Chapter 7: Fox, Foxy Fox, Fox
Mulder wakes. Felicity sits in a chair by his bed. She has pulled up another chair to use as a table and is looking at tarot cards. She doesn't notice Mulder is awake. He gazes at her. She is a woman he has loved, hated, mourned, assumed he would never see again. He understands now he doesn’t have the same right to hate her as he once thought, but he still seems to have some residue of anger unprocessed. It is interesting to look at a woman he met at the age of 17 now at the age of 56. He realizes it is impossible for him to think of her as anything but beautiful and that he has no objectivity in that conclusion. “If you are reading my future, I don’t see a death card.” It startles her to hear his voice and when she quickly looks at him, she is startled to look into his eyes. She sits as if frozen unable to do anything but stare. It is her first opportunity to see him awake in 26 years. Mulder waits for her to say something first. Presumably she is here to talk to him, right?
After several minutes he says “ well, it's been great visiting.” She immediately gets up and begins to put her cards away and he says, “I’m kidding.” She sits down again but doesn’t say anything still for several minutes. They both sit not looking at each other directly but trying to take side ways glances at each other. “I thought I would never see you again,” he says in an accusatory voice. ‘I’m so sorry,” she begins. He holds up his hand to stop her After waiting so long for her to speak, he is not sure now he wants to hear anything she has to say. “Scully told me. I went to both of your parents’ funeral to see if you would show up. I expected that you would at least show up for those.” Felicity closes her eyes briefly at the mention of her parents. She left her life with just the one note to Fox. He was left to tell her parents she had disappeared and to listen to their recriminations and hear how they blamed him. Felicity sits up straight and looks at him fully. There are things she will be blamed for and things she will not. In a calm, cold voice she says, “I would like to believe that if my parents knew the reason I did not attend their funeral they would understand and forgive me. Just as I hope you would forgive me for leaving you.” “There was never an opportunity to contact me?” “Can you tell me he wouldn’t have harmed our son? Did I over react?” Mulder thinks that the man is responsible for more than one million deaths yesterday. He shakes his head.
Now they sit quietly looking at each other aware of how much one man has taken away from them. Felicity/Moondance is the first to speak. “ What I haven’t had the knowledge to understand is why he wanted me out of your life so badly?” Mulder thinks. “I think it was so Diana would have more access into my life, be able to report back, be able to manipulate me more.” Felicity nods. She still doesn’t understand, but she doesn’t want to talk about Diana.
“We have a son?” Felicity smiles “ and a granddaughter.” Mulder is stunned. ‘I’m a grandfather?” “Samantha in honor of your sister.” Mulder smiles. “I tried to provide as much of you as I could in our son’s life. He knows all your family stories I knew and all of ours. He’s probably going to ask you to recite Yeats when you meet I have told him about our meeting so often.” “His last name is Fox?” “William M Fox. No actual name for the M so every time someone asks him what it means he has a different smart reply. He is a lot like you in his humor and wit.” “Your last name is also Fox?” “Moondance Fox.” Fox smiles again. He can’t help but smile at the memories. “You never remarried?” “We’re still married, Fox. You could have divorced me, but I would have had to come out of hiding to divorce you.” Mulder nods. “Is there someone significant in your life? Someone who helped you to raise William?” Felicity shakes her head “you know I can’t be in a relationship if I can’t be honest. So I adjusted to never loving anyone else. .” “My god, all these years! Weren’t you lonely?” “I had a part of you in our son.” He is beginning to absorb how much she sacrificed. “Your career?” “Law? I had to give it up.” “You gave up everything.” “No, I had William and I kept him safe,” she says this with some pride, but Mulder can feel the loneliness coming off of her.
His heart is full now of nostalgia for this first love and at the sacrifices she made for their son. He reaches out to touch her hair. “What’s with the hair?” “I find its best to hide out loud and outrageous. If you do, no one will ever know you’re hiding.” “I was in hiding for many years myself.” He suddenly wants to tell her everything. “I had another son, but his mother gave him up for adoption because it was dangerous.” “Your family?” “They’re dead, too.” “And the mother of your other son?” “You met her.” “Agent Scully?” He nods and then answers her unspoken question “We lived together afterwards but she broke it off. It’s been a while now.”
Suddenly he is swimming in wave of loneliness and grief and needing to keep from drowning he continues to stroke her hair. The colors are mesmerizing, the length and the texture. He lifts up a handful of her hair and slowly drops it to see the colors blend together. She laughs. “Feel free to play with my hair as much as you want. Our granddaughter does that same thing by the way.” Mulder finds himself smiling broadly and laughing loudly now rescued from the waves by the woman in front of him. He has a granddaughter. Decades of anger and hate fades away and he is giddy with the lightness this brings to him. He remembers the summer they were seventeen sitting on her bed with the door open; finishing up one board game and looking around to decide what else to play. Mulder bends towards her and lightly and quickly touches her lips with his. She is surprised. It is exactly how he first kissed her. She smiles at him broadly. “Do you know what I would like, Moondance?” He says her new name slowly, enunciating every sound, teasing her about the choice while letting her know he approves of it. She shakes her head. She would give him anything. The only man she has ever loved seems ready to forgive her and she will give him anything he wants in return. “Say my name the way you used to say it.” “Fox, Foxy Fox, Fox.” He bends his lips to her in the adult way he had once routinely kissed his wife.