Chapter Text
“But that makes no sense at all!” Dana protested, when Fox told her of the rumour. “My parents live in town! Or, anyway, they used to.”
They were in the kitchen, which like everything else in the place was enormous. Clearly, it had once been a working kitchen built for serving the needs of a much larger family: a decrepit system of service bells hung prominently near the door. It also boasted a big farmhouse double sink big enough to wash babies in, skirted in gingham, and an old cast iron wood stove, with ornate cabinets stretching all the way to the tin tile ceiling, and Delftware on display. The table at which Dana sat could seat all twelve Apostles on a single side.
“That’s just it. No one knows them. And now they’re gone. Or at least, not around to argue. So now everyone thinks you were in a coma, or have a tragic case of amnesia, or got kidnapped and brainwashed by the Soviets to spy on Dad, or something.”
“What, like on some stupid radio drama?”
“Don’t knock it, Scully; it would make a good episode of Suspense. Or The Mysterious Traveler. Or-”
“But I look nothing like you!”
“You’re around the right age, though,” Fox said, glumly.
Looking at Fox standing at the wood stove (he said lighting it would warm her room), Dana felt a sadness open up in her for how empty the house was. If Mrs Mulder had already lost one baby with Fox, then maybe it was difficult for her to carry another, again. That would have made losing Samantha even harder. Because the family had obviously adored Samantha. It was there in every picture. The frames containing her photographs were all heavy silver, or leaded crystal. Someone had clustered them all together on a trestle table with white lace on it; Dana suspected the lace had once been part of a baptismal gown. Looking at the photos felt like contemplating an icon painted with gold leaf. Only the little girl in the images was much happier than the subject of any icon or stained glass window Dana had ever seen. She loved the beach, and she loved her brother, and she loved a calico cat she was often photographed with.
“And your eyes are the right colour,” Fox continued. “She was fair, like you, too. More freckles, though.”
“But my hair is all wrong!”
He frowned. “How would you know?”
Dana gestured in a way she hoped encompassed the rest of the house. “There’s this groundbreaking new technology called photography, Fox. You should really check it out.”
Fox pulled a face. “Scully, the reason my room was so dark before is because it is literally a darkroom. Half those pictures of Sam are the ones I took myself. And I hate to break it to you, but nobody believes that’s your real hair colour, anyway.”
“What?”
He winced. “Sorry.”
“But you know it’s real.” She scowled. “Right?”
Now he just looked uncomfortable. “Well…”
“Fox! Look at my lashes! Look at my brows! They’re ginger, too!” She narrowed her eyes at him, now. “Do I have to do a Punnett square, right now, to explain the principles of Mendelian inheritance?”
Perversely, this idea seemed to delight him. “Nah. Save it for the Stooges. Frohike refuses to believe your hair could be real. It makes him question his atheism. If you want a soul to save, his is low-hanging fruit.” With his chin, he nodded down at her lunch. “Eat. Dad’ll have my hide if you don’t.”
Lunch was all the Chinese food leftovers dumped into a stock pot and covered with water and a Bovril cube. It was not bad, and Dana had told Fox as much, because he had done the job himself. In the winter, Fox told her, they would keep the wood stove going all the time. Doing so would help keep the pipes from freezing. When Dana asked if the winters were hard on the Vineyard, Fox gave her a sharp look and asked again if she had hit her head when she fell out of the bathtub, yesterday.
“Before I go, I’ll get Mom to take you to the doctor.”
Mrs Mulder was upstairs. There had been a number of phone calls, that morning. Now, Dana suspected she herself might be the cause of them. The thought made her a little sick. It must be awful for Mrs Mulder to have to answer questions from nosy neighbours about the charity case she’d taken on.
“Maybe I should go back to Our Lady of Sorrows,” Dana mused.
“What?” Fox, who had already finished his soup, was now preparing multiple sandwiches. He looked over his shoulder. “Are you crazy? Shut up.”
