Disclaimer: Characters and everything X Files belongs to Chris Carter, 10-13 and Fox, not to me. I would say I was ripping off "It's a Wonderful Life" except I haven't seen it in ages and got the plot totally wrong. I don't know what disclaimer procedure for ripoffs gone astray is. ;) Summary: Alone at Christmas, Scully wonders what her life would have been like if she had never met Fox Mulder. This story follows "The Angel" Spoilers: Well...this story is set during Season 3, but there is a reference to That Event in the Blessing Way. But everyone's seen that now, right? Comments: Please send me some at eponine119@att.net About the introduction: I hate ones this long! My apologies. _________________ The Star by eponine119 eponine119@att.net December 1, 1996 __________________ December 24, 1995 8:59 pm Neither of her brothers could make it home for the holidays this year. With her father and Missy gone, Dana's mother had decided to take a cruise to "someplace warm" with an old friend. That left Dana all alone at Christmas. She got out of her car at the grocery store and heard the sound of a Christmas carol being sung with beauty and passion. A sad smile quirked her lips. The kareoke beggar. He hadn't been around for a while; she hadn't realized she'd missed him. She stopped for a moment off to the side of the store's entrance and listened to him sing. He had one of the most beautiful and haunting voices Dana had ever heard. And yet instead of being on the radio or the stage, the blind man had a small kareoke machine and performed in front of a grocery store for money. Even on Christmas Eve. Dana dropped a bill into his hat and murmured, "Merry Christmas." She wondered if he had a family and went inside. She picked up a small plastic basket and started to walk around. There wasn't really anything she needed; she'd come just to get out of the lonely quiet of her apartment. She would have gone to the office, except Skinner had banned her. "You've been working too hard, Agent Scully," he'd told her. "If I see you here over the holidays, I'll have your hide." She'd smiled because it sounded like a joke, even though they had both known it was not. Her work was the reason she had no social life - it had gone from being a reason to an excuse. And now it had come back on her. Skinner realized this as soon as he'd given the order. A faint look of embarrassment had crossed his face before he said, "Dana...you know Sharon and I would love to have you over if you don't have any holiday plans. A couple of the younger agents are coming for dinner..." "No, thank you, sir," she'd replied quickly, out of pride. "It's a very kind offer, but...I have other plans." Skinner had nodded and she'd left quickly. Dana checked her watch. Gone with the Wind was starting in fifteen minutes on one of the cable channels. She'd have to hurry if she didn't want to miss the beginning. Even though she knew exactly what happened. She lingered in the expansive liquor department, a section she rarely visited. She sighed and picked up a bottle of something that was a gorgeous shade of blue. She wondered what would possess someone to drink blue stuff that looked like Windex. She set it down but found herself turning back to it a moment later, wondering what blue liquor would taste like. Windex, probably, she thought, but it looked strong and it was pretty. It would look nice in the bottle if she didn't drink all of it. And right now, that looked like a pretty big if. She set the plastic cart on the floor out of the way and headed for the checkstand, not caring what sort of a person she looked like, buying a big bottle of liquor on Christmas Eve. It was probably a pretty accurate picture. The wind had picked up outside and it was cold. The busker had stopped singing for a moment and he looked like he was contemplating going home. Then, as Dana passed, he began to sing "Silent Night," which was her favorite. She sniffled, and got in her car, shutting out the sound. The blue stuff was pretty strong, and Dana wasn't much of a drinker. She'd passed buzzed and was on her way to philosophical before Scarlett even met Rhett for the very first time. She figured she'd be passed out long before the burning of Atlanta, and that was fine with her. She was sick of this stupid movie. Wasn't there another four hour flick they could show for pathetic lonely people to watch on Christmas? She picked up the TV listings. The SciFi channel was having a "V" marathon. Not a bad alternative, she thought, but she didn't have the SciFi channel. She'd never missed it before now. Was Mulder home watching lizard aliens invade earth? Or did even he have better things to do? Fox Mulder. This is all his fault, she thought, draining her glass again. What would my life be like if I'd never met him? The glass hit the floor with a dull thud and Dana's eyes slid closed. """"" She stretched and woke on the couch. Her mouth felt like cotton and her eyes were glued shut like she'd been sleeping forever. The light was so bright, but her head didn't hurt. Not such a bad hangover, she thought, sitting up. She wasn't in her living room. I take it back, she thought, I am never drinking again. There was a man sitting in a white chair across from her. Apparently he'd been watching her sleep. "Who're you?" she demanded. "You'd never believe me if I told you." "Try me." "I'm your