"The Hills and the Sea" part 1 of 1

by Pellinor 

******

RATING: PG

CLASSIFICATION: SRA (romance is fairly implicit, and it's in an 
"alternate universe" too)

SUMMARY: Elizabeth Mulder has built a new life over the grave of 
the old, salvaged _some_ happiness. The dead was never supposed to 
return.... 
____

DISCLAIMER: None of these people are mine. They belong to Chris 
Carter, 1013, or Fox, and I use them without permission and 
without profit.

NOTES: This is something of a multi-dimensional series, if that 
makes any sense. This story takes place in my "Innocent Spring" 
universe, but it is really more of companion piece to "The Buried 
Life." These two stories are intended to be read together.

For those who haven't read "The Innocent Spring" series, they 
portray a universe in which Fox was taken instead of Samantha. 
When he was returned, twenty four years later, it was with no 
memory of the intervening years. In his mind, he was still twelve. 
His return was hard for his family, but Dana Scully, Samantha's 
partner, as an outsider was able to understand him. The two became 
involved. While Samantha is now reconciled with her brother, Mrs 
Mulder remains cold....

******

Still she dreamed, at times, of the grave.

The wind lashed the barren hillside - a cruel wind from the cold 
Atlantic, wild with the lament of the gulls and a small girl's 
quiet weeping. She clutched the spade with hands still red with 
his blood, digging intensely, desperately. Dig and throw, dig and 
throw.... The mounting pile of earth and the hole dark and deeper 
than the wailing night.

Her face was wet.

"Why do we have to do this, Mommy?" A small voice, cracked with 
tears. Oh, she loved her fiercely, and held her, kissed her, 
staining her face with mud.

"For you, my love. For all of us."

She straightened her back, wiped her face, staring almost 
defiantly at the sky, then she crouched down, touching his 
unseeing face reverently.

"Sometimes it is necessary to sacrifice one in order for the rest 
to live." She stroked his cold skin, and let herself cry for him 
one more time. "You understand that, Fox. I know you do. It will 
be a noble death."

Then gently, lovingly, she pushed him into the darkness. Rain-
drenched mud sluiced onto his face, and he choked, choked, as it 
sucked his life, as it claimed him.

She dug the spade into the pile and buried him.

She buried him.

******

The knocking was hollow, frenzied. His nails were bleeding, and 
his mouth was open in a scream from which all voice had long been 
scoured away. Pounding, pounding on the coffin lid, suffocating on 
the weight of so many years of earth.

"No." She lashed her head on the pillow, one side, then the next. 
"No. You're dead. I buried you. You're not supposed to come 
back...."

Knocking. A voice, cracked, pleading.

She blinked hard, wiping at her face to remove the taint of the 
earth that, even now, she fancied she could feel. The image faded 
and became no more than a dream - a memory of something that had 
never happened.

But the knocking continued.

******

"Mom."

A desperate need permeated his voice. He was lashed with rain, and 
broken. 

"Fox." She clenched her fists tight, safe on the other side on the 
door. In the dark, strangers were kept away by a metal chain, 
unbreakable. "Do you know what time it is? You woke me."

"Mom." He took a deep shuddering breath, looking her straight in 
the eye. She winced, pushing the door shut to a tiny crack. "I 
need to know, Mom."

She shut her eyes. Groping, reaching for the support of something 
solid, she closed on the door handle and clung to it with all her 
strength. There was nothing she could say to him.

"I need to know...." He made a low sound - a sob? "Did you ever 
love me, Mom. Ever?"

She leant forward, resting her forehead on the cool wood. Her lips 
moved convulsively. I buried you, Fox. You were supposed to stay 
dead. This was never supposed to happen....

But she was silent. Moving as in a dream, she reached for the 
chain, knowing she was letting in more than her s.... than Fox.

******

"You remember, Mom?"

He sat at her feet, leaning forward half eagerly, half fearfully. 
If she slapped him, he would still return, still kneel before her 
like a supplicant without pride. It sickened her, sometimes. He 
was no man at all.

