Tinfoil (0/1) ***Intro only - story begins in Part 1/1***

By Loch Ness

DO NOT ARCHIVE without author's express permission. Do not forward to
any other newsgroup or mailing list. May be redistributed to individual
readers as long as Loch Ness is acknowledged as author and nothing of
value is exchanged. ***Not to be entered in or nominated for any
competition or award.***

International readers: No US4 spoilers. As in the original on which this
is based, "everything after *Talitha Cumi* has been gleefully ignored."

AUTHOR'S NOTES: Many thanks are due--overdue--to my beta reader, Gem,
who should've gotten the same credit for "Letters of Transit," except
that I was too dopey to think of it at the time.

The idea of Mulder and Scully stuck in an apartment/safe house together
while the conspirators are on trial was inspired by scenes from "The
Five, Book 2"--what I've borrowed is used here with the permission of
the author.

DISCLAIMER: This is intended as an homage, not a rip-off. These
characters and the X Files universe were created by and/or are the
property of Chris Carter, Ten-Thirteen and Fox Broadcasting, all of whom
are smarter and richer than I. No infringement is intended. Anybody who
sues me is wasting a lot of time and effort, because I'm broke and this
story is actually *costing* me money to produce.

MISCELLANEOUS: Do not use if seal is broken. Contains 0 calories derived
from fat. No animals were harmed in the making of this fanfic.

lochness@texas.net

 

Tinfoil (1/1) By Loch Ness

DO NOT ARCHIVE without author's express permission. Do not forward to
any other news group or mailing list. May be redistributed to individual
readers as long as Loch Ness is acknowledged as author and nothing of
value is exchanged. ***Not to be entered in or nominated for any
competition or award.***

International readers: No US4 spoilers. As in the original that inspired
this, "everything after *Talitha Cumi* has been gleefully ignored."

Probably will make more sense if you've already read "The Five, Book 2,"
scenes from which inspired it. Those ideas are used here with the
permission of the original author.

See Part 0 for disclaimer and introductory notes.

**********************************************************************

Tinfoil (1/1)
By Loch Ness

December 12, 1996

Mulder called them "the weasels," the landlords and caretakers and
runners who, in theory, served every need of the inmates of the
building. Not that the weasels weren't nice people, but years of serving
cranky residents overcome with cabin fever had given them a perverse
indifference that meant they didn't ask questions in an effort to get
something just right. On movie nights, a resident might sign up for
popcorn, assuming it would be buttered, but the weasel running the
signup effort wouldn't ask about butter, and so there wouldn't be any.

In retrospect, Dana Scully thought she should've known better than to
sign up for a Christmas tree. But she hadn't thought about it at the
time, when one of the weasels came around asking who wanted one. She had
just signed that she would like a Christmas tree--naturally, why
not?--and not given it another thought.

She and Mulder had been stuck in the safe house/apartment building since
October, and they weren't likely to get out again for a good, long
while. Scully and her partner would be here until all the conspirators
who had organized "The Project" had gone to trial. Mulder had given the
building a name, too--"The Witness Arms." The whole complex was a
federal haven for witnesses, heavily if subtly guarded, its location
highly classified. Mob boss John Gotti's secretary had been living there
for years; Mulder sometimes played Monopoly with her. He usually lost.

Nobody could leave the building for any purpose except to go to court.
Anything they needed or wanted, from a refill on a prescription to
satisfying a jones for pepperoni pizza, they had to ask one of the
weasels to fetch it. The one thing the weasels could not do was offer a
taste of freedom or even a glimpse of the sun outside.

Scully sometimes thought she had forgotten what the outside looked like.

To her surprise, Mulder--the man who thought rules existed to give him
something to break when it pleased him--had adjusted to these
restrictions better than she had. She wondered whether, like a little
boy who needed discipline more than he thought, Mulder's predilection
for resisting restrictions meant he was really in need of *more* of
them, to provide some coherent structure to his life. Or so she had
thought until Thanksgiving night, when she had discovered his secret
passageway up to the roof and had found him building a snowman on top of
the building in perverse defiance of the almighty "Building Rules for
Residents."

