#emily sim

at that point that little cross has basically been passed around the whole family.

and mulder looking at emily... you can literally see him thinking, "i know how much this means to scully, but this child is also going to get her killed."

She had driven to the church with her mother but it is Mulder who takes her home.

Well, away. Not home. Home is very far but away can be anywhere.

Away is where there isn’t little Matthew’s fat pink cheeks or Tara’s full breasts or the helpless gazes of her mother and brother. Away is where she can’t smell incense and baby’s breath and heaps of roses.

They’ve been driving in quiet, aimless loops for over an hour. Scully has her face pressed to the cool glass of the window. Mulder’s jacket is off and his sleeves are rolled up. His forearms are the color of graham crackers.

Mulder exits and re-enters the same highway again. His face is drawn.

Neither of them has consumed much of anything but coffee for days. She can’t let him keep going like this for her.

“Hey,” Scully says, sitting up.

“Hey.” He merges left. They pass the same massive parking garage for the umpteenth time.

“You ever had a fish taco? Kind of like a SoCal lobster roll.” Scully favors him with a smile that she knows to be, at best, watery.

He smiles back. “No, I haven’t.”

If he’s lying he’s good at it, Scully thinks. Scully is white and red and black in the golden SoCal light. Mulder, New England bred and born, is bronze and cinnamon and offshore kelp forest eyes.

She directs him towards a little place she recalls, tin-roofed and fragrant, crammed between the gun shop and the florist.

Mulder turns the car off. Stills. Waits.

She knows what he’s doing because it’s an old interrogation tool and they’re just two magicians doing card tricks for each other but still she gives in. Sometimes it feels so good to let someone else be the adult.

Scully reaches into her pocket, pulls the necklace out. She lets it puddle in her cupped palm.

“How can I believe in a god that would do this,” she asks, shivery and heartsick and afraid. Her own cancer is one thing but little Emily is another. Her cross is gold, like it means anything. 79 protons.

Next to her Mulder closes his eyes for a long breath. Mulder in a shirt crisp and stiff as beaten egg whites. Her shoes are appallingly expensive to her Catholic soul. Her suit is a good merino blend.

Mulder opens his eyes. “God gave us free will, Dana Katherine. He cannot intercede.”

“Mulder, don’t. Please, I -“

“Maybe this is how he saved her. You don’t believe death is the end. Do you?”

He squeezes her shoulder hard, a fraction of a second. She shudders, Dana Katherine. Good second daughter. Misses her father and her sister.

“No,” she whispers. “I don’t.” She stares at her necklace again.

Mulder takes it from her. He reaches around her shoulders, clasping the chain behind her collar. His breath is warm on her neck; he smells like cedar and bergamot.

“Let me curse god for a while,” he says, dropping a kiss on her temple.

He writes a short message on the inside, signs his name Love, M, and puts it on her desk the next day, too nervous to hand it to her directly.

She never mentions it, much to his relief. But she can tell he’s grieving, too, despite his attempts to hide it. So the following Father’s Day, she does the same for him.

Dear Mulder,

I know you weren’t her father, but I don’t doubt that with time, that’s who you would have become.

Love,