"Remember that summer before I was ten? Dad was away. You took 
Samantha and me to the beach, and we had a picnic." His mouth 
flickered, though whether with a smile or with barely suppressed 
tears, she could not tell - she didn't _want_ to tell. "You and 
Samantha buried me in the sand and then I pretended to be a sand 
monster and chased you. You hugged me and laughed."

She shut her eyes, filling her mind with the night and the wind 
and the feel of the earth beneath her feet. She would _not_ 
remember.

"And when I was younger still?" He ran a hand across his eyes and 
kept it there, as if suddenly ashamed to let her see what she 
already knew. "You used to read to me. We would snuggle up real 
close, and you would read to me. You stroked my hair and kissed me 
goodnight...."

Samantha. She willed herself, hearing a young voice begging for 
another chapter, willing herself to see the long braids and the 
beautiful eyes of her daughter. The hair was soft, and the 
skin.....

"Do you remember....?"

"What are you trying to do to me, Fox?" She slammed her fists down 
on the arms of the chair, her eyes flashing fire at him. "It's 
ancient history. It's past."

"Not to me, Mom." He winced at her tone, almost crumbled, but 
stayed in control, just. His face was pale. "To me, it's barely 
two years since you held me."

She stood up, the chair legs scraping on the floor. She shuddered. 
His hands were all over her, poring at her, pleading. She could 
_feel_ them, though he was like stone on the floor, his hands 
clenched tight at his sides, unmoving.

"You keep coming back. You give me no peace." She turned her back 
on him, knowing there were things on her face she would rather him 
not see. Her voice was safer, secure in its contempt. "Have you no 
pride, Fox?"

"Have you no heart?" It was almost a whisper, and faltering, too. 
"You're my _mother_."

"What did you say?" She whirled on him. She was all anger, now, 
blazing. Anger was simple, and safe. "What did you say to me?"

"I said...." He straightened his back, holding her gaze almost 
defiantly. He had learnt a lot in a year, built _some_ walls. "I 
said, have you no heart?"

She slapped him with all the weight of twenty-five years.

There was blood on her hand, afterwards, and she winced, washing 
it off as if it was acid, corroding her.

******  

She held the picture in trembling hands, looking down at the three 
shadowed smiles. It guarded her sleep, justified her. 

"I was right." She whispered the words, now, stroking the outlines 
of Samantha's hair, of her husband's face. "It was for the 
best...."

She hadn't wanted to lose either of them. They had such beautiful 
eyes, and Fox's rare smile had been like the sunrise. She couldn't 
choose.

"Fox! Just look at this mess, Fox. Do you think your mother's your 
slave?" The floorboards hummed with the thundercloud of her 
husband's distant anger. "Clean it up at once, or there'll be no 
birthday for you this year."

Thud. Had she winced, then, or was it just memory that heard that 
first fall of earth on his face?  It had hurt, then, the knowledge 
that she would lose him. It had hurt with an aching pain of tears 
she'd been forbidden to shed.

"How dare you answer me back, young man? Just because you're 
twelve now doesn't mean you know it all. I'm your father, and just 
you remember that."

She had known him to be innocent, that time. His anguished eyes 
had searched for her, trusting her to explain. But the smell of 
earth had stung her, and she had remained silent, her mind pulsing 
with her fears and her grief.

"Fox! Why aren't you....?"

She had clasped her hands over her ears, at last, refusing to hear 
it, refusing to care. The choice had been made by her husband's 
anger. Losing a child would be torment more than she could bear. 
She had weeks - months, maybe - to make him into a stranger.

She had buried him weeks before that cold November night.

******

Padding of her feet on the carpet, each step regular, controlled. 
She was pacing, pacing, seeing flashes of herself in the mirror as 
she passed. 

"I was right." The words ran in her head, desperate and 
convincing. "I was right...."

A flash in the mirror, and she started, seeing a stranger in its 
brutal gaze. She paused, and sank down onto the chair, one hand 
reaching out for the glass.