“They board some students, and might still have a bed open-”
“Shut up, I said!” He turned back to his work and made a stronger slice on the diagonal than was strictly necessary.
“But if people are spreading rumours about you, then-”
“Better this rumour than any other ones,” he said, darkly.
She frowned. “Like what?”
“You know like what.” Fox refused to turn around.
Dana didn’t know. “No, I don’t know.” Then it occurred to her: “You mean about people thinking you…” She looked around quickly for Mrs Mulder. Despite not seeing her, Dana lowered her voice anyway, just in case. “That you’re responsible in some way for what happened? Like if everyone thinks I’m Samantha, then they’ll know you didn’t do anything wrong?”
Fox leaned way over the sink. He drummed his fingers to the sides of it. Once, twice, thrice. “Sure,” he said, finally. “Let’s go with that one. Yeah.”
Dana huffed air at her bangs. She watched him folding waxed paper around his sandwiches. These were probably his pre-game supplies. “Anyway, how’d everyone find out so fast?”
Now, Fox turned and levelled her with a look. “Scully, it’s an island.”
“Well, excuse me for thinking the people of Martha’s Vineyard might be more circumspect! I thought New Englanders were supposed to be dignified and reserved!”
“They are. They’re also gossipy, curtain-twitching busybodies. Trust me; I should know. Drink your orange juice.”
Fox seemed to hold great faith in the healing powers of orange juice. “You know, you would love San Diego. Everyone has orange trees. You can pick the oranges right up off the lawn every morning. And they’re huge!”
He smiled crookedly. “Yeah?”
Dana nodded. “Yeah. Even on base, which never happens, because all the trees are so new most of the time. But in San Diego everything grows really fast, so we had oranges, and our neighbour grew avocados, and our parish priest trained grapes on a trellis over the patio that he grew just for the birds.”
“What about when you lived on Hawaii?”
Dana’s memories of Hawaii were less distinct. Just endless green, and the smell of cooking rice, and rain that didn’t feel like rain, but more like the mist from a nearby waterfall. “We had an awapuhi plant that my mom loved.”
“A what now?”
“Awapuhi. White ginger. It has these red flowers that look sort of like pinecones, and they fill up with sap-”
“You’re making this up.”
“I am not! They fill up with this sap, and the sap smells heavenly. It’s called shampoo ginger, because the native women use it on their hair. My nanny would wash my hair with rice water and awapuhi and hibiscus, to make it grow faster and come in more red.”
“You had a nanny?”
Dana shrugged. “More like a student who lived with us. Her name was Akane. I think she watched us in exchange for room and board. She was born in Japan. My first word was actually in Japanese.” Her eyes filled with tears. By now, Akane was probably in some awful internment camp where everything was covered in shit and mosquitos, and there was typhus and malaria everywhere, and-
“Scully?” When she looked up, Fox had soundlessly crossed the room and now stood poised at the kitchen table, fingers digging at the irregularities of its grain as if by habit. He looked almost scared.
“I just really hope that wherever they put her, she’s okay,” Dana said, and burst into tears.
Fox made a noise under his breath that sounded like God, or honey, but was more likely a curse of some sort. (So much for not being a crybaby. He probably thought she was on her period, or something.) Abruptly he sat down beside her inside the banquette, and looped an arm over her. He tugged. When she leaned into him, his other arm joined its mate.
“She’s probably dead,” Dana heard herself say.
“Don’t say that. You don’t know that.” His arms tightened around her.
“She was so kind to me, Fox. Akane was so kind to me, and now she must feel so betrayed, and-”
Dana had never said these things out loud, before. The one time she had brought it up, Dad told her that immigrants who truly loved America would understand the sacrifice they had to make. Even if it meant being penned up like farm animals. Everyone had hardships in life, and this was theirs. Or something. Dana had been so angry she could hardly breathe. But now Dad was unreachable. Or possibly missing, like Samantha was missing. Maybe he was just too busy to come to the phone; the whereabouts of his mousy middle daughter were obviously less important than the war, or Charlie being sick. Whatever the reason, with her mother and Charlie in Boston, Dana no longer had to pay lip service to the opinions her parents held. She no longer had to pretend to agree all the time. In the Scully home, disagreement was treated like disrespect. But the Mulder home seemed to thrive on a sort of dynamic tension.
