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December 23rd, 1999
Scully can still smell the airport on herself as the light San Diego wind stirs her hair and presses it against her face, feather soft. It’s a seasonably dreary day, all grey clouds and squishy grass under their feet as their party of four makes their way through the cemetery.
Through the maze of stones, a block of granite stands out. Sim.
Scully’s mouth flattens to a grim line on the border of a frown. She hates the reminder of what almost was. She sets a gentle hand on the girl who stands by her side and squeezes her shoulder, anchoring herself once more to reality rather than nightmares of the past.
Emily knows where she came from, at least to the extent that a five-year-old can comprehend. She knows that she’d had parents before Scully and Mulder, that her parents had loved her and cared for her and that they’d died. She knows that Scully is her biological mother and that Mulder loves her so much that blood relation is unnecessary. They’ve done their best not to hide anything about her past from her, both knowing the pain that withheld information can bring once it’s finally revealed.
Emily had had a say in coming here, of course. Scully had explained it all very carefully a few weeks ago, that she, Emily, Maggie, and Mulder would all be traveling to Uncle Bill’s house for Christmas. That Emily’s first parents were buried in San Diego, and would she like to visit where they are buried?
Yes, Emily had said, fingers breaking a graham cracker into smaller and smaller pieces at the kitchen table, I want to visit them.
Now the day has come, and here they stand before the graves of Roberta and Marshall Sim. Emily looks at the headstones with minimal comprehension in her eyes. Her grasp on her first parents has grown foggy with age like the yellowing of a picture, but Scully has taken care to save pictures in case she’s ever curious. Whatever feelings she herself has about the Sims have been tucked away somewhere safe in her mind. Emily comes first.
Maggie stands back a few yards as Mulder, Scully, and Emily approach the graves. With every step, Scully can feel the knot of complicated emotion in her stomach tighten. She doesn’t know how to feel about this- visiting the graves of people who she’s not certain were always good to her daughter, people she either never or barely met- but the idea had seemed like the responsible thing to do when it had occurred to her.
She looks at Mulder, who stands beside them as a silent pillar of support. He nods at her sympathetically and places a hand on Emily’s other shoulder lightly. He might be the only other person who could come close to understanding the mess of feelings Scully is reeling from. She gives him a tight smile and pushes down the feeling to focus on Emily.
“Are you okay, sweetie?” she asks.
Emily nods. “What do we do now?”
That’s a good question. Scully considers it and swallows uncomfortably, her throat dry.
“Well,” Mulder speaks up, “we can stay here for a little longer if you want to think or talk or just look around, or we could go to Uncle Bill’s house if you’re ready to go.”
Emily thinks, takes a step forward, steps back, and looks at Scully. “I’m ready to go.”
Scully nods, lifting her daughter up to carry her back to the car. “Let’s go, then.”
The drive to Bill’s house is quiet, although the Christmas carols on the radio serenade them lightly. Finally, they enter the naval base and navigate the maze of houses that Scully knows so well to reach the one belonging to Bill and Tara. As she glances at the house, she can almost see her father on the front lawn teaching her to ride a bike.
Mulder unfolds himself from the driver’s seat and piles his arms high with luggage and gifts before he, Scully, Emily, and Maggie make their way to the front door. Bill greets them all with hugs and a handshake for Mulder, which Scully hesitantly considers a win on her internal scoreboard of how well Mulder is melding with her family.
Emily sheds her shoes and jacket and runs into the living room, fidgety from all the travel and lured by the glow of the Christmas decorations. She grins, baby teeth showing and eyes crinkling at the corners.
For a moment, Scully sees a young Melissa where her daughter stands, taking in the fairy lights and tinsel. The resemblance is clear since Melissa shines so brightly in her memory this time of year, but it also helps that the house is the exact same layout as the one where she and her family spent so many happy holidays. Scully catches her mother’s eye, which twinkles with nostalgia. They share a small smile before the excitement of the room pulls them back to the moment.
“Welcome!” Tara calls from her place on the couch where she sits, overwhelmingly pregnant and draped in a burgundy sweater.