guardian angel, Dana." "You're right, I don't believe you. Why don't you just leave me alone and let me sleep it off? I don't want any hallucinations, I promise, I'll never drink again." "It's not as easy as that, Dana," he told her, rising to his feet and grabbing her hand to pull her up from the couch. She felt oddly light. "You wanted to know what your life would be like if you'd never met Fox Mulder." She crossed her arms over her chest. "And I suppose you're going to show me," she said. He nodded with a smile. "I watched this movie last night - two nights ago," she said, "You're going to show me absolutely miserable, with an abusive husband and forty seven kids or something so I'll appreciate the wonderfulness of my life now. Spare me." "I don't think so, Dana. Come with me." She rolled her eyes, but she followed him through a long tunnel lit with blue lights up near the ceiling. They cast an odd blue glow on everything, like if she looked around through that bottle of liquor she'd bought at the store. Psychological hint, Dana, she said to herself. She looked down and saw that she was wearing a flannel robe and slippers. Definitely not what she'd fallen asleep on the couch in. Then she noticed the tunnel was gone and she was standing in the middle of a suburban living room. Alone. "Hey!" she cried. "Clarence! Guardian angel! Where'd you go, come back!" Hands closed over her shoulders and she jumped. "Are you all right?" a male voice whispered into her ear. She spun around quickly, her heart racing. This wasn't the way it was supposed to be. she was supposed to stay by Clarence and just peek...damn it. "Yeah," she said shakily. He kneaded her shoulders tenderly. "I thought the doctor said you were finished with sleepwalking, that you were better." He brushed her bangs off her forehead and kissed her there. Dana shrugged and pulled back. Bangs? She didn't have bangs any more. She didn't like this. It felt real. Looking at this man gave her warm feelings inside. He rubbed her hand between his. "Come on back to bed, Dana." "No1" she cried, jerking back away from him. "I mean, I -" she didn't want to sleep with some guy she'd never seen before. Even if her body was telling her that she did. And come to think of it, this wasn't her body, not really. It had changed to go with the flannel robe. She was soft all over, out of shape. She didn't like it. It felt...old. "It's OK," he said, kissing her on the ear. "You're probably right. The kids will be down to open their presents any minute. And I know you want to be careful around them." Kids? Holy Massachusetts. And she wasn't married to this man, there was no ring on her finger. "I'll be back in a minute," she muttered and broke away from him to see if she could find the bathroom in this crazy Brady-like house. She found it, off a bedroom that she could tell she'd decorated herself. There were photographs on the dresser. Her brothers, much the same. Melissa was getting married in a new age church, surrounded with candles. Oh God, if it weren't for her, Melissa wouldn't be dead. She'd known it, but here was proof. Beautiful Missy. There was a family portrait with her and two kids and a guy, not the guy from out there. The kids looked like the guy. They were cute. A perfect little family. Why did the thought make her so uneasy? She figured she was divorced, and dating the guy in the living room. "Let me out of this nightmare, please," she whispered, wanting to go back where things were familiar. Nothing happened. She sat down on the bed and pulled out the top drawer. As she'd expected, there was a half-used journal in there. She wasn't much of a diarist, but she did like to note down when important things had happened. She sat down cross-legged on the bed and began to read. If she'd never joined the FBI, she'd never have met Fox Mulder. She would have studied internal medicine and had a decent general practice that allowed her time to play with her kids, Mark and Katie. She yawned, reading it. She didn't handle emergency patients at all. The most exciting thing she ever did was remove appendixes. Everything she'd noted seemed so incredibly trivial. She'd wanted to make a difference - was this it? Prescribing antibiotics for colds and viruses and giving shots wasn't like catching killers and keeping them off the streets. She looked in the mirror and saw a content woman. Who worked hard but still had time to play. With love in her life. Was that the trade off? Excitement for love? She sighed. She figured this woman would spend half the day cooking a dinner the kids wouldn't eat, but she wouldn't mind because she loved them. Some Christmas. She put the book away and sat on the bed, waiting for her guardian angel to return. It didn't take long. "Learn anything?" he asked pointedly. And nosily, she thought. "I guess I have a shorter attention span than I thought," Dana remarked. "Can I go home now?" "Don't you know that fate has more than one road?" "Since I don't believe in fate...no." He frowned at her. "You're in quite the snippy mood today, aren't you?" She just gave him a look cold enough to freeze the tropics. He clucked over it and took her hand. They walked again through the blue tunnel. "I admit, that was a little extreme," he told her. "Statistically, it's unlikely that your life would have come out that way." "Statistics?" she asked, raising