Beating the Darkness Back, Part 2
Oct. 25th, 2008 07:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anjouficTitle: Beating the Darkness Back 2/7
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
comice aka Anjou (Anjou@rocketmail.com)
Posting Date: October 2008
Rating: R for language and sexuality; M for Mature readers
Classification: Mulder/Scully, MSR, post-ep for IWTB
Archive: No archival until the story is completed, please. I'll be submitting to Ephemeral and Gossamer myself.
Spoilers: Through I Want To Believe
Disclaimer: All X-Files personnel belong to 1013 and Fox. All other elements are mine.
Author's Note: Beating the Darkness Back will be posted in seven parts. Parts 1 & 2, and 3 & 4 will be posted together, as they are just long sections that needed to be cut in half for ease of posting. This story is finished, although still undergoing final editing for Parts 5-7. I expect it will be all posted in a week's time. Posts can be read on my fic journal:anjoufic, as well as Ephemeral and other XF fic sites. The whole tale will be archived at my website, No Other … , maintained by the generous dtg, when it is completed.
Thanks to Konrad Frye and especially the fabulouslilydale for not only willingly answering questions about the novelization of "I Want To Believe" that clarified the timeline for this writer, but for being brave enough to have read it in the first place.
As always, my biggest thanks go to my sister and editrix, Suzanne, for her support, and above all, her patience.
Summary: Where do we go from here, now that we are free?
~* ~
It was full dark by the time Skinner dropped him at Our Lady of Sorrows Hospital, leaving him with a nod as he drove off, his phone already pressed to his ear. Mulder watched Skinner drive away and wondered if the visit had been about more than delivering the papers, more than Skinner's desire to see if he might consider coming back to the FBI. He shook his head and turned, walking into the hospital. Skinner had confirmed that it was he that he had given the casefiles to the ill-fated Dakota Whitney. It was clear that he felt some guilt about having done so, and in that, at least, he and Skinner were united. Mulder sighed as he passed the admissions desk in the dimly lit foyer of the hospital and walked the long connecting corridor to the wing that housed pediatrics. He’d had years away from the death and ruin of his daily caseload at the FBI, but in the end, it seemed it hadn't been long enough.
He paused outside the entrance to the small ward where Christian Fearon lay sleeping, looking around furtively for Scully. She had no idea that he'd snuck downstairs to see Christian when he'd been admitted overnight for observation, that he felt compelled to see this boy with whom she felt such a connection. His first sight of the pale boy with the scar on his head, his thick lashes tangled as he slept, his mouth hanging slightly open, had caused his heart to turn over in his chest. Mulder saw that Christian could have easily passed for their child, even if he was older and more fair skinned than William, or the way Mulder had imagined him to look.
Long before there was even a possibility of William, Mulder had dreamt of a boy on a beach. Now, whenever he revisited that beach in his dreams -- and he did so, every few weeks -- that boy was William, and together they built huge sandcastles, and not always space ships. William, the real William, the child he hadn't seen since he was two days old, would be seven soon, when the spring finally came after this interminably cold winter. Christian had to be at least two years older. He'd only seen Christian once with his eyes open, and even hearing his slow, slurred speech had done nothing to dispel the familiarity of the child's appearance.
Today, however, Christian was not alone. A red-headed woman sat at his bedside, holding his hand as she looked at the child with worry and love. It wasn't his redhead, but a younger woman, petite but on a larger scale than Scully, aged beyond her years by her child's struggle to live. He looked around, wondering if he would see himself in Christian's father, only to find himself being watched territorially by a tall, almost gaunt younger man walking rapidly toward the ward.
"Can I help you?" he asked Mulder, stepping into the doorway and effectively blocking Mulder's entrance to the area.
"I was looking for Dr. Scully," Mulder said quietly.
"Oh," Christian's father said apologetically. "I'm sorry, I don't know where she is. I’m just getting here." His eyes were the same dark blue as the boy's, but ringed by lack of sleep, rather than illness.
Mulder imagined that he worked as a laborer somewhere, rising early and then driving to the hospital after a long day. He smiled and nodded at him, taking care to maintain the distance between them. "No problem," he said, pulling out his phone. "I'll just call her. Thank you."
He stepped away from the door of the ward and retreated down the hall a bit, watching while the younger man greeted his wife with a kiss, and then bent to kiss his sleeping son with a tenderness that made Mulder's heart ache. He didn’t know how Scully did it, day after day, facing parents terrified at having to meet with a pediatric neurologist. She was incredibly strong, as always, but motivated by so many intricate impulses from their shared past. Those parents would never understand how much of her desire to aid them came from her own deeply felt pain. They would only see the compassion in her eyes, the reserve. They’d never know what it cost her to retain her seeming neutrality in the face of their overwhelming need for her skills. Just watching Christian’s parents, seeing the mixture of anxiety and hope on their faces as they looked at their child, was so intimate that he had to close his eyes against the sight. Instead, he listened to Scully's phone ring and anticipated the healing balm of her voice, as he leant back against the wall.
"Hey you," Scully said warmly in his ear.
He smiled, and said, "Guess where I am right now?"
"Guess what you're wearing right now?" she teased. "Are you still playing that old game, Mulder?"
"Only with you," he murmured, then opened his eyes because he felt himself being watched. A young blonde doctor with sharp features regarded him with open interest as she made her way down the hallway to the children's ward. He turned his back to her as she passed him by, knowing without looking that she was checking out the rear view. Maybe he hadn't been outside in a long time, but he was reasonably certain that women had not been so bold when he was younger.
"I'll tell you where you better not be," Scully said, unaware of where his thoughts had gone.
He pushed away from the wall, and began walking toward her office.
"Where's that?" he asked.
"Up on that roof when it's dark out," she said firmly.
"Hmm," he said to her in his best 'I'm just proposing a theory' conversational tone, "what if I told you that I was stuck to the gutter?"
"Mulder!" she said, with some feeling. "You aren't serious?"
He heard his knock on her office door echo oddly through the phone.
"Hold on a minute," she said.
He listened as her heels crossed the floor, both on the phone and off. He stood out of sight as she opened the door. "Boo," he said, leaning around the door jamb and snapping his phone shut.
"Mulder!" she said, in surprise. She pulled him into the office hurriedly and shut the door as if she still had to hide him, her phone pressed against her ear.
He bent down and kissed her, taking her phone and dropping it into her lab coat pocket as he backed her up against her desk. "Hi," he said when he drew away, still holding her face in his hands.
"Hi," she whispered back. "What are you doing here?" She reached up and stroked the hair back from his brow. "Not that I'm unhappy to see you, but …"
He pulled a small laminated rectangle out of his jacket and handed it to her.
She took it with a puzzled expression on her face. "Is this a letter?" she asked. "Reduced and lamina-" her breath caught. "Mulder, is this a copy of your exoneration?"