For one, Fox seemed to enjoy it when Dana poked back at him. It was fun. In her admittedly limited experience, living with him was fun. Dana liked it. She liked him. She had always liked him. But living with him was also this: warm, soothing, sweet. Dana could not remember the last time her big brother Bill had held her like this, or stroked her hair, or simply comforted her. (Missy used to. But then Missy was the one who needed all the comforting, and then Missy was gone.) Dana had done nothing to deserve such tender care; despite knowing her hardly at all, Fox seemed to presume she was somehow worthy of it. In a strange way Dana did feel a kinship with Samantha Mulder. It was as though the Mulder family had been waiting for an understudy to take over her role, so their performance could continue. And the longer her own family was in crisis, the longer Dana could stay here, and-
“And I think I might be a terrible person,” Dana whispered.
“You’re not,” Fox rasped. “You’re practically an angel, damn it.” He kicked uselessly at the table legs.
“Why are you mad at the table?”
“I’m not mad at the table, Scully. Jesus. Just…” He sighed heavily through his nose and set his chin on her head. “Can you just sit here quietly, for me, please? If Mom comes in and sees you crying like this, my ass is grass.”
Snuffling, Dana nodded. She had no desire to get Fox in trouble. “Okay.”
“Good girl,” he muttered. He sounded somehow bitter about it.
“Why are you so mad at me?”
His voice turned very crisp, as though he were giving an oral report on a book he’d read that he didn’t like. “I’m not mad at you; I’m mad at your brain. Your ideas. Your philosophy. Because if you think you’re a bad person, then there is literally no hope for humanity.”
She wiped her face. “I don’t understand.”
He picked up her injured hand at the wrist and settled it on his chest. “Aside from a tendency toward chimney-related recklessness, and a stubborn insistence that you can do everything all by yourself, you’re perfect, Scully. Annoyingly so. Which means if you’re a bad person, then everyone else is like a thousand times worse, and there’s no point to anything. Okay?”
Dana caught herself fussing with a stitch that wouldn’t lay right, in his shirt. “I’m not perfect. I never said I was perfect.”
“I know, but-”
“Insisting on things by myself is a major fault of mine. Mom says so, too. She says self-reliance can become self-importance, which becomes pride, which is a mortal sin. The sin of sins, actually: the one that turned Lucifer from an angel into Satan. Because it leads us to believe we are above God, and leaves no room for Him to humble us through His intervention.”
Fox hissed as though he had touched the wood stove with his bare hands. “Scully. C’mon. Tell me you don’t buy that.”
“Even if it were not the case, there are other things, too. I am too aloof; I make no friends; I care too much about my own interests and pursuits, and not enough about those of others; I cry too much but have no idea how to make others feel better; I have no athletic ability or physical grace, and I lack feminine talents.”
One of his knees had started jigging up and down, like he wanted to be somewhere else, but Fox had yet to let her go. If anything, his arms seemed to have locked in place. “Feminine talents? What on Earth are those supposed to be?”
“Things other girls know how to do. Things they care about, or have an interest in. I only know how to do boy things, so most everyone in my family says I will probably be useless as a wife.”
“A wife? You’re fifteen! What century does your family think this is?”
Dana shrugged. “Boys may not be trained to be husbands, but girls are trained to be wives from a very young age. It’s like the perfume story I told you, before. Missy was so good at things like that; she always helped me, so I never even learned how to braid my own hair. But without her, I have no idea how to do...” She held up her injured hand. “Girl things. That was why I liked Our Lady of Sorrows: wearing a uniform meant I could never wear the wrong thing. And makeup was forbidden, so I never had to worry about it. And we only had one dance a year, so I never had to learn. Everything was so much easier!”
