking.  He tries another tack.  "You tell her, she'll listen to
you.  You know how much she's always admired you."  

I go hot and cold with swirling anger, pity, and resentment.  But at
last I sigh through clenched teeth and nod reluctantly, feeling like a
traitor and a charlatan.  Mercifully, his next words hang in the air
unspoken: "Why can't Melissa be more like you?"  And so this time I don't
give in to the urge to jump up and shout, What's so great about me? and
Who am I to dictate the shape of her life?

A sudden muffled clatter in the hall is followed by the bang of the
bathroom door.  My father raises his head, looking tired.  "Missy, is
that you?" He heaves himself off the bed and stands framed in the open
doorway, leaving  me silent and sullen.  "Missy?"...

"Missy, you get back up to your room and into some decent clothes this
minute!" and Melissa slams the screen door behind her as my father rises
from the dinner table, round face red, spluttering with impotent rage.  I
watch her saunter out to the driveway with a loose, insolent swing to her
newly broadened hips, her thighs sleek and pale under fishnet stockings
between her tight leather skirt and her spike-heeled black boots.

"It's just her stage costume, Bill," my mother says soothingly, reaching
for his hand, and I struggle vainly to suppress a smirk, picturing my
father's likely reaction if he ever obtained the slightest glimpse into
the actual nature of Missy's latest gig, the weekly screening of the
Rocky Horror Picture Show at the dilapidated Rialto downtown.

Now as Missy swings her leg nonchalantly over the seat of her new
boyfriend's Harley, that skirt hikes way, way up, past the lacy black
garters to the crease below her buttocks, and she turns her strawberry 
blond head to favor me with an almost pitying grin.  And then she is gone,
roaring off into the night, leaving me with my parents at the table,
wrapped in an awkward silence.  Many minutes pass before my father breaks
it with a show of joviality, clapping me roughly on the back: "Thank God,
Starbuck, we've never had to worry about any of this stuff with you!"...

This scene dissolves completely, leaving me shivering in the dead of
winter outside my medical school dorm.  It is the week before the
long-awaited end of OB-GYN, my least favorite rotation to date, and yet I
am dreading the end of it - or more accurately, the beginning of the break
to follow.  A few nights ago I called my parents and told them that I was
thinking about joining the FBI, doing a forensics residency instead of
preparing for a career in private practice.  My mother received this news
tight-lipped; my father sounded livid.  I finally hung up in tears, shaken
to the core but no less fiercely determined to pursue my new goals.  But
since then, doubt has crept into the silence.  I want more than anything
to have my family's understanding and support in this decision, and for
what seems like the first time in my life I find I cannot have either.

Now I reach into my mailbox, heart knotting with loneliness, a bitter
taste in the back of my throat.  There is a single piece of mail, a
postcard with a colorful picture of a naked woman, vibrant, glowing, arms
raised to the sun.  Crammed onto the back in my sister's
unmistakable untidy scrawl is a poem:

"Dana, this year has left you dry, taut, brittle,
a withered stick at the side of the road.
But you too can sprout, and grow, and blossom,
Even here, far from sunshine and moist salt breezes,
Far from cradling trees and comforting stone.
Your father, now so full of rage,
Will split a pomegranate to share on your return,
the sweet ruby juice running down your chins.
You walk torn, confused, spinning, encompassing
Rejoice in your potential
You have not shipwrecked,
Only become stranded on an unexpected island for a time.
>From here you may sail in any direction.

Love, Missy
P.S. See you soon!"

I am smiling, but a tear escapes to spatter onto the postcard, blurring
the purple ink.  Christmas is just around the corner, and soon I will be
home...

I snuggle into the living room couch, wrapped in my worn white terrycloth
robe.  Missy crosses in front of the warm flickering light from the
fireplace.  "I couldn't sleep," I confess, as guiltily as though she has
caught me sneaking around under the Christmas tree rather than sitting
quietly on the sofa.

"How come?" Missy asks, settling herself in the loveseat.  "You worried
about Quantico or who gets the most presents this year?"

"I guess I'm afraid that I'm making a big mistake.  I can tell Dad sure
thinks I am."

Missy is trying not to smile.  "Oh.  Well.  It's not his life, Dana."