her eyebrows. "As a scientist, you realize they're very important. There was only a .0234986 chance that you would choose a different field of study than the one you did. You wanted to join the FBI, even before they recruited you, Dana." "Great," she muttered. What he said was true, but she'd never admitted it to anyone. She'd wanted to work in law enforcement, forensics, from the year she spent in Berkeley, her freshman year of college. Physics had fascinated her and she'd toyed with astronomy for a while, but medicine had always been in her mind. When a close friend had been murdered at the end of her freshman year, she'd known forensics was the way she would go. Tears were in her eyes. She'd managed to put Sarah Jones almost all the way out of her mind. It didn't seem like it had been that long since she was eighteen, suddenly, though she realized that was almost half her life ago. "It's all right, Dana," the angel said and patted her shoulder. She nodded and composed herself. "Yes, you were determined to join the FBI. Statistically, it's 89 percent likely. And if you had never met Fox Mulder..." They were out of the tunnel again, He disappeared before she realized it. "Damn it!" she cried. At least she was on familiar ground. The FBI building. She could see Christmas lights strung on the trees outside from the window of the office she stood in. Her own office, she realized. She picked up the nameplate from the desk. Dana K. Scully. Section Chief. One corner of her mouth turned up at that. A position of power and respect. Mulder liked to say that she'd be Assistant Director by the year two thousand. Mulder. She'd never met him? It seemed unlikely. She sat down in the plush leather chair behind the desk and reached for the mouse. There was already a window open on the computer, in the word processor. Dana leaned forward to read it. "...was one of the finest agents in FBI history. Although I never personally worked with Fox Mulder..." Oh no. Please, not this. "...he was well known to me. I held him in the highest regard. He was a brilliant man. He was a kind man. A man with a gift for human understanding. It saddens me to present this star, the symbol of agents who have lost their lives on the call of duty, to his family. We have lost a great man to the service of his country." Dana wiped her eyes, astonished by how hard she was crying. Mulder..dead. She clicked the window closed and frantically began opening other files on the computer. She had to know...she had to know...she had to know how this had happened. There was nothing, no notation in the personnel files. It had not been updated in six months. "Damn it!" she cried, furious and lost to the empty space inside her. She tossed things off the desk until she came face to face with a newspaper. Her hands trembled as she held it. A photograph of Luther Lee Boggs. That bastard. The date on the paper was January 7, 1994. A glance at the computer confirmed that as the date. Section chief before thirty, Dana thought. She hadn't realized Clarence had left her back in time. She knew what the article would say even as she began to read. Fox Mulder, killed in the line of duty. Searching an abandoned warehouse for two kidnap victims, he'd been shot in the leg. His partner had been unable to administer the necessary first aid. Mulder had slipped into a coma at the scene and later died of infection. Dana's stomach rolled and she felt the cold sweat break out on her skin. She'd saved his life that day. She hadn't realized it, had never thought anything of it. His partner was a rookie 23-year old girl who knew nothing about medicine or science. It was only her tenth case. Infection. What a hideous way to go. Flesh rotting away, eating itself... had he been aware in those days before he died? She had made the difference. She'd killed him. It was her fault he was dead. "No, no, no," she cried, pounding on the desk. She closed her eyes and put her head down. She didn't want to know any more. She just waited for Clarence. "Isn't it better the way that things are?" the whisper snaked past her ear and she jumped, opening her eyes. She was alone. Lying on her couch. Everything was fuzzy and her head was pounding. She was caught up in a chill and she felt like she was going to throw up. She saw the bottle of alcohol and thought she'd be better off if she did. The TV was loud enough to bring tears to her eyes, so she shut it off. It was morning. She realized the pounding wasn't just in her head. It was at the door. She stumbled over to it and opened it. The bottom dropped out of her stomach. "Mulder!" she cried. He grinned a little selfconsciously at her. "I'm so happy to see you!" she cried and threw herself at him for a hug. It took him by surprise and for a moment he stood there, off balance, with his arms out. Then he patted her on the shoulders. "Are you all right? You look like you've seen a ghost," Mulder said to her. He swept back a strand of her hair. "You're cold, and you're pale." She pulled back, suddenly embarrassed. "I think I'm going to be sick. Excuse me." She fled from the living room. She felt better once her stomach was empty. Her head was clearer and the feverish feeling went away. She'd never seen blue puke before and she sure as hell never wanted to again. She brushed her teeth and went back into the living room. Mulder was sitting on the