Scully shifted under the heavy damask, eyelids fluttering as she drifted deeper and deeper into the dream.  The wind blew softly into the room, and a lightning bug landed just inside the window on the old sill.  It sat there, blinking its iridescent light for a few seconds, then slipped back out into the warm night air.  The old house settled, creaking boards making their night noises, and the figure in the four poster bed breathed quietly as her spirit walked in another world.

-----

"Hey, Katherine! Wait up!"  It was Susan, dashing along the sidewalk calling to her over the noise of the horses and people making their way through the town.  Somewhere an automobile backfired; must be Old Man Johnson's son, she thought.  Though the autos had been out since '08, the Johnson family was the only one who had been courageous-or was it foolhardy?-enough to purchase one of the smelly, loud contraptions.  But she knew her Papa was thinking about it-the wave of the future, he'd said at the dinner table the other night.  Mama had merely rolled her eyes and asked him to pass the peas.

"What are you doing in town today?" Susan asked as she caught up with Katherine and they began walking together.

"Oh, Mama wanted some things from the general store so she sent me into town for them," Katherine replied.  Susan was bouncing on the toes of her shiny black shoes, blond bangs bobbing in time with the rhythm of her gait.

"Katherine," she said in a stage whisper.  Katherine arched an eyebrow.

"What, Susan?  You look like you're going to bust your buttons." Susan made a small face at the vulgar expression, but didn't comment.

"Oh, but Kath, it's so exciting!  Remember that handsome young man you were staring at in church a few weeks ago?"  Katherine drew herself up to her full height of five feet, two inches, and wished she could look down her nose at her taller friend to show her distaste for her gross overstatement.

"I was NOT staring," she said haughtily.  Susan giggled and adjusted her glove.

"Well, whatever you choose to call it, I know something /you/ don't, and I think it's something you'll be /very/ interested in."

"What do you mean?" Katherine asked, curiosity piqued despite her unwillingness to encourage her friend's display.

"I know his NAME!" Susan fairly squealed, her excitement finally getting the best of her.  The couple walking past stared at her disapprovingly.

"These young people, no manners!" part of Katherine's mind supplied as they slipped past, even as Susan giggled again.  Then Susan's words caught up with her.  Katherine stared, stupid with shock, as white as if she'd seen a ghost, then colored up thoroughly. Yet another mark against fair Irish complexions, she thought bemusedly.

"Wh..what is it?" she asked at last, in a queer voice that was little more than a whisper. She felt numb, and oddly floaty. She had the strangest sensation in her chest, like a breath held too long.

Susan put her hand on Katherine's arm and drew her out of the crowd. "It's Daniel," she said to her friend.  "Daniel Lange."

"Daniel," Katherine whispered, trying the name out as if she could taste it. She found that she could, and for all the world it tasted like*blackberries.  Warm. Sweet. Vibrant.

"Of course," she replied.

"Katherine, you should see your face!" her friend said.  "You haven't been that color since we canned the tomatoes!" Susan went off again in a gale of giggles.  Katherine tried to hush her even as she pulled herself together.

"What else do you know about him?" she asked quietly, fiercely.

"Well, Papa met him down at our store the other day.  Seems he's only in town for a few months."  Katherine felt the sun beat down on her head and she watched the world break up into dark splotches.  Only a few months?  A few months?  No!

"Why is he here?" she asked, blinking rapidly, thinking that getting information out of Susan was like prying the top off of an old canning jar.  She valiantly resisted the urge just to smash the jar instead.

"Well, his brother decided to move up here from Charleston; seemed he wanted a quieter place, somewhere he could buy some land and put in a farm, get away from the constant news of the war.  So Daniel accompanied him here to help build a new house and get the ground turned.  They're out a few miles from town, rather near y'all, actually," Susan said with a wink and a nudge.  Katherine ignored her, thinking quickly.  She wondered if Papa knew anything about this new development.  She'd just have to ask him, in a roundabout way of course, when she got home.

"Well, thanks for the information Susan.  I really do appreciate it," she said with a smile.  Susan looked down at her, agape, obviously surprised at the control Katherine was exhibiting, having expected something beyond the cool, friendly response her friend was giving her.

I must have been a regular show in church, Katherine realized, if Susan is acting this way about it all.  I'll just have to be more circumspect until I can find out more about this man.  About Daniel, she reminded herself. The taste of blackberries sat warmly in her mouth.

"You want to go with me to the store?" she asked, deliberately switching the subject. "I hear they have some new ribbon in."

Susan nodded, always eager to spend her coins on pretty trifles. "Oooh, Katherine," she started as they walked toward the store, "I got the most beautiful fabric for a new dress the other day.  Pale pink, and Mama's making it up now so I can wear to the next church social...hey, have you heard about Laura and James?  Well, it seems they fought and now James is keeping time with Laura's sister, Rachel!  Can you believe it....?"  Katherine was able to listen with half a mind to Susan's chatter. The rest of her mind was on Daniel and how and when they might meet.

The early afternoon sun burned gently down on her shoulders, and Katherine winced as the apples thudded resoundingly when they fell from her apron into the basket.  Usually she didn't come out to pick apples; she stayed in the house with Mama to peel and can them.

But Mama had decided it was time for Mary Margaret to learn how to put up apples, and so here she was, with Colleen, picking apples like a child.  But it was a beautiful, early autumn day, and Colleen was home from school, so at least she wasn't out here alone.

Her skirts swished as she climbed back up the ladder.  Darn these things, she thought.  Just once, I'd like to do this in pants.  Colleen clamored up the tree next to her, chattering about nothing important. As usual, Katherine thought.  That girl was as bad as Susan. But it gave a body time to think about things, and for that she was grateful.

Things, in part, being the advancement of the war, already being called the Great War.  She didn't know what was great about it.  Not too many years ago, over 100,000 men had died in these fields. Families were just getting over it, even now, and sometimes, at night, she could smell the blood, feel the fear that still floated in the air.  She shivered and turned her thoughts to the poem that she had read this morning.  And what she would write in her journal next. And Daniel, of course.

Now that she knew his name, it was even worse.  She truly could not stop thinking about him; the way the light played on his hair through the stained glass windows that day she'd seen him in church; how he moved so relaxed but like he could take quick action at any moment. She sighed.

"Hey, Kath," Colleen called as she dropped her apples into the basket below.  Katherine looked down at her younger sister, whose fair face was turned upward, her blue eyes peering out from under dark brown bangs.

"What?" she asked, still far away.

"We've been out here for /hours/!  I'm too hot to work another /minute/!  I'm going to take my lunch down to the creek and cool off. You coming?"

"Maybe in a minute," Katherine replied.  "I want to get a couple more baskets filled, then I'll join you."  Her sister picked up her lunch and disappeared through the trees and down the hill toward the creek.

Katherine slowly made her way down the ladder, feeling carefully with the toe of her shoe before taking the next step.  Now that her sister was gone, she sure didn't want to take a spill.  Knowing Colleen, it could be an hour before she came back from lunch.

"Here! Let me help you!"  a voice called from behind her.  She started, turned, felt the ladder wobble, and nearly dropped the apron full of apples she held.  The next thing she knew, there was a pair of hands around her waist, and she was lifted down onto the ground. She turned quickly and found herself staring into his eyes....

"Daniel," she whispered, a flush crimsoning her already warm skin. He smiled at her and her heart thumped against her chest as loudly as an apple meeting the bottom of a basket. It was a wonder he didn't hear it.

"Oh, dear.  My reputation precedes me," he said with a laugh.  She dropped the apples into the basket without any grace at all, and looked back up into the face of the man she'd been dreaming about for weeks.

Try as she could, she hadn't been able to get any more information on him.  And he hadn't been back to church, either.  But now he was here, walking confidently through the fields...her family's fields, she thought, and felt a shiver.  He was much better looking up close, if that was possible, her foggy mind registered.

"I'm sorry to admit I don't know your name," he said, smiling.

"Katherine," she said, "Katherine O'Donnelly."

"O'Donnelly, hmm?"  She nodded, suddenly feeling horribly self- conscious.  "I was just coming over to introduce myself to your family.  My brother and I came up from Charleston a few weeks ago to set up his farm-we're a couple of miles beyond the creek, there, and wanted to get to know our neighbors.  It's the first chance I've had since we got here to come 'round."

As he smiled again, she noticed that his nose was a little too big for his face, but his mouth was beautiful, almost like a girl's.  She flushed again and dropped her eyes downward, wishing she had on something besides her chambray workday dress for their first meeting.  She was glad that today hadn't been the day she'd decided to try wearing pants.

"I'm sure Papa will be pleased to meet you," she said, looking back up at him, suddenly unsure of what to do with her hands.  She remembered what Susan had said about getting a man's attention, and tried to remember just when she should flutter her eyelashes, when she should lower her head demurely.

Oh, fiddle, she was terrible at this.  Where was Susan when she needed her?  She hoped she didn't look as uncertain as she felt. Well, she decided, she'd just have to be herself.  That was the best she could do right now.  She cleared her throat, looked him straight in the eye, and said steadily, "If you'd like, I'll be glad to take you to the house and introduce you."

"That would be mighty nice," he said softly, his words curling up with her heart like sunshine on a drowsing cat. He smiled again, full mouth opening over strong teeth, and she flushed hot and cold.

"Just a minute, I have to let my sister know where I'm going," she said, even as she dashed off toward the creek. She paused, turned back. "Don't go away!"

"I won't," he called back, and it sounded like a promise.

"Colleeeeen!" she yelled, going as far away as she could without actually losing sight of Daniel. When she heard the answering 'halloo' at last, she hollered that she was heading back to the house, then turned and jogged back to where Daniel waited.

"Follow me?" she panted.

"Yes," he replied, and she had that feeling again, only this time it was like the breath finally came free. She took the proffered arm and they began the short hike back to the O'Donnelly home.

-----

"Katherine!  You're beau's here!" Mary Margaret called in a sing- song voice.

"Oooh, Mary Margaret," Katherine growled as she hurried out of her room, "how many times do I have to tell you he's NOT my beau? We're just friends!"

"Of course you are, dear," said Jenny soothingly, as she shooed Mary Margaret up the stairs to do her lessons.

"Now, you don't stay out long," she said.  "I want you back in before dark."

"Yes, ma'am," Katherine said, dashing down the stairs to meet Daniel.  They were going for a walk together, something they'd done most evenings after dinner since that day she'd met him in the orchard six months before.  Now that she thought about it, as she flew down the stairs, she realized that, except for the times when she couldn't see him because of bad weather, they'd been together every night since that first meeting.

She grabbed a book of poetry on the way out.  Now that April was here, and the promise of spring was heavy in the air, they had begun stopping before coming inside, and sitting in the grass to read poetry in the dying light of day.

Tonight, she thought with a thrill, Yeats.  She opened the door to see him on the porch, cleaned up after a day's work and smiling at her. She thought she'd never seen anything more beautiful. He took her hand.

"Good evening, Katherine. I like the dress," he said, and she flushed. It was new, a soft violet fabric that turned her eyes to cobalt, her hair to flame.  He brushed his hand across her cheek and she turned her blue gaze on him.

"Ready to walk?" he asked.

"Of course.  I brought Mr. Yeats tonight," she said, and she showed him the book.  He smiled.  They loved Yeats, and she especially loved it when he read the poems to her.  It made them even more magical, she thought, and almost laughed at her fancy.  She took his outstretched hand, and they walked along the road, under the young magnolia trees her father had planted when the family had moved here, the year before she was born.

-----

"It's such a beautiful night," she whispered, watching twilight steal across the lawn as they headed toward the house.

"Yes, it is." His voice was soft, and deep; he squeezed her hand.  As usual, they'd spent the last hour arguing everything from politics to poetry; who should be elected president next and which Yeats' poems were their favorites.  They even talked about the advancement of the war, wondering whether America should join the Allies.  Not the usual conversation for a man and a woman to have, but Daniel was a miracle, not discounting her thoughts and feelings because she happened to be female.

He listened, he considered, he discussed.  She delighted in the fact that she had someone she could talk to so easily; even arguing was easy and good natured with him, and they seemed to do a lot of it, she thought with a smile.  She thought that it should be impossible to love him any more than she did when she met him, and yet, each day what she felt for him grew.  Maybe it went beyond love, now, and into hope and trust.

But he would be leaving soon, she knew, now that the winter was over and his brother had settled into the farm.  Leaving to go back to Charleston, and then they'd only have letters.

She felt herself grow sad at the thought, and then reminded herself that he was here now, her best friend, and that was what mattered. That, and the fact that he should never know how she felt about him, lest he feel obligated to her somehow.

Too much to risk, too much to lose. Their friendship was more precious to her than anything she owned, and to risk losing it because she was so foolishly in love with him....   The only safe place to say this was bound in leather and sealed with a ribbon. And that was how it would stay, she thought.  Better to have loved and lost....

"Katherine," he said softly, turning her face toward him.  "I have something for you."

"You do?  What is it?" They were within sight of the house now, and she could see her father in the rocking chair on the porch smoking his pipe. Daniel waved and Mr. O'Donnelly waved back.  Daniel reached into the satchel he'd been carrying, and tugged out a small, burlap wrapped...twig?

"It's lovely," she said uncertainly, allowing him to press it into her hands.

He laughed. "Not yet, but it will be. It's a rose," he said, "a cutting off a rose bush.  Give it some time, and attention, and soon it will bloom. It's got such a lovely, lemony fragrance..." he paused, looking for the words, "...a soft scent that enfolds you, draws you into its secrets."

"A rose?" she breathed.  He knew how she loved roses, how she always had a small vase on her desk with roses she'd picked, herself. But this one looked different.  She ran her finger over the twig and gasped when it struck a thorn.  He reached down and soothed the mild stick with a caress of his callused fingers, his warm hands cupping hers lightly.

