Summary: Two women grieve for the same man. Scully/Diana, references to Mulder/Diana and Mulder/Scully.

TITLE: Invading Space
AUTHOR: Maidenjedi
RATING: R
ARCHIVE: List archives, otherwise please ask.
KEYWORDS: Scully/Diana, references to Mulder/Diana
and Mulder/Scully
SPOILERS: DeadAlive, but this is AU
DISCLAIMER: Not mine, thank you very much.
SUMMARY: Two women grieve for the same man.

***

For the Harem Femmeslash Challenge, and the Six Feet
Under Challenge.

I'm gonna go to PhileHell for this, aren't I?

Author's Notes at the end.

*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*X*


It was just sex, just an outlet, and if it wasn't
with Mulder, what did it matter that it was with
a woman?

The woman in front of her, the woman unbuttoning
her blouse and kissing her lips, wasn't just
someone. That, perhaps, made this situation
heavier than it should have been.

It started, arguably, in a car. Scully's car.
Diana had information, or thought she did. They
told no one, just went to Maine on a tip and
women's intuition. When Scully crumpled, crying,
on the gravel in the parking lot of a cheap diner,
Diana picked her up.

What happened next was textbook, perhaps. It was
what John Doggett, in the deepest recesses of his
mind, probably expected would happen for him.
Instead,
it was about these two women, and nothing else.

This was the elevator; it was a hospital stairwell,
and eventually it was Diana's apartment. It was
never Scully's place.

They were quiet, discreet, and mutually private.
Intimate but never divulging.

Then Scully found Mulder in a field. Dead.

She came home but didn't go to her apartment. She
went to Diana's.

Drunk on wine and determined not to think, it was
sex like good porn.

When Diana called her Dana, she let her see the
tattoo.



------------

She has been here before, watching his burial from
a distance. She remembers it from dreams, ones
she had when she first left him, first abandoned
him for her own interests.

She pinches herself. Please God, let me wake up.

With a jerk, she does. Startles herself awake
just as the first clump of dirt hits the coffin.

From behind her, an arm clutches at her waist.
Thin yet defined, the hand carefully moisturized
and tipped with a professional manicure. It
squeezed, the muscles asserting themselves and
reminding her of the strength.

Diana Fowley had to admire that about her lover.
A woman of certain tastes, who could run to beat
the devil and succeed, even in high heels.

Under the surface, Diana and Dana were a lot alike.
Both pledged fealty to lost causes. Both had harbored
deadly secrets. Both loved one Fox Mulder, now
deceased.

Deceased. Diana blinked against the dull light coming
through the curtains. She'd been dreaming.

The clock read 7:15. The funeral was in less than
two hours.

She sat up slowly so as not to disturb Dana. Better
to let her sleep for awhile. If Diana had dreamed of
the funeral, Dana would be dreaming of death itself.

A low moan and furrowed brow seemed to confirm that.

Diana made her way into the bathroom, turning the tap
so that the water would scald her skin. She didn't
want to feel this tired acceptance, or relive that
dream one more time. She wanted to be fresh and
alive.

--------------

Dana Scully woke up feeling rather hung-over.

The space next to her in the bed was still vaguely
warm, and the sound of the shower told her that Diana
had just gotten up.

She rolled over onto her back and stared at the
ceiling. She'd been dreaming...something. A pounding
headache reminded her that it had probably been the
merlot. She hadn't drunk so much since Eddie Van
Blundht....

Oh, but it hurt to think of Eddie. Or rather, Eddie
as
Mulder. Hell. It hurt to think of Mulder.

The sun wasn't shining, and she found that she wasn't
surprised. The sun never shone when there was a
funeral. It was poor logic - there had to be funerals
everyday, somewhere in the world, surely the sun would
shine for some of them - but she couldn't think of
coffins and headstones and mourning relatives without
thinking of overcast skies. It had been raining when
her father's ashes had been scattered.

She let her thoughts linger on ashes and Ahab, on
pride
and daughters and sons. She touched her still-flat
stomach, for once glad that there would be no child
to stay strong for.

Yet, she thought. Yet. She had, after all, already
gained two pants sizes. Diana hadn't noticed, or
chose not to say anything.

She ran her hands up to her breasts and back down.
Diana must have noticed.

The shower stopped, and she lay listening for her
cue to go in and brush her teeth. They were
intimate, but they were still private.