He smiled at her excitement, watching as she turned and shoved the small placard under the lamp, fumbling for the glasses in her pocket, then reading the words under her breath.
"Mulder!" She turned and flung her arms around his neck.
"Skinner came for a visit today," he murmured into her hair.
She was practically jumping up and down in his arms, but stopped and drew back at his words. "Oh …" she said.
He nodded. "He brought many gifts," he said, pulling his wallet out of his back pocket. He flashed his license like it was the ID in his old FBI billfold and she grabbed at it greedily, still holding the laminated letter in her other hand.
"This picture's almost a decade old," she murmured, tracing his face.
"I can still pass as me, though, right?" he asked.
She held the wallet up next to his head, eyebrow cocked, considering him teasingly. "I guess," she said slowly.
He pouted as she giggled.
"Did Skinner want anything for his gifts?" she asked.
He could see how apprehensive she was about his answer. "Maybe," he said, "but I told him 'no' before he could even make a real offer."
Her blue gaze was troubled as she regarded him. "Is that really what you want?" she asked quietly.
He shook his head in exasperation. She was such a contrarian. "Yes," he said firmly. "I meant what I said."
Her expression relaxed. She looked at the documents in her hand again. "Did David ask him to shrink down your exoneration and laminate it like this? It's barely legible."
Mulder laughed, "Believe it or not, that was Skinner's addition to David's checklist. You know how he worries. I think that if he could somehow tattoo it on me, he'd have it done."
Scully looked like that was an idea worth considering.
"No, Scully," he said firmly. "We are a one tattoo family."
She grimaced.
"Besides," he bent over her suggestively, and she stared up at him, her breath coming a little more deeply, "you know how I hate needles." He tipped forward just a bit more and caught her mouth with his, kissing her with intention, letting her know how he wanted this evening to end. He broke away from her, pressing his forehead against hers. "I say that we go out and celebrate," he said. "Let's go someplace nice and have dinner, just be … like anyone else."
She shook her head. "No, let's be just like us," she said. She kissed him, and slipped her hand inside his coat, placing his wallet and the exoneration letter in his breast pocket. Her hands pressed against his chest, feeling the fine wool of the dark green cashmere sweater that he’d worn, knowing that she loved it. "I know just the place."
~*~
Mulder looked around the upscale diner, a bit startled that of all the places she could have chosen, that this was what Scully had picked. The diner had been restored lovingly, from its octagonal tiled floor to the art deco brushed nickel clock over the counter. The booths along the outside walls were dark red, with coat hooks like antlers springing up between them. The tables were covered with red and white checked cloths, but at the back of each booth was that same upright chrome topped napkin dispenser that he’d seen in innumerable places in years past. Still, the lighting was set lower than the diners of his memory, and there were tiny candles in glass globes on the table, adding to the cozy, cheery mood. He hung his winter coat over Scully’s and turned to see her seated very happily with her menu already open. Her feet were crossed at the ankle, and she was smiling as she perused her choices. Mulder decided right then that it didn’t matter if the food here was even worse than what could be had at Our Lady of Sorrows, so long as Scully was smiling like that.
He sat down opposite her, sliding his own feet out and around hers, then crossing his ankles behind them so that her legs were resting inside. She hummed a little and adjusted her seat, moving so that her feet were actually laying atop his, then looked up at him, blue eyes sparkling. “The meat loaf is supposed to be really good here,” she said brightly.
“Meat loaf?” Mulder said in disbelief. “You’re advocating for me to eat red meat?”
“It’s turkey,” she said warmly. “And I was thinking of getting it myself.”
Mulder opened his menu. There was an array of comfort foods listed including potpies, stews, and hot sandwiches, and hardly a salad in sight. He quirked an eyebrow. “And what else would you recommend, Dr. Scully?”
“I’ve never eaten here before, Mulder,” she said, and there was something in her tone that made him look over at her. She fiddled with her silverware, not looking at him.
He jiggled her feet to keep her talking, a method he’d perfected after years of her dozing off on him, sometimes while she was in mid-sentence.
“I just …” she looked around the restaurant, but before she could finish her thought, was interrupted by the waitress.
“Can I get you folks something to drink?” she asked pleasantly. She was older, wearing the kind of waitressing uniform that had gone out of vogue during Mulder’s childhood, with an apron around her waist.
“Do you have Shiner Bock?” Mulder asked.
“Sure thing, honey,” she said in that warmly unaffected way of Southern women. “One for you too, honey?” she asked Scully.
“Just water,” Scully answered.
Now it was Mulder who smiled at her, wagging a finger. “What makes you think …” he began, but Scully silenced him with a tilt of her head and an eloquent eyebrow.
After the waitress left to get their drinks, Mulder turned his head to look at his menu. “You were saying …” he prompted. He knew that Scully was more likely to talk to him if he wasn’t looking directly at her just at this moment. He watched, from the corner of his eye, as her hand played with the salt shaker at the end of the table.
“It didn’t seem right for me to come in here without you,” she said quietly. “I always thought that you’d like it here,” she shrugged, lowering her head as Mulder raised his. “Eating here without you seemed like it was …”
“Disloyal?” Mulder supplied, as he watched her searching for a word.
“Giving up,” she said softly. “If I ate here alone, that would be like saying that you were never going to be free.”
Mulder closed his menu and reached across the table for her hands. He pulled the left one up to his mouth. “Thank you for not giving up, Scully,” he said, and then kissed her knuckles.
“Never about that,” she whispered back. Her smile was back, and even if it seemed a bit tremulous, he was sure that it was from happiness for once. She covered his hand with her other one, running her fingers lightly over his knuckles.
He nodded in understanding. He knew that however many times they had the same argument about who they were, and how different they were, that in the end, they always circled back to the other. At least, he hoped they always would.
"You shaved," Scully observed, tilting her head to the side and regarding him with open admiration. She lifted her hand from his to run it over his smooth cheek.
"It was a direct order, wasn't it?" Mulder said, with a chuckle. "Even though my face will freeze now," he complained.
She pressed her fingers over his lips, shushing him.
"You got any suggestions as to how I can keep my face warm, Scully?" he whispered, kissing her fingers softly. He was rewarded by the flush that came over her skin and the dilation of her pupils. "Hmm … I think you do," he continued in a low voice that only she could hear, nipping at her index finger.
"Mulder," she murmured. She pressed her fingers against his lips once more before removing her hand.
He could feel her little feet moving as she shifted in her seat.
"What's on tomorrow's schedule?" he asked.
"You know I'm off tomorrow, Mulder," she said.
"Off?" Mulder said speculatively. "Let me get this straight, you're getting off tomorrow?"
The waitress interrupted him, bringing a beer with a glass over the long neck to the table. "One Shiner Bock," she informed them. "Do you know what else you want?"