"I know that," I say impatiently.  "But you know, when I started med
school, it felt so right... it just seemed like that was where I was
supposed to be... and..." I sigh.  "And then by the time I graduated I
just knew it was wrong.  And now the FBI feels right and - what if that's
wrong too?"

"There is no right or wrong," Missy replies confidently.  "Life is just a
path. You follow your heart and it'll take you where you want to go."

I grimace.  "You sound like a greeting card."  Now Missy smiles, not at
all offended.  But I continue slowly, "I don't believe in fate.  I think
we have to choose our own path."

"Well, just don't mistake the path for what's really important in life."

This is a new one.  "Which is what?" I counter.

"The people you're gonna meet along the way... You don't know who you're
going to meet when you join the FBI.  You don't know how your life is
going to change... or how you're going to change the lives of others..."
Missy suddenly hunkers down next to the coffee table and beckons me over
conspiratorially.  "Don't be scared, Dana.  I have a feeling that this
decision is going to transform your life forever.  And that you're going
to meet someone very special that you never would have known otherwise..."

"That's downright spooky," Bill complains, tossing his pencil down on
the coffee table with a grimace of frustration, bordering on disgust.  "I
vote that next time we put you guys on separate teams."

Beside me, Missy grins triumphantly and tries to catch my eye, but I avoid
her by looking instead to our father, who has been watching his three
favorite girls with a twinkle in his pale blue eyes.  "Bill Jr.'s right,"
he concurs fondly, reaching with one hand to knead the muscles at the base
of Mom's neck.  "A couple of hundred years ago, all three of you Scully
women would have been burned at the stake."

"Wait just a minute.  Don't you mean we *O'Brien* women?" Mom counters
with mock indignation.  "Assuming it's running in the maternal line, I
mean!"  The whole family laughs except for me.  I am squirming with
embarrassment at the thought of being grouped together with Mom and her
uncanny prophetic dreams, and Missy with her bizarre beliefs in auras and
fortune-telling.  I am a scientist, soon to be a doctor, and it disturbs
me that I haven't found a satisfactory way of explaining their
occasionally astonishing predictions.  Not only are Mom and Missy right on
target about people and events far more frequently than would be expected
from random chance, but they often seem to know things for which even the
most sensitive perceptions of their surroundings could not reasonably
account.  How do they do it?

And how did I know just now that the jagged shape Missy scribbled in blunt
lead was supposed to be the "Red Cross"?  "Look, Dana," Missy nudges me
impatiently, and I start and blink at her in confusion.  Somehow, I just
knew...  

"Look," Missy hisses gleefully, reaching down to roll up the left cuff of
her jeans.  We are sitting on the porch steps on a warm June day, the cry 
of seagulls high above us.  I stoop obligingly, wondering if her new
tattoo is a rainbow, a dove, a heart with an anchor.  But what I see is
something I never would have expected, yet have to admit makes a certain
perverse sense coming from my sister: a recycling symbol, a bright red
triangle with three swirling green arrows inside it.  

"Missy, I hate to say it, but that's oddly appropriate," I tell her with a
straight face.

She smiles at me, then becomes suddenly serious.  "This body is only a
temporary container," she declares gravely.  "When I die, I want you guys
to donate all of my organs.  And I want my body to go to your medical
school."

I stare at her for a second in disbelief, then give her a little push.
"Don't be ridiculous," I say.  "I wouldn't let people like my classmates
get their bloodthirsty little hands on me for a million bucks."  I pause,
an image of the pitiful remains of my own first cadaver flashing in my
mind's eye.  "Besides," I add, trying to smile, "there's nothing more
frustrating to a first year anatomy student than an organ donor!" 
  
"Yeah, yeah," she grins, waving my feeble joke away with one slim hand.
"You think I'm a weirdo, admit it..."

"Missy is a weirdo!" the fourth grade class heartthrob jeers for the third
time in a maddening sing-song, his eyes alight with malice behind
impossibly long eyelashes.  He stands on the playground surrounded by a
circle of admirers, pointing his elegant little index finger at my sobbing
older sister, laughing at her, and at my increasing anger and frustration.  

Then "I hate your guts, Chris Valdez!" I explode, and suddenly my
fist is connecting with his perfect jaw and shooting trails of bright fire
down my sturdy wrist, and now I am screaming obscenities and straddling
his supine form, swinging left and right at his alternately reddening and
blanching face as he cowers and screams.  

