#how many things can I justify being birthday gifts to myself in february

[aefensteorrra]

thinking about The Miffy Lamp

[saferincages]

a couple of weeks ago, a friend showed me this amazing post (where the photos are far better than mine, which just didn’t want to turn out at all) of @the-far-bright-center‘s beautiful, sparkly Force Ghost Anakin, and it brought me such joy (I was maybe giggling excessively...), and today he arrived in the mail as a surprise gift! 💖

I want to take a moment to appreciate this bio, and the “weapon of choice” being loyalty and love, because it is. a lot.

this could be a very silly post (okay, it already is), but it actually gives me an opportunity to talk about something that I’ve never had a chance or reason to discuss before without some frame of context, so here is an unbelievably overemotional story (one of many regarding Star Wars’ history and special place in my life, I could write a series of these focused of specific themes and characters in all honesty) that no one really needs, but that I feel compelled to write anyway.

I’ve written before about my first experience seeing Revenge of the Sith (most recently here), so I apologize for retreading a certain amount of ground, but it’s important to know what the state of my life was at that time, which was a frightening, burned out shambles. ROTS premiered in May 2005, I believe I had just completed the physical therapy I’d been undergoing since the car accident we had that February. I was extraordinarily ill, and no one knew why (diagnoses were forthcoming), I was rapidly losing weight, and at the time, the scariest thing for me, was that I had no choice but to withdraw from school. Academia, which was such a constant for me, wasn’t even going to be on the horizon. I was, in short, not okay. I felt almost hollow in that uncertainty.

That midnight premiere was incredible, exciting, emotionally fraught, and I remember the weight and the sorrow of it hitting me in a very profound way when we got home, at which point I crawled into my bed and sobbed. I saw it several times that summer, but the final time (which is also a story a couple of my friends know, but I don’t think I’ve posted about it publicly?) was on my birthday that September. It is a crystalline memory. I can recall everything about that day, even what we ate (the cinnamon rolls my mom made for breakfast, the vanilla chai tea I had at Borders that afternoon), because it was the last birthday I had when certain things were not yet permanent, when I was still in the misty place between before and after. By then, the film had moved to our local little budget theatre, and seeing it that way, with a handful of other people rather than with a big, enthusiastic crowd, lent it an intimacy and poignancy which struck me on a wholly different level. (That was also the night Supernatural premiered, which is an aside, but don’t doubt for a moment that the events are inextricably emotionally connected for me.) September, and I should have been in school, but I wasn’t. I had no idea at that point that I never would be again, but I was frightened, and sad, and deeply angry. Anger isn’t a feeling I’d had a lot of experience with, I was a sweet, shy, overly sensitive, naive child (and teenager), but I didn’t often deal with anger, and then I usually sublimated anger with grief and guilt instead (and those things were warring in me, too, and of course I still carry them), but the anger at the unfairness of it all, at how cruel it was that this had happened to me, at how much I hated my own body for turning against me, how I irrationally hated myself for not being better or stronger or able to fight it, was consuming and yet almost childish, as though being ill was causing a perpetual temper tantrum in my mind.

My touchstone in the prequels was always Padmé, and she deserves her own post, but she was so inspiring to me, her compassion and her goodness and her belief in justice, her loving nature and her femininity and her tender heart being strengths, and never undermining her bright spirit, her keen mind, her ability to lead, her powers being her forgiveness and empathy and kindness. I love her so much and she had (and continues to have) such meaning for me. 