The wild roses barely had thorns.  Was he sure this was a rose?   She looked up in confusion. "Like the wild roses down by the creek?" she asked, as she looked again at what she cradled between her fingers.

"No, this one is different.  It's cultivated, brought over from England. I saw them when I was in Charleston, before we came out here.  It's the palest white...it reminds me of your skin," he said, and Katherine looked up at him with tears in her eyes.

"Beautiful," she said, already imagining the rose fully in bloom.

"Yes," he agreed, his eyes intent upon her face, and she realized he wasn't talking about the rose at all.  He lifted her hands up, complete with their precious bundle, and dropped a gentle kiss along the knuckles.  She started.  It was the gesture of a lover, and they both knew it.

"Katherine..." he said, his voice as full and shaded as the night.

"Daniel..." she echoed, out of breath, eyes large.

"Katherine, what would you say if I asked your father if I could court you?"  Katherine felt her heart speed up.  Words were drummed out by the thunder of her pulse, and she couldn't seem to make the world stop spinning.

"Wh...what?" she asked, and Daniel smiled down at her.

"Surely you're not surprised, Katherine?" he said.  But she was, she was stunned.  She'd only dreamed, barely hoped*and here was this miracle.  She remembered the words of longing, the wishes from her heart that she'd penned in her journal.  Were they coming true even now?

"Oh, Daniel," his name was a little more than a breath, and she was afire. She could feel something burning through her, could feel her eyes glowing, her face glowing.  She threw her arms around him and kissed him, fully on the mouth, in front of her father.

Daniel, surprised for a moment, pulled her closer and kissed her back. And it was right, they fit, and she was right, he tasted like blackberries, sweet and  full of summer. It lasted a second, it echoed forever. They pulled apart laughing.

"I'll take that as a yes," he murmured.

"What about Charleston?" she said.

"Everything I want is here," he replied.

They went to talk to her father.

-----

She shifted in the bed as the dream moved through her. Her hands reached out for the smooth, worn leather, wanting to write it down, wanting to save the kiss for all time should memory fail. But it was not there, she couldn't find it.  She moaned as her hand worried over the damask.

-----

"What do you mean, war?" she asked, the horror of it dawning in her eyes.  "The country is at WAR?"

They'd all known it was coming, of course, for the last two years there had been nothing but talk of war was on everyone's lips, in the newspapers, about how the United States would, at some time, have to become involved in the fight overseas.  About how they must do what was right, join up with England and France and become Allies.

But still, it didn't stop the shock that rocked her to her heart.  War. Even the word, itself, sounded horrible, the worst kind of word.  She shivered as she sat with her mother in the kitchen, listening as Daniel told the news.

"Katherine, you knew this was happening.  We've been talking about it for ages," Daniel said reprovingly, but not unkindly.  Jenny put a hand on her daughter's shoulder and squeezed lightly.  She knew how Katherine felt about this young man; and she was ashamed to admit, even to herself, that she was glad her Liam was too old to fight.  But that didn't stop the pain she felt for her daughter, or for Daniel, whom she'd grown to love like a son.

"Of course, you're right, Daniel," Katherine said.  And then a horrible thought struck her.  "You're not waiting for the draft, are you?  You're going voluntarily."  Daniel looked down at his feet. He took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and looked Katherine in the eye.  She flinched.

"Daniel," she breathed.  He reached for her hand.

"Katherine," he beseeched, looking deeply into her eyes.  She saw there what she needed to know, and she dropped her head.  A flash of anger roared through her.  She looked back up at him, eyes hard.

"Of course, Daniel," she said through gritted teeth, "you must go and fight.  You must go and fight for your country."  And leave your loved ones behind while you die in some terrible trench, surrounded by rotting corpses and buzzing flies, she thought, eyes watering.

She knew that he saw this, saw what she was thinking, and he reached up and clasped her jaw in his hand.  She shuddered, and watched tears came to his eyes.  She hated hurting him; it was the first time she'd ever done it.  But at that moment, she was hurting more.  And she was hating him.  Hating all those things that so drew her to him in the first place: his courage, his honor, his strength.  For they were the very things that were taking him away from her....

She watched his face as he looked down at her and knew why he was going to do this thing.  It was simply that he felt in his bones that it was right.  He'd told her one night as they walked through the trees that he /must/ fight for this country because, without it, he would never have met her.  They would still have lived in Ireland and England, miles and miles apart, separated by more than just a channel of water.

Words, ideals, notions, that meant nothing in the face of her despair.

She let her hot blue gaze drop.  She felt him flinch as he heard her fight a tearless sob.

"I could not love thee, dear,  so much/Loved I not honor more," she quoted softly, not quite bitterly, and only felt a little ashamed when he winced.

Jenny left the kitchen silently, giving them time alone, as Katherine turned to look out the window. Her fledgling rose garden was just blooming now, in the early April sun, opening up like she'd opened her heart.  The new gazebo was framed in.  She could see the fresh new wood, the lovely patterned gingerbread of their special place, their own place, and she felt her own despair swallow her as she looked at it.

He tried to explain it to her again, in her mother's kitchen, why he must go.

"Here, Katherine," he said, "It was here in the apple orchards and battlefields of the Virginia tidewater, that we met.  I must protect what we've been given, even if it means giving my life in return. You /know/ that." He squeezed her hand.  She knew, in the part of her that was still rational, that he didn't want to leave her.  But if he didn't go, he'd be compromising some integral part of himself, of his soul.  If she held him back-and she knew he would stay if she asked him to-then he would grow to resent her.  She knew that their life together would be spoiled by what she'd asked of him.

She felt damned either way.

She wondered how long he would be gone. The awareness of his mortality lanced through her yet again, and she hated him a little more for accepting it so blithely. His warm hand came to rest on her shoulder and she turned to him as she felt his arms wrap around her and pull her tightly against him.

-----

A light breeze blew through the window carrying the fragrance of the roses in the warm summer night.  The golden light bounced fire off her hair as she twisted in the bed, unable to find comfort in the cool cotton sheets, and her glasses fell to the floor, landing softly on the old carpet.

-----

She'd been up all night, unable to sleep.  Even writing in her journal didn't comfort her, as it usually did.  She knew why she felt like this. Daniel had left for England today, and then on to France, most likely, though none of them knew for sure.  She'd spent the week helping him prepare, getting his gear together, washing and ironing his clothes.

For the past month, he'd been in training.  He'd endured rigorous exercise regimens, gone without food and water, slept outside with the other men in the tents they'd set up on the edge of town.  He'd lost weight, lost sleep, even while his conviction grew.  He was doing the right thing.  He knew it.

She was still not convinced.  The night he came home, hair cropped close to his head, it became real.  She'd gone into the house weeping when he came up the walk.  His shining, chestnut hair gone, and with it any illusions she'd had left. He's looked harder, older, and so removed from the man who'd kissed her hands that first time.

During the last week she'd thought many times how wonderful it would be if she really were his wife, and she were doing his laundry, his mending and ironing in their own home, instead of at his brother's house, an empty mockery as she helped prepare him for war. Since that first day, she'd not told him how she felt; he knew just by looking at her that half of her soul was going with him.  It was the same for him; half of his would be staying here.

It was the actual goodbye at the boat that was the worst.  They'd all gone to Newport News, with the other families who had sons setting off for Europe, and she'd watched as he made his way up the gangplank, duffel bag shouldered high, his hair, which had begun to grow again, shining like a pelt in the morning sun.  He stood there on the deck, with the other men from the counties who had signed up, and shifted his duffel bag on his shoulder as he'd waved.

She'd waved back, trying to hold back the tears, and succeeding, really, better than she thought she would.  She didn't want the last picture he had of her-might ever have of her-to be red-faced and weepy.  No, she wanted him to remember her smiling and happy and loving him.  Now she understood what Rossetti had meant in that poem.

Jenny and Liam stood with her; Jenny wept silently, watching as Daniel waved to them.  The two younger girls stood next to their parents, caught up in the excitement of it all but still too young to understand what war meant. Eventually, the boat pulled away, taking the young men with it, and the families headed to their homes, handkerchiefs wiping tears from wet faces, arms wound protectively around each other.

The trip back had taken hours, even in Papa's new auto, yet she remembered very little.  Only Jenny clasping her hand, stroking her hair, telling her in a soft voice that everything would be fine, that the war would end, and he would come home.  Empty promises, she knew, but the only promises she had.

Now it was nearly dawn, and Katherine hadn't been able to sleep. Didn't want to sleep, for to lose consciousness even for a moment would mean putting an end to the day.  It would mean losing contact with Daniel, once and for all.

She was so tired, but fought against sleep, struggling to hold onto the memory of their last walk, their last night together for months, for years.  Maybe forever.  Now there was only dreaming, remembering.   She must steel her heart, she thought, shield it against the desire she felt for him; ignore the longing she felt, the longing for the evening walks, the long discussions, even the arguments.  The things she knew she couldn't have, except by letter, until he came home. Whenever that was.  If it ever was.

She felt the sadness rest heavy on her shoulders as she looked out the window of her girlhood room.  She loved this view, over the maturing magnolias to the fields, with the lilacs edging the road, and the rose garden below.  She looked down on the newly finished gazebo.  Daniel and her father had worked so hard to complete it before Daniel left; for it was imperative that she have some physical reminder of him during his absence.  He'd told her it would keep her company, like her journal and his letters would while he was gone; he'd promised her he'd come back and they'd sit and read Yeats there, just like always.

Before she realized what she was doing, she'd pulled her robe and started silently down the stairs.  She picked up the book of poems he'd given her before he left today from the shelf in Papa's study and slipped outside to the gazebo.  The dew came up between her toes, riding on the chilly green grass to soak the hem of her nightgown. She was barefooted, but she didn't care.  The cold dew made her feel alive and she was glad for it.

She shivered as she crossed the lawn, touched the rosebushes as she passed, being mindful of the thorns, and sat on the bench, their bench.  She opened the Yeats book at random and began to read.

The first line of the poem twisted her heart.

"I dreamed that one had died in a strange place," she whispered, and feared it was prophetic. She felt her eyes sting and fill, and the first drop fell on the pages below before she could stop it, the pages he'd held in his hands only hours before.

It was suddenly too much to bear, his absence, and the memory of his presence, and she burst into tears. At first they moved through her silently, her shoulders shuddering under their weight.  But then the dam burst and the tears fell, and the sobs poured through her, and she was keening, not caring who heard, not caring if the whole world heard.  It would not matter. There was nothing that could stop this pain.

"Daniel," she moaned, clasping the book to her chest and rocking as the first rays of the dawn sun slipped into the garden.

"Scully," she heard, someone dimly reply.  Scully, she thought, who was Scully?

"Daniel," she keened.  "Don't go...."

"Scully," it was more urgent, louder this time.  Her feet were cold and she shifted on the bench.  She felt warm hands cover hers, and the book slid away.

"Daniel," she cried.  "Daniel!"  She opened her eyes and saw through the tears that it was him, that he had heard her heart's call, had returned to her somehow, that he was here, kneeling in front of her in their gazebo.

But the war, she thought.  He has only just left for the war.  What miracle of God /was/ this?  She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him fervently, afraid that if she let him go he'd leave her again, and that, she knew, she could never bear.

-----

Mulder had expected many responses when he'd knelt in front of her.

This was not one of them.

As her lips met his, he shut his eyes reflexively.  This was his partner, and something was obviously, terribly wrong with her. What would draw her out of the house at dawn, clad only in her nightgown, and cause her to sob and call out a stranger's name?

But the thoughts quickly became dust as he realized that she was here in his arms as he'd longed for last night, alive.  Even more incredibly she was kissing him, as if she could somehow crawl inside him. For a moment he tried to resist, tried to be noble, but she was ruthless and he was so very hungry.

He couldn't stop himself from kissing her back, couldn't stop himself from diving into the heat of her seeking mouth, couldn't stop himself from cupping her face in his hands and drawing her against him, so close that she could never slip away again.

Even as he did this, he felt her start and pull back, her fingers coming up to rest on her lips, her face beautiful and bemused in the strengthening light.

"Scully?" he whispered, a hoarse noise in the stillness.  At that she awoke completely, the clouds clearing from her blue gaze to reveal confusion and a hint of disquiet. She looked like a child against the backdrop of the gazebo and stone bench, the early dawn light rendering her damp nightgown translucent even as it set fire to the roses of the garden.

"Mulder?" she asked, hesitantly.  He looked down at her, his face mirroring the confusion and longing that curled inside her.  His long fingers reached out and brushed the drying tears from her face. Small ripples of sensation pooled through her at his touch. "What are you doing here?"

"I could ask you the same question," he said, as he picked up the battered book of poetry from her side.  The kiss hung between them like an unanswered promise.  Scully looked down at her lap.

"I didn't know you liked Yeats." It was all he said.  She knew he was letting it go...for now.

Yeats, she thought.  The tears welled up in her eyes again.  She brushed at them and looked at her fingers in amazement.  She noticed the sunlight for the first time.  What time was it?  Where was she?  She looked around and the dream flooded back.  The rose garden....

"Here," he said, "you must be freezing."  He stood slowly, slipping his arm around her and guiding her to her feet.  "Let's get you into the house."

She shivered as he pulled her from the gazebo, glancing at him quickly when he muttered, "You scared the hell out of me," as they made their way across the yard.  Scully leaned into him, allowing her head to rest against his shoulder in a rare moment of vulnerability, allowing herself to be sheltered by his arm and warmed by his body.

Her mind was swirling.  She had no recollection of leaving the house, no memory of being in the gazebo until she woke to Mulder's mouth on hers, soft and hot and sweet; the reality and the dream twined together like the old vines and wood above them.  She looked down at her feet, startled to find them bare on the grass and chillingly wet with the dew, as was the hem of her nightgown. Jesus.  What had happened?

