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The Gift
by Barbara Barnett
(Takes place at the end of Max)
Disclaimer:  Characters and dialogue are property of CC and 1013 (and of
course their souls are property of DD and GA, who breathed life into them)
Comments to Barbara462@aol.com 

Rating G


He'd never had the chance to explain. And with no explanation, the gift would
seem at least silly, very small, and a joke.  No joke was intended. And now
too much time...and too many things had passed to offer an explanation.
 Pendrell.  Poor Pendrell.  Alas, poor Pendrell dying for a cause not your
own, thought Mulder.  Mulder felt terrible about Pendrell's death.  Made even
worse because he was Scully's friend, and she'd had more than her share of
losses "to the cause."  Mulder could hardly bear to look Scully.  "You've
lost someone close, too," Sharon Graffia had said to her.  The look on
Scully's face said that Sharon had spoken the truth.  Until that moment,
Mulder had never considered the possibility that Pendrell and Scully were
more than professional acquaintences.  

Was there so much about her life he didn't know?   Was there anything about
her that he did know or understand.  Words rang in his ears.  "Not everything
is about you, Mulder.  This is my life."  In retrospect, he was ultimately
relieved that he had not completed his response.  "Yes, but it's m..."  How
pompous that would have sounded.  "his" life too?  No, guess not.  Pendrell.
 That would have made sense.  More sense than giving her heart and soul to an
emotionally damaged wreck of a man.  

Did she really think of him as a more mainstream version of Max?  Her
eccentric friend, living the life of a monk in a monk's cell of an apartment.
 He thought of Don Quixote dreamining an impossible dream from inside the
cell of an asylum.  

Mulder suddenly went cold thinking of how he must seem to Scully sometimes.
 He had deluded himself into thinking that she cared for him in the same way
he did for her, buried deeply within his heart and engraved upon his soul.  

Time, he thought, to be Scully's *friend*.  She needs one now, badly, in the
face of Pendrell's death.  Mulder only now noticed that Scully had left the
trailer.  Opening the door, Mulder watched her as she peered at the stars,
which pockmarked the black, clear sky.  He drew a breath, approaching
quietly, and more than a bit apprehensively.  He was ready to stand with her,
comfort her.  He knew she would need to talk about Pendrell, her lost love.
 He steeled himself to be the friend she needed, to sacrifice his feelings to
her need.  Wasn't that what love was about.  And Mulder *loved* Scully,
deeply and with his entire self.

"Thinking about Pendrell," he asked quietly?  He drew another breath, his own
emotions simmering just below the surface.  He stayed behind her, knowing his
eyes would betray his own feelings for her.  Then Dana would not be able to
share her grief with him...and she needed to do that.

He watched her for a moment.  She stood face to the wind, looking up at the
stars.  "I just realized that I didn't even know his first name"  She said it
flatly, without turning around.   Just continued stargazing, hands on her
hips.  He took a few more steps toward her, still standing behind her.  

So he was wrong about Scully and Pendrell.  But still, that pensive
countenance of hers.  Pendrell's death haunts her, Mulder was certain of it.
 Guilt?  Sadness that she didn't "get to know him better?"  Maybe?  Suddenly,
he couldn't read her.

" I... actually was thinking about this gift you gave me for my birthday."
 Electrical impulses fled up and down Fox Mulder's spine, leaving him
momentarily breathless.  

    "You never got to tell me why you gave it to me or what it means."  She
removed it from her jacket pocket.  Mulder was stunned that she had it with
her, had kept it with her, near her.  His senses were flooded with an
unspeakable delight.  

His mind flashed back several days.  They had been interrupted by Sharon
Graffia on the night of the crash.  The keychain.  He closed his eyes
briefly, reflecting on how he arrived at the keychain.  It had taken weeks to
find something for Scully.  He was careful.  The gift had to be  innocuous,
almost, but not quite, something she could perceive as a gag gift...something
he could fall back on, make a wry comment about if he needed to.  He'd never
bought her a birthday gift.  And Mulder didn't know how she would react.  He
would have loved to give her something lovely and precious.  She would be
embarrassed.  She would joke about it...or worse.  

He had been considering the options as he wandered the great halls of the Air
and Space Museum near the Mall.  Apollo 11.  The mission to the moon.  An
impossible dream realized.  The impact of the moon landing unified the world
in wonder at a tumultuous time, a terrifying time.  Scully.  How she anchored
him, kept him on a forward path, despite his ever-present demons.  Her impact
on him and ultimately what he could achieve was staggering.  He knew that
without her his quest would have been over long ago, and he would probably be
dead now.  

That's when he thought of the keychain.  He'd seen it in the gift shop at the
museum.  Laser engraved 14K gold.  Just like Scully, delicate, beautiful,
practical ( a keychain was always practical), simple yet complex, a tale told
in a small package.  Perfect.  He would tell her now.  But Scully spoke
first.


    "But I think I know.  I think that you appreciate that there are
    extraordinary men and women and... extraordinary moments when history
    leaps forward on the backs of these individuals. That what can be
    imagined *can* be achieved.  That you must dare to dream, but
    that there's no substitute for perseverance and hard work... and
    teamwork. Because no one gets there alone.  And that while we
    commemorate that... the greatness of these events and the individuals
    who achieve them, we can not... forget the sacrifice of those who
    make these achievements and leaps possible.

Mulder stood captivated by the words.  He didn't have to add a thing.  He was
taken by her words, understanding how they put meaning, even more meaning
than he could have ascribed, to (at least some of) his feelings for her.  But
also how they provided her a context for the horrible losses they'd witnessed
that past week.  She needed that context.  The meaning, her own meaning, of
his gift, put her life in perspective for the moment.  So, he fell back on
his best defense, quietly moved by her words.  

"I just thought it was a pretty cool key chain", he said soberly and gently. 

the end