"I was right." She whispered the words, but the face in the mirror 
was stony, even hating. "If I had mourned him, Samantha would have 
suffered. I couldn't have been a proper wife and mother if I was 
mourning. I had to make him a stranger, to ease his passing. It 
was for _their_ sake."

Tears shone in the eyes of the mirror image - tears of grief? She 
couldn't understand it.

"He would have been taken anyway. There was nothing I could do. He 
would have been taken. I had to make the best of it."

There was a small sound - a barely voiced moan of denial. The face 
in the mirror moved, one way then the other.

"I couldn't have done anything." Fiercer, now, and still silent, 
though her lips moved softly. "How could we have lived, as a 
family, with a constant gaping wound? It would have destroyed us. 
We had to heal the wound. We had to forget him. We had to forget 
we had ever loved him."

The mirror image blinked, then  opened its eyes wide, questioning.

"Oh yes, we loved him, before." Her face was wet with tears she 
hadn't noticed shedding. "But he's dead and buried. It's over. He 
wasn't supposed to come back."

"Is it guilt that hurts most?" The cruel harsh light of the mirror 
was guileless and open. She was naked before it. "Does even 
looking at him remind you how you were wrong?"

She breathed deeply, in and out, shuddering breaths. There was a 
scratching at the locked door, and a murmur. _Him_.

She was imprisoned, suffocating. His clawing fingers and the 
mirror's cruel slashing glass.... She lashed her head from side to 
side, tears dripping onto her hands, mind screaming.

"No!" Just a low moan, though inside it was a cry of agony. "No. 
Leave me alone!"

The mirror smashed and she was transfixed in a pool of glass, 
hairbrush in her hand, alone.

But the scratching at the door, and the voice.... 

"No." She put her hands over her ears, rocking, rocking.

******

"I'm sorry, Mom."

Hands closed round her shoulders, lifting her into the chair. 
Glass crunched beneath his feet, and there was blood on his face, 
still. So little time.

"I'm.... sorry...." His face crumpled. He was fighting, sobs 
shaking him deep inside - fighting not to let her see him cry.

She was alone, bereft, without her mirror voice, without her 
certainty. She raised her head mutely, seeing the door hanging 
loose on its hinges. 

"I shouldn't have come, Mom." He swallowed hard. "I thought it was 
me. Dana said.... She said it was you. She made me think I was 
wrong. I.... I just needed to know."

She looked at him, slumped in the broken glass, one arm lying 
limply at his side. His face was a mask. She licked her lips. 
"You're hurt." Her voice was dead. "Was it when you opened the 
door?"

"She was wrong." He raised his hand, staring blankly at the blood 
that trickled down his palm. "You _are_ capable of love. I 
remember. I...." His voice caught, became slurred. "It was 
something I did, after all. I must have deserved it."

"No." 

It was out before she could stop it. The very air clicked, 
changed. The mask fell away He was alert again - alive. 

"Why did you stop loving me, Mom?" He touched her knee, 
hesitantly, gently, as tears poured down his face. "Why don't you 
want me back?"

She pressed her hands into the back of her neck, leaning back, 
staring at the ceiling. A cry escaped her lips - a moan. She could 
_not_ tell him. To know that your parents had a choice - that they 
_made_ that choice.... God, it would destroy Samantha if he told 
her.

There was _nothing_ she could say.

She shut her eyes, clenched her fists, cut herself off from what 
she was about to say. It was the cruel bite of a cornered animal, 
terrified. "For God's sake, Fox," she snapped, hating herself. 
"Stop crying. Grow up."

He winced, but didn't move. Bleeding and crying, he didn't move.

She wanted to scream.

******

The rippling sound of a girl's rare laughter....

She shook her head, dreamily, surrendering to the memory. All 
memory hurt, but this.... this was necessary. It was her 
justification.

