Real Life

By Melody Clark

Disclaimers:  1013 Est Deus
Post-Existence, Mulderless by choice.
Email: melodyc@qnet.com 
(in case story gets cutoff no flames please)




	Awake.  Light.  Morning.  Something.

	She opened an eye to the bleary room before her, all lit up with
serious morning.  Creak of outside life, murmur of car alarm, distant
door slam.  Happy baby chattering to self.   She had...overslept...shit,
ohwait, wait...weekend.

	She sniffed the air and detected coffee.   That's right:  Doggett.  
Stayed the night on the sofa.   Came over for the six month anniversary
of sad things, then stayed over to humor her out of them with happier
things .  She remembered, hazily, sobbing into arms.  Leaning against
his unpresumptuous strength.   Sharing openly, easily.  As if they had
known one another a thousand years.  Had there ever been a day before
Doggett?  Hard to recall.  They had polished it all off, deep in the
night, with domestic beer and cop stories imported from New York.

	She smiled at the thought: at his uncomplicated companionship. Well,
uncomplicated for now.

	Wrestling with a robe, she walked toward the source of happy baby
sounds.   Leaning over the crib, she smiled down at this tiny bona fide
miracle in her life:  now nine months old.  He sat up, batting valiantly
at pendulant butterflies fluttering over him, just out of reach.   The
chirping sounds brightened as he looked toward her.

	"Morning, sunshine."  She smiled, feeling by instinct now for the
diaper:  found nothing new.  "No night drop, I see.  That's odd.  But
then that's business as usual with you, hmm?"

         "I took care o' that," another voice said - a man's voice -
from the other room.

         The voice reached into the shallow pool of her memory, and
scooped up wonder, brought it to the surface again.  She smiled to
herself.

         "You change diapers," she said, wonder in her voice, in the
same tone she might have used for you threw yourself in front of a bus,
or you leap tall buildings in a single bound.

         "That a problem?  He was fussing, you were sleeping..."

         "No," she said, chuckling through a laugh.  "No, that is fine, 
John.  Thank you.  Thank you very much."

         "No big deal.  I've changed tons of 'em."  His smile saddened a 
little.

         And there it was, the tightness in her belly, the cramp at her 
heart.  Real ones.   And what was her new resolution about never hiding 
from honest emotion?  They had already shared so much of their pasts
last night.  She inured herself for a bold, forward approach, then
reached an arm around his neck and hugged him.

         His smile brightened again.  "I get that for a diaper.  Jeez, 
what'll I get if I clean the oven?"

         "Stick around and maybe you'll find out."

There it was, Dana realized.  A complete cycle of overt flirtation,
fully exchanged.  No way to back away from it.  They had crossed the
unbroken line.

         His smile increased in pleasant surprise.   He even blushed a 
little.  "Well, lets put the groceries away first."

         "Groceries?  You did shopping?"

         "Yeah, I noticed yesterday, you were running low on stuff.  I 
don't mean to be a buttinsky or anything, and I don't wanna step on
toes, but I figured...I was stocking up anyway, I was there, I might as
well pick up some stuff for you and Will, too."

	(Dear lord, he did supermarket, too)

         Was there no end to this wonder?  she thought to herself,
smiling at it all.

         It was Saturday, and Saturday was tight T-shirt day in 
Doggettland.   And she really didn't (well, did...really did, but
therefore didn't) want to stand around and watch him put away
groceries.  Because the subtle ripple of muscle through cotton was just
too much to bear after all that had gone before.  She felt a muscular
twinge of guilt, as she always did of late, but it had become easier to
comfort it, and send it away.  Mulder was dead.  And even had he not
been, everything Mulder might have been to her, Mulder had never really
been at all.  It was the sad twist of final truth.  Mulder had always
known a different star toward which he wandered.  And her own road had
finally diverged.

         "No, that's great.  Thanks.  Thanks again.   I owe you...as
usual..."

         "Don't owe me a thing.  Oh, you said to remind you about 
lunch...brunch...dunch, some food thing with your mom today."

         She smiled fondly, shaking her head at her own thoughts.  "Tea, 
actually."

         "Oh, yeah, sorry.  Tea.  We don't do tea where I'm from."

         "I can well imagine."  She tugged at a strand of her own hair
to study it thoughtfully, suddenly self-conscious.  "I need to get 
ready.  Keep an eye on William for me?"

         He looked at her with those eyes - an expression that seemed to 
say, as it always did, of course...as though there had truly never been
an option.

         "I'll be here, Dana."

         She smiled.  "I know you will," she said, and she did know, she 
really did know.  She knew she had always known, even before his noble 
spirit had entered her life anew.  Which made all the difference.




         She mulled quietly over the events of that morning, as she sat
at tea with Mom.  William, in high chair, muttering in his native
babylingua, as he played with a plastic ring of toy keys.

	Before Dana had left home, Doggett had spoken of going to his own
house, asking that she  "call if she needed something". Said he'd be
back late in the day, to check in with her.

	She had wondered, staring after him, where he was headed.   If there
was someone else at the other end of his journey.  The very idea had
made her stomach knot.  And that's how it was now:  how bad it was.  It
scared her to death.