"Oh, yeah," Mulder answered, never taking his eyes off Scully.
The waitress looked at him expectantly, while Scully's eyes shot flames at him.
"Oh, ladies first," Mulder said lazily, "that's always been my policy. Right, Scully?" He wanted desperately to tell her that if she kept pursing her mouth like that her lips would stick together, but she was already running one of her lethal heels up the inside of his leg in a way meant not to entice, but to warn. He couldn't help the fact that it was turning him on anyway.
"I'll have the meatloaf special, please," Scully said.
He listened while she went through her side dish choices as he slowly poured half the beer into the cold glass.
"And you, honey?" The waitress smiled when he ordered the shepherd's pie. "Oh, that's a good choice on a cold night like tonight. It's already starting to snow a little."
"How do you think tomorrow will be?" Mulder asked innocently.
"The perfect day to stay inside all day, if the weather report's right." Mulder smiled and nodded at the waitress' words and then turned to look at Scully as she continued on. "Let me just get these orders in. Holler if you need anything else." The waitress walked away.
"You may no longer be fit for civil society, Mulder," Scully said sternly, while she watched him finish pouring the beer.
When he’d filled the glass halfway, he put them both down and waited. Just as he suspected, Scully reached right out and snagged the bottle. "We could just order two," he said mildly. Secretly, he was charmed by the fact that he never got to drink a beer alone anymore, although he did occasionally miss drinking from the bottle.
"What fun is that?" Scully asked. She leaned forward on her elbows to the middle of the table. "I'd like to propose a toast," she said seriously.
Mulder picked up his glass and waited.
"To your freedom," she said, and he could see the sheen of tears in her eyes. "And our future."
He clinked his glass against her bottle and took a drink, holding her gaze the entire time. He leaned forward across the table and kissed her. It was an awkward stretch, but he just made it. "Thank God for those yoga tapes," he muttered as they broke apart.
"Oh, I'll drink to that," Scully said devilishly, clinking his glass with her bottle.
He smiled as she giggled. “So, even though I’m no longer a wanted man,” he said slyly, referring back to a joke of theirs for the past few years, “you still love me?”
"As long as you keep practicing yoga,” she said demurely, then added in a breathy voice, “I really love yoga." Her eyes were dancing in the candlelight as she raised her bottle to take a drink, her eyebrow arching salaciously.
A feeling of happiness broke over him like a wave and he laughed aloud. Who needed four-star restaurants and extensive wine lists? He was free, he had Scully -- and she loved him. He got himself back under control to see that she was grinning at him from her side of the table, his little provocateur, his partner through thick and thin. "Amen," he said, raising his glass. Then he drank deeply, never looking away from Scully’s laughing eyes.
~*~
Scully was kind of a cheap drunk these days. No doubt this was due to her level of exhaustion, how rarely she imbibed, and that fact that she was already a bit giddy about his exoneration, but Mulder could not help but be amused by it. After they’d eaten a huge meal -- he must have missed when restaurant portions became enormous again while he was in exile -- Scully had demanded to see his exoneration. He sat there smiling, watching her trying to read the teeny type without her reading glasses in the low light of the diner. She had been annoyed with his amusement, but more annoyed that he didn’t have his reading glasses with him.
After the meal, they’d walked down the snowy streets to the hospital-affiliated lot where Scully had parked her car that morning. She was slipping a little in her impractical-for-the-weather high heels, but he didn’t bother to chide her. Scully might normally be the most sensible woman on the planet, but her hatred of wearing her “ugly” snow boots was almost comically adolescent. Instead, he tucked her hand inside the bend of his elbow, covering it with his other hand, and they slid along together like they were lovers from the era of his grandparents.
The snow had yet to amount to much, just a dusting on the windows and the roof, which only took a second to brush off. Instead of sitting in the warming car, though, Scully stood on the passenger side and continued her tale of the most recent political machinations of the other pediatric neurology fellow. This had become such a recurrent topic of conversation since Scully had begun her fellowship that Mulder had nicknamed Scully’s erstwhile colleague her 'nemesis'. She had just gotten to a part of the narrative that she clearly found particularly galling when she abruptly changed the subject. Mulder glanced over his shoulder to see that they were being approached by a woman who was clearly curious about them. As she got closer, Mulder could see that it was the sharp-faced blonde from earlier in the evening, now under layers of winter clothes. He whacked the brush against the side of the car, to clean the accumulated snow from its head as she approached them.
“Dr. Scully,” the woman said impassively. “Hello again,” she said in a brighter tone of recognition, turning toward Mulder.
Mulder felt his brow beetling with incredulity at her rudeness. He nodded, but did not speak.
The younger woman had stopped, clearly expecting an introduction.
“Oh,” Scully said. She had just clued in to what was going on, and seemed a little bemused by the whole situation. “This is my …” Her sentence trailed off as once again the issue of how to describe the other reared its ugly head. It had been the subject of many conversations during his exile, but they’d never come to any conclusions. Scully had maintained that they were too old for the girlfriend/boyfriend routine and besides, they were committed, just not legal. Mulder absolutely hated the phrase ‘significant other’, and had advocated for partner, which was routinely used in Europe to describe a non-legal commitment. Scully had objected on the basis of their long partnership meaning something entirely different, while Mulder had countered that without the first partnership, there would never have been a second. As usual, their argument had ended in an impasse.
“Fox Mulder,” Mulder finished. “I’m her Fox Mulder.” He brushed the accumulated snow from his coat.
“Yes,” Scully exhaled quietly, in a happy little breath.
He was sure her colleague hadn’t heard Scully, but he had, and it made him smile to hear how pleased she was that he had his name back. Scully introduced the woman. She was, as he had suspected, Scully’s nemesis. He congratulated himself on a still useful Spidey sense -- even if it was rusty, he’d known that he didn’t like this woman before they’d been introduced.
“Nice to meet you,” Mulder said with almost no affect. He tossed the scraper into the trunk, and walked past her to Scully, pulling her door open. “Be careful driving home,” he said. “It’s kind of nasty out here.” He then handed Scully into the car, and closed her door, rounding the hood to the driver’s side. It had been years since he’d done such a courtesy for any woman, and he wasn’t entirely sure that he’d ever done so for Scully before, odd as that seemed, but he had exerted himself to make a point.
The woman was still standing at the back of the car, watching him. “You might want to move,” Mulder said, opening his own door. “I’d really hate to accidentally back into you.” He uttered the last in his blandest monotone ever, and heard Scully snickering in the car.
The woman blinked. “Oh, sure,” she said, moving away slightly, but still not going on her way.
Mulder got in the car and closed the door. While he fastened his seatbelt, he leaned over to Scully and rested his head on her shoulder. She kissed the top of his head.
“My hero,” she murmured. “Would you shoot her for me?”
