FOREVER MORNING 
TexxasRose
(a.k.a. Laura Castellano)
lauritaC@excite.com
November 23, 1999

WARNING!  This is character death (which I previously
swore I'd never write) but it is still MSR and it still has
a happy ending.  Trust me.  Really.

Classification: Mulder/Scully married

Disclaimer: If I owned Fox Mulder I'd keep him much too busy
to solve cases. If I owned Dana Scully she'd be my shopping
buddy. I don't own Skinner either, obviously. They all
belong to Chris Carter, and 1013, and Fox Broadcasting, and
all those other lucky entities.  Emmie is all mine.

Spoilers: Nope, not this time

Rating: PG

Archive: You're welcome to link to it, the URL is
http://members.xoom.com/lauracastell/twilight/morning.txt

Author's note: Followup story to Ahead of Twilight and 
Fade to Midnight.  Will probably make sense if you haven't
read those, but it will make more sense if you have.



*******************************************************

FOREVER MORNING
TexxasRose

We had the funeral yesterday morning.  It was beautiful, of
course, but no matter how I tried to tell myself that Fox
wouldn't want me to cry for him, I couldn't stop.  I've lost
them both in such a short time. I'm not alone in the
world--I have my husband, my son, Grandma Maggie, Grandpa
Morrow, Jess and Walter.  All people I can trust and depend
upon, and yet, without Mom and Fox, I feel all alone.

She died a month ago, losing her fight with pneumonia after
several weeks of illness.  Fox was with her the entire time,
and on her last day, he climbed carefully into bed with her
and just held her.  We all knew Mom didn't have much time
left--she was just so weak--and Fox wrapped his arms around
her and buried his face in her hair so she couldn't see his
tears.  He had protected her for most of his adult life, as
she had him, but they couldn't shield one another from the
inevitable.  At about 5:30 that afternoon, Mom just drifted
away, a contented expression on her face and his arms still
encircling her. She'd often told me that if they couldn't go
at the same time, she wanted to die in his arms.  Mom got
her wish.

I knew Fox felt differently.  He knew he couldn't survive
without Mom; we all knew that.  His face, when he finally
rose from the bed and allowed the medical personnel to see
to her body, was haggard.  He embraced me wordlessly, and I
rubbed his back in a vain attempt at comfort.

"It's just you and me now, Fox," I choked.  "We have to go
on."

He nodded grimly, but in my heart, I was absolutely certain
I wouldn't have Fox for long.  He could never stay away from
Mom for more than a few days at a time.  I resolved to watch
him closely for the next little while, in case he decided to
do something stupid, (something Mom had always warned me Fox
could often do in a panic) but he didn't.  He just began to
fade away, and nothing I could do or say made any
difference.

I wanted him to move in with Andrew and me, where Daniel,
his grandson and the apple of his eye, might give him a
reason to live, but Fox refused. He said he didn't want to
leave the home where he and Mom had spent so many happy
years.  Often, when I would go over to check on him, I'd
find him wandering aimlessly from room to room, picking up
her things, examining them, and putting them carefully back
in place.  He wouldn't let me sort through her stuff, saying
he preferred to do it himself, but he never could bring
himself to start the task.  When I finally get up the nerve
to tackle it myself, I'm going to have both his and Mom's
things to deal with.  I suppose I should be angry with him
for saddling me with this double whammy, but I can't work up
to it--Fox faced so much pain in his life that I guess this
final thing was too much for him. I'm young and strong, and
I have support from many different people.  I can handle
this.

I found his journals a few days ago, journals dating back to
when he was a kid.  Apparently he'd started keeping one soon
after his sister disappeared, as a part of the psychotherapy
his mother obtained for him, and had kept the habit up off
and on over the years.  There were several spiral-bound
notebooks, and later on a few leather bound journals, and
still later, computer files.  I sorted them according to
date, and began reading, and it was hours later before I
raised my head from the words Fox had written.  He had a
fascinating, amazing, and utterly unbelievable life.  I only
wish Mom had kept journals as well, so I could compare their
accounts--as long as I knew them, they disagreed heartily on
issue after issue, but they respected each other so much
that the disagreements never mattered.  It would have been
interesting to compare their accounts.

Some of the things I read in the journals were simply too
weird to be believed, and yet...I'm left with the certainty
that Fox, at least, believed them to be perfectly accurate.
The stuff of legends is contained in these files--vampires,
werewolves, aliens, monsters...and an evil that I never
suspected could run so deeply.  Mom and Fox apparently
battled all these things, or something that Fox interpreted
to be these things, side by side.  The journals tell of his
love for her, years before he was able to express it, of the
despair he felt at being imprisoned for a crime he hadn't
committed, of the agonies he endured when he was released
and she was married to my father...and it goes on and on and
on.

So, are there such monsters in real life?  I don't really
know, and unless I train at the FBI Academy and join the
X-Files division, (which to my surprise, Walter says does
still exist) I don't suppose I'll ever really know.  Maybe
some things are better left to the unknown.  Of one thing I
am absolutely positive, however, and that is that deep,
dark, terrifying evil really does exist in some people.  It
was in the people who sent Fox to prison, and it was in the
man who kidnapped Ellery and Fox, and it was in many, many
people Fox wrote about in his journals.  Such evil frightens
me, which is why when I chose my particular field of study
for my Ph.D. I went with Child Psychology instead of
Criminal Psych.  I find the criminal mind fascinating, but
to actually confront those people day after day...well, it
seemed more than I wanted.  It's difficult enough dealing
with troubled pre-adolescents.