couch, looking uncomfortable. "Doing a little celebrating?" he asked, gesturing with the bottle. Scully rolled her eyes and nodded. "Ho, ho, ho," she said. "Against my better judgment." "I didn't think you ever did anything against your better judgment, Scully," he said flirtatiously. She managed a smile. "I just don't usually get caught." "It's pretty strong stuff, Scully, did you get tanked?" He looked at the bottle again. She shrugged. "I don't remember." It was a lie, but she said it straight-faced. She didn't want to believe what she had just seen, so she wouldn't. Easy as that. It was too horrible to think about. "What are you doing here, Mulder?" He set the bottle down. "I tried to call first, but there was no answer." "I didn't hear the phone." "Yeah, well, no wonder." "Yeah." This was awkward. Scully didn't know what to say and neither did Mulder. He seemed pretty embarrassed about coming to her house on a holiday about something that obviously had nothing to do with work. "I was just...ah...I remembered you saying your mom was going out of town, and I didn't want you to be lonely. Unless you, um, wanted to be, that is." Mulder admitted. He shook his head. "Maybe I should just...go." She put her hand on his arm. "No. Don't. I'm glad you're here." He was lonely and didn't want to admit it. Neither did she. "I think I have a Christmas cake in the fridge or something, we can -" "It's all right, Scully." "I'm sorry," she said, dropping her facade for a moment. "I'm not very good company right now, and I realize it. Go on, I'm sure you have better things to do." "I actually...there was a reason I came over here." She looked at him and he was quiet. "I got you something. Just a token...to say thanks. For your friendship. I know you put up with a lot from me sometimes and I just wanted to say...I appreciate it." He shoved a box into her hands and got up from the couch. "Mulder, wait," she said, getting up. "Don't you want to stay..." "It's a stupid present, Scully. I think I'd better..." He suddenly looked desperate to escape. "Stay," she said softly. She set the box down on the couch. He stopped at the door and Her fingers found the box he'd given her and she toyed with it almost nervously, as though she didn't want to open it. "Go ahead," he nodded. She met his eyes and opened it slowly. "Mulder, I can't accept..." She looked up at him again. "I want you to have it." "Mulder, no, it's too...precious. I can't." She shook her head and rose to hand the box back to him. He held his fingers up like a wall and wouldn't take the box. "It's the strength of my beliefs, Scully. When you were gone, I had your cross to protect me. If we're ever separated, I want you to be protected. Even if it's by things you can't understand." "Mulder, that's so beautiful." He took the box from her then and removed the tiny necklace and lay it across her collarbone, sweeping her hair up to fasten it. "My mother gave it to me when I was a child. We were never very faithful, but I...I kept it. It's meaningful to me. My sister...has one like it." He leaned in so close to her she could feel his breath on the back of her neck, his nose against her hair. His arms were around her...why hadn't she noticed before? And she did feel protected. She turned around in his arms and their noses almost touched. She reached behind her neck and his face fell. He thought she was giving it back to him again. He tried to pull away, but his back was against the door. "You wore this once before. I want you to wear it again." "Scully, you don't have to..." "I want to. You need it, Mulder. It's my faith. I know it's something you don't believe in, but I know you can try to understand it. Because I have faith in you. Even when I'm not with you." She didn't intend to leave him, not after what she'd seen. But maybe it would keep him safe. As it had kept him safe when she was gone. The vision in her dream, of his star of service, haunted her. More strongly because he had just hung a star around her neck. It was a symbol. They needed each other. No matter how much they fought it. She reached up to fasten the delicate gold chain around his neck. When she finished, she realized she had her arms around his neck. He leaned into the embrace and hugged her too, burying his face against her shoulder. He raised his head and touched her lips with his, briefly, only a whisper of a touch. "We'll have a lot more Christmases together, Dana," he promised. "I know," she said, because she did. No matter what happened, they would be together, one way or another. She brushed his lips to seal the deal and he hugged her tighter. "Want to watch football?" Mulder asked, still squeezing her. She laughed, and she had thought she would never laugh again. She dropped her arms. "Sure." He released her and plopped down on the couch. She curled up next to him and put her head against his shoulder. Christmas with a friend, the world's very best friend, was a perfect Christmas. THE END. Thanks for reading! Comments accepted graciously at eponine119@att.net Coming soon: "If They Loved" -- ___ _______________________________________ eponine119 eponine119@att.net or Eponine119@aol.com Web:http://members.aol.com/eponine119/ M&S * LGW #110 * Girls From File #4* Relationshipper Pack #C - Fanfic Reader _______________________________________ Winner of the 1996 Starbuck, Best Author :)