She had not been able to resist helping him with the snowman. They had
put a black cap emblazoned with "FBI" in gold embroidery on its icy
head. They were the only two FBI agents imprisoned in "The Witness
Arms," so there was no question who had done it--the "screw you" message
had been loud and definite. But the only repercussion that had come down
was a glare like a laser beam from Skinner as he handed the hat back to
Mulder.

"Oops," Mulder had said. "I was wondering where I lost that."

It had been delicious all around. But Scully felt guilty about going up
on the roof, uncomfortable breaking the rules. And she knew even another
snowman episode wouldn't be much comfort at Christmastime.

She'd had two Christmases now without her father, and one without her
sister, Melissa. Those holiday celebrations had been painfully lacking,
but bearable because the rest of the family had been there. Besides, it
was easy enough to pretend that Dad was just at sea and Melissa was
skiing with her friends, as it had been at Christmas in other years. But
Scully had never had a Christmas away from the *whole* family, without
the usual holiday rituals, even without the usual minor bickering that
befell most families once a year on December 25. It was still two weeks
away, but already she was feeling the emptiness. Along about now she
should've been helping her mother shop for a turkey and the makings for
pumpkin pie. Dragging the decorations, some of them in the family for
decades, down from the attic. Selecting cards and gifts.

And so, automatically, she had signed for the tree.

It hadn't occurred to her that there'd be any problem with it until they
returned from court one day to find the tree leaning up against the wall
outside the apartment, along with a metal Christmas tree stand.

And then Mulder was standing there looking at it, with his eyes narrowed
in confusion and consternation, as if he was not quite sure what it
was--maybe a little as if he thought it might bite him.

"Where'd that come from?" he asked.

"Your tax dollars at work," Scully said lightly. "The weasels came
around asking who wanted one."

"Oh." That was it. Just, "oh." And he picked the tree up and carried it
inside.

"Uh, where do you want it?" he asked. He stood there holding it upright,
still with that uncertain, slightly helpless look on his face.

"How about that corner over there? Here, I'll move this little table."

She busied herself moving things out of the way, clearing a space for
it, then went to the kitchen to fetch some water to fill the stand. When
she came back a moment later, Mulder had leaned the tree in a corner and
was sitting on the floor, the stand in one hand, the cardboard
instruction sheet in the other.

Actually *reading* the instructions--directions for installation of a
Christmas tree stand, for God's sake, his dark brows knit in concentration.

"What are you doing?" Scully asked.

"Trying to figure out how this works," he said, abstracted, still reading.

"Oh, come on, Mulder--it's not rocket science."

He sighed, gave her a slightly irritated, long-suffering look. "I've
never done this before."

"What do you mean you've never done this before?"

Now his mouth pursed in clear annoyance. "I'm Jewish, Scully--we don't
do this."

She was stunned. She'd had no idea. He had never said; she had never
asked. "I didn't know," she said. *God, that sounded lame.*

He shrugged and turned back to the instruction card.

She stammered out, "Is it...I mean, does it violate some religious law,
if--"

"I don't know. We were never exactly orthodox about it, but then, we
were never *un*orthodox enough to celebrate Christmas."

"I didn't mean to offend--"

"I don't mind. If nothing else, it smells wonderful. Okay, so the trunk
goes in here and then you tighten the screws to hold it up, right?"

After the usual struggle attendant any Christmas tree setup, they got it
straight and turned with its best side toward the middle of the living room.

Mulder stood back and surveyed it. He said, "Aren't we supposed to put
some kind of...stuff on it?"

Scully suddenly found herself having to fight back tears. Yes, of
course, they were supposed to put some "stuff" on it, but they didn't
have any "stuff," and even if she sent the weasels out foraging, they
would bring back the wrong "stuff." And if by some miracle they did
bring back some nice "stuff," it still wouldn't be right because it
would be new--baubles without the meaning of the old family "stuff."

She sighed. "I don't want to deal with that right now," she said, and
withdrew to her room so he wouldn't see her sniffling and think *he* had
done something wrong just because he had quite innocently observed the
patently obvious.