“Look at you!” Maggie says, already gravitating toward her and resting her hands on Tara’s stomach, pulled to her impending grandchild as if by magnetic force. “You’re absolutely glowing!”
“How are you, Tara?” Scully asks, guiding Mulder over and sitting down on Tara's other side. He sits down next to her, all knees and elbows and anxiously tapping feet.
“I feel like I’m about to outgrow this house if she stays in there any longer,” Tara says with exasperated fondness, rubbing a hand over the prime meridian of her belly absentmindedly. “But it’s a blessing this way too, I guess. Now Matty gets one last Christmas as an only child.”
“Where is he, anyway?” Scully asks, surveying the living room from where she sits in search of her nephew.
“Down for a nap, not that he was very happy about it,” Tara rolls her eyes. “It’s getting harder and harder to convince him to go down. You’re lucky you two don’t have to deal with that.”
“Trust me, getting her to stay in bed instead of treating her bed like a trampoline is still a nightly struggle,” Mulder chuckles. Scully feels a bit like she’s having an out-of-body experience watching the whole domestic scene unfold.
As if sensing that she’s being discussed, Emily walks over, curiosity morphing her face into an expression that resembles Mulder’s face at the beginning of a case.
“Hi, Emily,” Tara says warmly. “Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas. Are you going to have a baby?” she asks, crawling onto Scully’s lap with all the grace of a newborn deer. Scully lifts Emily up by her armpits and repositions her with ease.
Tara laughs. “Yes I am, a little girl.”
“The baby’s in there.” Emily says, her tone half-statement and half-question as she points a little finger at Tara’s rounded stomach.
“Mhm,” Tara responds patiently. “She’s been growing in there and getting stronger for a while now,” Suddenly, Tara’s eyes widen and she brings a hand to her belly. “Oh! It’s like she can hear us talking about her.”
Emily’s eyes focus on Tara’s belly, trying to discern the reason for her exclamation. She squints as if trying to see the baby through layers of fabric, skin, and muscle. “Are you okay?”
Tara nods. “She likes to kick every now and then, do you want to feel?”
Emily looks at Scully hesitantly, who nods encouragingly. Then she reaches her hand out and rests it just above Tara’s navel. When the baby kicks against her palm, she pulls her hand back, looking torn between amusement and horror.
“Pregnant in December again, huh?” Mulder whispers in Scully’s ear as Tara and Emily become preoccupied with talk of baby names. “There must be something about the month of March that really gets them going.”
Scully stiffens and morphs her face into a pantomime of disgust for a split second, looking every bit the little sister she is.
As the afternoon wears on, Matthew toddles out into the living room, hair mussed and cheeks pink from his nap. He and Emily soon take to coloring in front of the fireplace, each caught up in their own little worlds but happy to share the crayons. Bill sits down between them and inspects their work.
“Nice sleigh, Emily. It looks just like the real one that Santa flies in.”
Emily’s eyes widen to roughly the size of satellite dishes. “You’ve seen Santa’s sleigh?”
Bill throws a wink at Scully before nodding. “Oh yes, you mom and I did when we were your age,” he says seriously. “But only for a split second. It has to be really fast to get all around the world in one night.”
Emily nods, processing the information with a look of wonder and deep contemplation on her face. Next to Scully, Mulder watches the whole scene unravel with a grin. She silently curses Bill, knowing that there will be several dozen questions about sleighs for her to answer before bedtime. Still, it’s hard to be upset when her brother is bonding so easily with Emily.
Bill had had his reservations, quite vocal ones, about Emily two years ago. But no matter what he may think of his sister’s life choices, he is still a Scully man and a father and therefore can’t help but love the girl. Fondness for Emily certainly seems to bridge old divides tonight. Emily and Matthew sort legos into piles by color on the floor and Scully watches them, a mug of eggnog in her hand and an ear on the conversation that Mulder and Bill are having on the other side of the room.
Bill bemoans the process of signing Matthew up for the on-base preschool years in advance and Mulder chimes in, sharing a story of how they’d scrambled to find a school for Emily when she’d first moved to DC with Scully and had ended up using a Bureau connection to get her into a preschool just in the nick of time.
“The last two years…” Mulder says softly. “I feel like I’ve become a totally different person. And I never want to go back.”