Mulder felt her shoulders slump, and he looked down at her, taking in the rumpled hair, the edgy movements, the clinging damp of the nightgown. Questions welled up; he let his territorial soul ask the one question he really, really wanted the answer for.

"Who's Daniel?"

He'd searched his mind and couldn't remember a Daniel, either in their cases or in her family.  She wiped her hand across her face. She looked up at him and held her hand out for the book. He handed it to her and watched her touch it lovingly, stroking it like one might stroke a child's hair.

"The man Aunt Katherine loved," she said, and opened the book to the front cover, where the inscription read, "To Katherine: true love never dies, Daniel."  She showed him the inscription and he looked at her strangely.

"He gave her the book when he went to war," she said, realizing that she wasn't even sure if it was true.  How did she know that, she wondered?  She hadn't gotten that far in the journal...the journal, she thought, suddenly, where's the journal?  It would tell her if what she dreamed was real....  She was dashing up the stairs and into the house, out of Mulder's arms before he realized what was happening.

"Scully?" he called behind her, "Where are you going?"

"Up here, Mulder!  In Katherine's room!" He followed her up the stairs, his long legs negating her head start. He found her in her great-aunt's bedroom, looking like a wraith in her now-transparent nightgown as she frantically searched the area around the bed, crawling under it, shaking the covers. The longer she searched the more distressed she became; a wild look replaced the clouded confusion of her waking.

Her glasses sat on the floor next to the bedside table, as if they'd been knocked carelessly off the bed, something Scully would never do.  He picked them up and replaced them gently in their case.

"It was here," she said, panting, panic edging her voice. "I was reading it when I went to sleep and it must have fallen out of my hand."

"What was here?" he asked patiently, his concern at her odd behavior growing. "What are you talking about?"

"The book.  Katherine's journal.  I KNOW it was here!" and she tossed the covers off the bed, running her hands along the pillows, under the mattress...wait!  She turned to the enamel box on the bedside table and placed her hand on it.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"She always kept it in here," she said.  She tried to open the lid, but it was locked.  She looked up at him, then walked to the desk and pulled open the drawer.  It slid open easily.  And yes, there was the false bottom, just as Katherine had written about so many years ago, and surely there was the key...yes!

The tiny gold key fit in her palm, not much larger then the cross around her neck.  She turned and looked at Mulder.  He was looking at her with a mix of concern and fascination, as if not sure what to think about the tableau unfolding before him.

She walked to the box and put the key in, turning it in the lock.  The lid drew upward, and there was the journal, in its hiding place, as it had lain for so many years, ribbon tied neatly around the faded leather.

"How'd you know...?" he asked.

"She wrote about it," she replied.  "I must have put it here when I was sleepwalking...." she let the sentence trail off.  Mulder saw a flush creep up her cheeks as she suddenly realized just what she had done, how he'd found her outside in the rose garden at dawn, weeping uncontrollably over the book.  How she'd kissed him, wildly, passionately, with a heart full of feeling he'd only suspected she possessed.  She looked at him defensively.

"I fell asleep reading it Mulder," she said, and he could hear the distance between them growing with every word.  "I dreamed about the book.  I went sleepwalking.  It could happen to anyone," she finished in a huff.  The corners of his mouth turned up slightly.  His Scully, he thought.  Or maybe he should call her Cleopatra.  Queen of Denial.  He snorted softly, shook his head. There was more here than met the eye.  He could feel it.  But he wouldn't push her on it. Yet.

"Why don't you get cleaned up and we'll go out for breakfast," he said.  He ran his hand along her hair, letting it fall to rest on her bare white shoulder, where the lace-edged cotton nightgown had slid down her arm.

He was going to grill her about that journal.  About why she hadn't told him about it in the first place.  Oh yes, he was going to grill her. And he was going to enjoy every minute of it.

But not now.

Later.

He'd do it later, when she wasn't looking so vulnerable...or so beautiful.  When the vestiges of the kiss weren't still quaking in his soul.

-----

Scully sipped at the coffee, and surveyed her surroundings. The small diner they had found had a cozy, mom-and-pop feel to it, with shining Formica counters and blue vinyl booths. The coffee was hot and the food was good. Not too much more you could ask for at seven on a Sunday morning. She returned her attention to her plate and the few, lonely mouthfuls that remained of her fruit salad and bagel.

She was very careful not to look at Mulder.

He had been patient, she had to admit. He had kept all conversation small and casual, talking about the book he had read last night, the war waged against the insects that had found the miniscule tear in his window screening, the benefits of bacon and eggs over bagel and fruit.  He talked about everything except finding her half-dressed in the garden at sunrise, and the kiss that still scalded her mouth.

But she could feel it, like the heavy weight of air that precedes a thunderstorm. Even now, the fine hairs on her arms prickled with the memory of what had passed between them, the electricity of it. It was a live wire that danced between them, humming with connection. She knew, without looking, that his eyes followed her. She could feel the questions he kept at bay.

She could still taste him, mixed up with the memory of roses and...blackberries?

"I've never really gone sleepwalking before," she offered hesitantly. "It's unnerving, the total lack of control."

"At least you don't sleep naked," Mulder offered, his own peculiar brand of comfort. She choked on her coffee and shot him a terrible glare, at last making eye contact.  He offered her a lazy smile, little more than a slight quirking of his full lips and a warm gleam in his hazel eyes.

"Mulder!" His name was a mingling of exasperation and amusement. "Why does it always come down to bare skin with you?" she asked at last.

He snorted. "If that were the case, I wouldn't have a drawer full of videos that you know nothing about." He paused, let the laughter linger between them.

"So, tell me about it." It wasn't a request.

She traced a pattern on the table top with a nervous finger. "Where do you want me to start?" she asked, as the silence threatened to swallow them.

"How about with why you didn't mention the journal?" His tone wasn't accusatory, but there was a faint current of reproach all the same.  "Seems to me like you were withholding evidence. That's not really like you, Scully."

Nervous fingers found their way into the wet rings left by her sweating orange juice glass. She'd never been one to fidget, but now she couldn't seem to stop. "I wanted you to approach it objectively, I think."

"You think?"

Blue eyes locked with hazel. "I think," she repeated, and he could hear something rare in her voice: uncertainty. "And perhaps," she continued, "because it seemed personal. Intimate." Her gaze pleaded with his for understanding.  That, too, was rare.

His mouth quirked, but not in laughter. "You've never been terribly good with sharing anything intimate, have you?" It was almost, but not quite bitter.  She flinched, but held his gaze.  Neither of us has been, he thought. "So, you read the journal and you dreamed.  What did you read, and then what did you dream?"

Scully sighed, and then launched into the details he requested, a part of her mind detaching from the narrative. Mulder's attention never wavered, and his only interruptions were to ask questions about details in the journal, and details in the dream. After she finished, she sat back in the booth and watched Mulder process.

He had long, graceful fingers. She watched as they fretted away at the sugar packets in the container. If there had been a straw or toothpick handy, she was sure he would have been chewing on it. She wondered if she'd caught her restlessness from him.

"You dreamt more than you read," he said suddenly, startling her from her contemplation.

"More than I remember reading," she corrected automatically. "I fell asleep reading; I probably processed a lot more than I can consciously remember."

Mulder rolled his eyes. "Sure. At any rate, I suspect that the journal might be the key to this haunting. It's your aunt's house that's haunted, and her journal that has you playing Juliet in moonlight. Perhaps you're susceptible to the feelings, the old memories." He held up a hand to quell her rising protest.

"Scully, this wouldn't be the first time, and we both know it, so let's just not argue. I'm not even going to try and convince you of anything." He smiled at her. "In my increasing old age I've learned to pick my windmills. But it is the beginning of a hypothesis. Feel free to prove me wrong, but /prove/ it, don't just argue it."

The words were firm, though not unkind; all the same Scully still felt a clutch of pain in her belly.  They often disagreed; it was an integral part of their relationship. Right now, however, it hurt. She wondered it she was a little too predictable, a little too unyielding.

Mulder waved to the waitress for the bill, and began fishing around in his wallet for smalls to leave a tip with. "I say we go home and finish the journal together, and then search around for scrapbooks, photo albums.  There's a story here that needs telling."

She watched as he took a toothpick from the holder on the counter when they left, and set it between his teeth. The hurt receded, and she allowed herself a small smile. In a world of uncertainties, it was good to have something you could rely upon.

-----

It was only a short drive back to the house, and it was passed in silence.  Scully gazed out the window, obviously replaying the conversation in the diner. He could see it in the set of her shoulders, the faint pulse of muscles along her jaw.  Mulder glanced at her from time to time.  It wasn't the first time she'd been haunted, but that didn't make him any more comfortable.  If he were ruthlessly honest, it also made him a bit jealous.  It seemed just unfair, somehow, that the skeptic always got to see the ghosts. Maybe it was like cats, he reasoned. They always jumped in the lap of the person who wanted them least.

Scully was out of the car before they came to a complete stop.  He frowned at the slamming car door and made to get out of the car. Something stopped him, held him in place; it moved inside him, a feeling in his gut.  What is it, he wondered, overwhelmed by a sudden surge of...homecoming?

It was as if all of the loneliness, all of the isolation he had known since Sam had gone just lifted, to be replaced by a ball of light that expanded within his chest until he could barely breathe because of it. He felt good. He felt safe.  He gasped as it continued to swell within him, and then, suddenly, it felt like it fragmented into a million pieces.  When he came to himself again, Scully had disappeared into the house, and his face was wet with tears.

He wiped his face hastily, got gingerly out of the car, and jogged to catch up with his partner. "Hey, Scully," he called through the screen door, "Slow down!  Or is the little agent's room calling your name?"

He caught up to her in the hall.  She shook her head. "No, just a feeling that I need to hurry. That time is running out, y'know?"

He glanced down at her, and realized he was feeling the same thing. He nodded. "Let's get to it."  He walked toward the study.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the interior after the brilliant sunlight. For a span of heartbeats he saw only the haze of dust motes dancing, and then his gaze steadied. He felt his mouth open and close, but could do nothing about it.

His sudden halt forced Scully to run into his back, and he was sure that she felt his indrawn breath deep in her own body. "Mulder, what...oh, my God."

On the coffee table was the enamel box she had shown him earlier, now open.  The journal was visible inside it, as was a bundle of papers, tied by a blue ribbon. Something long and slender stood out, starkly brown against the cream and sepia of the paper. With a start, he realized it was a rose.

"Call your cousin, huh, Scully? Ask if she stopped by this morning while we were out."

Scully reached into her handbag and pulled out her cell phone. "Why? You don't really think she did, do you?" she asked, even as she dialed.

Mulder surveyed the box and its treasures grimly, and then looked at his partner. "No, I don't. I just thought I'd get your most obvious argument out of the way before we sit down and read what /someone/ has so thoughtfully provided."

-----

"So you're sure you didn't stop by?" Scully asked again, a little imploringly.

Karen laughed. "I'm sure, honey. I did mention that things had a tendency to get up and move there, now didn't I?" Her voice sounded amused. "I told you about the box, now it's gone and performed its little parlor trick especially for you!"

Something clicked inside Scully's head. "That's how you found the journal to send to me, isn't it?" she said, accusingly.  Her temper didn't subside at all when the older woman laughed again.

"Guilty as charged. Dana, honest, it seemed the right thing to do, like a message.  Has something bad happened?" The warm voice shifted from amusement to concern. "Has something gone wrong?"

Scully touched her mouth and wondered if smashing every wall that let her keep her balance where her partner was concerned qualified as 'something wrong'. "Not wrong, precisely," she finally responded, aware that her cousin's concern grew the longer she stayed quiet. "Just a little weird."

Karen's laugh returned. "Well, according to your mom, weird is what you do for a living, hon. D'yall need anything? We can stop by after Mass if you want."

A small voice inside Scully protested the possibility of intrusion, and the same urgency that had driven her from the car spurred her now. "No, no, we're fine. I suspect another quiet day here will let us settle everything out. We'll drop the keys in the mailbox at your place on the way out of town tomorrow, if that's all right with you?"

"Sure thing, Dana, provided you promise not to wait years before coming our way again. Family means something, honey." Her cousin's voice was only moderately reproachful.

"I promise," Scully replied, a slow warmth spreading through her. "You're right, it does.  I'll talk to you soon."

She joined Mulder in the living room after her cousin's good-bye. He was already untying the bundle of papers. Letters, she realized suddenly, Daniel's letters.

"Karen didn't stop by," she offered, reaching for the journal.

"What a surprise." He fingered the rose distractedly, yet with wonder. "This is very old, Scully. Should be powder, by the feel of it, but it isn't." He held up the small bundle in his hands. "These are Daniel's letters."

"I know," she replied, clasping the journal loosely between her hands.  He glanced sharply at her.

"I mean, it's a logical deduction, isn't it?" she fumbled, resolutely ignoring the look her partner shot her. "I take the journal, you take the letters?" she offered after a moment of silence.

"You're on," he agreed. "We'll take a break and compare notes in a couple of hours."

She nodded, settling back into the solid embrace of the old sofa, and didn't even protest when he sprawled out and tucked his bare feet under her legs.  She had already fallen back in time.

-----

//July 8, 1917

Life moves along here, though I'm not sure how.  Without Daniel, everything in my being comes to a standstill.  It seems strange that the outside of my life keeps moving.

We get news of the war every day in the papers. I haunt the general store with the other wives, the other fiancées, waiting for them to come in, eager to know what is happening even as I dread to hear more. It is terrifying to think of Daniel in that place, doing those things. But the alternative is to know nothing at all, and that would be worse.