Hell, even a Jew could see this Christmas tree was all wrong.

                                ****

December 15, 1996

Mulder kept looking at the tree, standing there with its branches all
plain green and fragrant, undecorated and bare. He had been looking at
it for days. He never said anything, just stared rather thoughtfully at
it, as if it were the strangest thing to land in his universe since the
development of yard art.

"If it bothers you," Scully said, "we can take it down." She half-
wished he *would* ask to take it down, on religious or any other
grounds. She *wanted* to take it down. It reminded her of what she was
missing by being stuck here out of the real world.

He didn't give her the excuse. "I don't mind," he said, and turned back
to watching the NFL playoffs on TV.

                                 ****

December 18, 1996

They had split up the kitchen duties. Scully cooked--or ordered out if
she didn't feel like it--on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and Mulder
did the same on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. On Sundays they
fended for themselves or went downstairs to the cafeteria.

Tonight she had planned on roast chicken, but when she went to look for
tinfoil to line the pan, there wasn't any in the usual drawer.

"Where's the tinfoil?" she called to Mulder in the living room.

"I used it."

"*All* of it? What for?"

"This and that," he said evasively. "I'll scrub the pan."

Now *there* was an offer she couldn't refuse. But what the hell had he
done with a whole roll of tinfoil? She shrugged. Whatever. They'd just
get some more.

It occurred to her suddenly that Mulder had taken to disappearing in the
evenings. Three nights in a row he had gone up to watch movies with the
other residents, and afterward she had heard him rustling around in his
room, which now smelled oddly like popcorn. Scully pictured him hoarding
the stuff like a squirrel.

And he was keeping the door shut all the time, too, which he hadn't
bothered to do before.

*As if I had any desire to see whatever's in there,* she thought irritably.

She started to close the drawer, then noticed the box of blue plastic
wrap was gone, too.

What the hell was he up to?

                                ****

December 22, 1996

Scully had just sat down to eat a bowl of cereal before leaving for the
Hoover building. Mulder appeared, dressed and showered but still a
little bleary-eyed. He poured himself a cup of coffee.

He sat down at the dining room table across from her and slid a sheet of
paper across the tabletop. "You weren't here when the weasels came
around, so I signed you up," he said, and unfolded the morning newspaper
to read it.

Scully examined the sheet. It was a signup for Midnight Mass at St.
Theresa's. Her heart thudded. Not at St. Michael's, and nobody else she
knew would be there. This would accomplish nothing but to drive it home
to her that she was alone on Christmas. Oh, sure, there was Mulder, but
he didn't get it. Not his fault, but it wouldn't be the same.

"I'm not interested in going," she said coolly.

He looked up, hazel eyes wide.

He shrugged. "Okay," he said. "I just thought you might like to have the
option."

She wished she did have the option--to go to church with her family, in
the right church, in her own way. Not like this. She crumpled up the
sheet and put it in her pocket, fighting back tears of loneliness and
frustration.

                                ****

December 24, 1996

When it came right down to it, "Spooky" Mulder really was a good
psychologist. He had nailed what was bothering her right to the wall,
and had approached her with a solution so delicately she hadn't even
realized he was doing it.

Only when Scully arrived at the church did realize that she needed to go
to Midnight Mass. Not because she cared about the religious
significance--and Mulder knew that, too--but because she needed at least
one Christmas ritual, and it was the only Christmas ritual she really
could take part in. So she went.

She was almost not surprised to find her family there, waiting for her.
Mulder had known she needed that, too, and had gotten word to them
somehow, in defiance of the rules.

As Scully felt her mother's arms close around her in a hug, she thought
she might actually grow to like Mulder's joyously thumbing his nose at
authority.

                                ****

The apartment was dark when she came back after Mass except for one lamp
in the living room. She went to Mulder's room, intending to thank him
for what he had done, but the door was open and the room was dark,
indicating that he wasn't there.

She drifted into the living room, considering where he might've gone,
then stopped dead. The lamp he had left on illuminated the Christmas
tree, suddenly wrapped around with popcorn strings, glittering with
silver balls and shining with something that approximated tinsel icicles.

