~~~ October 13, 1998 ~~~

The moon appeared on the horizon like a giant bald head 
poking up from a black water bath.  It rose slowly, lingering 
bright and low so that fat moonbeams rippled over the distant 
waves.  Mulder stood on the edge of the chilly beach and 
watched the eerie glowing orb with only an ocean between 
them.  Nights like this, when the moon hung large and close, 
the Earth became a new planet under the shining white sky.

The fire cracked behind him, farther up on the beach.  He 
heard a car door slam from beyond and turned around.  With 
the moon, he could just make out a patch of her hair in the 
distance as she started down the path to where he stood.

She stopped, her arms full, and tried to make out what he was 
doing down on the beach.  He waved for her to join him and 
then watched her wend her way down between the grass-covered 
bluffs.  He walked a few steps to greet her, the sand soft 
beneath his feet, and they met up by the fire.

"I thought we could eat down here," he said.  "Unless you 
think it's too cold."

The wind was enough to chase her hair into her eyes, despite 
the shorter cut she wore these days.  She had exchanged 
contacts for wire-rimmed glasses halfway through their first 
day here, when the combination of dust and chemical cleansers 
proved too much irritation.

"It's fine."  She knelt down near the fire and withdrew two 
submarine sandwiches and two bottles of soda, handing him 
half the bounty before settling back to open her meal.

He lowered himself to the sand, dusting off his hands before 
unwrapping his sandwich.  "I must've spent fifty percent of 
my time down here as a kid.  It used to be I could draw a map 
of the ocean floor out there -- where the sharp rocks were, 
where it dropped off."  He closed his eyes and curled his 
toes, recalling the feel of the stones on his feet.  New 
England beaches were only for the most hardy folk, austere 
and cool, even in the summer, with more rocky shoals than 
golden sand.

He opened his eyes and looked at her over the flames.  "They 
say the ocean has no memory."

She licked her thumb and scanned the paltry breaking surf.  
"I guess I can see that.  The tide comes in, sweeps 
everything away and washes out again, only to reappear a few 
hours later.  It makes the ocean seem immutable, as though no 
outside force can change it."

"And change equals memory?"

"Sure.  Every memory changes you."

He took a sip from his bottle of soda.  "I guess I hadn't 
thought of it that way.  To me, memory seems fixed, 
unchanging."  He turned his gaze to the water again, but he 
could feel her watching him.

"Having second thoughts?" she asked casually.

He shook his head and reached for his sandwich.  "No.  It's 
past time for this.  I should have done it a long time ago."

"It's just the circumstances..." She sighed.  "Mulder, we can 
always find the money another way."

He looked sideways at her, amused.  "You got a pyramid scheme 
going that I don't know about, Scully?  Playing the lottery?"

Scully smiled a little but she dropped her gaze.  "You don't 
need to sell the house."

Really, he did.  His summer jaunt to the Antarctic and the 
resulting fallout had run him a cool fifteen grand, and now 
Kersh had hit them with a tab totaling nearly as much for 
their unscheduled trip to California.  Actually, Kersh had 
billed Scully, as promised, but there was no way Mulder was 
going to let her shoulder it alone.

He never visited the Vineyard house.  No one did. 

His alternative to selling was to ask his mother for the 
money.  She would give it to him willingly enough, but then 
she would know the truth: his father had died in debt, 
leaving half-empty liquor bottles stashed around a house 
mortgaged two times over. 

The only thing of value his father had left him was the deed 
to their family house.  The old man hadn't been able to bring 
himself to sell it, and for years, neither had Mulder.

"It's best this way," he said to Scully, testing the words 
out loud.  "Some other family should be in there now, someone 
with a bunch of kids to run around on this beach all summer."

"I remember our summers on the water.  My brothers tried to 
build a submarine one year out of a couple of aluminum 
garbage cans.  Charlie nearly drowned and Mom grounded them 
both for weeks.  It was punishment for me too since I lost my 
partners in crime."

"Melissa didn't play submarine?"

"She was always lying around on the beach in some teeny 
bikini."

"I bet your father loved that."

"He wasn't around to see it."

Finished eating, Scully drew up her knees and hugged them to 
her chest as she stared out at the water.  "I used to hate 
the ocean for taking him away.  I remember standing on the 
edge of pier when I was about six years old.  Dad had just 
told us he was leaving again for a month and I started 
searching for rocks to throw at the water.  I threw them as 
far and as hard as I could but they just made these 
disappointing little splashes, like I was tickling the ocean 
rather than hurting it."

Mulder said nothing.  His father had been away a lot for work 
too, but he hadn't known enough to be angry at the time.

Scully turned to him, firelight in her eyes.  The corners of 
her mouth were turned up as she tried not to smile.  "You 
want to hear something silly?  I thought his job was to fight 
pirates."

"Argh, matey," Mulder said, grinning back at her.

Scully closed her eyes and shook her head in embarrassment.  