Melissa is crying behind me, "Dana, let him go, stop hurting him," and the
gravelly asphalt digs painfully into my bare knees, while grubby hands
pull at me from all sides.  

But I ignore the noise and confusion and keep pounding away at my
nemesis until a whistle shrieks two feet from my ear and Sister Soledad's
dreaded bellow follows on its heels: "Dana Scully!  What is the meaning of
this *hooliganism* from a young lady in the second grade?"  An
excruciating tug on my left ear plucks me swiftly off my whimpering
antagonist, leaving me stranded in front of her, squinting resentfully
against the sunlight as the rest of the crowd mysteriously melts away.
"That red-headed Scully temper will be the damnation of the lot of you..."

Now I find myself emerging from the sallow fluorescence of the metro at
Union Square by NYU.  Squinting against the sudden revealing glare, I
hesitate, holding my sister back from her eager plunge into the midday
crowds.  A weathered gap-toothed Black man of indeterminate age and
sobriety grins at us and calls over his shoulder as he passes, "Yo,
sweetheart!  You showin' your lil' sister the city?"

His slightly bloodshot eyes are raking over Missy's tall, willowy
slenderness, and I blush hotly, feeling dumpy and baby-faced beside her.
But my sister only laughs richly and tugs at my hand in impatience.
"C'mon, 'little sister,' I'll be late for my interview..."

Five-year-old Missy skips cheerfully down the driveway clutching her
stuffed rabbit, her chubby little hand clinging stickily to mine...

Missy's cool little hands press firmly into the small of my back, and I am
propelled ecstatically up towards the heavens, the spring breeze rushing
past my flushed face...

Missy and I lie giggling together under elaborate tents of blankets and
pillows draped over the living room furniture...

Missy appears at our door on the night of my big O-Chem midterm with a
freshly baked cranberry scone and a mug of steaming spiced apple cider for
me...

The images succeed each other more and more rapidly until I barely have
time to place one scene in space and time before it evaporates into the
next.  Missy laughing, Missy singing with me in the bathtub, Missy
presiding over a solemn tea party with her dolls.  Faster and faster,
until my head whirls with an incoherent blur of faces, shapes, fragments
of color and sound.  My heart is pounding wildly; my locked knees threaten
to buckle.  Ten more seconds of this and I will find myself in a heap on
the corridor floor.  But then, slowly, a still center appears before me,
starting small, but gradually unfolding like a flower until it has
smoothed away the chaos, leaving a single distinct vision.  This one feels
as real, as familiar, as the other memories, but with a startling
difference: I, Dana, am not physically present.  Yet I can see Missy
clearly, seated at a small round table covered with a lacy white
tablecloth in her first apartment.  I am watching her from above as she
chatters into the telephone, the receiver tucked between her neck and
shoulder, her head tilted to one side.

End of "Cold Comfort" 1/3.  To be continued in "Cold Comfort" 2/3.

-----

Post-"Paper Clip" SA "Cold Comfort" (revised) 2/3 by Flywoman

Disclaimer in Part 1

"You've been reassigned to work with who?  Wait a minute.  Isn't he the
one you used to say was... spooky?"  A pause; Missy's mouth quirks in a
small smile.  "So why were you selected for this honor?"  Another pause as
Missy listens intently, presumably to me.  I can't clearly recall my side
of this conversation, but I remember the occasion for our chat as clearly
as if it happened yesterday.  I had shown up to teach my class at Quantico
exactly as usual that morning, and in my mailbox had been a discreetly
unlabeled manila envelope that contained a letter inviting me to a meeting
with the Violent Crimes section chief regarding a sudden change of
assignment.  It had been phrased to sound like an honor, like a belated
recognition of the unusual skills and experience I had brought to the FBI
as a medical scientist.  My concentration had been shot for the rest of
the day, I was experiencing such a heady combination of giddiness and
anxiety.  I had called my sister immediately upon returning home and
breathlessly dredged up every scrap of information I could recall about my
new assignment and my future partner, the famous- and in some circles,
infamous -Fox Mulder.