“Just give me a gun, Scully,” he said. He laid his arm behind her on the back of the seat. “In lieu of that, I hope to spurt snow all over her when I peel out, because she’s still standing there staring at us.”
“You have to understand, Mulder,” Scully began. “I have never said a word about my personal life to these people. To them, I might as well be a nun. And now, here you are, and it’s kind of proof …”
“That you’ve been practicing yoga?” Mulder finished, putting the car in drive. He gave her colleague the finger in the rear view mirror as they drove away, but it was dark enough that she probably hadn’t seen it.
“Mulder!” she laughed, grabbing his hand. “I still have to work here.”
“Not forever, Scully,” Mulder vowed. “Unlike your nemesis back there, when your fellowship is done, you’re going to get out of this hellhole. You’ve done what you were supposed to do.”
She was staring at him. “Why do you say that, Mulder? Because of what Father Joe said?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know why, Scully, but I’m sure I’m right.” He pulled up to a stop sign. “I’m sure of it.” He turned on the radio and fiddled with the knobs until he found some music. She was still staring at him, half-hopeful, half-fearful. He wanted the lighter mood from earlier in the evening back and could have kicked himself for bringing up such a touchy subject. “And, as you know,” he said in a confidential tone, “I’m right 98.9% of the time.”
Scully rolled her eyes. “Mulder, please don’t make me break out the spreadsheet again,” she said.
He smirked as he put his foot on the gas pedal and drove them home.
~*~
“Don’t think that I didn’t notice the stockings on the roof, Mulder,” Scully announced from her current locale below his chin.
Mulder, roused from the pleasant state of sated half-sleep, ran his hands across her waist and then up her back under the long fall of her hair. “Who says that the pillow talk falls off in a long-term relationship?” he asked rhetorically, kissing the top of her head. “Not us.”
Scully yawned expansively, but made no move to get off of him. “Certainly not,” she countered. “Just tell me that you didn’t fill any of my La Perla stockings with rock salt.”
“Scully!” he said, in a scandalized tone. “What do you take me for?”
She raised her head from his chest and stared at him. “Which ones are the La Perla stockings, Mulder?”
“The fancy ones,” he said promptly. “My favorite ones,” he amended off her look. “The ones with the roses at the top,” he continued when he could see she wasn’t going to be appeased.
“Should I be worried about you being home all day alone with my stockings, Mulder?” she asked drily.
He smiled at the image of himself wearing her sheer black stockings in all his hairy-legged glory. “I think that if you give that just one moment of thought, you’d realize that would not be a turn-on.”
She cocked her head at him, eyes twinkling. “I guess that depends upon your perspective, Mulder. You do have a nice set of gams.”
“Well,” he laughed. “I like to think of myself as being open to new experiences and all, but …” he was rewarded with the huff of her laugh. “I’m not sure they’d come up much higher than my knee.”
She reached for her pillow, ready to belt him with it and he rolled her in the opposite direction. They wrestled pleasantly for a few minutes, ending up with Scully underneath Mulder and on top of her pillow.
“See this is what’s wrong with American society these days,” Mulder said. “Sex and violence all mixed up.”
“Cats and dogs yadda yadda,” Scully continued, kissing him to shut him up.
They lay there kissing for a few minutes until Mulder found himself feeling quite awake indeed.
“So, which stockings did you ruin?” Scully asked when they came up for air. Mulder had begun kissing his way down her neck.
Mulder stopped and looked up at her with feigned indignation. “You have a one track mind, woman.”
She raised an eloquent eyebrow as he continued to kiss his way down toward her breast, arching her back and ruffling his hair. After a few minutes, she pulled his hair lightly to get his attention. “Mulder?”
“The trouser socks,” he said in a distracted tone, “the ones you said made you look like an old lady, OK?”
"OK," she said, wrapping her legs around his upper back. She peered down her body at him. "I didn't say stop, did I?"
He nipped at her hipbone and she giggled, her face losing its mock stern expression. He smiled, and happily continued on his journey.
~*~
By the time Scully woke up the next day, Mulder had checked his various e-mail accounts, surfed the web, read two newspapers and drunk a pot of coffee. When he heard movement from upstairs, he'd already moved from the office to lounge on their too short couch, and was doing some serious reading, or trying to. He'd stoked the wood-burning stove to keep the upstairs warm, and the incredible heat coming off it, combined with the subject matter, was making him drowsy despite the amount of coffee he'd consumed. So, he was slower to respond than usual when she flew down the stairs wearing one of his flannel shirts and nothing else. She blew right past him and threw open the door of his office. When she saw it was empty, she gasped and covered her mouth, clutching the shirt against herself.
"Scully," he said quietly, not wanting to alarm her more. "I'm right over here, Scully."
She turned around and the raw pain that he saw on her face in the seconds before she launched herself at him was almost too much for him to bear.
He caught her and pulled her close, one arm wrapped around her waist, the other holding the back of her head tenderly.
She grappled for a hold on him that was tight enough to suit her; he could feel her heart beating, and the way that she was shuddering against him as she tried to control her fear and struggled not to cry.
"I'm right here, Scully," he said again. As much as her being traumatized worried him, he found himself humbled by her need for him, especially after all these years. It had taken him a long time to see past his own guilt at all that had been taken from her to realize that her love, as possessive and contrary as it could be, was an enormous gift. No one had ever loved him like Dana Scully had. In fact, there were times when he believed that, aside from Samantha, no one had ever truly loved him until Dana Scully. It obligated him to her, and there were still times when he chafed at such a restriction.
Then again, he'd never had to pick out the clothes to bury her in, or watch a backhoe cover her coffin with yards of earth. Even when he'd been miraculously restored, it had been a perversely cruel tease, a far too brief respite before they'd again been separated, potentially forever. He knew that she had lost far too much during the course of her life. If she lost him, she'd lose all connection to that past, including their son, in an irreplaceable way.
So much of their lives were bound up in the other -- he could only imagine how she had felt when she'd seen Dacyshyn raising that axe above his head, ready to strike the death blow. Many years ago, he'd seen her similarly threatened on the Chaco Chicken case and although he well remembered his terror, his love for her then had been so immature, so untested. He couldn't imagine how he'd feel now. It wasn't rational how intertwined they were, but their life together had conspired to make it so. After all, less than twelve hours ago he'd lashed out peevishly at a total stranger whose only crime had been that she was unkind to Scully. How would he feel if her safety had been truly threatened?
"I'm right here," he repeated, waiting. Despite the heat, he pulled the blanket off the back of the couch and covered her with it, then continued running his hands through her hair.
"I had a nightmare," she said finally, and he nodded, kissing the top of her head.
"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked.
"No," she said firmly. She was still holding him tightly.
Time was he would have felt rebuffed by her abject refusal or pressed her to share her nightmare, but he had enough of his own to know that sometimes the images in them were the last thing that he wanted to revisit for analysis. He pulled gently at a snarl in Scully's hair as he combed it with his fingers. He heard her sigh, and felt her relax a bit against his chest.