Colleen has gone off to boarding school in Charleston.  She's decided to become a teacher, and the school offers a study program in education.  I envy her independent life, the new people and the new city.  I'm sure it's exciting for her; I'm also sure that it wouldn't keep my mind off of Daniel for one moment.  It's much better for me to stay here with Papa and Mama and Mary Margaret.  I couldn't live far from our roses, from our gazebo.  Each day they remind me of our love.  A love that I know will never die.//

-----

//Katherine, love:

I knew this would be hard. I just did not expect it to be like this. Sometimes, I think I could forget to breathe, I miss you that much. We have arrived in England, and that is all I can really tell you about anything from now on. Unless, of course, you like having my letters to you full of little black lines? Please smile at that, my dear one. Please smile.

The trip over was long and rough. Apparently I'm one of the few recruits on board who does not get seasick. I do not feel particularly lucky. It was like the picnic last summer, where Billy Henderson overindulged in cherry preserves, only multiplied a hundredfold. Those who could stand were pressed into service. I had laundry detail. I know you are smiling at that.

Before I left, my brother and your father took me aside for a little talk. When I get back, and we marry, they want to give us some of the land along where their properties border. It will be our own, and we can build a house, if you would like. It won't bring that much income, but I will also be helping them both out with their farms. Rachel is in a delicate way, and so Jacob will need the help, and then there is your farther, cursed with nothing but beautiful daughters. I think it will be good. I think we will be happy. You can be near your Mama, too, and I know that is important. Nor can we forget about the roses.

I still remember the night before you drove me down to the boat. Katherine in moonlight-I swear it should be a poem, if it is not one already. Your skin goes all mother of pearl, like a set of combs my mother wears. The roses just starting to come into bloom, white and sweet. Of course, I had to bring you another rose, fool that I am. You have your little garden now, roses we planted together. But this one was red. You know what red roses mean, do you not my dear? One red rose, one true love. Forever.

You still make me dizzy.

With Love, Daniel//

-----

Her father had wanted them to stay on the porch in plain sight, but Katherine's mama had overruled him, quietly but firmly. And so he got to walk with her, going down by the creek and then through the orchards where they first met.  They didn't talk much, because the silence was just too hard to fill. Already the ache of separation echoed hollowly within, and there was nothing anyone could say to ease it, fill it. Once, he stopped and kissed her, right under the tree that she had been in the day they met. It was a gentle kiss, but it was a good-bye kiss as well, and it left them both feeling bruised.

Eventually he led her around to the gazebo, where the roses were finally blooming, and the moonlight would make her skin glow and turn her copper hair titian. He had a present waiting there for her, something to hold onto when she couldn't hold onto him.

"When I'm gone, you'll come here. Read poetry. Smell the roses. Know that wherever I am, I'm picturing you here, and that my heart is with you."  He tried to give her that, tried to forge the connection, but it sounded weak even in his own ears. She simply nodded her head and sighed.

Daniel echoed the sigh, and then reached down under the gazebo bench to retrieve what he'd hidden there earlier. First came a small, flat package, which he passed to her in silence. She opened it slowly, moving aside the soft cloth packaging. He watched as she held it aloft, a small silver locket on a length of blue ribbon.

"It matches your eyes," he said softly. "I thought for now, you could keep a bit of my hair in there. I've already put it in," he confessed a little sheepishly. "Later, well, later, it can be used for*." he trailed off, uncertain of what to say. He hoped she'd understand enough that words wouldn't be needed.

"Thank you," she said at last, her voice catching.  "It's beautiful." He reached down again and pulled out the second gift.

"I know it seems a little strange to be giving you in the middle of a rose garden, but I wanted you to have it, all the same." He held it out to her, the single long-stemmed rose that he had hunted the area for.

"It's red," she said at last, not taking it, her hands still looped in the ribbon of the locket.

"It's red," he agreed, struggling against the loss in her voice, clutching the fragile stem too hard and not even noticing the thorns. He wanted, desperately, to quote Ben Jonson at her, to compare her to the rose in his hands. He wanted to touch her with words, kiss her with poetry so deeply she felt it until the day she died. He wanted to woo her, win her, and cherish her. He wanted a hundred dead poets to say all the things he couldn't say in this last private half-hour, things that propriety and convention wouldn't allow, to make promises he couldn't, in good faith, give.

"I've got to go, you know," he said softly, at last. Her eyes were shadowed in the twilight, and he was thankful for that. They saw too much in full light.

"But I want you to know, I'll write. I intend to come back. I can't not come back." The words were heavy, awkward in his mouth. He let the rose drift between his fingers, plucked the petals off, one by one, crushed them between his clumsy fingers until the fragrance rose up and mixed with all the other roses blooming in the night.

"I'm going to lie there at night, and remember that in the middle of all these roses, you're the one thing that made me dizzy."

His rose-stained hands came up, held her face and tipped it up so that the moonlight left her blind. He kissed her again, and it still hurt like hell, but it had to be done. The pain was worth it. It let him know he was still alive. When it ended, he pulled her towards him so that their foreheads touched. They sat like that until their hearts grew quieter.

"I crushed your rose," he said at last, ruefully.

"It's all right," she said softly, her breath feathering across his face. "You can bring me another when you come home."

Daniel had to swallow hard to clear away the sudden lump in his throat.  "I'll do that."

"You'll do what?"

Mulder started, staring up into a Scully-shaped shadow, outlined in a fiery corona. For a minute or two he could merely gape at her open mouthed, until he realized that his left hand hurt like hell.

"Shit!"

Immediately Scully was beside him, and he realized suddenly that he was sitting in the gazebo.

"Yeah, well, if you're going to rip roses off the bushes, you're going to get hurt," she said, forcing his hand open to reveal the mangled flower and bloody palm.

"You scared the hell out of me, Mulder," she said quietly, echoing his words from that morning.  She began plucking out thorns with her well-manicured nails. "One minute you're reading, and the next thing I know you're out the door, wandering around the back yard, muttering something about Ben Jonson!"

Mulder shook his head dazedly. Ben Jonson.  The rose.  He looked at Scully's bowed head.

"I'm not sure what happened-ouch!-to me. I was reading through the letters, and suddenly...it's like a technicolor dream, and I'm in the middle of it."  She lifted her face, her eyes steady on his.

"It was like I became him. Daniel." He paused, lost in thought. A small smile played over his features.

"He promised to bring her a rose when the war was over. Probably that rose that was tied to the letters.  Your uncle must have been some romantic," Mulder said softly.

Scully looked up at him, a small furrow forming between her eyebrows.

"Daniel never married Katherine. She married Edward Spencer, at the end of the war."

Mulder made a soft 'o' of surprise, his eyes widening, then narrowing. "I think the other shoe just dropped, Scully.  Unfinished business is usually a prime motivation for a haunting."

She returned her gaze to his palm, idly picking out the few remaining thorns. "So you honestly believe this is a haunting?" she asked carefully, her voice steadfastly neutral.

Mulder pulled his bloody hand away, examining it with displeasure. "Yeah, well, I know I'm a bit of a masochist sometimes, but I didn't exactly do this on my own." He wiped it on his denim cut-offs, hissing in pain as he snagged a missed thorn. "My guess is that someone wants a story to be told. And the story is back there in the living room."

Scully reached for his hand again, and examined the small wounds still bleeding sluggishly. "Is it wise?" she asked softly, stroking his fingers as she scanned his face with her eyes. "If we go with your theory, this haunting has taken on elements of possession. Is it safe to just keep ourselves available for that? And if it isn't a haunting...well, this just isn't...healthy," she finished weakly.

Mulder shrugged. "I doubt we're in any danger. I don't feel frightened by any of it," he offered.

"You don't have the common sense to be frightened," Scully commented dryly, curling his fingers protectively over his palm and setting the hand in his lap. She shot him a warning glance as he began to protest. "I'll bring up anecdotal evidence, if need be. Then we'd be here for a month."

Mulder pouted at her. "Thank you for that vote of confidence, Dr. Scully.  Seriously, though, I say we go back to what we're reading. If we watch out for each other, we can probably make sure nothing too dangerous happens.

"But first, I want Bactine," he said with a grin.  "And an ice-cream bar," he finished, his grin becoming wicked around the edges.  He stood up, offered his good hand and pulled her to her feet.

"Bactine you can have. The ice-cream is mine," Scully said firmly as they headed back towards the house.

Mulder held up his bloody palm face up, as if in supplication, and let his mouth slide into another pout, one which said, "I know you can't resist me."

"But Scully, I'm hurt.  Didn't your mother ever tell you that ice- cream is good for owies?"  On top of the pout he gave her his best little boy look.  Scully, determined to resist him if only to show she could, shook her head and glared.  The man's ego was big enough as it was.

"You touch my ice-cream and /I'll/ give you owies. C'mon, Mulder. Let's get going," she said firmly.

He shot her a surprised look, as if he couldn't believe she would deny him anything.  "You must've missed out on the whole 'sharing' section of the kindergarten curriculum, Scully. Either that or you're totally heartless," he grumbled as they went in the back door.

Scully smiled sweetly at him. "Take your pick, Mulder. Make it a damn X-file if you want. But the ice-cream's mine."

-----

Mulder shot Scully a malevolent look as she sat down on the couch with her ice cream bar.  Meanie, he thought.  Won't share her ice cream with an injured man.  With a sigh he worked steadily through the bag of sunflower seeds he'd settled for, and skimmed over the letters as he crunched. He marveled at the depth and length of the missives; with a rueful shake of his head, he realized that he was lucky if he managed one-line responses to most of his e-mail.

Even with the surface reading, the love was there in every line, every word. He almost felt like a voyeur, despite the fact that this had happened decades before he'd even been born. Yet somewhere in the middle of all these letters, an answer lay waiting to be discovered. The fact that they had been set out for him eased his conscience. He pulled one at random, from 1917, and began to read it in earnest.

-----

//August 27, 1917

Beloved Katherine:

"When my arms wrap you round I press/My heart upon the loveliness/That has long faded from the world"

I look at the picture your Mama gave me of you every night, and I swear that it is everything lovely in the world. I am not in the middle of a war, I am not trudging till my feet ache so bad I'd take a mustard bath, and gladly! I am instead lost in you, and all your high, lonely mysteries.

Have I told you that I miss you?

We've covered a great deal of ground. I'm not even going to try and tell you what ground, since that would make the censors whip out the scissors and black ink. Some nights we camp in tents, but when we are near a town we can usually get lodgings with the locals.

The towns are chilling, Katherine. They echo a bit, I swear. There are no young men left at all; the women, the infants and the elderly are left here to fend for themselves. And it is quiet, but not in a comfortable way. It's like everyone is waiting, if you can picture it. Like the stillness right before the thunderstorm. It is a little unsettling.

Tonight Davey and I are sharing a broom closet (that is the approximate dimension of the room, at any rate. I don't actually see a broom!), which means we are in out of the elements. There is even an indoor water closet. The line is long. I thought I'd take the time to write, since I have the time, a flat surface, and bunk mate who is lined up to take advantage of the W.C.

We are getting nearer to our destination. We'll be taking over from a British unit that has been on the lines for three months now. I must admit to a certain amount of trepidation. I know that we will acquit ourselves well, but still, there is so much unknown and unknowable. I can't prepare for what is coming.

I was thinking that when I get home we should set a date for our wedding right away.

The longer I'm here the more I miss you. I want to build us a home, and work a farm, and watch our daughters grow up to have beautiful red hair, just like their mother.

The boys downstairs have gotten some sort of talent show going. We amuse ourselves, and some of the fellows are pretty entertaining. Ira Wright is a fine tenor, and Jubal Washington tells a good story. They are a good group. I'm lucky to be with them. I suppose I should get back to them. I promised to read something to the group. Maybe some Browning.

Good night. Please take care.

I love you.

Daniel//

-----

Mulder shifted in his seat, stretching and twisting like a cat. Because of the censors, and Daniel's own discretion, there were very few details to glean about the war itself. He didn't even know what company the young man was with. But at the same time, he felt a surge of liking for him, a sense of depth. He was intelligent, literate and possessed a sense of humor. And he knew how to love; that alone made Mulder admire him. With a sigh he shuffled through another couple of letters, only settling to read when one pulled at his attention.

-----

Scully settled back into the couch and looked thoughtfully at her half-eaten ice-cream bar.  For the last few minutes, she had resolutely ignored the occasional grumble and glower from Mulder, trying not to gloat as he made a great show of eating his sunflower seeds.  So she'd failed the "sharing" class, had she?  Well she'd see about that.  She held the other half of the bar under Mulder's nose. He looked up from his letters, his eyes focusing on hers.

"What...?" he asked.  She reached for his hand and wrapped his fingers around the stick.

"See? I know how to share," she said.   His mouth fell open, and then he grinned.

"Well, wonders will never cease," he said, and took a big bite.  Ice cream dribbled down his chin.  Scully wiped it away with her fingertips and then licked it off.  She heard his quick intake of breath, felt his eyes search hers out. She finished licking her fingers with slow deliberation.

"Missed some."  Her voice was unbelievably prim. Her eyes were anything but.  Paybacks are hell, she thought.  She met his gaze a moment longer, then turned her attention back to the journal. Mulder just shook his head and took another bite of ice cream.   The book sat unopened on her lap, a strange and awkward weight. She knew she was avoiding picking it up again, despite the odd ache inside that had her brushing her hand over it every few minutes. It had been nice when she had merely felt this as a sort of kinship, but now the thought of something outside of herself pushing at her...it made her rebel at the most fundamental level. She was uncomfortable at best with the thought of such matters. While she believed in life after death, she didn't claim any insight into the details of it. She was a rationalist. She was an empiricist. You couldn't put your hands on a ghost, measure its shape and weight like you could a brain or a heart.

But you saw those girls, a traitorous inner voice chided her. You felt their terror and their suffering. You saw them as they died, and you couldn't measure it, you couldn't rationalize it. You could only feel it until it made you shake apart, until it made you vomit.