"Interesting," Missy says now.  "Well, I guess if they want scientific
anaylsis and skepticism then you're their woman, sis.  Uh-huh."  Another,
longer pause.  Missy is starting to frown slightly.  "Listen, Dana," she
begins at last, "I can tell that you're not really sure about this.  If
you want, I could just do a little reading for you and-  Okay, all right,
never mind, forget I mentioned it!  But if you don't believe in this stuff
anyway then what difference-"  The line has apparently gone dead; Missy
stares bemusedly at the receiver for a minute and then replaces it in its
cradle.  Observing, I feel a quick flush of old annoyance and new
embarrassment.  I had been furious, fed up with my big sister and her
New Age nonsense, but that was no excuse.  She had only been trying to
help.

In contrast, Missy doesn't seem at all flustered by my overreaction.
She is, however, clearly bothered by our conversation.  She stares into
space for a moment, absently tapping her fingernails on the tablecloth,
then abruptly pulls a slim deck of oversized cards towards her.  She
shuffles rapidly, biting her lower lip in concentration, then lays the
card out in a careful pattern, six face-up, four face-down.  I recognize
the colorful images of her favorite tarot cards, already dog-eared from
many hours of eager consultation.  When she is done, she does not begin
the reading immediately, but pulls her ankles up to sit cross-legged in
her chair for about half a minute, eyes closed, breathing deeply, face
still.  At last she blinks softly and turns her solemn gaze to the cards
before her.

"Your present influence is The Fool," she observes aloud, lightly touching
the first card in the pattern, which features a gaily clad man stepping
blithely over the edge of a cliff, his head obviously in the clouds. "You
are about to encounter an individual whose naivety, thoughtlessness, 
irrationality, and extravagance will test your patience and convictions,
but whose enthusiasm will carry you along on his journey despite
yourself."  She smirks a little.  "I guess I don't have to think too hard
about who *that* might be."

Next she touches the card that lies crosswise over the first.  "The Moon
suggests that deception, obscurity, and danger lie just ahead.  Beware.
Unknown enemies will place obstacles in your path."  Missy tucks a stray
lock of hair behind her ear.  "Well, honestly, it's the FBI, what would
you expect."

"This card symbolizes your goal or destiny, or your aim or ideal.  It is
Justice.  You seek a reasonable outcome, a proper balance.  From yourself
you expect impartiality and careful weighing of the facts to reach a
correct conclusion."  So far I have been watching her with a grimace of
impatience: what help is this series of vague predictions supposed to be?
On the other hand, the cards she has put down at random seem oddly...
appropriate for their position.  But no, I catch myself, this is
ridiculous.  It's pure coincidence.

Missy taps the card to the right of The Fool, a stern-looking man seated
on a throne.  "The emperor is the patriarchal figure in your past
foundation.  Good old Ahab.  Your thoughts and actions have been strongly
shaped by your relationships with authority.  Isn't that the truth.  Also,
for you, reason has generally dominated over passion."  She smiles with a
kind of quiet triumph.  "Gosh, Dana, I wish you could see this.  You'd
never make fun of my readings again."  I can.  I wouldn't.  Please, Missy,
give me that chance.  For heaven's sake, Dana, get a hold of yourself.

The card below The Fool shows a disturbing image of destruction,
two people falling from a great height.  "The Tower portrays great changes
in your recent past due to the breakdown of old beliefs.  Your decision
not to practice as a doctor caused a lot of upheaval in our family, that's
for sure.  This has also resulted in the loss of stability and security,
in your goals and your relationships, leaving you vulnerable to further
change.  These events set the stage for the choices you now face."

I recognize the card to the left of The Fool without having to read the
title: it is Death, riding a pale horse under a black banner that bears a
white rose.  Missy looks distressed, but not greatly so.  I, on the other
hand, am beginning to tremble.  Memories of my abduction threaten from the
dark depths to which I have consigned them.  But Missy is speaking, and
her gentle voice drowns out those thoughts, those terrifying images.
"Death is in all our futures, Dana.  I choose to read this card as
predicting a transformation, an unexpected change.  But it could also mean
illness, or a great loss.  I won't know until I see the final cards."  I
wrap these words around myself for comfort.  Perhaps that future has
already come to pass; perhaps I escaped Death in the hospital in those
days after my abrupt return, those days that left me weak, dazed, with no
power to recall or articulate what had been done to me.