"Do you want some breakfast?" he asked after a while. They'd been laying there in the quiet, with only the roar and hissing of the burning wood in the stove for accompaniment. Outside, he could see the snow falling, the large flakes fluttering indifferently this way and that. It wouldn't accumulate to much, he was reasonably certain.
"Mm …" Scully said noncommittally. Her body was still fairly rigid against his.
He gathered her hair up and moved it to the side, sliding his hands under her shirt and massaging the tension out of the base of her skull and down her neck.
She issued a little groan at his efforts, and encouraged, he kept going, widening his strokes to encompass her shoulders and top of her spine. Her hold on him began to relax.
"I made frittata," he said in a sing-song voice. He felt her smiling against his chest.
"Mulder," she said in a whiny tone, "you know that has way too much fat in it."
He smiled at her feigned petulance. "I'm sure you can find some way to burn off the extra calories," he said.
She ignored him.
"I need a bath," she said a few minutes later.
"You are pretty stinky," he agreed.
That got her to turn her head to look up at him. He stroked her brow line, which was still furrowed with tension. The flannel shirt she'd hastily thrown on was pushed back off her shoulders, and her hair was tousled both from his hands the night before and her unquiet dreams this morning. She was, without a doubt, the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.
His expression must have reflected his thoughts, because she reached up and put her hand on his cheek. "Mulder," she whispered. How she could put so much expression, so much feeling into saying his name, he would never be able to explain.
He pulled her up on his chest and kissed her, trying to reassure her that her feeling was, and always would be, returned.
She broke the kiss, reaching beside him to where he'd shoved his reading in his haste to receive her. She braced herself and pulled the large hardback out from where it had gotten wedged. "Abnormal Psychology, Mulder?"
"13th edition," he supplied helpfully.
She was clearly mystified, but moved to drop the book onto the coffee table, only then noticing the others. He watched as she turned the small stack, looking at the titles, Biological Psychology, The Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Sourcebook, The Handbook of Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy. He watched her expression change as she got to the last book on the pile. "What's going on, Mulder?" Her question was not challenging – he could see that she had moved from being worried to being honestly curious. "Is this research for a new novel?"
His hand sifted through her hair. "No," he said. "Yesterday, when Skinner was here, he asked me what I would do now, and I talked about you, about how you'd continued your education, but changed your focus, and it made me think. Why do I have these books, Scully? I haven't been a profiler for years, but I ordered all of these books from Amazon."
She nodded, listening.
"This morning, I was sitting there in my office looking at my walls, and then my book shelves, and it struck me how many of my books are psychology texts. And I realized that I ordered them, but I haven't read them. So, I decided to give it a shot."
"Are you thinking about practicing?" she asked him.
He shrugged. "I really don't know, Scully. I just thought that I should see what happened when I started reading these books, see if it sparked anything."
She was regarding him in her clear-eyed, assessing way. "I think you'd be an excellent psychologist, Mulder."
He smiled at her, knowing that he was hardly likely to get his head cut off as a practicing psychologist.
"No, I'm serious," she said. "I think that you have a lot of insight into motivations, and real compassion," she hesitated, then leaned over and picked up the textbook on top of the stack, "especially with children. You were always so good with them, no matter what the circumstances were in the case." She was speaking dispassionately, but he could hear the sincerity in her tone. "I'm glad you're considering this," she said.
"We'd be a two-doctor family," Mulder pointed out.
"We already are," she said, laughing at him.
"Technically, I never completed my practicum, so … I never really finished that doctorate."
She grimaced. "Does that mean that you’d have to go through therapy yourself?" She made it sound as if the very idea was torture.
"That's really more for psychoanalysis," Mulder said, "and I was always much more of a Jungian."
"Naturally," Scully said, with a giggle.
"No, it would be about conducting therapy while being observed, and advised," he said. "I just don't know if it's possible, or if it's what I want."
"Is there something else you're interested in?"
"Actually, yes," he said.
She looked at him expectantly.
"I want to go on that vacation," he said firmly.
"Oh, Mulder," she began, "I'm not through with Christian's treatments, and …"
He held up a hand. "I know," he said. "But we can go away when you're done, right?"
"Well … " she began, "I don't really know."
"Scully," he said, "you haven't taken any vacation since you started re-qualifying. You must have some time squirreled away."
She looked thoughtful. "I just never thought about it," she said. "But I must have something. Maybe two weeks?"
Mulder smiled. "Think about it, Scully." He closed her eyes. "You and me, on a tropical island somewhere. Warm ocean breezes, palm trees and sunsets, fruity drinks, dolphins leaping from the water …"
She sighed wistfully. "I'll need a lot of sunblock," she said speculatively.
"I can buy you sunblock," he said, "and plenty of tiny bikinis."
"Oh, Mulder," she said, opening her eyes. "I think those days …"
"Bikinis," he said firmly, "and you know that you are totally gorgeous."
She smiled.
"I want to go to one of those places where you have your own little island to yourself, where it's just you and the ocean and a well-appointed hut with a big hammock."
Scully looked intrigued. "You can do that?"
Mulder nodded, "Yep. There's usually a main house somewhere nearby, but if you want total privacy, you've got it." Off her expression he continued, "There was a time that I was thinking that's where we should go, but that was before Skinner made it clear that the best strategy was for you to come out of hiding."
"You never told me this, Mulder," she said drily. "I might have chosen the beach instead."
He smiled at her. "No, you wouldn't have," he said. "And we're going to go now, anyway, right?"
She was looking at him, but he could see the wheels turning in her head. "Can you wait until sometime in February?"
"February's perfect," Mulder said. "Valentine's Day. Your birthday. We could celebrate it in style this year, just you and me."
Her smile was like the sun breaking through the clouds. "Just you and me," she echoed.
~*~
Part 3
Author:
comice aka Anjou (Anjou@rocketmail.com)Posting Date: October 2008
Rating: R for language and sexuality; M for Mature readers
Classification: Mulder/Scully, MSR, post-ep for IWTB
Archive: No archival until the story is completed, please. I'll be submitting to Ephemeral and Gossamer myself.
Spoilers: Through I Want To Believe
Disclaimer: All X-Files personnel belong to 1013 and Fox. All other elements are mine.
Author's Note: Beating the Darkness Back will be posted in seven parts. Parts 1 & 2, and 3 & 4 will be posted together, as they are just long sections that needed to be cut in half for ease of posting. This story is finished, although still undergoing final editing for Parts 5-7. I expect it will be all posted in a week's time. Posts can be read on my fic journal:
anjoufic, as well as Ephemeral and other XF fic sites. The whole tale will be archived at my website, No Other … , maintained by the generous dtg, when it is completed.Thanks to Konrad Frye and especially the fabulous
lilydale for not only willingly answering questions about the novelization of "I Want To Believe" that clarified the timeline for this writer, but for being brave enough to have read it in the first place. As always, my biggest thanks go to my sister and editrix, Suzanne, for her support, and above all, her patience.