But even at its worst, they had been a presence alongside her. They had never crawled inside her, walked around in her skin. They had never invaded her, controlled her.  In some ways, this haunting was a compulsion in line with what Modell had done, and she hated the sense of violation it brought. The potential loss of her free will terrified her almost as much as the journal called her.

Almost.

With a sigh she gave in and opened the book. The words swam into focus.  It was like warm water closing over her head.

-----

//Sept. 9, 1917

The town is so empty, now, with all the young men gone.  Even Daniel's brother, Jacob, is preparing to ship out in a few weeks, leaving Rachel and baby Sarah behind.  I see sadness and fear in Rachel's eyes each time we meet.  I've taken to walking over most days to help with little Sarah.  It eases my mind.  Even after Daniel's been gone for over a year, I miss him.  It is impossible to describe this feeling of longing.  It is the deepest pain, the most overwhelming sadness.

Yesterday I was walking through the orchard and passed under the tree where we first met.  My knees gave way and I sat and wept.  I was glad there was no one to see, for I covered my face with my hands and bawled like a baby.  You must come home soon, my beloved.  Please.//

-----

Scully flipped quickly through the book, skimming the entries until one caught her eye.  The journal looked as if it continued more in this vein, and finished out the year of 1917.  She leaned over and picked up the next book from the coffee table.  Yes, here's where 1918 picked up.  She drifted into the words....

-----

//January 3, 1918

Some Happy New Year this has been.  It began with a snowfall that has stranded us here, away from any news of the war.  No newspaper, no letters.  I can neither send nor receive, and I am increasingly frustrated.

The house is cold; we have firewood, but we're trying to burn it mainly at night.  We've begun living in the kitchen; it's easiest to heat the one room, as opposed to the whole house.  I'm sleeping with Mary Margaret to keep warm.  The girl kicks so, but she does keep the temperature up.

Mama has been baking bread to pass the time.  We've been eating it with the tomatoes we canned last summer.  She's always right; as miserable as it is to do that job, it is wonderful to eat tomatoes while there's snow on the ground.

I've been embroidering linens for my hope chest when the light is strong.  Today I finished the pillowcases for our bed.  The creamiest linen, they are, and I worked the thread through their tops, embroidering our initials into the twining roses I'd already sewn there.  I'm not a very patient seamstress; especially not when it's so cold my fingers ache.  But these turned out so beautifully, even I have to admit it.  Mama and Mary Margaret cooed over them.  Papa merely raised his eyebrows and patted me on the cheek.

"A lucky man," he said, "to have you as a wife!" and then he turned back to his book.  Ah, Papa.

I slipped into the study once the light started to fail and got the Yeats book Daniel gave me.  It's now in my apron pocket, and I've been reading it by firelight this evening.  It's so chilly I've had to keep my gloves on, and it makes writing in my journal difficult now, but without my little books I'd have no company at all.  My heart is lonely enough....//

-----

Scully read entries from each month, noting the number of names in the growing list of dead that Katherine commemorated.  She noted the change of seasons, the comments on clothes, on books, on Katherine's family.  Read about the advancement of the war.  Not much was different from the journals of years past, except that the war was on.  And Daniel was gone.  That alone changed everything.

Her fingers paged restlessly through the small book, finally coming to rest on a single entry in June.

-----

//June 24, 1918

Oh, God.  Daniel.  The news is terrible.  The papers say that we have gone over the top-that the fighting is more severe than it has ever been.  The telegrams come every day to our friends-their loved ones, their sons and husbands and brothers-gone.  Our families, only now healing from the War Between the States, rent apart again like rotten fabric.  I pray every day that the telegram will not come. I am with you, Daniel.  Are you getting my letters?  Can you hear me, feel me, taste me, as I can, you?  Why aren't you writing to me? I am yours forever.//

-----

"Here, Scully, read this," Mulder said, and handed her a letter.  She marked her place in the journal with her finger and took the missive from her partner.  She glanced at the date.  How did he know that this corresponded to the entry she'd been reading in the journal?  Or was it merely coincidence that he handed her this letter at this moment?

-----

//June 16th, 1918

My Dearest:

I'm sorry I haven't been able to write more. I start letters, but by the time they're ready to send off, everything is old news and I've thought of a hundred better things to say. I always have so much to say to you, I sometimes just say it aloud and pretend you can hear. Not too loudly though. I suspect it might put the other men on edge. Thank-you for the tin of hard candies you and your sisters made. You were right.  Had you sent cookies they would have been inedible by the time they arrived here. Not that they'd be all that different from what they're serving now. I swear, there is a place in the 7th Level of Hell reserved for army cooks. I have a confession to make. Some nights, instead of dreaming of you, I find myself envisioning fresh eggs and warm bread that tears instead of crumbling. And meat that is identifiable. Forgive me my unfaithfulness.

It's been raining for two weeks now. The ground is a slogging mess-like the far field on my brother's place, last fall. You sink at every step, and you are never completely dry. If we ever take a honeymoon, Europe is not even to be considered.

It's strange to think of the enemy soldiers so close by. Sometimes, late at night, when the rain isn't too hard, and everyone is settling in, you can hear the German soldiers talking and laughing. You can picture it in your head, really. A bunch of young men like us, playing cards and racing rats (You remember that from my last letter, don't you? Richard is still the undisputed champion. Long may his whiskers wave!) and scratching at the bugs that live cheek- by-jowl with us in the trenches.  Maybe one of the Germans is writing a letter home, to the second-most beautiful girl in the world.

Things are coming to a head, here. The rumor is we're going over the top.  I see the other men writing wonderfully bracing letters home, reassuring their wives and families that all will be well. I love you and respect you too much to pretend. I am disquieted. I suspect part of it is fear. Only a fool feels no fear. I suppose that means I am very wise indeed.

Whatever happens, though, know that I love you. They're such pale, small words to express this depth of feeling. They don't even begin to say all the things that I want to say to you. All the things you are to me.

Alpha and Omega, Katherine, and heaven help me if that's blasphemy, but it's true. I'll come home to you, Katherine. I can't not come home. I owe you a rose.

Pray for us all.

I love you, and your pilgrim soul, Daniel//

-----

Scully felt it happening again, felt the pain, the longing, roll through her like a wave.  Felt her world tilt, her head spin, felt the old book in her hands fade away.  Felt as if it ceased to be outside of her, and instead, she dissolved inside it.

-----

"Mary Margaret, give it to me."  Katherine's younger sister stood at the road, the just-delivered mail clutched in her hand.  Katherine had been watching for the mail truck, and she rushed out begging her sister to let her sift through it, desperate for any word from Daniel. Mary Margaret held the mail behind her back.

"Give you what, Katherine?" she teased.  She knew how Katherine wanted the letters, the letters that were coming fewer and farther between.  And really, she wasn't being cruel.  It was just that everyone was so glum, lately, with this stupid, never-ending war. Nothing fun ever happened any more.

Ever since Daniel left, it felt like the light had gone from her sister. She had faded without him.  She was almost hollow looking, like an egg that had had a tiny hole poked in it and all its insides blown out. Mary Margaret only wanted to see her sister laugh.

Evidently this tactic wasn't the way to win her good humor, for Katherine simply stood at the base of the driveway, under the shadow of the arching lilac, and held out her hand.  Her skin was sallow, the shadows under her eyes the color of bruised plums. Mary Margaret slipped the mail into her palm and watched as Katherine sorted through it, watched as her face fell.  Nothing. Again. Mary Margaret put her hand on Katherine's shoulder.

"It's okay, Kath," she said.  "He'll be back soon."

As she said this, she heard the growl of an automobile making its way slowly up the road. Mary Margaret turned toward the sound, while Katherine stood, head down, staring at the letters, worry and fear etched plainly into her young features.

Mary Margaret held up a hand in greeting as the car drew nearer. The driver didn't return the wave. Mary Margaret felt her stomach twist like the clothes in the wringer she'd used that morning.  She clasped Katherine's hand hard as the car drew to a stop.

The officer stepped down from the passenger seat, put on his hat, and said, "Katherine O'Donnelly?"  She looked up from the letters as if startled to see him there.

His face was grim, his eyes soft with sadness, defeat.  He held out his hand.  A flat, brown envelope lay on his upturned palm.

"I'm sorry, ma'am," he said, and he turned back to the car. Katherine's eyes looked from the letter back to the man.

"What...?" she asked.

"I'm so sorry," he said, and then the car was gone in a plume of dust and fumes.

Mary Margaret 's heart twisted in her breast as she took in the slack gaze of her older sister, the sharp, shallow pants that preceded weeping. Oh dear Lord, no.

Daniel.

No.

She reached out and plucked the letter from her sister's nerveless fingers, then draped her arm around Katherine's shoulders and drew her gently toward the house.

"Come on, Kath," she crooned.  "Let's go find Mama."

-----

//August 23, 1918

No.

No it is not true.  It cannot be true.  I cannot even write it here.

I have burned the telegram, for I know that it lies.  My Daniel is not dead.  He cannot be dead, for my life, too, would be extinguished.  I will wait for you Daniel.  Forever, if I must.  But I will wait for you, my beloved.//

The words stared out at her from the page. For all the denial they held, their very presence sounded like a death knell throughout her body.  Shivering, Katherine put the pen down and crawled into the uncertain comfort of her bed.

-----

The winter wind slashed through the trees, snapping branches with abandon.  The very rosebushes seemed to shiver in the relentless chill of it.  Katherine pulled the shawl around her too-thin shoulders, felt her hair whip free of its pins.  The snow lingered on the ground; it had been so cold that the snow hadn't melted since November.

She was tired of the snow, tired of the bleak sky.  January 1919 had come and another year had passed.  A year without Daniel.  Nearly six months since she had received the telegram.

Edward Spencer had asked her to marry him.  Good, kind Edward, whom she'd known since they were children.  Good, kind Edward, who, it seemed, had loved her more than half his life.  Half his life, and she had never even known-had barely known he had existed at all. She had seen only Daniel, blinded to anyone else.

Edward knew this.  He knew how she felt about Daniel, but he was kind, and he was gentle, and he didn't begrudge her the loving. He seemed to think half her heart was better than none, that they could build something from friendship and loyalty and trust.

She walked out to the orchard, her hair streaming behind her as the wind clawed and tore over her. The fierce bite of it stung her eyes to tears. She found the tree where she'd been picking apples, where she'd first met Daniel. She wrapped her arms around the trunk, and pressed her cheek against the cold, rough bark of the tree. The tears continued, and she didn't even try to pretend it was the wind.

-----

//February 3, 1919

Daniel, where are you?  It's been months, and you have not returned. You must be alive, you must, or I would surely have died.  My heart would have stopped with yours, wouldn't it?

Wouldn't it?

I am beginning to doubt myself, as the days pass.  Beginning to doubt that you are alive.  For if you were alive, wouldn't you have come to me?  Wouldn't you be here with me now, your warm hand clasped in mine as we walked these fields?

Daniel?

Mama says this is for the best, for me to marry Edward.  Marrying him, getting on with my life, this will help me live with my loss. How do you get on? How do you live with loss? I look before me, and missing you stretches out like a road to forever, without end, without respite, without ease. I hate you just a little for it, I think. For leaving, and leaving me alone to try and figure out what to do.

Whatever happens, whether or not I marry, it doesn't matter. You were the sun in my life, the light, the heat, the passion*whether I'm alone or married to Edward, I'm still dead inside, empty. Like the roses are now, waiting for a spring that will never come. Either way, I stay barren. But at least with Edward, I would not be alone.

Please forgive me, but you are not here.  You have not come home. All the other boys have come home, ages ago, to be welcomed by their families, to become part of our lives again.  All but you, Daniel, and the only thing I have had to go on is my belief that you are alive.

I have lost the strength of my convictions.

I walked our land today, the land that was to have been ours. That is ours. All our dreams are buried there.  I feel like I should mark it somehow, mark the small deaths that destroy me every day. But at the same time, it gives me hope. Whatever else has happened, whatever may come, you'll always be a part of me.  Like the trees bury their deep roots in that soil, your soul is buried in mine.

But I can't wed myself to a ghost, Daniel. I can't wait for a dream. I must go on with my life, my beloved.  I will marry Edward, and I will do right by him. I will be a wife to him. I cannot give him love, but I can give him friendship. I can build something from this grief.

I wish you could tell me that it's what you would have wanted. I wish*I wish so many things, and writing them is pointless, because if wishes came true, I'd simply wish you were here.

Please forgive me.//

-----

Katherine stretched slowly in the early summer afternoon, slightly drowsy with the heat of it, her hands moving gracefully over the whitework she was sewing.  Mama had sent her to the porch with it, decreeing that she'd looked too peaked and drawn to be doing the chores, and that she'd best rest and get ready for the "blessed event."

She set aside the sewing, and let her hands caress the gentle swell of her ripening belly. She marveled at the spark of light, the only brightness  in her grayed world. As if aware of her touch, the baby kicked. It had  started this about a week ago. Mama had called it the quickening,  and the word seemed right somehow, as though the baby had  suddenly become a person, a soul. A life ripe with possibilities  and hope, able to jump and flutter and tumble. It had become amazingly, heart-stoppingly real, then. It stopped being "the baby" and had  rapidly become "my baby."

She crooned to it, sang to the little pulse of life that trembled under her hands. In a rush of unreasoning emotion, joy tumbled into despair.

"Oh Daniel," her voice cracked, and the tears that had come so easily these last few months fell yet again, "what am I doing making this baby without you? This was supposed to be ours, our daughter. Our baby."

She wept a little, then wiped away the tears, ashamed. What sort of woman was she, to be carrying one man's child and weeping over another. Yet she couldn't help the tears, or the sorrow. The need was bone-deep, and not even the baby in her belly could begin to fill the emptiness inside.