"I know.  That's exactly what I thought.  I figured he was 
out there battling guys with long black beards and a skull 
and crossbones flag.  Once I had convinced Charlie that Dad 
had chests of gold buried somewhere on the base in secret.  
We spent two weeks looking for them."

He leaned his hands back into the cool sand.  "You see that 
lighthouse down there?" he asked, nodding in the direction of 
the far-off beacon. 

She squinted and nodded.  "Sure.  What about it?"

"We thought we could see to the other side of the world from 
the top of it.  A buddy and I set out one day with the idea 
of climbing it.  Took us the better part of a day to get 
there and then finagle our way inside.  It was a clear day 
but all we saw was Massachusetts.  I was convinced we were 
going to see Chinamen on bikes and stuff.  Instead, all I got 
to see after that was the inside of my room for about three 
weeks.  Mom had no idea where we'd gone, and she was not 
impressed with my little adventure."

She tilted her head back as she polished off the last of her 
soda.  "Speaking of your room..."

"Yeah.  Let me just put the fire out and we'll get to it."  

Scully cleaned up the remains of their dinner while he went 
to the water's edge with a bucket.  He stood just out of the 
reach of the waves, listening to them crash and roll for a 
long moment.  At last, he knelt down and scooped up some 
ocean to douse the fire.  

The flames died easily in the cold, wet night air, and Mulder 
walked back to the house with only the moon to guide him.

Scully turned on most of the lights in the house and he 
congratulated himself on remembering to have the electricity 
reinstated before this little boondoggle. It would have been 
near impossible to get all the work done in a single weekend 
if they could only use the hours of shrinking daylight. 
Already they had ten boxes stacked in what used to be his 
living room and at least double that in trash sacks.

He'd been surprised at how much stuff the house harbored 
since most of the important items had left with the family, 
either one half or the other, years ago.  But here still was 
the ugly bubble lamp his grandmother had given them; the old 
vacuum his mother had pushed across the floor while he and 
Samantha held their legs in the air from the sofa and 
complained about not being able to see the TV; the framed oil 
painting by no one special, a seascape Mulder had never 
understood the purpose of, since they had an actual view of 
the sea from their windows and that was superior to a 
stagnant dusty picture.

As these last mementos disappeared into bags and boxes the 
house became less familiar to him.  It was stripped of the 
Mulder personality and became again just a collection of 
boards and nails, a place anyone could have lived.

He knotted off the top of a trash sack and heard Scully 
moving about upstairs.  The stairs creaked under his weight 
as he went to join her, and he paused on the third to last, 
making it squeal repeatedly the way it always used to do.

He found Scully stretched on tiptoe, chasing cobwebs from the 
ceiling corners.  She had covered her hair with a blue 
bandana and her voluminous work shirt hung nearly to her 
knees.

"I can do that," he said, and she lowered her broom to turn 
and look at him.

"No, I've got it.  You can fill the buckets, though.  The 
walls are going to need a good scrubbing."

The bathroom still shocked him with how small it was.  He 
remembered the claw foot white tub as enormous, but now he 
would have been hard-pressed to fit inside it.  It looked sad 
with its missing shower curtain and a collection of dead bugs 
circling the drain.

Mulder filled the bucket with cold water -- they had no hot -
- and returned to his old bedroom where Scully was.  Of all 
the rooms in the house, his had been the most empty.  Even at 
fourteen, when he'd left, Mulder had been a packrat and prone 
to taking everything with him.  He'd left half a deck of 
cards and a camp T-shirt in the tall wooden dresser, and 
Scully had found a cardboard sword, an old math textbook and 
a fossilized pack of gum in the closet.  That was pretty much 
the sum total of his remains.

"This room was always yours?" Scully asked as she swept.

He dipped his sponge into the soapy water.  "Birth to 
fourteen years."

Scully paused and rested her chin on the end of the broom.  
"You know, I don't think I've ever lived anywhere for 
fourteen years in a row.  Where was your bed?"

"Right there where you're standing."

She turned in place and surveyed the spot.  "Near the 
window," she said.  "Of course."

It was black outside now but his mind could still conjure the 
view.  He could see the Olsen's backyard and just a hint of 
the sand dunes beyond their fence.  He always knew it was 
spring again when Mrs. Olsen started hanging her wash 
outside, garments blowing in the salty wind.

He washed the walls until his arm grew tired, but the regular 
rhythm of the sponge over paint was also soothing.  Years of 
grime disappeared, and the room smelled new again.  When he 
reached the closet door to wipe it down, he stopped and 
smiled.  "Check it out," he said to Scully.

She sniffed, wiggling her nose, and came over still holding 
her sponge.  "What is it?"

"Proof that I wasn't always this tall."

The door had periodic markings on it in pencil.  "Fox 1963, 
age 2.  Fox 1964, age 3."  Each year had a tick mark until 
the last -- Fox, 10/13/73.  This one was in his own 