Summary: Where do we go from here, now that we are free?
~* ~
It was full dark by the time Skinner dropped him at Our Lady of Sorrows Hospital, leaving him with a nod as he drove off, his phone already pressed to his ear. Mulder watched Skinner drive away and wondered if the visit had been about more than delivering the papers, more than Skinner's desire to see if he might consider coming back to the FBI. He shook his head and turned, walking into the hospital. Skinner had confirmed that it was he that he had given the casefiles to the ill-fated Dakota Whitney. It was clear that he felt some guilt about having done so, and in that, at least, he and Skinner were united. Mulder sighed as he passed the admissions desk in the dimly lit foyer of the hospital and walked the long connecting corridor to the wing that housed pediatrics. He’d had years away from the death and ruin of his daily caseload at the FBI, but in the end, it seemed it hadn't been long enough.
He paused outside the entrance to the small ward where Christian Fearon lay sleeping, looking around furtively for Scully. She had no idea that he'd snuck downstairs to see Christian when he'd been admitted overnight for observation, that he felt compelled to see this boy with whom she felt such a connection. His first sight of the pale boy with the scar on his head, his thick lashes tangled as he slept, his mouth hanging slightly open, had caused his heart to turn over in his chest. Mulder saw that Christian could have easily passed for their child, even if he was older and more fair skinned than William, or the way Mulder had imagined him to look.
Long before there was even a possibility of William, Mulder had dreamt of a boy on a beach. Now, whenever he revisited that beach in his dreams -- and he did so, every few weeks -- that boy was William, and together they built huge sandcastles, and not always space ships. William, the real William, the child he hadn't seen since he was two days old, would be seven soon, when the spring finally came after this interminably cold winter. Christian had to be at least two years older. He'd only seen Christian once with his eyes open, and even hearing his slow, slurred speech had done nothing to dispel the familiarity of the child's appearance.
Today, however, Christian was not alone. A red-headed woman sat at his bedside, holding his hand as she looked at the child with worry and love. It wasn't his redhead, but a younger woman, petite but on a larger scale than Scully, aged beyond her years by her child's struggle to live. He looked around, wondering if he would see himself in Christian's father, only to find himself being watched territorially by a tall, almost gaunt younger man walking rapidly toward the ward.
"Can I help you?" he asked Mulder, stepping into the doorway and effectively blocking Mulder's entrance to the area.
"I was looking for Dr. Scully," Mulder said quietly.
"Oh," Christian's father said apologetically. "I'm sorry, I don't know where she is. I’m just getting here." His eyes were the same dark blue as the boy's, but ringed by lack of sleep, rather than illness.
Mulder imagined that he worked as a laborer somewhere, rising early and then driving to the hospital after a long day. He smiled and nodded at him, taking care to maintain the distance between them. "No problem," he said, pulling out his phone. "I'll just call her. Thank you."
He stepped away from the door of the ward and retreated down the hall a bit, watching while the younger man greeted his wife with a kiss, and then bent to kiss his sleeping son with a tenderness that made Mulder's heart ache. He didn’t know how Scully did it, day after day, facing parents terrified at having to meet with a pediatric neurologist. She was incredibly strong, as always, but motivated by so many intricate impulses from their shared past. Those parents would never understand how much of her desire to aid them came from her own deeply felt pain. They would only see the compassion in her eyes, the reserve. They’d never know what it cost her to retain her seeming neutrality in the face of their overwhelming need for her skills. Just watching Christian’s parents, seeing the mixture of anxiety and hope on their faces as they looked at their child, was so intimate that he had to close his eyes against the sight. Instead, he listened to Scully's phone ring and anticipated the healing balm of her voice, as he leant back against the wall.
"Hey you," Scully said warmly in his ear.
He smiled, and said, "Guess where I am right now?"
"Guess what you're wearing right now?" she teased. "Are you still playing that old game, Mulder?"
"Only with you," he murmured, then opened his eyes because he felt himself being watched. A young blonde doctor with sharp features regarded him with open interest as she made her way down the hallway to the children's ward. He turned his back to her as she passed him by, knowing without looking that she was checking out the rear view. Maybe he hadn't been outside in a long time, but he was reasonably certain that women had not been so bold when he was younger.
"I'll tell you where you better not be," Scully said, unaware of where his thoughts had gone.
He pushed away from the wall, and began walking toward her office.
"Where's that?" he asked.
"Up on that roof when it's dark out," she said firmly.
"Hmm," he said to her in his best 'I'm just proposing a theory' conversational tone, "what if I told you that I was stuck to the gutter?"
"Mulder!" she said, with some feeling. "You aren't serious?"
He heard his knock on her office door echo oddly through the phone.
"Hold on a minute," she said.
He listened as her heels crossed the floor, both on the phone and off. He stood out of sight as she opened the door. "Boo," he said, leaning around the door jamb and snapping his phone shut.
"Mulder!" she said, in surprise. She pulled him into the office hurriedly and shut the door as if she still had to hide him, her phone pressed against her ear.
He bent down and kissed her, taking her phone and dropping it into her lab coat pocket as he backed her up against her desk. "Hi," he said when he drew away, still holding her face in his hands.
"Hi," she whispered back. "What are you doing here?" She reached up and stroked the hair back from his brow. "Not that I'm unhappy to see you, but …"
He pulled a small laminated rectangle out of his jacket and handed it to her.
She took it with a puzzled expression on her face. "Is this a letter?" she asked. "Reduced and lamina-" her breath caught. "Mulder, is this a copy of your exoneration?"
He smiled at her excitement, watching as she turned and shoved the small placard under the lamp, fumbling for the glasses in her pocket, then reading the words under her breath.
"Mulder!" She turned and flung her arms around his neck.
"Skinner came for a visit today," he murmured into her hair.
She was practically jumping up and down in his arms, but stopped and drew back at his words. "Oh …" she said.
He nodded. "He brought many gifts," he said, pulling his wallet out of his back pocket. He flashed his license like it was the ID in his old FBI billfold and she grabbed at it greedily, still holding the laminated letter in her other hand.
"This picture's almost a decade old," she murmured, tracing his face.
"I can still pass as me, though, right?" he asked.
She held the wallet up next to his head, eyebrow cocked, considering him teasingly. "I guess," she said slowly.
He pouted as she giggled.
"Did Skinner want anything for his gifts?" she asked.
He could see how apprehensive she was about his answer. "Maybe," he said, "but I told him 'no' before he could even make a real offer."
Her blue gaze was troubled as she regarded him. "Is that really what you want?" she asked quietly.