I'm thinking of compiling the journals, editing them to
remove the more personal information, and publishing them.
I'll ask Walter to help me, since he was involved in many of
their more fantastic adventures as well.  There is a lot of
government information there that probably shouldn't be made
public, but maybe I could turn the whole thing into a
fictionalized account of their lives.  Maybe that way I
could avoid pissing off anyone still alive who might have
been involved in the massive conspiracies Fox and Mom
uncovered.  Walter assures me that the man with cigarettes
is long-since dead, but evil seems so permanent; I could
feel his presence even as I read about him.  He was there
when Fox was sentenced--I don't know if he was
single-handedly responsible for Fox going to prison, but he
was almost certainly the brains behind the frame-up.  He
scares me.  Just reading about him scared me.

I have a renewed respect for them after reading these
journals.  These were two of the bravest, most honest and
true souls who ever walked the planet.  They were completely
devoted to one another, even to the point of risking their
lives for each other on an uncomfortably regular basis. Fox
literally went to the ends of the Earth to rescue Mom once,
and she put her hard-won career in jeopardy on many
occasions in order to stay at his side.  And this was all in
their professional lives.  It doesn't even touch the torment
I know they went through privately as they suffered through
cancer that almost killed Mom, and some strange kind of
virus that would have killed Fox had Mom not been there to
tell the doctors what to do.  Then there was the opposition
to their relationship from Uncle Bill, and the dance of
misunderstandings they dealt with after Fox was released
from prison.  It boggles the mind, thinking of all they
survived.

And in the end, it wasn't illness, or evil, or even a
criminal's bullet that felled Fox--it was plain old grief.
He was seventy-two, but he was still in excellent health,
and kept himself in good physical condition. Fox could have
lived another twenty years, barring an accident or serious
illness, but the truth is, he died the day Mom died.  It
just took his heart that long to stop beating.  He had no
intention of going on without her.

I felt Mom's presence at the funeral yesterday, and last
night I had a dream about them.  I dreamed that Fox rose from
his bed, leaving his body behind, and Mom was waiting for
him, smiling, holding out her hand. Fox embraced her,
resting his chin on top of her head as he always did in
life, and then the two of them walked away together, slowly
disappearing into a bright light.  I'm sure the dream was
based on accounts of near-death experiences I've read, but
it was comforting nonetheless.  Wherever they are now, I
feel certain they are together. And nobody can ever hurt
them again.

**********

Scully smiled at Mulder over Emmie's head as they watched
the young woman save the file and shut down the computer.

"You see?" she said.  "I told you Emmie would be all right.
She has lots of people looking out for her."

Mulder sighed.  "I know, but I'll miss her so much.  And
Daniel."

She smiled again at the framed picture near Emmie's
computer.  It was of Mulder and Daniel, taken in the back
yard the spring before, when Mulder was teaching his
four-year-old grandson to play baseball.  Daniel had been
just about same age as his mother when Mulder had taught her
to swing a bat.  Scully had been considerably older, but she
could still remember the feel of his arms around her, his
long, lean body pressed against her back...she shivered.

"You know, Mulder, one of the benefits of being dead is that
'real life' no longer interferes with what you want to do,"
she said seriously, holding out her hand.  "And what I'd
like to do right now--"

"Scully!" he shushed her.  "Can you even say that here?"

She laughed until tears ran from her eyes, then threaded her
fingers through his.  "Body, Mulder.  Flesh.  Bone.  Sexual
organs.  We can do everything we could do when we were
living--except touch the living. But we can touch each
other, and I, personally, think it's a great idea.  And
after all, we *are* married."

He stood and allowed her to lead him away, but turned back
once to gaze at Emmie, now paging through one of his
journals.  Her lovely face was set in concentration, and
occasionally she would jot down notes on a sheet of paper.

"We can come back and check on them from time to time, can't
we?" he asked wistfully.

"A word of advice, Mulder.  I don't recommend watching too
much.  You still have emotions."

He turned back to her with a little smile.  "Did you watch,
Scully?"

Scully slipped her arm around his waist and together they
began to walk. "Every minute, Mulder," she told him
somberly.  "But you have to understand--I knew you would be
joining me soon.  I wanted to be here, waiting for you."

"How did you know that?"

"Because, Mulder, I knew you'd go to any lengths to avoid
having to do your own laundry again."

It was his turn to laugh.  "You know me too well, Scully.
Okay, you win--I won't watch often, but I do want to check
on Daniel now and then.  I only wish I could talk to him."

"Mulder--if anyone could find a way, it's you," she said
positively, walking ahead.  "Now let's go.  I promised your
mother we'd stop in to see her today."

"Yeah," he agreed, trotting to catch up with her.  "And
Langly wants to hang out with me later on."

She shook her head.  "Nothing ever changes, does it?"

"One thing has changed, Scully," he reminded her seriously.
"We never have to be afraid again."

She stopped walking and turned to stare up into his face,
restored now to the handsome youthfulness he'd had when she
first met him.

"You're right, Mulder," she said softly.  "Never again."

And pulled him down to her, into a kiss that would last
throughout the eternities.

They'd found morning at last.
               
*****

IT IS FINISHED