“I hear that.” Bill nods. Scully tries not to get her hopes up but can’t help but detect a hint of approval in his voice. He looks like he might say something else, but then Tara and Maggie announce that it’s time for dinner and the conversation is cut short.
December 24th, 1999
Holidays with the Scully’s have always given Mulder a bit of whiplash when comparing them with his own childhood, but this takes the cake. Apparently, it’s his turn to play Santa. Maybe it’s a rite of passage for Scully fathers, or maybe it’s some kind of initiation. Either way, Scully and Tara had distracted the children while Bill had secreted him away to the attic where the musty costume hides 364 days out of the year.
Now Mulder stands in the guest room pulling suspenders over his shoulders and buttoning up an oversized red coat. He stands sideways to admire the look in the full-length mirror in the corner of the room. After positioning the hat on his head and his fake beard just right, something still seems to be missing. In a flash of genius, he grabs a pillow from the bed and stuffs it under his costume. It makes his belly balloon out cartoonishly, obscuring his characteristically lanky form and making Father Christmas appear where his own reflection had just been..
“Ho ho ho.” Mulder practices, patting his belly and lowering his voice. Hell, he’s a family man now, so why half-ass the job?
“Hello there, Santa.” Scully says from a crack in the doorway. He jumps and feels his cheeks warm under the fake beard.
“Why hello there, Mrs. Claus,” he responds, turning on his heel and holding his arms out. Scully floats over to him and kisses him lightly, careful to not mess up his beard. Mulder circles her waist with his gloved hands and holds her against him gently so he can whisper in her ear. “Have you been naughty or nice this year?”
“You tell me,” Scully smirks, her sneaky hand surprising him by squeezing his ass. He jumps in surprise, a small sound erupting from his lips.
“I think I have my answer." he whispers.
Scully giggles in response and takes a step back. “Come on, the kids are getting impatient for Santa.”
Mulder nods, white whiskers tickling the tip of his nose. “I’ll be right down. Make sure to hype me up for my grand entrance.”
Scully laughs on her way out the door. Mulder waits exactly two minutes before clomping his loud boots down the stairs to much fanfare from adults and children alike. The festivities fly by in a rush of colors and noise and glee as he distributes gifts from a large bag with the promise of a visit overnight as well, as long as the children are good and go to bed on time.
Predictably, the living room becomes an epicenter of merry commotion and provides a perfect distraction for Mulder’s- Santa’s -exit. The plan that he’s set up with Scully is for him to leave through the front door in case the children see him and the circle back and to creep back in through the back door and change in the downstairs bathroom. So far, everything seems to be going according to plan. He waves to nobody in particular before creeping into the hall and almost has the front door open before he feels a small but determined tug on his jacket.
The FBI training that’s made a comfortable home in his psyche tells him to defend himself, but he ignores the urge just long enough to turn and see Emily, who looks up at him nervously and shifts her weight from foot to foot.
“Hello, Emily,” he says, warping his voice back into something jolly. “What’s up?”
It occurs to him a moment too late that what’s up isn’t a very Santa-like thing to say, but Emily either doesn’t mind or doesn’t notice. Instead, she stands on her tip toes and he crouches down to meet her halfway.
“I have to tell you my Christmas wish.” she says.
“Go ahead, Emily.” Mulder says, cupping his hand around his ear so she can whisper.
“For Christmas I want a little brother or sister just like Matthew is getting,” she says, her words rushing together. “Can you do that, Santa? By Christmas?” Her lower lip protrudes, a move she uses to win extra stories before bedtime. “Please?”
Mulder’s mouth opens, but for a moment no sound comes out. Emily looks at him expectantly, uncertainty creeping onto her face. Mulder can’t think of anything to say, but even if he could, he suspects that there is no right response to this question. He’d prefer to say nothing, to escape and be just Mulder again, but there’s a little girl staring at him with her Christmas wish hanging in the air and her heart on her sleeve.
“I can’t make any promises, Emily,” he says, patting her shoulder. “But I think you’re going to have a great Christmas.”