It took me by surprise when the aching heart of my identification in ROTS plunged more towards Anakin. I loved him too, and I had a lot of varied, complicated feelings about him already, about his gentleness and his trauma, about the immensity of his capacities and his contrasts, but this was the fall, the dark hour of the story, the nadir of everyone’s suffering, and so much happens at his hand, because of his tragic choices. When I was reading the novelization, I didn’t know what to do with the fact that I understood certain aspects of his struggling in such a harrowing way, and seeing it playing out made that even more acute. Those choices he makes out of desperate fear aren’t rooted in evil, they’re driven by the chasm of grief and terror of loss, and they’re mixed with disillusionment and disappointment and frustration. Up until the moment when he walks into the Jedi Temple, when we really see him cross a line he cannot return from, hope for a course correction seems possible. Even knowing what’s coming, it’s like...just turn back. You can still fix this. It ripped my heart out because of course he wouldn’t, he couldn’t. There’s the scene where he’s denied the title of Master, and his outburst at the council (“this is outrageous! it’s unfair!”) is tinged with an adolescent level of upset, but...of course it is. He’s still so young and he wants to trust them, it’s not ambition causing that fury, it’s desperation for inclusion, for some measure of respect, and he keeps being refused. It’s a strange analogy because the things holding me back had nothing to do with a council of old men deciding my fate, all my hindrances were physically trapping me in my own body, the jury denying me the ability to move ahead was my own failing immune system, but I understood his rage, because I wanted someone I could yell at. The person I was so terrified of not being able to save, of having to watch die, wasn’t my beloved, it was...me, the girl I was, the girl I dreamed of becoming. I’ve talked so many times about feeling like I let her down, like I’m the ghost of her, the revenant walking around in a shape that vaguely resembles her, but at that point, she wasn’t gone yet, she was just rapidly slipping away. I didn’t know what to do to save myself. People would say it wasn’t my fault, to let it go (which felt a lot like being told the useless “mourn them do not, miss them do not”), that I was still here, I didn’t ask to get sick, and I knew, logically, that was true, but emotionally all I felt was that crushing guilt and despair (all of this remains a lingering struggle). I didn’t want to be powerless. I would have clung to something that offered me a way out. I knew where Anakin, conflicted and misguided as he was, was coming from, and it eroded everything that made him good and heroic and kind, so the only power I had left was to fight against it and keep the anger at bay.

This is such a specifically personal thing that I won’t get into the analysis of what happens in regards to his descent (which I also expounded upon in that other post anyway), but every time it happened, the same muscle memory seemed to take hold of me, my hands would shake and I’d press them together, my chest would pound, I’d bite my lip to try not to cry. I have this overwhelming fear of fire, so Mustafar was its own nightmare, and I’ve literally only watched the immolation scene once (that first time, at the midnight showing), otherwise I close my eyes tightly shut. I don’t even like seeing gifs of it. But because of what I was going through at the time, what I’ve gone through since, the physical aspects of him so painfully and horrifically losing himself, being so stripped of his humanity that hardly anyone ever looks at or acknowledges him as a person again (until Luke) held its own terror (it’s such an awful metaphor when it’s examined, and it’s that re-enslavement, he did not choose that reconstruction) because I didn’t understand what was happening to me physically, and because so many people were questioning the veracity of my pain and my incapacitating illness, were treating me as somehow less (ableism wasn’t even a word in my vocabulary yet, I just thought maybe everyone had a point and I didn’t deserve the space to be heard or understood, since so much of what I was going through was invisible). I genuinely felt like my personhood and my agency was being taken away. I didn’t have school, I was quickly isolated from everyone else and kept in the (comforting yet confining) cage of my room, I didn’t know who I was supposed to be anymore, and I didn’t know what to do if no one would listen or believe me (my mom aside). The torture Anakin is put through in that conversion to Darth Vader is unimaginable and I don’t want to dwell on it, but there’s a passage from the novelization that goes in part: “The first dawn of light in your universe brings pain. The light burns you. It will always burn you...You can hear yourself breathing. It comes hard, and harsh, and it scrapes nerves already raw, but you cannot stop it. You can never stop it. You cannot even slow it down...now your self is all you will ever have...and within your furnace heart, you burn in your own flame.” It’s such a wrenching description that some part of me separated it out from the villainous aspect, because the rest of it felt true. My nerves were raw and burned with sensation, touch and too much strain hurt, but my heart persistently, stubbornly kept beating, and I was left sifting through the alternating aspects of its passions (both the transcendent and the desolate).

This isn’t at all “excuse or justify the things Vader did” (since, again, this isn’t actual analysis, it’s sentimental personal nonsense), because of course I do not and never would, but the depth of empathy I had for Anakin, as a person and as a lost soul (and a lost future), and the way that left an imprint on me right at the onset of my illness became indelible.

There’s a point to this, I promise.

George Lucas did re-editing and reworkings of the original trilogy and I’ve never minded any of it, because they were his to edit and fix up if he wanted to do so, and little extra CG snippets of planets and creatures only expands the universe in my mind. That said, I realize adding Hayden’s Anakin at the end of Return of the Jedi was divisive, even upsetting for some, but for me it was everything. I’ve hesitated to ever reblog gifs of the scene because I felt like I had to justify or explain why I hold it so dear before I did, so this is my chance to do that. 