-----

Scully felt herself drift back to the present slowly.  The room, the old study, began to take shape.  She moved her hand to her belly, feeling for the baby, panicking at the flatness, the emptiness.  Her heart contracted as memory returned.  Not her baby, Katherine's.

Oh, God.

The pain was almost too great to bear.  Her own longing for her lost children.  Katherine's longing for Daniel. The empty ache that had dogged her for so long became a tidal wave, and she thought she might drown in it.

Jesus, she whispered, little more than a breath.  It sounded like a prayer.  Take away this pain.  It is too much for me to carry.  She looked back at the journal, at the entries of love and sorrow.

How did Katherine do it?  How did she live with not knowing?

She remembered Mulder's absence from her life earlier in their partnership.  Remembered her conviction that he was alive.  He had come to her in a dream.  It was the only thing that had kept her going in his absence, when everyone else believed him dead.  She had known differently.  For he had come to her.  Scully wondered if Daniel had done the same for Katherine.

She glanced up as she heard Mulder shuffle into the room, his thoughts years away with Daniel.  She hadn't felt him get up; hadn't realized he'd stepped away.  She watched as he inched toward the sofa, two cans of soda clutched in one hand, the other holding a letter.  As he eased down into the cushions, he glanced up from the letter and really saw her face, the naked loss painted there.  The letter fluttered to the floor.  The cans dropped with a thump onto the carpet.

"Ah, damn, Dana," he breathed, not even realizing he'd shifted to her first name.  He cupped her face in his hands and wiped the tears with his thumbs.  She hadn't realized she'd been crying and she huffed out a soft laugh, made as if to pull away from him.  His hands tightened on her face, capturing her.  His eyes were gentle.

"How did they do it, Mulder?" she asked at last, her voice a ragged sigh.  He knew what she was asking, but had no answer.  He could only remember how he'd felt when she was gone, believed dead; it had been as though some vital part of him had been torn out with her leaving. Like he'd been left to bleed, to die by inches. He had felt utterly, completely alone. The thought of trying to go on without her indefinitely chilled him utterly, making old wounds ache.

"I honestly don't know," he acknowledged.  He rested his forehead against hers and closed his eyes. Her skin felt warm and smooth against his.  He smelled the faintest scent of lavender.

"If this is too hard, Scully..." he started.

"No, Mulder, they need to tell the story.  Let's let them tell it."  He leaned back.  Dropped his hands from her face. She met his gaze quietly, steadily. He took her hand.

They continued reading together.

-----

Katherine felt the soft tickle of grass on her ankles, heard the dirt crunch under her shoes.  She knew that if she were to turn around, she'd see the house behind her, the early afternoon sun turning its soft yellow paint nearly white.

Instead she stepped onto the path to the orchard, a bag for gathering apples slung over her shoulder, a walking stick in her left hand.  The baby kicked, turning restlessly in her swollen belly.  The baby was too big to somersault anymore, and Katherine missed the wild fluttering movement.  But this meant she was getting bigger, nearer to being born.

She hadn't told anyone that she knew the baby was a girl, but she felt it to her core. Already she called her by name, crooning Elizabeth. Gift of God. She stopped on the path, rubbed her belly, circling her hand over the distended fullness. Her daughter.  Katherine laughed aloud, at the thought of her busy little girl, always moving, always kicking. Just like her mama.

But she hadn't been that way, not for a long time.  It'd been too easy to stay inside, to fall into a stupor after lunch, to let the day slip away into nothing.  She'd spent too many afternoons that way, hiding in the dark rooms, avoiding the world in a pretense of getting ready for baby.  She couldn't do it any longer.  Like the baby, she had grown restless, impatient as the baby as gotten bigger.  She couldn't sit still any more and wait. Memory and loss were making her insane, and that was just no good for the baby.  Just not fair to Edward.

Everyone had cautioned her about these walks.  You're too far along, they'd say.  It's not good to go walking alone.  What if you twist an ankle?  What if you fall?

But I must be alone, she thought.  I must get out of the house, away from mama, away from Mary Margaret.  Away from their prying eyes, their solicitous commands.  Lie down, Katherine.  Eat your vegetables, Katherine.  How'd you sleep, Katherine?  You'd think I was sick, not pregnant!

If Daniel were here, he'd shoo them all away, tell them I can take care of myself, then proceed to badger me, too.  She smiled at the thought even as she wiped at her eyes. "Daniel.  God help me.  I miss you so much." She realized with a start that she'd spoken out loud.

The wind felt crisp and cool today, and the baby kicked again. Sometimes it tickled.  Sometimes it hurt.  Katherine knew she'd be glad when the baby was finally born.  Glad to have her body back. Happy to be able to bend over, to tie her apron, to buckle her shoes. Such simple things, really.  But her life had been reduced to the simple.  To eating, to sleeping, to getting through the day without Daniel.

The orchard was so beautiful the afternoon, with the light coming through the trees.  It had gotten a bit chilly out, with the wind.   Fall was finally here, and she felt her heart gladden.  She had swelled all summer long as the baby grew inside her small frame, tenting under long dresses and those awful, scratchy petticoats.  At least she'd been able to put away her corset.  Thank god.  She could breathe so much better without it.  And now the cool air felt good on her swollen ankles, her puffy face.

She'd been craving apple pie.  And the apples from the orchard trees made the best pies, tangy and tart.  And Mama had such a light hand with pastry.  Katherine quietly and ruefully despaired of ever being able to equal her in that regard.

She stepped into the orchard and reached for an apple, pulling it from a low hanging branch, and dropping it into the bag she'd slung over her shoulder.  It was impossible to carry a basket now, her belly sticking out so far, and no hips left to balance it on.

She remembered the day she had met Daniel, so long ago. She'd been picking apples, then, too.  Climbing the ladder.  Filling her apron.  Dropping them in the basket.  Thunk.  Thunk.

Now they slid into the bag with a shush.  She could feel the tug against her shoulder as apples contacted the canvas. She paused, leaned against the tree, resting her forehead against the bark.

She wanted to pound her fists into the unyielding trunk, beat and wail until her hands were bloody, until she hurt as much on the outside as she did inside. How could he have left her? What a mockery, to live in the middle of the garden they'd planted, breathe their roses day and night, sit in the gazebo they'd built, but without him, always alone. She pressed her face hard against the tree, let the uneven surface roughen her cheek and lips, and hated Daniel with an intensity that left her breathless. "How could you make me love you, and leave me?" she whispered against its bark.

Her husband's face flashed before her eyes.  Poor Edward. Katherine pulled away from the tree, drew in a steadying breath.  He was a good man, a kind soul.  And he respected her.  He always quietly listened to what she had to say. It wasn't the challenging, laughter- filled conversations she'd known with Daniel, but they were, at least, friends. It was more than she'd expected to have, more than she'd expected to feel after the telegram had arrived.

She was so grateful to Edward in many ways, and at the same time she felt unworthy of him. A man deserved more than just friendship in a marriage. Edward deserved so much more. Her hands drifted over her swollen belly, back to the ache in the small of her back, and for a moment she pictured Daniel's hands there, easing the pain away. Strong, courageous, faithful Daniel. The memory of his touch moved through her like summer sun.  It always would. She shook her head, dispelling the memory, and reached for an apple, tottering precariously onto tiptoe, swaying as her center of gravity shifted, knocked her a little off-kilter.

"Here, let me help you," a voice murmured from behind.  Longing clutched her heart, and she knew that it was only her imagination, knew it because she heard his voice always, waking and dreaming. They talked often, in her head, in her heart.  She continued reaching for the apple.  Her fingers closed around the ripe, red fruit; her heart fluttered to stillness when suddenly there was another, larger hand around hers.

"Katherine," he whispered, his voice a caress.  She turned her head, looked upward into his eyes.  He stood next to her, his body brushing hers, as solid and real and as full of life as the trees around her.

Her blood sang  insanely through her veins, and there was a ringing in her ears, like church bells when the funeral procession passed.

"Daniel?" she whispered, even as she slid toward the ground, vision narrowing to sudden blackness, then shattering into a million pieces that bled a searing light.

-----

"Oh, my God...Daniel?  Daniel, is it really....   Oh, Katherine, Katherine...what's wrong with her?  Is she okay?" He saw Jenny O'Donnelly rushing at him, her fine Irish face three different shades of white as her wide gaze shifted from him to Katherine lying slackly in his arms.  The screen door slammed behind her as she ran down the steps.  He worked on instinct, only thinking of Katherine's safety, unable to fathom the weight of her pregnant body, the unthinkable weight of the slim gold band on her left hand.  His Katherine needed help, and that was all that mattered.

"Daniel?" Jenny asked again as she reached them. She was crying now, her face red and splotchy with fear and grief and wonder. "Oh, Daniel, it is you," she wept, touching his face, touching his hand, looking at her daughter.

"But how...?" she asked, and then, disjointedly, "Oh, Katherine, what happened?"

"She fainted," Daniel offered, pushing past the distraught woman into the house. He carried his fragile armful gently up the stairs, directed by Jenny into Katherine's room.  He set her down on the counterpane, realized with a start that this was the first time he'd ever been in this room, that it was her childhood room. Vague eyes took in every detail, noting that it was clean and neat and utterly divested of any hint of his beloved. She no longer lived there. She lived somewhere else. His eyes were drawn to the awkward swell of her belly, the cruel glint of gold on her hand. She lived elsewhere. With her husband.

Jenny had said nothing, too busy pulling off Katherine's shoes, unlacing her dress.  She looked up at him finally, stricken,  still crying. "Daniel," she said, "go downstairs and get a towel.   Soak it in cool water and bring it up here to me.  Please."   She touched his arm again, and then went back to her daughter.   He did as she bid, hoping that they were alone in the house,  knowing that he could not bear to meet with the rest of the family,  their anguished eyes. No matter what words he used, he could not  explain his absence, or his more damning presence. The living  always resented the dead come back to life.

Daniel tried rushing to the kitchen, but collapsed halfway down the staircase, knees buckling.  Katherine, oh Katherine.  He covered his too-thin face with scarecrow hands, and wept.  Oh, no.  No.  He heard Jenny come up behind him, felt her heat as she sat next to him on the stairs.  Felt her hands pulling his away from his face.  Her small hands lifted his head with ruthless pity.

"Oh, Daniel," she breathed.  "I'm so sorry.  I'm so sorry." She pulled him to her and they cried together.  He felt her small body, so like Katherine's, heave against him. Moments passed, and then she pulled back, wiping her eyes on her apron.

"Daniel, we thought you were dead, we got a telegram...."   She trailed of, made a helpless gesture.  Her face was a mixture of despair and shame.

He nodded. He wanted to tell her that he knew, that he understood, but he didn't have the words, couldn't find the words, there were no words. How could he explain shell shock and misidentified bodies and a catatonic state to a woman whose daughter had just fallen to flinders at the sight of him? But she seemed to see it in his eyes, in the bones that threatened to break through skin stretched thin to the point of gauntness. She touched the scar on his neck, the one that showed above his collar.  Her eyes grew huge in her tear-streaked face.  He could see her wondering how many more there were.  He would not tell her. He pulled her gentle fingers away from his ruins, clasped them gently between them.

"Daniel, she waited for you.  We told her you were dead, but she waited.  For months, she waited.  She refused to mourn, said she knew you weren't dead.  But months had passed, and all the other men came home, and we heard nothing more....   Even your brother, Rachel, they did their grieving.  We all thought...."  She looked down at her hands. Guilt and shame and just a hint of defiance were in the bow of her wind-burned neck.

"We didn't know, we didn't believe her.  We told her it was for the best to marry, that she wouldn't be so lonely." She looked up at him again. "She was lost without you, Daniel; we didn't know what else to do," she finished, the tears spilling again. He reached out to wipe them away.

He tried to find the anger he knew he should be feeling, but he could not bring himself to be angry with Jenny.  She loved Katherine, only wanted what was best for her. Had he truly died, it was what he would have wanted, too. He wished he had the strength to tell her that. But now, right now, he just wanted to leave, to get out.  He longed to have a moment to think, so he could decide what to do. A moment in which to remember Katherine's hand under his, warmer, softer than it had been in his memories.  Warmer and softer and better than she had been when he half-remembered her in his battle fugue.  When the memory of her touch, her laugh, her quicksilver mind were the only things real in his universe.

Jenny was staring at him. He wondered what she saw in his eyes, if they told her that he'd killed and watched men killed until he couldn't, just couldn't bear to even just be any longer. He wondered if she could see the memory of five-nines, mud thick with blood, and the hazy coil of mustard gas. He'd learned that there were many ways for a man to die.

He'd just found another.

"I should go," he said quietly.  She moved to stop him, her hand on his arm, mouth open to say something.  He held up his hand to stay the words.  "No, Jenny, I must go."  He pulled out the rose he'd cradled between his jacket and his shirt, slightly crushed from his mad hurry to bring Katherine safely home. He could feel where the thorns had pressed through broadcloth into his chest. The pain anchored him, steadied him. He handed her the flower.

His insides were churning, like he'd missed the scramble to get his mask in place in time and the corrosive gas had eaten its way into him. The shrapnel of loving. The thorn-bites stung smartly.  He found himself wishing he'd just died after all, never having to return to this. It would have been so much easier. So much kinder. Jenny looked at him, holding the rose gingerly, eyes filling  yet again with tears.

"Give her the rose for me, Jenny.  Tell her that I still love her.  That I forgive her." The last almost wasn't a lie at all. "I promised her the rose. She'll know what it means." he whispered, as he stood and made his way down the stairs.  He left her there crying.  He left his Katherine to make her life with another man.  A man whose name he didn't even know. She'll know what it means, he whispered again, letting the porch door swing shut behind him. True love never dies.

No matter how much you might wish it to.