"Mom!" Kicking her shoes off, her eyes warm and wild. "Dad! I did 
it! I came first. It's the best anyone has done since...." And 
then her smile her faltered, and her eyes had taken on that 
recurring look of distant sadness that no cajoling could ever 
shift. "I'm not as clever as Fox."

"No!" Their two voices had rung in unison. A chair had scraped. 
"No, love." She had reached her first, her hand entwining her 
hair, damp from the rain. "You mustn't think like that. You have 
so much ahead of you." Her eyes has flashed fire, fierce. "Think 
of the future, love. We'll get you a horse. Would you like that?"

Samantha's hands had twitched, impotently, her arms pinioned by 
the embrace, her voice muffled.

She had rubbed her fingers across her daughter's face, intense. No 
tears. "Smile for me, Sammie. Smile for us...."

The image wavered, changed.

"Happy birthday, love." Her face had ached from too much smiling. 
"A teenager at last. My, aren't you getting grown-up?"

"Thank you." A tremulous smile across the candles, wavering in the 
heat from the flame. "I'm.... I'm older than Fox was, now. He's 
bigger than me. It.... it seems wrong to overtake him."

"You mustn't think of _that_ on your birthday." Her voice had been 
fierce, her fingers clenched on the table cloth, white and 
shaking. "Think of the future. Think of _your_ future."

His fingers had clawed at the coffin, escaping into a crack of 
air. She had stamped on them, pushing him back, hating him for 
tainting the laughter of the day.

"Think of what we've given you." Bill had leant across the table. 
His hand had trembled, his fingers tight on an empty glass. "You 
have so much to be grateful for. Don't spoil it now, Samantha. You 
should smile."

Alcohol had been heavy in the air. Samantha's tears, and the 
memory of _him_, had been like a cancer eating away at Bill's 
soul. It had been guilt, with him. He had been given the choice, 
and he had done nothing to stop them. He had killed his child. 
He'd willingly let the drink and the silence embrace him, feeding 
on Samantha's happiness as his only nourishment - his assurance 
that he had made the right choice.

She had hated him, bitterly, quietly. For Samantha's sake, she had 
remained silent, enduring.

"It's not guilt." She mouthed the words, now, silently into her 
spread hands. "I had no choice. He put me into an impossible 
position. I simply made the best of it. He was too spineless to 
face up to his guilt, so he had to forget Fox. I have no guilt. I 
did it for Samantha - so she could be happy. She couldn't have 
been expected to compete with a ghost - a memory. It was my duty, 
as a mother."

Her hands trembled.

"Mom?" A soft touch on her shoulder, tremulous. "Are you okay?"

She made a low noise in her throat. Sometimes, forgetting was 
necessary for survival.
 
******

Knocking, insistent.

Her limbs felt stiff, her movements awkward. She walked to the 
door and sighed, resting heavily on the door handle, composing her 
face into what was expected, what was necessary.

"Mrs Mulder?" The woman's hair was tousled, her face pale. "Fox 
has gone. We were.... talking. About you. I was wondering.... Is 
he here?"

She raised her head defiantly. "Yes. He's here, Miss Scully."

"Dana." The woman matched her stare, every bit as steely. "I told 
you. Dana. I love your son. Isn't that enough?"

"Dana." She repulsed the word from her mouth as if it was poison. 
"I do not appreciate being wakened in the middle of the night, 
just because you tell my.... because you tell Fox that I'm 
inadequate in some way."

"Did you?" Dana's shoulders sagged, her body devoid of hope even 
as her words belied her appearance. "Did you tell him....?"

"You. Don't. Understand." She spat out each word like a bullet. 
She would do anything, fight anything, to protect her home, her 
family. "How could you understand?"

"What sort of a mother _are_ you?" Dana's eyes blazed with unshed 
tears and her hair flashed fiery in the porch light. "Can't you 
see he just needs love? Can't you... You _must_ see that. You 
must. He's only a boy, still. He's so open...."

She swallowed hard. "Believe me, Dana." Soft, now - a whisper. 
"You could never understand."