Emily nods, expression hopeful, before shuffling back to the living room. Mulder hastens out the front door, feeling guilty, and takes a private moment to lean against the outside of the house and take a few deep breaths.
A sibling. Of course Emily wants a sibling after hearing about Matthew’s new baby sister that should be here already, after seeing the nursery all set up and hearing Scully and Bill regale everyone with stories from their childhood. It makes sense, but the logic of it does nothing to soothe the ache in Mulder’s chest.
He knows he should tell Scully, but it’s Christmas Eve and things have been going so well on this trip when they could have gone disastrously. With a considerable force of will, Mulder puts the conversation between himself and Emily out of his mind right until he and Scully are alone in the guest room getting ready for sleep.
“Hey, Scully,” Mulder says hesitantly, a toothbrush sticking out of his mouth and pajama pants slung low on his hips. “Emily stopped me to talk before I changed out of the Santa costume.”
Scully looks up from where she lays atop the bed covers and stretches like a contented cat. “What’d she want to talk to Santa about?”
Mulder chews on the bristles of the toothbrush and buys himself a handful of seconds by shuffling back to the bathroom and rinsing out his mouth. When he comes back, Scully looks worried. She sits on the edge of the bed, back straight and arms crossed over her pajama top.
“You’re scaring me, Mulder. What did she say?”
Mulder sighs and sits down on the bed next to her, placing an arm around her shoulders. “She told me that she wants a sibling for Christmas.”
Scully’s muscles stiffen under his touch and she raises her eyebrows in surprise. “Oh.” she shrugs out from under his arm and lays down, sliding her feet beneath the bedspread. “That makes sense, I suppose. She’s probably jealous that Matthew is about to be a big brother.”
“Are you alright?” he asks quietly, climbing under the covers next to her and laying on his side so he can face her. Scully nods and turns to face him, propping her head up with her arm.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” she reassures him.
She’s bluffing, she must be. Mulder’s uncertainty must play across his features because Scully sighs and continues speaking in a low tone.
“Emily is enough, of course she is,” Scully says quickly. “She’s given me a life that’s beyond my wildest dreams.” She sounds so defensive, as if Mulder hasn’t seen the way Emily has made them both so happy. He rubs Scully’s back and lets her continue. “But Mulder…” She reaches out and uses a slender finger to trace the shape of his nose in the darkness. The feather-light touch tickles his skin as she continues in a whisper, “Before I learned of my infertility, before all of the…you know.”
“I know.”
“I’d always pictured myself having more than one child. I grew up in a big family and it shaped who I am,” she smiles sadly, the slivers of moonlight in the window catching the turn on her lips. “I wish I could give Emily the same, that I could give her what she wants.”
The guilt rolls off her in waves, like a dark storm climbing the horizon.
“It’s not your fault, Scully,” he replies, nuzzling his face into her hand and kissing her palm. “And Emily will understand when she’s older. The sibling thing is only on her mind because of Tara, it’s a passing fad.”
Even as the words leave his lips and hang in the air between them, Mulder can’t help but picture a little child with Scully’s coloring and his nose, maybe even a few kids beaming from the front of a Christmas card. He tries to crumple the thought up like a wad of paper and toss it out of his consciousness, but it sticks there stubbornly.
Scully looks at him and sees right through his words, probably picturing the same idyllic image in her head. She moves closer to him until they lay flush against one another. He can feel her breath on his neck, smell the sweet scent of her and feel her clever fingertips work their way under his shirt and trace his vertebrae. It’s one of her classic moves to comfort herself. He kisses the spot on her head that’s closest to his lips and waits for her to speak.
“Maybe we could try.” she says slowly.
“Hm?”
“We have my ova, remember? We could try to use them and do IVF, try to have another kid using your sperm, make a little sibling for Emily.”
Something warm spreads through Mulder’s chest at her words. There are no words that completely fit the feeling, but no words are needed between them when Scully catches the grin on his face and kisses him soundly.
“Maybe we could.” he says when their lips part, if only briefly.
They lay like that for a while, faces nuzzling against each other and lips meeting in quick flutters and deep kisses. It feels like a wall has been knocked down between them when he hadn’t even been aware that it’d been there in the first place. Mulder wants to giggle like a kid.