As a child, I never felt really connected to the fleeting glimpse of Sebastian Shaw (my mom actually remembers me asking why he was so “old,” apparently I reasoned at the time that Anakin should have been younger, I think because I imagined him then as more of a dashing hero, based on Obi-Wan’s description in A New Hope). Anakin never lived as that image of a more middle aged man, that was never who he was within Vader’s suit, and there was always an evincive resonance that I was seeking. Once Attack of the Clones came along, Hayden was my Anakin, he was the embodiment of that character, and I loved him, and I loved his performance (and saw so much nuance and layering in it despite what was often said). Yet one of the last images we witness of him is burning on that scorched lava shore. It’s devastating. 

Luke’s unwavering faith that some glimmer of his father still exists, that goodness can’t ever be entirely erased, that love will overcome, that throwing aside his weapon is an act of bravery and grace, is the moment when Anakin is finally released from that. “He takes the ounce of good still left in him and destroys the Emperor out of compassion for his son.” Balance is restored, and redemption is very small and quiet, not a washing away of violence, but a ceasing of it. It’s the hope that we can always find salvation, that we can still choose to act in love.

When Luke turns around and sees those spirits watching over him, benevolent and glowing and one with the Force, Anakin is his beautiful self again, as the description on this little package says, restored to the “hopeful young Jedi he once was.” The first time I saw that edit of the film, I wept. That was the connection I’d been looking for, the understanding that we’re never wasted, that our souls endure and are mended, that we can choose light, no matter how lost we feel we are, that love can persevere and illuminate even the longest night. It reminded me that I wasn’t only my body, no matter how much it hurt, no matter how it felt like it was collapsing on me, no matter how often I felt like I was failing to be the person I thought I would be, my body could never capture the entirety of who I was, or am. My spirit could still shine, my heart could still be soft.

Anakin says to Padmé in AOTC, “Compassion, which I would define as unconditional love, is essential to a Jedi's life, so you might say we are encouraged to love.” It’s one of my favorite scenes because it’s so sincere, and yet so richly layered in its meaning. And in the end, this is fulfilled, this belief is proven right.

People may think the idea of the Force is hokey, but because of the way I was brought up, and the intense theological discussions that used to be framed around it (particularly by my dad, we used to do this over e-mail back in the olden days of dial-up, I wish I had those conversations saved), it was a really important, formative concept for me. The Force is connectivity, it’s like a variant of the belief in Tikkun olam that parts of the vessels of the divine used to shape the world shattered, and their shards became sparks of light trapped within the material of creation, and thus exist and persist in all of us, in all the diverse and breathtaking life around us, and that we should respect and cherish that life. “The best expression of the Force is not a lightsaber fight or other combat techniques. It’s really about your connection to life, to everything around you, and your ability or willingness to let go, to find peace, and ultimately become a selfless part of existence...in the end there is no power that aids [Luke], except the power of compassion and love; the act of forgiveness and apparent self-sacrifice is what saves his father from the dark side.” 

It’s the idea that there’s something eternal within all living things, something powerful and connected that binds us together, that means we affect one another, and that we make choices as to whether those influences are for the better (or not). That we can decide to increase the power of light and warm energy in the universe. The idea that we’re not limited to our physical selves, that we’re luminous, radiant, possible beings. That we can reach out in love and compassion to heal the world, even if it’s only in small ways, even if we’re the only ones who see it exist, who know it happens, and still the summation of that additional light can radiate everywhere.

[allyinthekeyofx]

The Power of words (1/1)

Season 10 Post Home Again.  My explanation for that quarter Maggie Scully was wearing the day she died.

J Edgar Hoover building.

9:07am

Scully is late. Not unusual for her at the moment and certainly, given recent events, both expected and forgivable. She tries to hide it from me but even now – especially now – I can read her like a book. Which now that I think of it, given what I’ve been trying to tell her for the past ten days, it’s an interesting choice of words.

We buried her Mom last Friday. Just three short days ago we both said goodbye to a woman who had been a guiding light in both our lives. The service was short, full of raw emotion and I watched silently as Scully fought to hold on to some vestige of composure. She stood at the front of course; alongside her closest family.

Her brother Bill - the patriarch of the Scully clan. Ramrod straight, rigid in his control of the situation. Not once did I see him extend a comforting word or touch to his remaining sister. 