-----

She awoke, finally, to feel a cool cloth over her forehead, to feel a soft hand holding hers. The hand was tender, soothing, the same hand that had nursed her through whooping cough and measles. There was no comfort in it now. No comfort, for it was her mama's and not Daniel's.  She reached up, pushed the cloth away, but didn't even try to open her eyes.

"Mama," she said, voice like stone.  "Daniel is alive."  She felt Jenny's hand reach out, smoothe back wet hair from her chilled forehead.

"I know, love.  I know." Jenny's voice was rough and sweet and broken.

Katherine felt the stone move inward, eating into her, turning her granite bit by bit.  Daniel.  Alive.

And Edward, her husband, out in the fields with her father.

The baby kicked in her belly, hard. Not all stone, then. Still some flesh and blood.  Elizabeth, she crooned silently. Oh, Elizabeth, what are we going to do?  She touched the hard curve of her distended belly, and felt her mama reach up to cover her hands. Katherine opened her eyes at that. Jenny had been crying.  She looked shattered. Katherine wanted to offer something, some sort of comfort, but she had nothing left to give.

"Daniel wanted me to give you this," Jenny offered, taking the rose from her lap.  Katherine closed her eyes, opened them again to see the rose before her still, rich and red and damning.  She smiled brokenly, clutched at the stem, glad for the pain of the thorns, glad for any feeling at all. The twisting, burning anguish that had held her hostage for so long had been replaced by something darker, something infinitely deeper. She thought she might suffocate in the stillness.

"He said that you'd know what it meant," Jenny finished, her voice a thick, tear-blurred whisper.  Katherine heard the words and the stillness was shattered. She knew then that the darkness, the stone, had been the easy part.

She had not believed.

She had been unfaithful to her heart.

She was broken.

She had not believed.

She would never stop paying for her lapse of faith.

"It means that true love never dies," she offered, and the stone was gone.  Her mama trembled at the sound of her voice.  She struggled up to her elbows, hair wet and wild about her face. "Mama," she whispered, harshly. Her mama flinched again, avoided her eyes. She wondered what Jenny saw there.  "Tell no one what you saw today."

Jenny reached out to her, tried to pat at her, soothe her like one would soothe a child. "Katherine, no," she said, "no*."  Her voice was sad, so sad, so full of pity, but Katherine shook her head, unyielding to the tenderness offered, resolute against the softness of sympathy.

"Mama, I'm married now.  I'm pregnant with Edward's child.  I must do what is right by him." Katherine knew she was pleading, knew she was begging. She saw Jenny waver, and pushed harder. She had to have this. Had to take the penance God had given.

O ye of little faith.

"Mama!  I promised him for better or for worse. If he were to know*."  Her mama looked at her then, clever hands nervous in her lap.  Katherine watched as Jenny's shoulders hunched under the weight of secrecy.  She felt it too, if only a shadow of it.

Jenny sighed.  Katherine knew she had wanted so much more for her.  But God had played his hand.  And now she must play hers.

"For better or worse," Jenny repeated softly, colorlessly.

Katherine nodded, took her mother's hands and it was a pact between them, sealed as solidly by tears as any oath sworn by blood. She must go on, move forward. There was no looking back. Only think what had become of Lot's wife.

Katherine had been ready for better or worse.

She just hadn't known worse would come so soon.

-----

They were still holding hands, the heat of the late afternoon settling around them like a blanket. The silence was a low hum that vibrated against them, set their teeth on edge.

"Goddamn," Mulder swore softly, violently, his voice frayed by emotion.

"Goddamn," Scully echoed, her face wet with tears yet again.

"Scully, they...he... Shit." Mulder gave up trying to speak, trying to articulate the loss that gaped like a wound inside him. "I give up. I just fucking give up!" He was up and away and in the kitchen before she could even draw a clear breath.  She found him rummaging through the fridge, pulling out the makings of dinner.

"Mulder, what's the matter?" she begged as he shoved past her to the counter. "What are you doing?"

"Making us something to eat," he replied evenly, beginning to chop carrots with a vengeance. "A chicken salad okay with you?"

Scully opened and shut her mouth, at a loss over how to deal with him. Now she knew what he had felt like, all those times she'd clamped down on her emotions, evaded his questions with ruthless guile.

"Mulder, don't you think we should talk about what's just happened here? Compare notes? Sort things out?" she demanded, feeling strangely at a loss in the face of his desertion.

He stopped chopping, knife tip digging into the cutting board. She could see the tendons on his arm strain, the muscles pump and flex with tension. "Give me time, Scully, give me some time, okay? After dinner. Please." His voice was harsh, almost angry, but it was the plea underneath that won her, wrung at her. She reached out, tilted his face up so she could see his eyes.

They were darker than they'd ever been, and empty to the point of aching. She understood it then, saw the ghost of Daniel's loss mixed up with all the times Mulder had been forced to mourn her. Her abduction. Her dying. This last, latest defection, when she'd tried to tender her resignation.

"Oh, Mulder," she said softly, her hand gentle under his chin, keeping the fragile connection in place. "Chicken salad sounds just fine."

-----

Dinner was quiet. They ate wrapped in the silence of their thoughts, with nothing more than a 'pass the salad dressing' exchanged between them. Scully nodded him towards the living room, and cleared the table alone. She was very thorough, knowing that this would be their last night there, feeling a need to leave the place unmarked. She hoped it gave Mulder enough time.

He was sitting in shadow, the last of the sun slanting through the window and puddling on the floor at his feet. He held the rose in one hand, the letters in the other, as though weighing them. "He went on, you know. He lived a life without her-almost. Not really, though. He was never really alive without her."

His words slid ghost-like through the darkness and bright, curled inside and haunted her. She saw in them the allegory for his own loss, his own despair. Heard the echo of longing in the words "without her."

"She felt the same. The journal entries after that are*empty. Daily routine, mother things, housewife things, but not Katherine things. No poetry. No joy.  It's like she set that part of herself aside, like she*." Scully floundered, trying to find the words.

"Died." Mulder's voice was harsh, cracked with grief. "She died, he died. Walking around dead, pretending to be alive. How absolutely, fucking horrifying." The swear word jarred, tore at her. It was said with such anger, such venom. The intensity of it frightened her.

"Mulder?"

"I'm so jesus-fucking tired of walking around dead, Scully," he said at last.

There was nothing she could say to that.

He held the letters aloft, letting the last of the light flare against the soft, sepia paper.

"There are just over 30 letters here, from 1920 to 1938. Some are from Europe, some are from the U.S., two are from Canada.  They are polite, like old friends talking about things that barely matter. He sounds like a goddamned travel writer. He mentions books he's read, sends her snippets of poetry, tells he what he's doing...but Daniel's gone, you know? The man he was just curled up and died."

He thumbed through the letters, opened one at random, began to read.

"Toronto is a busy place. I've managed to find work here in warehouse, manual labor. Long hours, but I enjoy the work. It feels good to be using my hands again. It's just plain good to be working. The library here is excellent. I managed to find an old favorite. Do you remember this one?"

Mulder's reading paused, his voice rough and deep. A long shuddering breath inhaled and exhaled, and Scully sat helpless as he read, as he continued.

"The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told; I hunger to build them anew and sit on a green knoll apart, With the earth and the sky and the water, re-made, like a casket of gold  For my dreams of your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart."

The silence was deafening, and quickly shattered. He threw the letters down in disgust, set the rose down with infinite care. "How the hell could she not believe in him? How the hell could she not wait? How the hell could she just walk away?"

Tears clawed down his voice, and she saw him rise from the seat, pace the room in long, agitated strides. "How the hell could she?" he cried again, and she heard, clear as anything, "How the hell could you?"

She didn't even see him leave, locked in her private shame. So many times she had left him behind, so much worse than his little disappearances and dodges.  He had run in pursuit, while she had run away. Mulder, I'm fine, echoed in her head like an indictment. That, perhaps, had been the greatest sin of all, all the times she'd been so afraid she'd pulled away, left him alone not by circumstance but by cowardly, beggarly choice.

She heard the door to his room slam shut, pulling her from the morass of her self-blame. Without conscious volition, she pulled  a journal out of the small pile, and followed him up the half-lit  staircase, stained rose and gold by the sunset.

She could hear his weeping through the three inches of wood that separated them. A part of her longed to open the door, to offer him comfort, but she didn't have the strength. Instead, she sat down against the door, and opened the journal to the last entry. A small, yellowed paper fluttered out. She knew, without looking, that it was Daniel's obituary. Knew, without even trying, that he had died in Toronto, in an accident, in the warehouse where he'd worked. The senselessness of it was an old ache, pale beside the overwhelming grief of her partner.

She tried to read the last entry. Her voice wouldn't co-operate, and she had to cough and clear her throat twice before she could proceed.

"When you are old and Grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars."

For a time there was only drowsy hum of night insects, her harsh breathing and the final shudders of Mulder's weeping. At last she spoke.

"Mulder, she loved him, she really, really loved him. But she was afraid, and she was alone, and she didn't know what to do, couldn't trust her heart...but she never stopped loving him, never stopped." She pressed her flushed face against the wood.

"I'm so sorry. So very sorry," she whispered in a broken voice.  She didn't know if she was Katherine speaking to Daniel, or Scully speaking to Mulder.

The silence continued. She dragged herself from the floor, and headed for her bedroom.

-----

The night air was tinged with the scent of magnolias, of roses.  The cicadas droned in the in the soft night; the lightning bugs flickered and flared in the magnolia trees below.  Scully pulled the brush through her hair.  98...99...100.  She would miss this ritual, she thought as she lowered the brush, laid it gently on the dresser. Would miss the brush and the mirror.  Would miss the rose damask spread on the bed, the view from the windows.  Would miss Katherine, she thought, as she slipped off her robe.

She heard the bathroom door close down the hall.  Mulder, she thought, getting ready for bed.  She'd miss that, too.  The little sounds that were him, the sounds that were muffled by hotel room walls and doors, but laid open to her here, in this old haunted house. He had not come to her tonight, not since he had locked himself in his room, weeping.  She pressed her hand to her heart, took a breath. Thought of going to him.  Then remembered the locked door, and turned, instead, to the bed.

Life doesn't always give you a second chance, she thought.  The words took on new meaning now.  They chimed in her head as she pulled the covers around her.  The moonlight slanted through the window, rendered almost invisible by the golden light of the globe lamp at her elbow.  Scully stroked the cover of the journal where it lay on the bedside table.  She'd read the end of it.  Now she must go back a few pages and read the entries she'd dreaded since she read the Yeats poem outside Mulder's door.  She opened the soft cover and began thumbing through the pages.

-----

//June 28, 1938

I can hardly record it here, hardly make it real.  My Daniel, gone.  I felt it the moment it happened.  Those funny flashes I get from time to time, those little knowing.  Papa used to call say I had Faerae blood, used to laugh at how it didn't show until after Elizabeth was born.  Elizabeth, all grown now, my little Faerae girl.

I knew it, I felt it.  I was in the kitchen cleaning up from breakfast. Edward had gone to work, kissing me on the brow as is his custom. My sweet, patient friend.  How has he lived with me all these years? And how will he live with me now?  For I thought I was dead before, but I was still half-alive.  Now, with Daniel gone....

I was reaching across the table to pick up the bowl left over from Jennifer's oatmeal.  I swear, she looks just like Mama; the name is so fitting.  I know I keep writing things that are off the subject.  I know it.  It's just that the subject is so awful, so unbelievable.  My Daniel.  Killed by a load of lumber crashing down upon him in that warehouse in Toronto.  Not by poison gas or gunfire.  Not in this new war, building.  Not even of old age.  He was still young, healthy.  Taken by an accident.  It's all so senseless.

I was reaching across the table when he appeared to me, there, as he had appeared when I first met him, all power and grace, chestnut hair falling in his eyes, and he reached out for me and smiled.

"Daniel," I whispered.

"True love never dies," he said, and he smiled that smile, and then I was looking at the wall behind him, looking at the spot he had just been in, feeling lost because he was there one second, and then gone.

I dropped the bowl.  It shattered at my feet and I remembered how I felt all those years ago when he came back, when all that darkness shattered into a million pieces of light. I was lucky this time.  When I fell, the chair caught me, and I didn't make it to the floor.  The irony was not lost on me that, this time, it was a piece of furniture, and not Daniel, that saved me.

I reached for him, but of course I was too late.  I thought, here is my heart, Daniel. Take me with you. This time, take me with you.

I called Rachel as soon as I could.   She didn't ask how I knew, just began weeping softly and gave me the number of the foreman of the warehouse.  I had to wait for several minutes to speak with him; he was already attending to the business of death.//

-----

//July 2, 1938

 How do I even begin to write these words?  For it has happened, the day I dreaded for so many years.  The day I buried my Daniel is slowly fading into night.  There is no point in staying awake, in putting off the close of day, for he is truly gone.  With war, at least, there was hope, even if I forgot near the end. Now I know he will never return.

I had Daniel shipped back to Fredericksburg, had the men dig his grave on the strip of land my father gave us, within view of our apple tree.  No one questioned my decision; no one asked why he wasn't being buried in the cemetery at the church.  Jacob took Matthew, his oldest boy, went to meet the driver from the warehouse somewhere in New York.  It was kind of the driver to come that far, to bring Daniel back onto American soil.  Jacob and Matthew were silent the day after their long drive.  They had returned home in the middle of the night, having taken Daniel to their house so we could prepare him for burial.

I went over at dawn, found Rachel and Sarah already bathing him by lamplight.  Jacob had taken the boys out to start their chores. Edward stayed at home with the girls; he touched my hand softly as I left, his eyes sad, his mouth soft.  I think I smiled at him, said something, I don't know what. Kind, good-hearted Edward.

Rachel and Sarah were not surprised by my presence; Rachel merely nodded to me and handed me the rag and the bowls.