---------------------------

On a chair in the corner, a black suit lay ready
to wear. Hanging up on the closet door was a
similar suit, longer and more tailored.

Dana had gone in to take her shower, and Diana
sat on the edge of the bed in bra and panties.

She debated pantyhose and went for trouser socks
instead.

She picked up a strand of pearls, nearly throwing
them down in revulsion when she recalled who had
given them to her. She didn't want reminders of
him today, Fox's day. She pulled open a drawer
and dug around, finally coming up with a black
velvet ring box. Inside was the very simple
diamond engagement ring.

"Marry me," Fox had said, almost as if he'd never
doubted she'd say yes. For that confidence alone,
she almost told him no.

She slipped it on a chain, clasped the chain
round her neck.

Black pants, white shirt, black jacket. The
uniform she'd worn for years now meant something
completely different.

She wasn't mourning herself or her integrity. She
was mourning Fox Mulder.

Dana came into the room, nearly blushing despite her
white terrycloth robe that covered everything.
Diana wanted to smile, but felt as though the black
she wore weighed her down. She felt drawn to the
woman in front of her and at the same time sickened
by the depth of emotion that they reluctantly shared.

She kissed Dana's forehead, not trying for something
else. It felt wrong this morning, where it had felt
right and passionate the night before.

"Okay?"

Dana nodded. "Okay. Aspirin?"

"Yes. I'll get it."

An excuse to get out of the room. She didn't want
to interrupt whatever ritual Dana had prepared for
herself, to gear up for this horrible day.

The aspirin was in the linen closet.

----------------

Scully had worn black so often since Emily's death
that it meant very little. It was no sign of mourning
any longer, just a part of her sacrifice. She gave up
color for practicality.

Mulder had dared to tease her once. She'd shot him
down with a cold look, and from then on he said
nothing. Black was a way of life for her, for him.

She wondered what he would say about her thickening
middle. She refused to dwell on it.

He didn't like the way gold looked on her, and she
didn't wear jewelry much anyway. Part of her wanted
to see what earrings made of alien implants would
look like.

A laugh escaped in the guise of a sob. She wouldn't
cry, she wouldn't cry, she felt tears running down
her cheeks. She wanted to wear makeup, but decided
against it. She would probably cry harder.

Fully dressed and coiffed, she was ready to face the
day. Or Diana, at any rate. Scully found her in the
hall, standing tall and imposing next to the linen
closet.

"Aspirin." She held out the bottle and tipped two
into Scully's hand.

Mindful of the child she carried, Scully dry-swallowed
one of the pills and pocketed the other.

"Do you want me to drive?" Diana was all business.

Scully, on the other hand, was shaking ever so
slightly. "No, I think we should take separate
cars."

Diana nodded. "I can't be graveside, you know."

"No, you can't." Diana was dead, to Skinner and
Kersh and the Gunmen. To the syndicate, who
would undoubtedly be spying. Scully watched
Diana's face, registering every small change
in her practiced countenance.

"Will you be alright?" Scully refrained from
touching her.

Another nod. "I've been dead for a year. This
is just another day." She paused. "What about
you, Dana?" A pointed look at Scully's waist.

A voice screamed it her head, Scully my name is
Scully not Dana just Scully.

I even made my parents call me Mulder.

Scully ignored the voice and the look. "I'm fine."
It was her Mulder voice. Mulder, I'm fine. The
doctor
said I'm fine. Go to Oregon, I'm fine.

Her chin shook, and Diana clasped her hand.

They had to leave.

-----------------------

Funerals struck Scully as being pretentious. She'd
gone to her first one as a child of nine or ten, for
a grandfather she'd met just once. The open casket
and weeping old ladies seemed routine, like wearing
black despite feeling nothing and saying the rosary
on your knees dutifully. She didn't fear the body,
as Bill had, or revere it as Melissa had. Instead,
her curious hands itched to touch it, smear the
coroner's makeup, look into the lifeless eyes.

The memory sickened her as mourners poured into the
chapel. There was to be a prayer service, and the
casket was up at the front. Closed. Mulder had
been too ravaged to be presentable.

She tried to quench those thoughts. She'd spoken
them aloud the night before, and Diana had bitten
back a bitter laugh. You sound like Teena, she'd
said.

She wavered between Melissa's and Bill's reactions
now, before settling on the old instinct. She
wanted to touch him, take off the tailored suit
he was dressed in and run her fingers over his
body. She wanted to catalogue the pockmarks and
the gouges, she wanted to remember what they had
done to him. She wanted more than an autopsy
would give her; she wanted him whole and real
for the last time.