I found myself musing as the service continued, as to what the reasons might be but could only come up with the fact he might be gay. I didn’t know Scully’s Father although he continues to hover over her, as controlling now as though he were still here. Scully loved him, of that I have no doubt. But I also know how much she tortures herself still, that he would be in some way disappointed in her. For what she has done in the past and also what she may do in the future. And as far as I can tell, Scully has always been a pretty dutiful daughter. To find Scully lacking in any aspect of her character is something I can’t quite comprehend, so I can only imagine how Ole Ahab would have reacted if Charlie had shown up one evening with a Robert rather than a Roberta in tow. Of course I was probably completely off beam, but my musings gave me an escape from the vice that seemed to have taken residence in my chest cavity ever since I stood and watched Margaret Scully take her last breath.

She had spoken to me, just a brief few words as she woke up for the final time.

Referencing my son. Knowing I would understand. Her final gift to me before she left.

It also, for the most part, took my mind off Scully. If things had been different, I would probably have been up there with her. Standing in silent sympathy, maybe holding her hand or at least being a supportive presence in the midst of such sibling disinterest. And truly, I wish I’d had the balls to insist that she needed me to be up there with her. But I hadn’t.

On entering the church I’d caught the look of disdain that crossed the stony, rigid features of Bill Jr as he glared at Scully with a look that plainly demanded she make some attempt to justify exactly why the fuck she had allowed me to come. The passing of time has in no way altered Bill’s opinion of me and of the chaos I brought with me to his ordered life still eats away at him. Forgiveness is not an option for this man and given how hard it has been to try to forgive myself, I can’t really blame him.

So the service went ahead and Scully did what she always does – she got through it as best she could. Stoical, serene and controlled. Other than the night in the hospital when she briefly lost herself and allowed me to comfort her, I have not seen her shed a tear for her Mother. It’s entirely possible that she hasn’t allowed herself to cry. My partner is the master of denial and can surround herself with walls of steel that are impenetrable to everyone around her. Impenetrable sometimes even to herself.

We didn’t attend the wake of course. Scully had said all she needed to say to those present and I knew without asking that I would be about as welcome as a Birthday cake at a Jehovah Witness meeting. My presence would undoubtedly have mixed in a detrimental way with the alcohol Bill Jr and his loathsome offspring would be knocking back and Scully knew that trouble would surely follow.

She didn’t want that. I didn’t want that. And most crucially, Maggie wouldn’t have wanted it either.

So we just left. Scully to her sterile apartment and me to the chaotic house that was never chaotic until she downgraded it from a home to a bachelor pad. Not that I blamed her for eventually leaving me. Hell, I practically pushed her out the door. But that doesn’t stop me from wishing she were still there. Wishing I’d done things differently.

I often wonder if, had Maggie Scully known how much we were struggling during that final heartbreaking year, whether she would have been able to somehow put our pieces back together. As our relationship disintegrated before our eyes and we lost sight of who we had become. Until there was nothing left to fight for. Neither one of us was exactly responsible. It just happened. Without us really noticing until it was finally too late. We got out before indifference turned to raw hatred.

We remained friends. Sort of.

We barely spoke for almost two years other than a weekly duty call from Scully. Because I couldn’t ever bring myself to call her although God knows I picked up the phone and brought her number up a hundred times. A thousand times. But even after everything we’d shared, I still couldn’t admit to her how much I needed her.

‘Hey it’s me…..how are you Mulder?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘You taking care of yourself?’

‘Scully I’m fine. Really’

Only I wasn’t fine. Or rather I was. Just as long as I was just drunk enough to temper the pain, but not so drunk that I ceased to function I was able to pretend everything was just peachy. And to my amazement I actually managed to fool her. I think, looking back, that she was as distracted as I was. Trying to find her place in a world where she suddenly found herself. She’d been alone before – we both had – but this was a new kind of loneliness. A loneliness we had forced upon ourselves.

And slowly, from the snippets she gave me during those precious phonecalls, it became obvious that her life was moving forwards. Mine on the other hand had ended the day she walked out of the door.

As she got stronger, I got weaker. And one drink turned to two, then three, then four. Some days I lost count. I was hanging on by a thread and still she didn’t notice. Or so I thought.

The calls continued. My denial continued. And with it, a slow, downward spiral in to the abyss.

Then one day - a particularly bad day actually where I was still drunk from the night before - an unexpected visitor arrived on my doorstep.

She took one look at me, at the stained clothes, five day beard and eyes like the proverbial piss holes and her mouth set in a determined line. The Scully women are nothing if not determined. Yet again, I had disappointed her. I saw it in the way her eyes widened then dropped to the ground. Scully’s eyes that I had gazed in to for a thousand lifetimes.