He shook his head in exasperation. She was such a contrarian. "Yes," he said firmly. "I meant what I said."
Her expression relaxed. She looked at the documents in her hand again. "Did David ask him to shrink down your exoneration and laminate it like this? It's barely legible."
Mulder laughed, "Believe it or not, that was Skinner's addition to David's checklist. You know how he worries. I think that if he could somehow tattoo it on me, he'd have it done."
Scully looked like that was an idea worth considering.
"No, Scully," he said firmly. "We are a one tattoo family."
She grimaced.
"Besides," he bent over her suggestively, and she stared up at him, her breath coming a little more deeply, "you know how I hate needles." He tipped forward just a bit more and caught her mouth with his, kissing her with intention, letting her know how he wanted this evening to end. He broke away from her, pressing his forehead against hers. "I say that we go out and celebrate," he said. "Let's go someplace nice and have dinner, just be … like anyone else."
She shook her head. "No, let's be just like us," she said. She kissed him, and slipped her hand inside his coat, placing his wallet and the exoneration letter in his breast pocket. Her hands pressed against his chest, feeling the fine wool of the dark green cashmere sweater that he’d worn, knowing that she loved it. "I know just the place."
~*~
Mulder looked around the upscale diner, a bit startled that of all the places she could have chosen, that this was what Scully had picked. The diner had been restored lovingly, from its octagonal tiled floor to the art deco brushed nickel clock over the counter. The booths along the outside walls were dark red, with coat hooks like antlers springing up between them. The tables were covered with red and white checked cloths, but at the back of each booth was that same upright chrome topped napkin dispenser that he’d seen in innumerable places in years past. Still, the lighting was set lower than the diners of his memory, and there were tiny candles in glass globes on the table, adding to the cozy, cheery mood. He hung his winter coat over Scully’s and turned to see her seated very happily with her menu already open. Her feet were crossed at the ankle, and she was smiling as she perused her choices. Mulder decided right then that it didn’t matter if the food here was even worse than what could be had at Our Lady of Sorrows, so long as Scully was smiling like that.
He sat down opposite her, sliding his own feet out and around hers, then crossing his ankles behind them so that her legs were resting inside. She hummed a little and adjusted her seat, moving so that her feet were actually laying atop his, then looked up at him, blue eyes sparkling. “The meat loaf is supposed to be really good here,” she said brightly.
“Meat loaf?” Mulder said in disbelief. “You’re advocating for me to eat red meat?”
“It’s turkey,” she said warmly. “And I was thinking of getting it myself.”
Mulder opened his menu. There was an array of comfort foods listed including potpies, stews, and hot sandwiches, and hardly a salad in sight. He quirked an eyebrow. “And what else would you recommend, Dr. Scully?”
“I’ve never eaten here before, Mulder,” she said, and there was something in her tone that made him look over at her. She fiddled with her silverware, not looking at him.
He jiggled her feet to keep her talking, a method he’d perfected after years of her dozing off on him, sometimes while she was in mid-sentence.
“I just …” she looked around the restaurant, but before she could finish her thought, was interrupted by the waitress.
“Can I get you folks something to drink?” she asked pleasantly. She was older, wearing the kind of waitressing uniform that had gone out of vogue during Mulder’s childhood, with an apron around her waist.
“Do you have Shiner Bock?” Mulder asked.
“Sure thing, honey,” she said in that warmly unaffected way of Southern women. “One for you too, honey?” she asked Scully.
“Just water,” Scully answered.
Now it was Mulder who smiled at her, wagging a finger. “What makes you think …” he began, but Scully silenced him with a tilt of her head and an eloquent eyebrow.
After the waitress left to get their drinks, Mulder turned his head to look at his menu. “You were saying …” he prompted. He knew that Scully was more likely to talk to him if he wasn’t looking directly at her just at this moment. He watched, from the corner of his eye, as her hand played with the salt shaker at the end of the table.
“It didn’t seem right for me to come in here without you,” she said quietly. “I always thought that you’d like it here,” she shrugged, lowering her head as Mulder raised his. “Eating here without you seemed like it was …”
“Disloyal?” Mulder supplied, as he watched her searching for a word.
“Giving up,” she said softly. “If I ate here alone, that would be like saying that you were never going to be free.”
Mulder closed his menu and reached across the table for her hands. He pulled the left one up to his mouth. “Thank you for not giving up, Scully,” he said, and then kissed her knuckles.
“Never about that,” she whispered back. Her smile was back, and even if it seemed a bit tremulous, he was sure that it was from happiness for once. She covered his hand with her other one, running her fingers lightly over his knuckles.
He nodded in understanding. He knew that however many times they had the same argument about who they were, and how different they were, that in the end, they always circled back to the other. At least, he hoped they always would.
"You shaved," Scully observed, tilting her head to the side and regarding him with open admiration. She lifted her hand from his to run it over his smooth cheek.
"It was a direct order, wasn't it?" Mulder said, with a chuckle. "Even though my face will freeze now," he complained.
She pressed her fingers over his lips, shushing him.
"You got any suggestions as to how I can keep my face warm, Scully?" he whispered, kissing her fingers softly. He was rewarded by the flush that came over her skin and the dilation of her pupils. "Hmm … I think you do," he continued in a low voice that only she could hear, nipping at her index finger.
"Mulder," she murmured. She pressed her fingers against his lips once more before removing her hand.
He could feel her little feet moving as she shifted in her seat.
"What's on tomorrow's schedule?" he asked.
"You know I'm off tomorrow, Mulder," she said.
"Off?" Mulder said speculatively. "Let me get this straight, you're getting off tomorrow?"
The waitress interrupted him, bringing a beer with a glass over the long neck to the table. "One Shiner Bock," she informed them. "Do you know what else you want?"
"Oh, yeah," Mulder answered, never taking his eyes off Scully.
The waitress looked at him expectantly, while Scully's eyes shot flames at him.
"Oh, ladies first," Mulder said lazily, "that's always been my policy. Right, Scully?" He wanted desperately to tell her that if she kept pursing her mouth like that her lips would stick together, but she was already running one of her lethal heels up the inside of his leg in a way meant not to entice, but to warn. He couldn't help the fact that it was turning him on anyway.
"I'll have the meatloaf special, please," Scully said.
He listened while she went through her side dish choices as he slowly poured half the beer into the cold glass.
"And you, honey?" The waitress smiled when he ordered the shepherd's pie. "Oh, that's a good choice on a cold night like tonight. It's already starting to snow a little."
"How do you think tomorrow will be?" Mulder asked innocently.
"The perfect day to stay inside all day, if the weather report's right." Mulder smiled and nodded at the waitress' words and then turned to look at Scully as she continued on. "Let me just get these orders in. Holler if you need anything else." The waitress walked away.
"You may no longer be fit for civil society, Mulder," Scully said sternly, while she watched him finish pouring the beer.