Missy has finished with the images now visible.  She reaches to turn over
the bottom card in the line of face-down cards to the right of them.
"Your present position and attitude is that of The Hierophant.  You are a
source of mercy, kindness, inspiration, and compassion.  But don't get too
much of a swelled head, St. Dana, because you also have a tendency to
cling to your beliefs and principles even when they are outdated or no
longer valid."  Listening, I grow hot with indignation, my fear for the
moment forgotten.  Who is Missy, with her crystals and tarot cards, to
tease me about inappropriate beliefs?   

Still grinning, Missy turns over the next card.  "To others, you are
represented by the High Priestess, who stands for wisdom, objectivity,
self-reliance, and emotionlessness.  They will rely on your common sense
and sound judgment.  Fits you to a T, along with the traditional
association with platonic rather than passionate relationships!"  Very
funny, Missy.  I am still fuming a bit from that last card.

Now she reveals a maternal-looking figure, sceptre in hand, enthroned amid
fields of golden grain. "Interesting," Missy muses.  "This card is
supposed to indicate your inner emotions, your secret fears or desires.
But the Empress is the symbol of motherhood, of fruitfulness, of feminine
influence and vitality.  Do you secretly wish that you weren't so driven
by your career ambitions that you've put all thoughts of a family on hold?
Or do you fear your intuitive, emotional, feminine side?  Probably both,
actually, sis."  This interpretation both disgusts and intrigues me.  On
the one hand, it is exactly the kind of feeble pop psychology that so
infuriates me when I try to talk to my sister about issues in my life.  On
the other, I can't deny, however much I might want to, that it might
contain some grain of truth.  But Missy doesn't leave me much time to
ponder these conflicting feelings.  Her hand hovers over the last card.

And leaves it.  Missy pushes her chair back from the table and stands
up.  She begins to pace.  I have rarely seen her so agitated.  What could
possibly be wrong?  Is she that afraid to view the final outcome of this
little game?  She must really take this seriously.  Ridiculous.  It's just
a silly card trick, a psych quiz.  It means whatever you want it to mean.
Sit down, I urge her silently from above.  It doesn't matter.  Just finish
it.  The incongruity of the dismissal and the request occurs to me even as
I phrase them.  I wait, confused and anxious.  What is wrong with me?  I
don't believe in any of this.  I don't.

As if in response to my vehemence, Missy resumes her seat.  Once again
she meditates briefly, slowing her breathing, steadying herself.  At last
she reaches for the final card.  Slowly she turns it over.  A man hangs
upside down, suspended in midair.  The room is very still.  Missy seems to
be holding her breath.  I am ready to scream with impatience, forgetting
for the moment that this is all nonsense, irrelevant.  What does
it mean?  Missy stares down at the card for a seemingly interminable
length of time.  Then, just as I feel utterly unable to stand it any
longer, she ends her silence, licking dry lips and finding her voice in a
fearful whisper that I must strain to hear.  "The Hanged Man," she
observes bleakly.  "Transition, change, reversal of mind and of one's way
of life.  Or..." and her gaze flickers to Death and back again, and she
shudders and abruptly sweeps the cards fluttering to the floor.  She
has paled and looks exhausted, ill.  "Or sacrifice."  Missy suddenly sinks
to the ground as if stunned.  Or shot.  The vision blurs brightly.  I am
staring into a blinding light.  Then even that vanishes, and I see only
darkness.

I find myself in the hospital corridor again, now weeping harshly, without
tears. "Missy," I murmur brokenly, "Missy, I'm so sorry.  Missy, why
didn't you tell me?"  My mother is shaking me.

"Dana, what's wrong?  Dana?  Can you hear me?"  Her anxious eyes bore into
mine.

I gulp and shudder and fight to get a grip on myself.  This is the last
thing my mother needs to see.  I am supposed to be the strong one.  I am
supposed to be...

Behind her, the doors to the operating vestibule swing open.  An intern
emerges, young face drawn and tired.  "Mrs. Scully, Dr. Scully," he says
hesitantly.  I do not want to listen to him.  I do not want to hear him
say the words that will make it real.

"I regret to inform you that, although we used all our capabilities and
did everything in our power, we were unable to save Melissa..."


End of "Cold Comfort" 2/3.  To be concluded in "Cold Comfort" 3/3.