But those eyes didn’t belong to Scully. Not my Scully at any rate. That day, when I had reached just about as low as I could get, when I truly believed that I had nothing of any value to justify my sorry excuse for a life, Maggie had decided to come-a-calling.

She never did manage to explain why she had felt the need to climb in to her car and drive out in to the Virginia countryside on a cold February day. To visit a man who, at best had been a problem the whole time she had known him and at worst, the instigator of enough collective heartbreak to last several lifetimes. But she had made the decision to come out there and I was so damned grateful that I never questioned it too much. I discovered many months later that Scully had mentioned that she was worried about me. But back then I had no idea. No idea that she knew somehow that, yet again, I needed saving.

I won’t pretend it was easy. I’ve never been particularly adept at accepting help, much less even admitting that there was a need in the first place. But like her daughter, Maggie Scully is pretty hard to deflect. She swept in to my life that day and gave me something I’d never really had. Something I’d never expected to ever have. She took me under her wing and became the Mother I had always wished for. She gave me, in a very real way, a stability that had been lacking since Scully left.

She didn’t do much really, but to me, it became everything. She talked. She bullied. She cajoled. She listened. But not once did she judge.

We talked about Scully, how she was doing. Snippets of her life. I remember asking one day if she was seeing anyone. Why I asked that particular question, I will never know because I sure as hell didn’t need to hear that she was. But Maggie just smiled sadly.

‘She never will Fox. You know that.’

I’m still not sure whether those words made me happy or that my heart broke for her yet again. My Scully. Not mine anymore but seemingly unable to be with anyone else. It should have made me happy but it didn’t and that night I drank until I passed out.

In the beginning I had wondered if Maggie had come to try to reconcile us. But I very quickly nixed that idea. She was a smart woman. She knew that no one could save us from each other, but that maybe, just maybe, she could help save us from ourselves.

She made it out to Virginia once a week or so. Only the worst weather would keep her away – she was, after all, well in to her seventies at that point. But I was still selfish enough to be pissed off when she didn’t make it. Not at her of course. Just at the circumstances, because slowly, slowly I was being pulled back from the brink. But the ledge I found myself on was narrow and infinitely unstable. One misstep would be all it took to send me toppling backwards once again.

But she rang me often and actually, it was easier to talk over the phone. I shared things with her that I hadn’t even shared with her daughter and to finally talk about some of the emotion I’d been bottling up, gave me at least some vestige of peace.

Occasionally though, after she had hung up the phone, the loneliness would envelop me like an impenetrable fog and I would reach once again for the only thing I knew would dull the pain. More often than not, waking up on the floor the next morning, with a thousand trumpets blasting out a crescendo in my head. Usually followed by me puking whatever beverage of choice had been on the menu the night before.

I wasn’t cured. Nowhere near.

And then one day, a bright spring day where we sat outside on the porch and listened to the sound of the countryside waking up from its winter slumber, she started telling me about a game she had started playing online. Kind of an interactive scrabble board where you could play your opponents remotely. I wasn’t really that interested. I always hated scrabble as a kid and really, it had never, until that moment, impinged on my adult consciousness in any way, shape or form.

But I listened to her extolling the virtues of this technological miracle out of a sense of duty more than anything else. Hell, she’d listened to me enough over the previous months.

‘Imagine Fox, I can have a game with someone all the way across the world, just as though they are sat right there with me…’

And somehow, I had found myself agreeing to set up an account and share some games with her. It seemed like such a small thing to do for her.

I know now, just how shrewd she was. The same quick mind I’d always admired in Scully, the ability to connect the dots, to empathise, to see cause and effect. Oh yeah, now I knew where it had come from.

So my focus shifted. It shifted away from the bottle and towards the computerised board that gave me a daily challenge. The challenge being of course, to win the game. But Maggie was already a master. And she was a formidable opponent.

By the time I finally managed to edge ahead with the rolling point score – Ironically the word I won with was ‘Obfuscate’ – I hadn’t had a drink in almost 3 months.

I won’t say it was all roses and sunshine because it wasn’t. I had some very very dark days. I think I always will. But I managed to keep afloat. Just.

Spring turned in to summer and her visits became less. She still called often and we still engaged in our tussles over the scrabble board, but our relationship had subtly shifted. Less of a parent and more as a friend. But I owed her. I think in many ways she had saved my life.

I began to emerge, with a renewed vigour and set about restoring order to both my house and my life. Clearing and organising a room at a time. And one day I found a small stash of beer. Shoved in to a cupboard and forgotten about. I didn’t recognise the brand, couldn’t recall buying it, although back when Scully first left, most everything I did was done in a state of semi consciousness. The ten bottles had a five cent return deposit on each of them……if I returned them to New York that is.