Scully looked around, acknowledging Doggett and
Reyes, holding Frohike's pitiful gaze. She didn't
want them to know what she was thinking. She
hoped no one could tell.

Skinner arrived, harried and exhausted. He
stood next to Scully and squeezed her hand.
She resisted the urge to lay her head on his
chest and cry.

Already crying and asking her daughter if she
needed anything, Maggie Scully knelt in the
pew and said a Hail Mary.

Scully didn't know if she could take it. The
minister said his piece, then asked the eulogist
to come up. John Byers stood behind the lectern,
Mulder's ghost in a black suit. Talked about the
quest for truth in all things, avoiding Scully's
eyes till the very end, when he talked of life
renewing itself.

---------------------

Diana was a Mulder by marriage. It was a distinction
that even the more well-known Mrs. Spooky would never
have.

A bitter part of her wanted to shout that out as the
crowd exited the church. She wanted to tell every
one of those pallbearers, those men who distrusted
her and tracked her every movement, Walter Skinner
with his proud posture and mournful gaze. Diana
Fowley Mulder, thank you very much.

She didn't say a word. She watched Scully exit
last, reluctant to get in the car and go to the
burial site. They shared more than Mulder himself.
They were sharing his death, his quest, his truth.
Diana wondered how much Dana knew. She wondered
about the child.

She remembered talking about kids once, in the giddy
beginning of their short marriage. Three, he said,
I want three. Girls, she said. No, boys, so we
can play basketball, two on two.

Diana Fowley Mulder.

She gave it up, and for what? Years of watching
psychic children give their lives for a dead cause?
Being sacrificed at the altar of that cause? She
thought of Scully, tired and seeking comfort when
everything failed her. In a way, she envied that.
Dana could be weak now, she could lay down and
rest. Diana was still a pawn, and even undercover
she knew they were watching. There was no comfort
to be had. She'd sold her soul.

From a safe distance and through binoculars, Diana
watched the funeral. Watched the minister's lips,
"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust." She focused on the
casket, wondering wildly if they could really trust
what they knew, was it really Fox inside or just
a pile of dust?

She remembered the day she left him. It had been
curt, her final farewell. No real warning, just an
offer to serve as a Bureau liaison in South Africa,
and divorce papers already drawn up. She made it
easy for him, no claim to the rumored Mulder riches.
She had pretended her way through a wild affair,
complete with hotel receipts and flower deliveries.

He forgave her. He didn't know how to hate her. He
didn't have room for more of it. When Gibson Praise
turned up, it was an excuse. Her time was coming to
an end and it was her last chance.

Scully had hated her. It had been mutual, though
more bemused on Diana's part.

She watched Dana through the binoculars. Leaning
slightly on Skinner, bending down to sprinkle dirt
on the casket. Her hand would be dirty; Diana
wondered if she would have the presence of mind
to wash.

She didn't love this woman. She shared something
with her, and that was different. Tonight they
would sleep in different rooms, different apartments.
Tomorrow, though. Tomorrow.

Diana didn't think about it, but tucked away the
promise. She needed to be touched, to know that
she was alive and not in a pretty silver casket
six feet under. She wanted to touch something
alive, blushing flesh, watch eyes that would
be watching her.

A light rain began to fall, cold and stinging
and for the first time, tears streamed down
her face. She could feel the rain, after all.

What about Mulder?

--------------------------------



Scully brushed her hair back from her face. Skinner
looked down at her, the question already written on
his face.

"I'm fine."

He pressed his lips together.

"I'll be fine."

He offered his arm, and they walked away from the open
grave. She kept her hand balled into a fist, the dirt
packed into the creases of her palm.

So this is what it felt like to leave him in the
ground.

She thought she might be numb. Between the graveside
and her car, there was no sound. Condolences from a
few of her colleagues and Mulder's old friends were
lost in midair. Her eyes, focused on the car ahead of

her, missed a crying Melvin Frohike and the more
solemn
Byers and Langly. She didn't want to deal with
anyone, she wanted to bury herself in Mulder's bed.

Her mother came up to her and whispered. Scully heard

nothing. Skinner asked if she was okay to drive, and
the answer was clear when she pulled out her keys and
unlocked the door.

"I'm fine."

Over her head, Skinner exchanged a look with her
mother. She felt it, and looked up at them both.
Defiant, she climbed into the car.