Scully sobers and she looks at him more seriously.
“It’ll be expensive.” she warns, his favorite pragmatist.
“Kids are expensive,” he reasons. “It’ll be good practice.”
“Yes, I know that.” Scully snorts, making Mulder chuckle with her. They’ve spared no expense at Christmas since Emily’s adoption, an affordable but considerable indulgence.
“It won’t be easy and it probably won’t work.”
“Not with that spirit, Scully,” he says, shaking his head gently before looking into her eyes. “Even if it doesn’t work, it’s worth a try, right?”
Scully nods and then speaks slowly, softly. “Emily was never supposed to live, she was never supposed to be ours. Maybe we still have some good luck left to add one more to our family.”
“One or two or three more,” Mulder smiles. “How big is a big family, anyways?”
A smile, hesitant but hopeful, lights up Scully’s face. “One at a time, Mulder.”
December 25th, 1999
Cold feet on Scully’s leg wake her in the morning. She opens her eyes to find Emily perched precariously between her and Mulder, watching them both with an expression like she could wake them with sheer force of will. Her little girl is nearly shaking with excitement.
“Good morning, Emily.” Scully whispers, voice hoarse from lack of use. Emily starts a little at the sudden noise but grins when she sees that her mother’s eyes are open.
“Merry Christmas, Mommy.”
Scully grins, her grogginess shattering like glass under the weight of Emily’s sweet little voice calling her mommy. It never gets old, not even after nearly two years of being a mother to this little girl.
She helps Emily maneuver through the pillows and blankets on the bed to hold her close.
“Merry Christmas, baby.” she smiles.
Mulder wakes and he and Scully allow themselves to be dragged downstairs by Emily. While the other adults in the house are beginning to assemble in the living room, Matthew bounces excitedly next to the tree. The presents that Bill, Tara, Scully, and Mulder had laid out after the kids had gone to bed last night sit under the tree, gleaming in the morning light.
Once Tara completes the careful process of descending the stairs, the allocation of gifts begins. Emily plays Santa this morning, showing off her reading skills and walking each labelled gift to its recipient. Scully watches with a smile on her face as Emily bounces over to her grandmother, whispering ho ho ho to herself before depositing a box wrapped in red at her feet and running back to the tree to grab another gift.
“If she keeps this up, I’ll be out of the Santa job next year.” Mulder whispers in Scully’s hair. She laughs as he tickles her with a stray piece of tinsel before tucking it behind her ear like a flower.
Tara opens gift after gift that are intended for the child that she’s carrying. Little boots and hats, a handmade sweater from Maggie, and a onesie that matches a t-shirt that lies in Matthew’s pile of gifts across the room.
As Tara holds the little onesie up to her stomach with a look of sheer excitement on her face, Scully realizes that she doesn’t feel the same twinge of envy that she’d felt two years ago. Then, she could hardly stand to look at her sister-in-law without feeling upset, and then suffering the resulting guilt of feeling upset in the first place. Now Scully feels nothing but happiness for Tara and Bill and Matthew, a feeling made all the more powerful by her relatively new understanding of motherhood.
For a moment, just a moment, Scully lets herself picture a hypothetical Christmas morning in a year or two from now, herself sitting in Tara’s spot, pregnant and glowing and opening packages of little booties and rubbing an enormous stomach. She blinks rapidly and the vision clears, returning her to the joy of the present moment. Mulder sits at her side, warm and loving and still sleep-mussed. Their daughter- two words she thought she’d never be able to attach to herself, much less to herself and Mulder- sits in a sea of crumpled wrapping paper and newly unearthed gifts, marveling at the work of ‘Santa’.
Emily is her gift, the gift that has kept on giving ever since Scully first saw her in the Sim house amongst the wreckage of a terrible tragedy. After becoming a mother, everything else in life had been put into perspective. Who knows how long she and Mulder would have tiptoed around each other and hid their true feelings had Emily not entered their lives? It doesn’t matter, because for a life lived somewhat in a state of instability and change, everything has fallen into place just how it should be. She has her Mulder and her daughter, and even if trying for another child doesn’t work, Scully feels content.