Fox made a thoughtful noise. “...You really don’t like the Vineyard?”
She shook her head. “It’s not that. But everywhere we move, I have to learn new rules, and by the time I finally figure out how to do everything right, we have to move again. So there’s no point in making people like me. Even if they did, I would just have to leave.” Dana frowned. “Not that I find the people of Chilmark terribly impressive. They thought you were a murderer, and they gave you a bad nickname because of it. Which means they’re stupid. And mean.”
He made a rueful sound in his throat. “So you believe me, but nobody else on this whole damn island does or ever will. You’re my one in five thousand. Which means I could give a shit if you can braid your hair, or not.” As if to prove his point, he tugged her hair a little. His hand did not leave. Rather, he leaved her hair between his fingers. “Huh. I guess it is real, after all.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your hair. It’s never been dyed. Too soft.”
He’d taken up kneading the place where her skull met her neck, and now Dana very much wanted to sleep again. “Told you.” She yawned. “In San Diego, Missy put lemon juice in my hair, so the sun would turn it blonde. It almost worked.”
A sort of sub-sonic purr emitted from his chest. Fox took a breath so deep it actually re-distributed her weight more evenly across his chest. His knee slowed to a stop. The fingers of his right hand kept kneading. Dana was reminded of a cat, making biscuits. His left fingertips found her right arm; they stroked up and down the tricep. The pressure of his fingers on her scalp and nape increased. Dana’s neck went slack. The tension melted out of her shoulders. He chuckled a little. “So that’s the right spot, huh? One of ’em, anyway?”
“Hmm?”
Fox made no effort to explain. He seemed to be considering something. “Just you’re wound up pretty tight, if this neck is any indication. You know, Scully, I used to think you needed shaking up, but now it seems more like you need, whaddya call it...” It was rare for Fox not to know the right word for something; his vocabulary was quite broad. Perhaps he was having trouble picking just one. “Gentling, I guess. Settling. Soothing. That’s what Karin Berquist calls this kind of thing. Skinner would just call it a cool-down, probably. Like after practise, you gotta get all the kinks out, or you might lock up later on and it can really hurt. Either way, I think you get so worked up, you have to actually concentrate on relaxing. Like you forget, sometimes? Or you can’t quite do it on your own?”
Dana made a skeptical noise. She could relax. Sometimes. When there was time. (If you have time to lean, then you have time to clean, and so on.) It was simply more difficult, lately, what with everything. There was so much to manage. And there was less to manage, here at the Mulder house. Besides, the Mulders let her stay home from school, today, and she spent almost the whole morning in bed, just like Mr Mulder told her to!
“You falling asleep, on me?” Dana shook her head. “No? Just resting your eyes?” She nodded. “I envy your ability to sleep, you know. I’m terrible at sleeping, but you make it look really easy. Did you sleep okay, last night?” Again, she nodded. “Better than before?” Dana continued nodding. “Because, um…” She heard him swallow. “Because you were a little scared, maybe? At the other place? By yourself? At night?”
Dana saw the rhetorical tiger trap she’d fallen into just as its logic neatly impaled her earlier arguments about doing just fine. She squirmed, and made a hmmpf of disagreement, or at least protest. Everyone felt that way in a new place, and the rental house was a new place. And every time someone left, it felt like a new place again. By the same token, the Mulder home was a very new place. Last night was her first one here, and Dana could barely keep her eyes open. She had not even dreamed. So maybe the other place was scarier than she wanted to admit.
“Were you scared, sleeping here?” Now Fox sounded a little scared, himself. On her neck, his hand had paused its work. Dana felt his middle finger under her jaw.