Scully felt her heart constrict. She went to the tree. The icicles were
strips of plastic wrap; the silver balls had been formed out of tinfoil
and hung on the tree with unbent paper clips. She wondered what he
would've done if she had not left the apartment to go to Mass, and as
soon as the thought formed, she knew--he would've waited until she went
to sleep and let her discover it in the morning. There was no stopping
Mulder when he had a plan.

She wept a little, then, standing there, in gratitude and to release
feelings she had not allowed herself to know until that moment. And to
some extent, she wept because she suddenly felt a little unworthy of
this gesture--she had not done anything for him for Christmas, or
Hanukkah or whatever.

Then she wiped her eyes and navigated the back hall and the electrical
closet that led up to the roof. It was Christmas Eve--he'd be in the
same place for this holiday where he had gone for Thanksgiving night.

He was just sitting there, wrapped up in his coat, watching the sky. The
city lights gleamed. It was cold and damp out, with heavy, lowering
clouds overhead. She knew she couldn't get too sentimental about all
this--that would just embarrass him. "How long have you been up here?"
she asked. "Aren't you cold?"

He handed her a bottle of Samuel Adams lager. "I brought anti- freeze,"
he said.

She opened the beer and took a swallow. "The tree's beautiful," she
said. "Thank you."

"You owe me big for the popcorn strings, Scully," he said lightly. "I
had to go to the movies three times to get enough popcorn, and the movie
was *Sleepless in Seattle.* Do you have any idea how grim that movie is
for a man without a date?"

She grinned in the darkness. "About like *Rambo* would be for a woman
without a date," she said.

He nodded.

"How did you cut the plastic wrap in those neat little strips?"

He shrugged. "I took it down to Hoover and ran it through the paper
shredder."

This struck her as both completely appropriate and utterly hilarious.
She laughed until her sides hurt, and after a moment he caught it, too,
and joined her. "Never let it be said that you're not resourceful," she
said, when she could speak again.

They fell quiet then, sipping their beers and looking at the night.
Finally, Mulder said, "I just thinking...you know, I kind of went into
this chase after the men running 'The Project' intentionally. And I
guess I knew it could end up like this. But you didn't. You got stuck
with it because I'm a loony tune."

That wasn't entirely true. There'd been times when she could've opted
out and had chosen not to. She hadn't stayed because he was a nut case,
although he was. She had stayed because, little by little, his quest had
become hers, because her own sense of justice had been just as outraged
as his at what the conspirators had done, and because he had become
important to her. Now that she thought about it, she wasn't sure she had
quite found a way to let him know that. Or maybe he had just not found a
way to accept it.

"I just started thinking about what you might be missing," Mulder went
on, "and I wanted to do something to make it up to you. It's not much,
really, but I thought there should be something."

"It's more than you think, Mulder," she said softly.

He looked up. "Hey," he said. "It's snowing. We should go in."

"I don't want to go in," she said. She leaned over to snuggle against
his shoulder for warmth. A moment later, she felt his arm come around to
hold her.

                                ****

January 6, 1997

The weasels were coming the next day to take the Christmas trees; the
trees would be sent down to South Carolina for dune preservation on the
beaches. Scully found a box and began carefully removing the decorations
from the tree.

"We can't keep the popcorn," she said, stripping it off the string into
a bowl. "But I thought we could spread it out on the roof for the birds."

"Okay," Mulder said. Then he got it. "You're not keeping the rest of
that stuff, are you?"

Scully carefully picked strands of plastic wrap from a branch and laid
them in the box. "I'll never have another Christmas tree without them."

He was frowning, embarrassed, a little confused. "You don't have to do
that," he said.

"I know. But when you take the religion out of Christmas--and I have--
what's left is tradition. And now I have a new one."

His frown had eased. He glanced down at the popcorn in the bowl. "Merry
Christmas, Scully," he said softly.

"You, too, Mulder."

He picked up the bowl and headed for the roof.

**********************************************************************
The End

Whether you are Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Bahai or extraterrestrial,
I wish you the perfect holiday the child in your soul wants and deserves.

And to all a good night.

lochness@texas.net