         She opened her purse to stow the credit card for charging
brunch, when she saw the small folded paper which bore Doggett's new
cell phone number.   She touched the page, feeling for memory.   Wanting
the connection.  A soft clearing of someone's throat caused her to look
up into her mother's watchful smile.

         "Well?" her mother asked.

         She struggled to piece together fragments of words, heard in
her reverie, finding nothing.  "Well...?"

         "Ma'am?" a polite voice spoke over her.  Waiter.  Holding
charge slip.  Oh, yes...that was it....

         She signed the slip, added the gratuity.  "There you are, I'm
sorry."

         The waiter retreated, but her mother's knowing smile had 
not.  "You've been a long way away all afternoon."

	 "I'm sorry...I guess I'm...distracted."

         "Is that what they're calling it these days?"

         "Is that what they are calling what, Mom?"

         "The look in your eyes.  The way you're smiling -- "

         "Mom...don't."  She gestured for her to stop.  " I can't deal
with this...right now.  I just want to enjoy having tea with my mom,
taking my son out for the day, simple things.  Love just...complicates
matters."

         "Did I mention - "

         "No, you didn't, but it's what you meant.  And yes, I'm aware
of it.  And it scares me.  It also makes me feel disloyal - "

         "And you aren't.  You know, in your heart, better than anyone, 
that you aren't."

         Dana's gaze lifted, as if following a drifting memory.  Sunlit 
tears shone in her eyes.    Sunlit tears spilled - and she caught them, 
palming them away with a quick indignance - begrudging every one.  "I
will not cry.  Not any longer.  I'm tired of tears.  Tired of pain and
living in doubt.  I'm sick of not knowing...of not being..."  She shut
her eyes tightly.  "No.  I have to get through this.  I have to make a
real life.  I deserve one.  William deserves one."

         "Then talk to John."

         There: the word was said.  No more sidestepping the issue in 
saying but not saying it.  If it was obvious to her mother, then it was 
real.   And in fact, it had always been real.

         Dana swallowed hard, venturing the last painful possibility. 
"But what if John doesn't feel about me the way I do about him. "

         "Not possible.  And don't ask me how, I just know.  It comes
with age, like my knees ache before it rains.  All anyone has to do is
look in his eyes when he watches you."

         "You're my mom, you're always going to see it that way."

         "Well, believe it.  And if that's not enough," she said, her
eyes lifting above them, to Dana's right.  "You can always ask him
yourself."

         Ohmygod, she thought, feeling the way she had once felt in
grade school when Kenny Tuckerman had learned of her crush on him. 
Well, it was that multiplied by several hundred times, and here she was
a grown woman, a doctor, a Federal officer...

         She forced herself to look up, staring through a part in her 
fingers.  There he was -- smiling down at her, those wise eyes twinkling 
with teasing good humor.

         "I've been set-up," Dana said, in realization.

         Her mother rose up from her chair.  "Yes, you have." Patting 
Dana's hand, Margaret then gathered her grandson into her arms.  "Now,
Dana Katherine, I'm going to steal Will away for the night.  Yes, he'll
be perfectly safe.  John has arranged some friends of his to keep an eye
on the house, just in case."

         "I give you my mother, duchess of delicacy."

         "Talk to each other," she said to both of them.

         "We will," Doggett said after her, watching as she walked away 
toward Michael and Tyrone, two Marine buddies he would easily trust with 
his life...even with a Scully life.

         He was just sitting there, beaming a teasing smile, staring at 
her.  His eyes opened widely as if to say, "And so..."

         "John," she said, unable to fully look at him.

         "Dana?"

         "How much did you hear - "

         He pointed to his left then to his right.  "We got a cat, we
got an empty bag."

         "First question satisfied."

         "I got one."

         She looked fully at him for the first time since he'd joined
them at their table.  Yes, his question.   This was important.  He was
important.

         "It is?"

         "Before...I gotta know.  I have to know for sure.  You over
Mulder?"

         She smiled at the words.  So typical.  So thoughtful that it 
mattered.

         "John," she said, loving the intimacy of the name on her 
tongue.  "Whatever Mulder was to me, he was never what I wanted him to 
be.  Whatever he might have been, he never really was.  We weren't
lovers, we weren't friends, we were...somehow, more than all those
things, and yet none of them at all."

         His eyes widened.  He was understanding something completely,
for the first time.  Something he had never thought possible, because he
had just assumed. He shut his eyes at the recoil of her words.  A burden
lifted from his heart.

         "Look," he said, his voice hitching, as he clearly battled 
tears.  "I know I'm no Fox Mulder..."

         "John," she interrupted him.  "What you are to me, Mulder could 
never have been."  She leaned forward, pulling him toward her.  She 
comforted him tenderly with a kiss to which he shyly responded till she 
felt tears touch their mouths.

         She smiled up into the beloved face of an ex- cop and ex-Marine 
tough enough to cry.  Wiping away the evidence, she mouthed three words
up into his waiting eyes.  He replied in kind.

         And he smiled, just for her.  "Whodda thunk it, Dana?" He shook 
his head.  "Whodda ever thunk it?"