-----

Post-"Paper Clip" SA "Cold Comfort" (revised) 3/3 by Flywoman

Disclaimer in Part 1


I am in Melissa's room in the ICU.  I do not remember how I got here, but 
my mother is kissing me on the cheek, her face still wet, and then she is 
gone, gone on, gone home.  My face is still dry.  It is very cold in this 
place.  I have never known such silence.  Even that year when Missy
wandered up and down the West Coast, with only a few sporadic postcards
flung across country to let us know that she was still alive and well, I
never lost my sense of her, tucked into a comforting corner of my mind.
Now there is nothing but the hollow echo of guilt.  The emptiness is
almost unbearable, and somehow I sense it will be worse when I reenter
familiar places. So I cannot go home just now. I cannot go home alone.
I sink into the only chair to wait for Mulder.  He will come for me.

         

I am still sitting here in this ghastly empty room when Mulder walks
in. I know that if I look at him, if I catch a glimpse of compassion in
his eyes, I'll lose it.  So I stare at a point just below his chin, try to
remain professional. "It happened three hours ago. She went into
surgery... the damage to her brain was worse than they had hoped."  To my
dismay, he crouches beside me, a comfort, a warning.  "Her blood pressure
started to rise and um... <I regret to inform you that although we used
all our capabilities we were unable> she slipped away."  

Mulder doesn't flinch, but his face tightens. He puts his hand on mine,
which are bloodless, numb.  Touched, I try to express the one thought that
has been washing urgently back and forth through my battered brain ever
since: "She died for me... and I tried to tell her I was sorry but I don't
think she'll ever really know," and my voice catches despite my 
resolution. 

Mulder does not let this pass unchallenged.  "Oh, she knows!
Melissa knows."

Somewhere deep down I am grateful for this gesture, but it changes
nothing. "You were right," I tell him bleakly. "There is no justice."

"I don't think this is about justice, Scully."

"Then what is it about?" I snap, more sharply than I'd intended.

"I think it's about something we have no personal choice in..." Mulder
says slowly.  "I think it's about fate."  I glance at him; I feel my lips
tighten around a protest but say nothing.  He swallows, changes the
subject.  "Skinner told me that he talked to you... that you were
insistent about coming back to work.  Now if Melissa's death is-"

But I am already shaking my head, cutting him off.  My voice emerges low
and vehement, almost a snarl, "I need something to put my back up
against."

"I feel the same way," Mulder says softly, close to stuttering, close to
tears.  "We've both lost so much..." I gulp down my own incipient sob.
"But I believe that what we're looking for is in the X-files - I'm more
certain than ever that the truth is in there."  His eyes, brimming with
tears just a second ago, shine with renewed conviction.

I feel sick.  I burn coldly with an anger that goes beyond anger, a demand
for meaning that will not be denied, that will fuel me in the bitter years
ahead.  "I've heard the truth, Mulder," I retort, remorselessly quenching
his hopeful fervor.  "Now what I want are the answers."

He has nothing to say to this.  Nothing to say, and so he rises to his
knees, slides one arm around my shoulders, pulls my head towards him with
the other.  I am pressed tightly against his side.  I feel that his
warmth, his fragrance lack the power to penetrate me.  Nevertheless, I
bury my face in the hollow between his neck and shoulder.  He rubs my
arm, roughly, as if trying to revive a frostbite victim.  An apt analogy.
I feel something taut and icy in my center snap, prickle, begin to thaw.
Tears well up as if from some melting subterranean spring, and I start to
cry.



Mulder is helping me into his car.  I sink into the musty-smelling
upholstery, feeling drained, a dessicated husk around an achingly barren
core.  The car door slams.  Mulder folds himself into the driver's seat
and buckles himself in.  I have not stirred.  He opens his mouth to say
something, changes his mind, unbuckles himself and reaches awkwardly
across me.  I make no move to assist him.  He pulls the seatbelt down over
my breasts and snaps it into place.  I continue to stare straight ahead
without blinking.  The Baltimore night passes by me in a moist blur.


               
In my apartment, I stand motionless by the front door, noting the
innumerable subtle signs that someone has been in here, probably several
someones, leaving the objects on my coffee table unnaturally arranged, the
wooden floor a little too clean around a shadow that proves to be a stain.
I am at a loss to continue, thinking, It happened right here and then,
absurdly, How will I ever get the blood out of the floorboards?  Mulder
rummages in the kitchen for a minute and reemerges with two shot glasses
of whiskey, neat.  He hands one to me, and I down it obediently, feeling
no pleasure at its slow burn down my esophagus.  Mulder is saying
something.  He touches me on the arm.  I assume that he has asked if I am
all right, and nod at him, I'm fine.  He takes my empty glass from me and
propels me gently towards the hallway with a hand in the small of my back.