It was a look a utter contempt. Dana pushed past her into the 
hallway, filling the cold walls with her fire, her warmth. "Fox." 
Her voice was soft, utterly devoid of the anger of just a few 
seconds earlier.

She kept the door open and stood unmoving, drawn by its cold.

"Dana." He was faltering. She had thought him drained, but his 
face became alive, seeing her.  "Dana, I...."

"You're hurt." She had to strain to hear the woman's words. "Hush. 
Come here."

His head sank onto her shoulder and her arms enclosed him. They 
were a thing apart, the two of them. Wrapped in the cold wind of 
outside, she shared nothing with them.

"I'm okay." His lower lip trembled. Dana's hands enclosed his 
cheeks, holding his face tenderly, her eyes caressing his lips. 
"I'll be okay, Dana, soon. It... it hurts, now. My shoulder...."

"It's okay." She gave a low laugh. "Poor baby."

Just for a second, he froze, his eyes darkening, but then his face 
softened, his broken mouth curling into a smile. "I'm glad you're 
here, Dana. Thank you."

She stepped backwards. Darkness embraced her. They were in the 
lights, distant, like players on a stage. She could not touch 
them.

"We'll do such things, Fox." Dana's voice was bright with smiles, 
though her eyes were so strained. "The summer's nearly here. 
Samantha's coming to stay. And my mother.... You haven't seen a 
Scully family picnic yet, have you?"

He shook his head, tried to smile, but there were tears on his 
face, now - long tracks scouring his cheeks. "I.... Dana...." His 
fingers clutched at her clothes, clenching convulsively. "It's 
hard...."

"I know it is, love." Dana was holding him up, now, giving him all 
her strength. "I would never force you to forget it. I know part 
of you will always mourn the past, but you have a future, now, 
too." White fingers, shaking and passionate. "We have a future, 
Fox. Never forget that."

She wrenched her head away, unable to watch further. Rain fell 
across her closed eye lids.

They had shut her out. They had buried her. It was _their_ fault, 
now.

She had never thought that she would _cry_.

******

Still she dreamed, at times, of the grave.

The wind lashed the barren hillside - a cruel wind from the cold 
Atlantic, wild with the lament of the gulls and a small girl's 
quiet weeping. The wind lashed the barren hillside, and the rains 
fell. 

The rains fell.

On his body, on his face, on his blood.... His blood mingled with 
water, and flowed, moving like a living thing, almost longingly.

"No!" A cry escaped her lips. She held out her hand, half reaching 
for it, then let it fall again, powerless.

The rains fell. His blood was as water, and it flowed away from 
her, ever away from her, until it reached the sea.

The air was loud with the ache of a sigh, and the sea embraced 
him, turning one red.

******

Her face was wet, when she awoke, and she was alone.

******

END

******

The titles for these two stories come from the poem "The Buried 
Life" by Matthew Arnold. A poem about the quest for self-
knowledge, the poem uses lots of river imagery and refers, right 
at the end, to the hills where our life begins, and the sea to 
which it will go. 

I hope the stories are self-explanatory, without need for my usual 
copious notes. This story is for all of you who read "Resurgam" 
and asked to know more about that conversation Mulder and Scully 
had about his mother, as well as everyone who told me that Mrs 
Mulder was the only character in the "Innocent Spring" universe 
who was without redeeming qualities.

These stories made _me_ cry (as does anything about Mulder's 
childhood), but I intend the ends, in both universes, to be a 
blend of hope and sadness. I hope it worked.

By the way, for anyone who loves to get into an author's mind, 
this story is central to my whole thinking. I think about two 
thirds of my stories deal with the ability of one tiny event to 
change a person for ever - whether it is by the psychological 
aftermath of trauma, or the chance making of an implacable enemy. 
In these stories, Mulder and his mother - and Scully - are the 
same people in the two universes, yet they are also very different 
people.  A matter of seconds one night in November 1973 changed so 
many lives. 

Hmm... I think it's Bill's turn, next. But he's dead. Now, 
_there's_ a challenge....

Feedback? Need you ask?