Vague plans had been made to gather at Maggie Scully's

place, but Scully rolled down her window and asked her

mother to make excuses for her. She had no strength
for dealing with the sorrowful looks and pitying
whispers.

The rain fell more steadily as she drove to
Alexandria. It became unclear whether she was
blinking back tears or raindrops.

She climbed the stairs to Mulder's apartment and let
herself in. A rush of stale air reminded her that it
had been two weeks since she last came by to feed the
fish. They were floating dead in the tank.

Dead. Death. Dying.

She killed them through neglect.

A punch to the gut. She ran to the bathroom and
retched.

----------------------

Diana watched Dana climb into her car amidst
disapproving and worried looks, and knew exactly where
she would go. Diana wanted to follow her, but she had
other things to do first.

One by one, the cars filled and pulled away. The
Gunmen were the last to go. She wondered if they even
guessed that she was there, and what they would say if
they knew.

Probably wonder what her ulterior motive was.

She swallowed that thought, knowing she would deserve
the accusation.

When their van finally left the scene, Diana made her
way to the grave.

Fox had come with her to her mother's funeral. He'd
walked boldly and carelessly, his wide gait carrying
him faster than seemed proper for such an occasion.
He fidgeted throughout the quiet outdoor service, not
ever looking up at the casket or any of Diana's
family. He nodded when introduced and seemed an
impatient child. Diana hated him for it then.

When the first few X-files had taken them to
cemeteries, Fox became a different person, intrigued
and eager to dirty his hands. Again like a child, but
an excited one. She wondered if Scully had seen him
like that, wondered if she'd come to enjoy it.
Wandering out into thunderstorms to chase the next big
thing, all night stakeouts that turned up nothing,
digging up a coffin to compare notes on long-dead
victims of various unexplained circumstances.

She wished he were here now, next to her instead of
six feet under.

Diana pinched herself, listening to the clumps of dirt

hitting his coffin. Was it the dream again? God, let
it be the dream again.

She stood behind the headstone, watching the last of
the earth settle as the diggers finished their work.
She laid her hands on it, smooth gray granite, hard
and cold. It bore his name but it wasn't part of
him. She wanted to touch him and sobbed aloud
thinking
of it. Nights before the X-files, before the smoking
man, before divorce and Berlin.

Flower petals lay on the ground, freshly fallen from
a bouquet or sympathy arrangement. She bent over to
pick them up and held them to her lips, whispering
a promise before throwing them. The wind caught one,
pink and bright, carrying it away from her.

She couldn't stay long; she'd risk being seen. As
Diana left, back through the maze of headstones, she
wondered which one was hers. She wondered if at least
her former self could spend eternity with her former
husband.

Diana left without looking for it.

---------------------------------------


She stood at the desk, looking out the window. Sticky
residue from masking tape still marred the view.

That residue struck Scully as especially sad, like a
lover's dog-eared novel on the nightstand. It was
something essentially Mulder, and it was waiting for
him to come back and cover it with yet another X to
signal his informant.

She'd come here once before, thinking he was dead,
and ended up pointing a gun at Skinner. She'd
sat there, on the couch, holding Mulder close to
her chest while he wept for his dead mother. Scully
had come to this apartment ready to bare her soul,
and had fallen asleep on that couch, only to wake
up to Mulder watching her.

She rubbed her stomach and sat down. Somewhere in
the distance, a siren screamed.

There wasn't anything she hadn't experienced in the
last eight years that didn't begin and end with
Mulder.

She wondered how she was supposed to get past that.

A light rapping at the door startled her. No one
knew she was here, though it probably wouldn't be
hard to deduce. She thought it would be the Gunmen,
or maybe Agent Doggett coming to collect her.

Watch out for Scully, she might crack.

Diana stood in the hallway.

It was wrong, all wrong. That wasn't her space, it
was Mulder's, it was Scully's, that damned bee and
Mulder I can't breathe I think I'm going into
anaphylactic shock....

Diana reached out to brush the frantic tears from
Scully's face, and Scully recoiled but didn't slam the
door. It was almost an invitation, and Diana took it.

"I just need a friend, Diana."

"I know."

-----------------------------


A/N: Well, there it is.

Dedicated to Deslea, because it was in her livejournal
that this story was first conceived, and to the rest
of the Harem for all their encouragement.

Feedback/criticism at texgoddess_at_yahoo.com