I wander listlessly into the bedroom.  There is a faint, familiar flicker
from the living room.  Odd that I can't hear the tv.  I strip down
steadily, automatically, not bothering to close the door.  He has already
seen me naked tonight.  My wellworn pajamas are folded neatly at the foot
of the bed, and I watch indifferently as my hands reach for them, newly
roughened fingertips snagging on the soft cotton.



I open my eyes and I am back in medical school, a first year student on
the first day of anatomy class, huddled with my friends around our newly
assigned cadaver.  When we unzip the powder blue plastic body bag we see
that we have been given a woman.  Her face has been bound tightly with
moist protective gauze.  Distorted by the preservative fluids, she seems
neither young nor old, thin nor fat.  Her hair is pale and dry and clings
tightly to her scalp.  Her skin hangs in stiff, leathery folds with a
reptilian sheen.

We have been asked to name our cadavers as a sign of respect and gratitude
- and as an attempt to forestall the ineevitable dehumanization of these
former people, now teaching tools, already referred to by several crude
students as slabs of cured meat.  Jessica suggests "Maggie," and we all
agree.  It is only after a few minutes that it strikes me that my mother's
name is Margaret and I would prefer a different moniker, but I am
embarrassed, both because I don't wish to appear squeamish or
superstitious in front of my colleagues and because it took me so long to
make the connection, so I say nothing.  In fact, to make a show of
confidence, as much for my own benefit as anyone else's, I volunteer to
make the first cut, snapping a fresh blade into my scalpel as easily as if
I've been doing this half my life.  My friends nod, wide-eyed.  In my
short time here, I've already made something of a reputation for myself
as game for anything: Dana Scully, Stomach of Steel.  I intend to keep it.

We are supposed to start with the back, in contrast to the procedure at
most traditional medical schools.  The four of us, all women, all below
5'5", groan with the effort of rolling Maggie over onto her chest.  I take
a deep breath, coughing a little at the rising phenol fumes, study the
diagram in our plastic-coated handout one last time, then lower my scalpel
to the middle of her back.  The first sagittal cut is too shallow, the
second too deep.  Again.  I expose the fatty superficial layers,
peripherally aware that I am biting my lip in concentration.  Enough.  I
return to the base of the neck, make perpendicular cuts out to her
shoulders.

Here I pause to glance at my teammates, who are watching in rapt and
barely disguised horror.  We need to separate the upper layers from the
goal of today's dissection, the superficial back muscles.  None of the
other women seem all that eager to jump in, so I take hold of one corner
of skin with my gloved fingers and begin working it loose.  As it slides
along the plane of the deep fascia, the scalpel makes a delicate scraping
sound, like a razor caressing the curve of a beloved's face.  The
steel-strong gossamer threads sigh and fall away, leaving the smooth pale
flank of muscle bright beneath.

Before I know it, class is over.  The professor comes around to remind us
that we should all try to look at the face of our donor before we clean up
and leave.  Despite all that I've seen and done today, this idea
scares me more than I'm willing to admit for reasons that I cannot
articulate even to myself.  Yet I nod reluctantly.  My head is pounding.
Vikki is the one who actually unwraps the gauze once we have turned Maggie
over again.  Slowly the sticky film pulls away and away, revealing a
well-defined nose, high cheekbones, unwrinkled lips.  I look away for a
few seconds, peeling off my stained latex gloves.  When I glance back,
Melissa's face is staring up at me with accusing grey eyes.

An abrupt wave of nausea engulfs me and flings me across the room.  Faces
blur past.  I am gripping the edges of a red biohazard bucket, the plastic
cutting into my palms.  My guts writhe and tear and force harsh bile up my
throat again and again.  Sweat is running down my face, my back, yet a
bone-chill shudder works its way up my spine.  Gradually I become aware of
someone else: one of my classmates has come up from behind and is holding
my shoulders.  His touch is firm but gentle, comforting.  Still choking
and sobbing, I open my streaming eyes and turn around.

