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Title: Shoulders Summary: Outward appearances can be deceiving - sometimes, only small changes happen in reaction to a crisis. At the end of each month past, the angle of her shoulders closed another degree. Oh, there were more noticeable chrysalises about her than her shoulders. Her stomach, once flat and taught, had slowly ballooned out, crying to the world that impossible though it seemed, a life was growing inside her. Where a barren womb once uselessly resided a baby kicked, as if to reassure her of its existence through the constant pummeling of her belly. A murky fog surrounded her, too weighed by grief and uncertainty to be the normal glow of a pregnant woman. But ever so slowly, the angle of her shoulders crept up. No one was cognizant of the change. It would have taken him to notice, but had he been there her shoulders surely would not have felt the need to ascend so steadily. His presence alone would have halted their climb; he was the only one who knew just how to soothe her jangled nerves. He was the only one who could peer through the shield she painstakingly drew around her body, the only one she allowed to see her weakness. The angle of her shoulders suffered from an abrupt increase only once: the day blood tests revealed the child was not Mulder's. Her first thought was of Gibson Praise as she viewed the lab results with horrified eyes. Exhaustive testing of the DNA served only to frustrate and baffle her: no earthly match for a father was readily apparent, or even possible. She did not cry with the discovery of the fetus's damaged, broken blood. She did not suffer from shock, she did not lose sleep, she did not stop eating. Yet on that day her shoulders rose almost a centimeter. Only once did she allow herself to contemplate an abortion. She admitted to herself that it could have, might have been the right thing to do. However, she was not sure she possessed the infinite strength necessary to kill the life growing inside her, not when Mulder had taken the larger portion of her energy with him. In the end, her motives for keeping the fetus were far less selfish then the trivial weight of her own wants. She had bore witness to the more unusual sides of Gibson Praise; from the unearthly aspects of his blood to his uncanny ability to know what was on her mind. Her child was so much more than just proof to her, but she could not ignore the implications of its DNA. No matter how desperately she wanted it not to be true, she accepted that the blood flowing through her child was, as she had told Mulder once about Gibson, the concrete proof they had been searching for. She refused to draw conclusions as to the consequences of her baby's blood; she was logical enough to know the adverse effects that process was bound to have on her damaged psyche. Yet she accepted that she had no right to destroy that life any more as a member of the human race than she did as a Catholic. The weight of her series of deliberations about her child's life fell squarely on her shoulders, causing them to contract even further in an effort to bear the excessive weight placed upon them. Scully's shoulders were given a short respite while she poured over books of baby names. With all that was incongruous in her life, this sole act of normalcy slightly revived her. The Gunmen had been unable to do more than blink, somewhat dazed, at the name Uriana. She withheld her own reservations about her choice, knowing that Mulder, with his aversion to his own unusual first name, might object. But she believed that the Greek translation for 'the unknown' was wholly appropriate, and knew that if Mulder was present he would not challenge her. She was not aware of her shoulders' gradual ascent until seven months had passed. Standing in front of the mirror in nothing but underwear and a bra, she abruptly saw that their once smooth and relaxed slope now rested parallel to the floor. Her attempts to lower them resulted only in muscle spasMs. She thought, inanely, that they were trying to ascend to the stars, staging their own desperate attempt to find her lover. She refused to procure an appointment with her masseuse or her chiropractor, instead wearing her new, highly strung shoulders as a badge. Mulder can massage them when he gets back, she thought. She did not deserve, could not endure creature comforts until his safe return. The birth of her child caused her to reel in the sudden comprehension that she could not afford self-castigation. She was no longer responsible for just Mulder's life, but the life of Uriana as well. A mother utterly consumed with the search for her partner could not protect her daughter, not when that daughter was infused with such sought-after blood. The masseuse kneaded and poked at her shoulders for over an hour, then ushered her off to the orthopedist when the only response she showed was increased tension. The orthopedist ordered a battery of tests, overriding her protests that the MRIs and x-rays were gratuitous. After all she had faced, she felt slightly ridiculous for getting people worried about the muscles in her shoulders. In the end, she bore only the inflammation of her right rotator cuff as a scar. She irrationally thought her injury should have been more dramatic, considering the event that had almost surely instigated it, but conceded when the doctor injected her with cortisone. He sent her home with an abundance of physical therapy appointments and a prescription for Nortriptlyne to assuage the myofacial pain syndrome in her shoulder. She could not help but felt inordinately guilty that night as she swallowed the white and green capsules: undoubtedly, Mulder's own horrors were infinitely more appalling than her own. She choked down the guilt with the pills, but the angle of her shoulders rose another millimeter. Uriana was the one thing that, in all likelihood, kept her rotator cuff from tearing apart. The small girl was her mother's tether to reality, though her mother was almost certainly not fully aware of it. Such dependence on an infant was decidedly unhealthy, and had Scully been completely appreciative of her reliance on her daughter she would have unconsciously closed herself off, no doubt with damaging effects. So perhaps it was healthier for her to live in ignorance, grounded by the new life that had come from her belly just weeks before. She loved her daughter dearly. But despite the infant, despite the barrage of drugs and physical therapy appointments, her shoulders remained tenaciously locked in their tense position. Her