I thought that morning in the gazebo right after Daniel went away was the worst morning of my life.  I was wrong.  This morning was beyond awful, beyond cruel.  For then, I saw the body of my love, fully, for the first time.  One of the greatest ironies of my life, that I should become acquainted with Daniel so intimately only after his death.

Death had not been gentle with Daniel, any more than life had.  His body, already scarred from his days overseas, was terribly bruised, terribly broken.  My beautiful Daniel, reduced to nothing more than simple flesh.  It was a shameful thing, and it would have been impossible to look at had it been anyone but him.

I found my eyes dry, my hands steady as I bathed him.  Behind me, Sarah lit another lamp and began singing, as if to drive out the grief.

The water is wide, I can't cross o'er And neither have I wings to fly Give me a boat that can carry two And both shall row, my love and I

It was comforting to hear the words, comforting to hear Sarah's voice, so light and lovely, carry the tune through the house as the first rays of the sun crackled through the windows.  I imagined that Daniel would have liked to hear it, to hear his niece sing the old song his brother had taught her, the old song from his childhood.  I wondered if he could hear it, and felt the tears come, the tears I had denied myself all those years ago.

Oh love be handsome, and love be kind Gay as a jewel when first it is new But love grows cold and waxes old And fades away like the morning dew

"Katherine," Rachel said.  I looked at her.

"What would you like to dress him in?"  I realized I hadn't thought of this.  In the confusion of his death, in having to trust others, so far away, to get him home to me, I'd never thought*.  She must have seen the look of utter despair that crossed my face.  She put her hand on my arm.  Sarah's voice dropped to a whisper in the background.

Give me a boat that can carry two And both shall row, my love and I And both shall row, my love and I

"I have just the thing," she said, and she left the room.  I looked down at my hands, resting on Daniel's arm, saw the white sheet draped across his hips in an attempt to preserve his dignity. There was no dignity in death, only emptiness and awkward silences. Sarah stopped singing and all I could hear was the waking-up noises of the birds.

"Sarah," I said, glancing at her.  She looked so sad.  I returned the soft, wet cloth to the bowl and went to her.  She wrapped her arms around me and we held each other, two women, made family by our love for one man.

"Oh, Katherine," she said, and I felt her tears slip down the scooped neck of my cotton dress.

"I know," I whispered, and we stayed in our embrace until Rachel returned.  I heard her footfall in the doorway, turned to see what she had brought.  It was an old suit, one I had never seen before.  It must have been several years old, by the cut and the fabric, but it was a lovely blue color.  It would flatter him, I thought, and I stepped from Sarah's arms to take it from her.

"Thank you," I whispered.

"It's one of Jacob's," she replied.

"He got too fat for it," she continued, and I glanced sharply at her. The look on her face as she said it was too much for me.  Suddenly we were giggling, like girls in church, holding our hands over our mouths, tears streaming from our eyes, trying to hold back the laughter and only making it come harder.

Laughing in the face of death, I thought.   Laughing at the fact that we are here, at dawn, laying out Daniel for burial, putting him in a suit that his brother had outgrown on Rachel's good cooking.  It was too much to bear, this idea that life could be funny in the face of such pain, yet we couldn't stop laughing.  Even Sarah, who had looked askance at us when we started, had joined in. It was unimaginable, and yet, I could almost hear Daniel laughing, too.

Within the hour, we had dressed Daniel, had made him as presentable as we could.  I had brushed his hair, had kissed his sweet, beautiful mouth. No hint of blackberries, but the memory was enough.

"My love," I said, as Rachel pulled Sarah from the room.

"Let's go," she said to her daughter quietly.  Sarah watched for a moment as I took Daniel's hand and then followed her mother to the back of the house.

"Daniel," I whispered, "wherever you are, wait for me." For the first time since he'd given it to me, I took my locket off.  I had put my picture in it last night after the girls had gone to bed, while Edward smoked his cigar on the porch.  I slipped the locket around Daniel's neck.

"Think of me, my love. Think of me in the roses."  I straightened his tie, smoothed his hair, and kissed him again.

"Rachel, Sarah," I called.  A few moments later, they came back into the room.

"I'm going to get the girls ready for school.  The priest should be here mid-morning."  Rachel nodded.

"Who all will be there?" Sarah asked.

"Your family, my mother and I," I said.  Sarah clasped her hands in front of her, leaned back against her mother.  The understanding in her eyes was far too adult.  Maybe everyone understands longing, I thought.  Maybe everyone understands love.

I touched Sarah's soft cheek, squeezed Rachel's hand, and started the walk through the fields to my house, where my daughters would be waking and wanting their breakfast.  Where my husband would be reading the paper, listening to the radio.

Edward had known that I needed to do this alone, had told the girls that I was going to help prepare an old friend for burial, had answered their questions patiently so I wouldn't have to.  Ah, Edward, you deserve so much more than I can give you, I thought as I closed the door behind me. Always making the better from my worse.

The sun had crested the hill; the trees Jacob and the boys had planted this spring looked young and strong in the early morning light.  I was grateful for this sign of life; like our laughter earlier it helped me see past the pain in my chest, to see past the endless, lonesome road before me.//

-----

Scully closed the book, marking the page with her finger. Her eyes burned with dryness, all tears already wept.  How did Katherine survive that? How did anyone survive that?  To have lost him three times, it was unbearable.  It was so unfair.  She heard the bedsprings squeak in Mulder's room as he shifted in the bed.  To have lost Mulder once had nearly been her undoing.  But to lose him again, and again.  It was unimaginable.  She took a deep breath, held it for a moment.  The heady smell of roses washed over her and she sighed.

She felt the weight of the door he'd shut between them, all the words she's barricaded herself with. Losing each other, again and again. "Stupid," she whispered as she opened the book and began reading again.

-----

//Edward and the children were gone when the priest came.  I had arranged to walk Mama over to Rachel and Jacob's, to accompany the casket as the men carried Daniel to his final resting-place. Mama met me at the bottom of the stairs as I made ready to leave.

"Katherine," she said, "I'm so sorry."  I wrapped my arms around her.  She felt so small, now, so small without Papa to bolster her up. There was pain in her eyes, and understanding.  I remembered the day Papa died; I knew she still pined for him.  Her Liam.  My Daniel.  Both of us widows.  I knew now what she felt when she awoke that first morning alone.

"Just a minute," I said, and I picked up the book of Yeats from the shelf in Papa's study.  She smiled at me as I handed it to her to carry.

"But what will you carry?" she asked.  I picked up the small cloth package that had been resting next to the book.  She glanced down, blinked back tears.  I heard her sharp intake of breath, saw her eyes search for mine.

"Yes," she said.  I drew the pillowcases to me, smoothed the blue ribbon I'd tied around them.  My initials entwined there with Daniel's.  The faded embroidery caught the light as it filtered through the window and she took my hand.

We started our walk to Rachel and Jacob's house, stopping only at the gazebo to pick one of the red roses that grew there, and a few of the white. Mama smiled as I did this, took the whites I offered and let me keep the red. Then she took my hand again as we started walking down the path, through the orchard to meet Daniel. Here, I thought, the journey will end.  We will close the circle we'd opened so many years ago.

"Have your hankie?" I asked.  Mama laughed and pulled two hankies out from the bosom of her dress.

"I came prepared," she said, and we laughed quietly together.

As the priest read from the bible, I fingered the rose in my hands. The last rites were administered there in the bright, strong sunshine, just down from the apple orchard, in the Virginia tidewater where we'd met.  On our land, the land my father had given us for our marriage.  I listened as the priest eulogized Daniel, a man he had never known.  The eulogy was short, and too general for my taste.  I would have said it differently, but then I knew Daniel better than anyone else had.

I listened to the creek chatter as I mumbled the appropriate response to the call for the Lord's Prayer.  I watched the birds wheel overhead as we sang the funeral hymn.  It wasn't a Catholic song; it was one I'd learned in school as a girl, from a friend of mine who was a Baptist.  I thought I had forgotten it; yet it came to me the night that Daniel died, just as I was on the edge of sleep.  I knew it was his way of saying goodbye.

I come to the garden alone While the dew is still on the roses And the voice I hear falling in my ear The Son of God discloses

And He walks with me And He talks with me And He tells me I am his own And the joy we share as we tarry there None other has ever known

He speaks and the sound of His voice Is so sweet the birds hush their singing And the melody that he gave to me There in my heart is ringing

And He walks with me And He talks with me And He tells me I am his own And the joy we share as we tarry there None other has ever known

I'd stay in the garden with Him Though the night around me be falling But he bids me go; through the voice of woe His voice to me is calling

And He walks with me And He talks with me And He tells me I am his own And the joy we share as we tarry there None other has ever known

Mama had already started on her second hankie by the time we sang the last line.  Mine stayed where it was, tucked into my sleeve at the wrist of my dress.  The brook and the birds and the memories of our garden were comfort enough.

Then it was time to push the dirt over him.  I stepped forward, dropped the rose into the grave, then knelt and let the pillowcases fall softly.  I felt my head spin, and then the soft doves of Mama's hands landed on my shoulders.  It strengthened me enough to drop in the first handful of dirt, and then Rachel and Sarah were there with Mama, pulling me back so the men could start shoveling in earnest. I had pulled one petal off the rose before I dropped it in.  I clutched it now in my hand, smelling its slight fragrance as the dirt began pouring over the simple wooden coffin.

I stayed until the only thing left of Daniel was a mound of dirt, glowing rich brown in the morning sunshine.  The others had left me there, left me to say goodbye once and for all.  But I couldn't.  I couldn't say goodbye because I know we'll meet again, my love. Somehow.  Somewhere.

True love never dies.

-----

The petal fell like a drop of blood onto Scully's nightgown.  Old now, and sepia colored, but preserved by the pages of the book.  She could see the place where it had stained the paper, so long had it lain there.

Scully stroked the petal lightly, then returned it to its proper place, closed the journal.  Set it back in its nesting place in the enameled box.  Extinguished the light and pulled the old damask over her shoulders.  She felt the longing spear through her, and thought again of going to Mulder.  Remembered the weeping, the locked door. She sighed as she drifted off to sleep, listening to the cicadas drone, the story of Katherine and Daniel whispering through her heart.

-----

He was waiting for her in the gazebo. He was tall and strong and utterly beautiful, looking exactly as he had the day his hands had spanned her waist and he had lifted her from the tree. She realized, with a thrill of joy, that she was once again the girl he'd known, untouched by war or death or marriage or birth.

"You waited for me," she said, coming to sit beside him on the bench.

He slipped an arm about her waist. "I waited," he agreed, smiling.

She buried her face in the curve of his arm, smelling him, feeling him, knowing him even after so many years apart. "I missed you. Every day, I missed you. I'm so sorry. So very sorry. I should have had faith. I should have believed."

His hand was soft on her face, forcing her to look up at him. His eyes were gentle.

"You were frightened, you were alone, and life had to go on. There's nothing to be sorry for. I'm sorry that you spent a lifetime mourning me. I wish you could have been happier. I always loved your smile."

"I'm happy now," she replied at last. "I'm happy now."

He pulled the pins and combs from her hair, buried his face in the deep red tresses, smelling her, feeling her, knowing her even after so many years apart.

"So am I," he breathed against her, kissed the tender skin behind her ear, along her jaw. "So very happy."

-----

She moved in his arms, and he pulled her closer, tighter, fingers lacing though the short bob of her hair. "Scully," he sighed, and she returned his kiss with a gentle one of her own.

"I'm sorry, Mulder. I'm sorry." She looked up into his eyes, saw the silver gleam of moonlight and the last wisps of Daniel. "I'm glad you didn't just wait," she said, "That you came for me. Wouldn't let me slip away."

Mulder's hands slipped from her hair, tracing her face and shoulders as they drifted down.

"So am I," he breathed, his fingers kissing the tender skin of her nape and collarbones. "So am I."  He turned her slightly, and settled her against him. Together they watched the stars creep out, and the moon move slowly across the sky.

She watched the stars sparkle, pointing the way to other worlds, and marveled at the boundless possibilities of second chances.

The night air was wonderfully cool after the blistering day, and the smell of roses made her pleasantly dizzy. She could feel the heat of Mulder's chest where it pressed against the thin cotton of her nightgown; it soothed her gently, leaving her feeling a deep sense of relief, of homecoming.

She let her head lean against his shoulder, almost sighing as she felt him slowly lower the weight of his chin onto the top of her head. After a minute or two, a strong arm snaked around her waist, and he gently clasped one of the hands resting in her lap.

She smiled and closed her eyes, breathed in his scent as it mixed with the odor of rose petals.  She thought then that maybe this was who Dana was: a woman in a garden, at peace with heaven and earth, with Fox Mulder holding her hand.

END  

Notes: Minor reference to Brighid's story, Poryphyria's Lover. 
Poetry by William Butler Yeats:      
    "When You are Old"
    "The Lover Tells of the Rose in his Heart" (hence the title!)     
    "Forgotten Beauty"     
    "A Dream Of Death"

Poetry by Richard Lovelace:      
    "To Lucasta. Going to the Wars"

War info:     http://www.u.arizon.edu~rstaley/wwletter1.htm     http://www.rockingham.k12.va.us/EMS/WW1/WW1.html     http://www.rootsquest.com/~amhisnet/ww1/index..html

Song credits (songs used without permission):      
    "In the Garden."  Words and music by C. A. Miles     
    "The Water is Wide."  Unknown, traditional.

Thanks to Jeffrey Weaver for answering my WWI questions. Thanks, as well, to all the patient people who helped me slog through the first draft, including my dear friends Lauren, Marla, and Angie.  None of my writing would be complete without their input.  I want to thank our beta readers, Ninnoc and Lauren Metal.  Your comments helped shape this story in the most positive of ways.  And finally, thank you, Brighid, for agreeing to co-author this story with a total stranger, for having such a wonderful way with words, and for being so much fun to work with.