handwriting.

Mulder touched the faint line with his finger. It only came 
up to his breastbone.  At 12, he'd yet to hit his major 
growth spurt.

"Well, you clearly need an update here," Scully said.

"What?"

"I've got a pen somewhere," she replied, feeling around in 
her pockets.

"We're just going to have to wipe this off in a few seconds," 
he told her.

"Ah ha!" She held up the pen to him, victorious.  "Now stand 
against the door."

Mulder rolled his eyes but cooperated by pressing his back to 
the door.  She stretched up in her sneakers to reach over his 
head, and he felt the pen graze his scalp.

"Okay, step back."

As he moved aside, Scully added some detail: Fox, 10/13/98.  
He stood with her and surveyed the new mark.  All the 
previous lines were separated by mere inches, but the space 
between the last two equaled nearly two feet.

"It's been a long time," Mulder murmured as he stroked the 
distance between the marks.

"You grew up well," she said softly, and touched his arm.

He nodded and then smiled.  "You, on the other hand, still 
appear to be the size of a twelve year old boy."

"I am not."

He touched the line from his twelfth year and held his palm 
steady as he crossed the air to her head.  "Looks like a 
match to me."

She ducked him, laughing.  "You moved your hand down."

"Stand against the door then.  We'll measure."  He tried to 
grab her but she evaded him and escaped back to her bucket.

"We have work to do, Mulder."

"Do you need me to do the high parts?" he called over his 
shoulder.  "Or I think we have a ladder in the basement... 
Hey!"

He broke off as a wet sponge hit him squarely in the back.  
Scully might have been short, but she didn't throw like a 
girl.

They finished his room around nine and moved to Samantha's.  
Her bedroom held far more junk, but they had cleared out most 
of it earlier in the day.  "Her bed was here," Mulder said as 
he stood near the large window.  He touched the low beam on 
the ceiling.  "Mom was convinced she was going to knock 
herself unconscious on this thing by jumping on the bed."

"Bill broke his ankle once jumping on the bed.  Or rather, 
falling off of it."

"No kidding," answered Mulder, unable to keep from sounding 
pleased.  "How old was he?"

Scully bit her lip.

"What?" he asked.  "Like five? Six?"

She shook her head.  "Ten."

"Ten!"

"Almost eleven, really," Scully said, trying not to smile.  
"He's lucky he didn't crack his head open while he was at 
it."

They went to work on the walls, making good time until Scully 
called to him from inside the closet.  "Um, Mulder?"

His knees cracked as he got up to go look.  "What is it?"

She was inside down on her knees.  "I don't know if you 
wanted to see this."

He pushed the door open as wide as it would go to let in more 
light.  As he crouched down next to her, he could make out 
some crayon markings on the wall.  Samantha had been 
practicing her name but she had not managed to make the "S" 
face the correct direction.  There was also a doodle of an 
orange cat with a big smile.  

Mulder reached past Scully to touch it.  "That was Ginger, 
our cat," he whispered.  "She died when Sam was six."

He traced over his sister's crayon drawings as though they 
were long-lost cave art.  Dimly, he was aware he was crowding 
Scully in the closet, but he was glad she got to see the 
markings.  She was real at one point, he thought.  She was a 
little girl with pigtails and buckteeth and crayons in her 
closet.

"We can leave them," Scully said at last.

"No," he replied, snapping out of his trance.  "Wipe it off."

"Mulder..."

He touched her cheek, his fingers wrinkled and cold from the 
water.  "She may be coming back, but she's never coming back 
here.  It's okay.  Wipe it off."

He went back to the other side of the room to get the dirt 
from the high moldings.  Behind him, he could hear the sound 
of Scully scrubbing in the closet.

Later as she prepared for bed, he peeked one last time and 
the walls were clean.  He gently shut the door and went 
downstairs to their sleeping bags.

Scully shut out the last of the lights and shivered as she 
snuggled into her bag several feet away from him.  Moonbeams 
slanted in through the blinds, painting the bare wall in a 
zebra patterned-shadow.

Mulder tucked his arms beneath his head and stared at the 
ceiling.  Outside, the sounds of his youth: waves hitting the 
rocks in a hypnotic crashing rhythm. 

"Scully," he whispered.  "What if it's the opposite?  What if 
instead of having no memory, the ocean has all the memories. 
The seas are all connected, washing up on distant shores and 
carrying molecules of earth away.  No one person can alter 
the ocean, but what if we all change it just a little bit? 
What if we all leave a piece of ourselves inside it?"

No reply.

"Scully?"

He turned to look at her, but she was on her side, sleeping.  
He closed his eyes then, fading once more into the past as he 
listened to the sounds of the sea.

~~~~

syn_tax6@yahoo.com

Notes:  Sorry for the long break between updates.  I have 
been unfortunately felled by a nasty cold or flu virus.  
Thankfully I am on the upswing now!

If you are one of the many wondering what happened to the 
Haven, it got hacked a few weeks ago.  Rumor has it that it 
shall return in some form at some point.  In the meantime, 
you can go here 
http://p076.ezboard.com/bhavensstillretreating to find out 
what's going on.

Cheers, syn