physical therapist referred her to a psychologist, cautioning her that if she did not find some way to reduce the stress in her life her right shoulder would continue to become inflamed, and she would have trouble carrying out the duties necessitated of an FBI agent. "That's okay," she told him quietly, and that was the end of the discussion. She would accept medicine and physical therapy, but at psychological appointments she drew the line. Mulder was the only person she would allow into her head at that moment. Eventually she had to accept that maybe her shoulders were not meant to descend until his return. Byers approached her one day, concerned about her sudden copious appointments with the orthopedist. She assured him she was fine, and in the end told him of her problematic rotator cuff to ally his fears. The pain in his eyes as he saw the one physical proof of her inconspicuous descent to hell was enough to cut into her heart. "It's only a slight inflammation," she said, even though she knew that it was no longer slight. "The doctors will have it fixed in no time," she added, though she knew that that too was a lie, that ironically, the one person who could help her had no medical training at all. Byers seemed innately aware of this also, and obviously shared the information with the rest of the gunmen, as they walked around her on cautious feet for the next few weeks. Two and a half months after Uriana's birth, Scully's guilt and restless energy from having to remain home almost incessantly was noticeable to even outsiders. She did not resent her daughter, but when she had trouble lifting her arm above her head to reach the plates in the high cabinet she interpreted it as her body's way of telling her to go back to work. She had enough self-awareness to realize that staying home was increasing her tension, not releasing it. That same day, when the Gunmen came over on one of their biweekly visits, Byers pulled her off to the side and told her that any time she wanted them to watch her daughter they would be more than happy to. She took them up on their offer with mild apprehension; she had never seen the Gunmen with children before, and the care of her child was a burden that she fully appreciated. Byers assured her that he was fully capable of caring for an infant, and Langly and Frohike steadfastly maintained that they wanted to help. In the end, she agreed; she was desperate to work again, and she refused to entangle an outsider in the peril involved in caring for Uriana. By the time her daughter had reached three months of age, Scully had trouble holding a gun held parallel to the ground for an excessive amount of time. She was not inordinately alarmed, as she had just returned from maternity leave and Skinner had confined her to deskwork on the X-Files, but she was painfully aware that the circumstances with her daughter dictated she should be able to shoot accurately. She mentioned the problem to her physical therapist, who to his credit, refrained from saying he told her so. In a moment extraordinary for any person in the medical practice, he admitted he was at a loss of what to do with her. He had not brought up his idea of seeking out psychological help since he mentioned it for the first time, but he timidly spoke of the subject again, saying that he could do no more for her. Once again she demurred, scheduling an appointment for next week. She allowed her frustrated orthopedist to inject her rotator cuff with cortisone a second time, and endured a lecture about the stress level of her life. "You can't keep living like this," he said as she unconsciously flinched away from his prodding fingers. She bit back the overly morose comment that maybe she no longer felt like living at all. She would be strong enough to exist until Mulder's return, and she would pray it was enough to keep her daughter safe and herself sane. To Scully's mild surprise, no attempts were made to take her child away from her. She waited with held breath, wondering when faceless men would break down the door to her apartment and demand her daughter from her. Yet her anticipation was, for all appearances, futile. She saw no sign of Cancerman, no sign of Krycek. Though their absence should have brought some release to her tense muscles it did not, instead causing them to tighten in apprehension over the eerie lack of shadows. The day Uriana turned six months old, she received a phone call in the middle of the night. Skinner's voice, short and cryptic, murmured: "Georgetown Memorial." The result was less dramatic than she had anticipated it would be. Only after dressing both herself and her daughter and gathering the car seat, bottles, and pacifiers now necessary for any journey was she able to leave the Apartment. She then spent an inordinate amount of time driving to the hospital -- she desperately needed to see Mulder, but her foot eased off the gas pedal every time she glanced at the six-month-old in the back of the car. She was outwardly calm throughout the journey, but her shoulders were so tight their angle was acute. Only when she pushed through the door to his hospital room, harried and exhausted and baby carrier swinging from her left hand, did she allow herself to cease all forward motion. And at the sight of him sitting on the bed, skinny but awake and alive, the muscles in her shoulders slightly released for the first time in almost a year. He gawked at the baby, stared at her and whispered "You look tense," against her cheek when she leaned forward to brush her fingers through his hair. All she could do was laugh. She brought him home two days after he was found, and four weeks later life was sluggishly returning to standard. He insinuated himself in her apartment -- all of his things were there anyway. Hee nearly made a dent in her coffee table with his fist when she told him about her daughter's blood. He affably approved of the name Uriana. He pointed to himself and said "Dada," for the first time, and Scully had to blink away the sudden mist over her eyes. He went to her physical therapy appointments with her and held ice on her shoulder. He laughed when he heard who Uriana's babysitters were. He returned to the basement. And at the end of each month past, the angle of her shoulders opened another degree. The End Author's END Notes: Jessica and Alicia K, you are goddesses. This would not be posted without Jess' harassment (ahem - encouragement), and there would be quite a few more commas and other assorted items in it without Alicia
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