“Mm-mm.” Dana shook her head. Why would she be scared? And when would she have the time to feel that way, what with all the goings-on? (For that matter, where had Dana heard the name Karin Berquist, before? It was familiar, but she forgot from where.) She frowned. “Are you trying to tell if I’m lying based on my pulse?”
Fox gasped as though genuinely surprised at being found out. But his voice sounded rather delighted. “Ten points,” he crooned. He added another finger beside the first. “But you would never lie. Right? What with being such a good girl and all.”
“An angel, you said,” Dana reminded him, grinning.
“I did, didn’t I?” Lifting his hand to check his watch, Fox clicked his tongue. “Well you better pray pretty hard for me, angel, ‘cause I am real damn late.”
“I will humbly ask Saint Christopher to intercede on your behalf to ensure your swift, safe return to school and home, and also to protect your journeys over water.” When Fox seemed confused, Dana added: “He’s the patron saint of travellers.”
“Right. Thanks for that. Should I put you back in bed, you think?”
Dana made a non-committal noise. Bed would mean moving. At present, she was not inclined to move.
“Because it kinda seems like I should,” he murmured. Dana lifted her shoulder in a silent shrug. “I’ll carry you,” he wheedled.
Immediately, she sat up. “Really?”
Fox looked oddly dazed. “Yeah,” he said, slowly. “Koala-style, this time, though; I have a game tonight. Stand up. Over there. That white square. The one with the crack in the tile.” He nodded; Dana moved. When she looked back at him, he was checking the corners of the kitchen, and the windows, and appeared to be listening carefully for something. Then he rose and, in a single motion, picked her up at the waist. Her legs, clad in trousers since she wasn’t at school, folded around him like a koala bear.
“That’s more efficient, huh?” Dana nodded. She placed her chin on his shoulder and tightened her grip with her arms and legs. Fox huffed a little. “Legs like that, I barely have to carry you at all, do I?” he muttered.
“You wish I were heavier?” she asked, confused.
A little scoff left his throat. “Uh, no. That’s not it at all.”
His hand resumed its position on the back of her head, as though he were afraid of her bumping it somewhere. He started walking. The journey to her bedroom was no kind of journey at all; it was off the kitchen. But he was very deliberate about it, and when he got to the bed he didn’t drop her so much as bend over to lay her down. His fingers took their time leaving her neck, as though she were an infant in special danger of skull-plate or collarbone injuries. When her eyes fluttered open, he seemed to be staring his hands on either side of her head. Dana twisted to look at them, too, and he pushed back quickly. Blinking rapidly, he picked up her knees and folded them up and back, looking progressively more alarmed as she failed to protest his treatment of them.
“I’m double-jointed,” she told him. His hands froze. Her knees were now almost at her shoulders. She held an arm out. “I can do this thing with my elbow, but to show you I have to be bent over on the floor-”
“Please don’t.” Fox held both hands up, fingers splayed. “I believe you. Get under the covers.”
Dana wrinkled her nose at him as she wriggled up the bed. “It’s not that weird, Fox. Between ten and twenty-five percent of the population has hypermobile joints. Just because I’m really flexible-”
“Less talking, more sleeping.”
“You’re weird,” she groused.
“Now she notices.” Fox pulled the covers all the way up to her chin. Then he took hold of her injured hand. “Can you please try not to get maimed or mauled again, before I come home?”
Dana nodded. Her eyelids were very heavy. “If you agree not to get hurt at your game.”
“No unnecessary roughness. Got it. Sure thing.” His index finger sketched the cross-hatching of bobby pins on her bandage. “Well. Bye, I guess.” He shook his head, quickly, as though he wanted to take it back. “I’ll come home as soon as I can, okay?”
Dana smiled. “Okay. Be careful.”
“Fox?” Mrs Mulder’s voice rang down the stairs. “What are you still doing here?”
Fox rolled his eyes. He rose to his feet. At the door, he winked at Dana and then leaned out to yell: “I don’t know, Mother; why are you still here and not at the hospital, getting our guest her stitches?”