230 miles. An 8 hour round trip if I were lucky. But as Scully could tell you, I’m nothing if not impulsive and when I get an idea….well I just have to run with it.

So I tipped the contents of the bottles down the sink, rinsed them as per the instructions on the bottle bill label, arranged the rental of a car, fed the fish double rations in case I wasn’t back as soon as I hoped, and off I went.

It was an easy drive, the first time I had driven any distance in the better part of a year. And it felt good. So good to be finally moving again. Two days later I was on my way home. Mission accomplished.

I sat on my surprise for two long weeks. Maggie was out of town – visiting Bill Jr in San Diego. We usually skirted gracefully around the Bill issue and when she told me she was going, I simply wished her a good trip. I don’t think Bill would ever expect or appreciate my fond regards.

But finally she returned home. And a couple of days later, on a balmy summer’s day, she visited me for the last time. I’d made an effort for once – pulled a recipe for Long Island iced tea off of google – the non alcoholic version of course – and whilst it wasn’t exactly perfect, it was pretty damn good to drink whilst we once again sat in the well worn chairs that still grace my porch today. Not so long before it had been the younger version of Maggie Scully who had sat with me. But I’d finally managed to reconcile myself to the fact that, for now at least, Scully and I didn’t belong together.

Maggie had smiled when I handed her the box. It was beautifully wrapped. Not by me, but by the jeweller who made the pendant setting that would hold the battered quarter in place. I held my breath as she opened it, hoping that she might guess the significance of the date I’d had engraved on the back if not the quarter itself.

05/26 – June 26th – the day I beat her at that stupid word game. The day I decided that I might just have something left to give.

When I explained the relevance of the quarter itself, her eyes shone briefly with unshed tears and she curled the pendant tightly in her hand.

Her voice, when it came, was a fierce whisper.

‘I will wear it always Fox. Thank you. I can’t tell you……’

I held up my hand. She didn’t need to say it. Because I knew already how much it meant to her. She had done this, not only for me, but for Scully. So that one day, we might be able to re-connect once more. And I loved her for it.

The visits stopped after that. An unspoken acknowledgement that I was ok. At least for the moment.

But every night at 6pm sharp, wherever I was, no matter what I was doing, I would pick up my smart phone and log on to play a few words with her. My way of affirming that I was still here. Still doing ok. Right up until the night before she died I played. I still have the active game open. But she will never make the next move. A game frozen in time, waiting patiently until eventually, it will probably miss a crucial upgrade and simply disappear.

The thought makes me sad………

‘Mulder? You ok?’

I start slightly at the sound of Scully’s voice, so engrossed in thought that I hadn’t heard her enter the office. She is holding two cardboard cups in her hands. Vanilla latte for her, strong black Columbian roast for me.

Worry is creasing her brow, her features still as fine and delicate as the day I first met her. If she’s grown older, I never see it. I smile to reassure her and reach out a hand to take the coffee from her.

‘Sit down here would you Scully? I need to tell you something’

‘Mulder?…..’

Her voice is questioning, but nonetheless she sits across from me, setting her own coffee down on the desk.

Instead of answering her, I reach in to my pocket and just for a second, let my fingers curl around the smooth, round surface of the key fob within. A key fob made up of a single battered quarter. The brother to the one she wears around her neck. Silently I remove it from my pocket, placing it on the desk and slowly slide it towards her.

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

Epilogue

I arrive home at just before 6pm. We both decided to escape the office early for once. It’s been a strange sort of day. Scully listened to my story of the quarter in silence and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out if she was angry or not. But eventually, after the silence between us stretched thin and taught, her hand lightly touched the pendant that nestled against the hollow of her throat and she smiled that sweet soft smile that can render a man just about unconscious.

‘I’m glad you did this Mulder’

She cried then. Finally, she cried and allowed me to kiss her tears away. I think I cried too. I can’t be sure.

I would have liked her to have come home with me. But we are finding each other again. Slowly re-connecting just as Maggie always knew we would. And even as I asked her, I knew it was too soon.

So I am here alone. But no longer lonely.

I’m contemplating what to have for dinner – I’m relatively self sufficient now and can cook a passable meal for myself – when my phone alerts me to a notification. I look at the glowing screen.

“DanaScMD has challenged you to a game of words with friends. Would you like to accept?”

End