Mulder's concerned face hangs inches from my own, that sharp little line
of worry etched between his eyebrows.  I am in my own bathroom, kneeling
on the cold tiled floor next to the toilet.  My hair feels damp and
tangled as it clings clammily to my neck.  I gulp a few times, try to wipe
my face with my pajama sleeve.  Mulder wordlessly hands me a strip of
toilet paper, then leaves my side to fetch a glass of water.  I hear him
fumbling around in the kitchen, turning on the tap.  My head is whirling.
I can still see Melissa's eyes.  <It was only a dream.>  I repeat this
thought like a mantra, or a charm.  It is no help.  The truth from which I
cannot wake is far more terrible.  My sister clung grimly to life in
that room for days while I played the fugitive in West Virginia only
to slip away as I arrived, futile prayers on my lips and my gold cross
searing the flesh of my palm.  But even as this thought occurs it is
weighed, found wanting, discarded with disgust.  Melissa never clung
grimly to anything; that would be me.  Melissa left life as serenely as
she sailed through it, bending gracefully beneath the few squalls she
could not tack adroitly around.

Mulder is back with the water.  He holds the glass to my lips,
half-supporting me as if I were the invalid.  I drink: cool, metallic,
slightly sour.  I lick my lips.  "What are you doing here?" I croak.

Mulder's eyes are brown in this light, soft and infinitely gentle.  "I
didn't want to leave you alone tonight, Scully.  You said that I could
sleep on the couch, remember?"  I can only stare at him.  All of my
memories center around an empty bed.  "If you want me to leave, I will."

I hesitate.  An empty bed surrounded by IV stands and heart monitors and
oxygen feeds dissolves into the wrinkled corpse of a thirty-two year old
woman face down on an anatomy table.  I realize that I am still shaking,
and clenching the empty glass so tightly that Mulder pries it away just
before it would have imploded in my fist.  He sets it safely on the back
of the toilet and slips a finger under my chin.  "No, please don't leave,"
I hear myself saying in a hoarse whisper.

Mulder nods slowly and slides his hand under my arm to rest on my back.
It burns through the thin flannel, the single source of heat in the room.
I draw on its warmth as I stand, feeling it as an umbilical cord, a
lifeline connecting me to the waking world.  Mulder is so solid, so
strong, so alive.  His very presence precludes the whisper of ghosts.

A few shuffling steps and we are in my bedroom.  The clock reads 1:06 am.
Mulder helps me into bed, pulling the thick down comforter away and then
around me, then turns to go.  The connection is broken.  A low moan
escapes my throat as he cruelly robs me of my only tenuous link to the
living.  He stops, looks back, his gaze unfathomable.  His eyebrows
raised in an unspoken question that hangs luminescent between us.  Under
any other circumstances, I would not ask, he would not offer, but dead
grey eyes flash before me and I reach out blindly for the cuff of his
shirt.  "Stay with me."  I watch the briefest twinge of panic slide across
his face and then vanish as into the depths of a still pool.  <Please.
Just for tonight.>  He does not move.  I will not ask again.  We both
wait, holding our breaths, to see what he will do.

The moment of decision falters, wavers, limps on.  Mulder unknots his tie
and loosens his collar, then sinks heavily onto the edge of the bed and
toes off his shoes.  I drag myself over a few inches to make room for him
as he slides under the icy sheets.  The crackle of starch as he shifts
around, adjusting his long body to my bed.  I wait.  He extends his right
arm over the crumpled pillow and beckons me with his left.  He will keep
me safe.  I lean gratefully into his warmth, tucking my chin between his
neck and shoulder, reveling in the firm pulse of his blood through the
carotid just under the skin.  I imagine its steady, soothing murmur and it
lulls me into a dreamless sleep.



When I open my eyes again, sunlight falls hot on my face.  I am alone in
my bed, sweltering under the weight of the comforter.  There is a smooth
curved imprint on the pillow beside me, faintly redolent of hair oil and
masculine shampoo, but Mulder is gone.         

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The End
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It would mean a lot to me to know that you got this far - please email
me at emarin@biomail.ucsd.edu and let me know what you thought of "Cold
Comfort."  My other XF fanfic can be found at Flywoman's X-Files Homepage,
http://biomail.ucsd.edu/~emarin/lisa.html