When he’d filled the glass halfway, he put them both down and waited. Just as he suspected, Scully reached right out and snagged the bottle. "We could just order two," he said mildly. Secretly, he was charmed by the fact that he never got to drink a beer alone anymore, although he did occasionally miss drinking from the bottle.
"What fun is that?" Scully asked. She leaned forward on her elbows to the middle of the table. "I'd like to propose a toast," she said seriously.
Mulder picked up his glass and waited.
"To your freedom," she said, and he could see the sheen of tears in her eyes. "And our future."
He clinked his glass against her bottle and took a drink, holding her gaze the entire time. He leaned forward across the table and kissed her. It was an awkward stretch, but he just made it. "Thank God for those yoga tapes," he muttered as they broke apart.
"Oh, I'll drink to that," Scully said devilishly, clinking his glass with her bottle.
He smiled as she giggled. “So, even though I’m no longer a wanted man,” he said slyly, referring back to a joke of theirs for the past few years, “you still love me?”
"As long as you keep practicing yoga,” she said demurely, then added in a breathy voice, “I really love yoga." Her eyes were dancing in the candlelight as she raised her bottle to take a drink, her eyebrow arching salaciously.
A feeling of happiness broke over him like a wave and he laughed aloud. Who needed four-star restaurants and extensive wine lists? He was free, he had Scully -- and she loved him. He got himself back under control to see that she was grinning at him from her side of the table, his little provocateur, his partner through thick and thin. "Amen," he said, raising his glass. Then he drank deeply, never looking away from Scully’s laughing eyes.
~*~
Scully was kind of a cheap drunk these days. No doubt this was due to her level of exhaustion, how rarely she imbibed, and that fact that she was already a bit giddy about his exoneration, but Mulder could not help but be amused by it. After they’d eaten a huge meal -- he must have missed when restaurant portions became enormous again while he was in exile -- Scully had demanded to see his exoneration. He sat there smiling, watching her trying to read the teeny type without her reading glasses in the low light of the diner. She had been annoyed with his amusement, but more annoyed that he didn’t have his reading glasses with him.
After the meal, they’d walked down the snowy streets to the hospital-affiliated lot where Scully had parked her car that morning. She was slipping a little in her impractical-for-the-weather high heels, but he didn’t bother to chide her. Scully might normally be the most sensible woman on the planet, but her hatred of wearing her “ugly” snow boots was almost comically adolescent. Instead, he tucked her hand inside the bend of his elbow, covering it with his other hand, and they slid along together like they were lovers from the era of his grandparents.
The snow had yet to amount to much, just a dusting on the windows and the roof, which only took a second to brush off. Instead of sitting in the warming car, though, Scully stood on the passenger side and continued her tale of the most recent political machinations of the other pediatric neurology fellow. This had become such a recurrent topic of conversation since Scully had begun her fellowship that Mulder had nicknamed Scully’s erstwhile colleague her 'nemesis'. She had just gotten to a part of the narrative that she clearly found particularly galling when she abruptly changed the subject. Mulder glanced over his shoulder to see that they were being approached by a woman who was clearly curious about them. As she got closer, Mulder could see that it was the sharp-faced blonde from earlier in the evening, now under layers of winter clothes. He whacked the brush against the side of the car, to clean the accumulated snow from its head as she approached them.
“Dr. Scully,” the woman said impassively. “Hello again,” she said in a brighter tone of recognition, turning toward Mulder.
Mulder felt his brow beetling with incredulity at her rudeness. He nodded, but did not speak.
The younger woman had stopped, clearly expecting an introduction.
“Oh,” Scully said. She had just clued in to what was going on, and seemed a little bemused by the whole situation. “This is my …” Her sentence trailed off as once again the issue of how to describe the other reared its ugly head. It had been the subject of many conversations during his exile, but they’d never come to any conclusions. Scully had maintained that they were too old for the girlfriend/boyfriend routine and besides, they were committed, just not legal. Mulder absolutely hated the phrase ‘significant other’, and had advocated for partner, which was routinely used in Europe to describe a non-legal commitment. Scully had objected on the basis of their long partnership meaning something entirely different, while Mulder had countered that without the first partnership, there would never have been a second. As usual, their argument had ended in an impasse.
“Fox Mulder,” Mulder finished. “I’m her Fox Mulder.” He brushed the accumulated snow from his coat.
“Yes,” Scully exhaled quietly, in a happy little breath.
He was sure her colleague hadn’t heard Scully, but he had, and it made him smile to hear how pleased she was that he had his name back. Scully introduced the woman. She was, as he had suspected, Scully’s nemesis. He congratulated himself on a still useful Spidey sense -- even if it was rusty, he’d known that he didn’t like this woman before they’d been introduced.
“Nice to meet you,” Mulder said with almost no affect. He tossed the scraper into the trunk, and walked past her to Scully, pulling her door open. “Be careful driving home,” he said. “It’s kind of nasty out here.” He then handed Scully into the car, and closed her door, rounding the hood to the driver’s side. It had been years since he’d done such a courtesy for any woman, and he wasn’t entirely sure that he’d ever done so for Scully before, odd as that seemed, but he had exerted himself to make a point.
The woman was still standing at the back of the car, watching him. “You might want to move,” Mulder said, opening his own door. “I’d really hate to accidentally back into you.” He uttered the last in his blandest monotone ever, and heard Scully snickering in the car.
The woman blinked. “Oh, sure,” she said, moving away slightly, but still not going on her way.
Mulder got in the car and closed the door. While he fastened his seatbelt, he leaned over to Scully and rested his head on her shoulder. She kissed the top of his head.
“My hero,” she murmured. “Would you shoot her for me?”
“Just give me a gun, Scully,” he said. He laid his arm behind her on the back of the seat. “In lieu of that, I hope to spurt snow all over her when I peel out, because she’s still standing there staring at us.”
“You have to understand, Mulder,” Scully began. “I have never said a word about my personal life to these people. To them, I might as well be a nun. And now, here you are, and it’s kind of proof …”
“That you’ve been practicing yoga?” Mulder finished, putting the car in drive. He gave her colleague the finger in the rear view mirror as they drove away, but it was dark enough that she probably hadn’t seen it.
“Mulder!” she laughed, grabbing his hand. “I still have to work here.”
“Not forever, Scully,” Mulder vowed. “Unlike your nemesis back there, when your fellowship is done, you’re going to get out of this hellhole. You’ve done what you were supposed to do.”
She was staring at him. “Why do you say that, Mulder? Because of what Father Joe said?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know why, Scully, but I’m sure I’m right.” He pulled up to a stop sign. “I’m sure of it.” He turned on the radio and fiddled with the knobs until he found some music. She was still staring at him, half-hopeful, half-fearful. He wanted the lighter mood from earlier in the evening back and could have kicked himself for bringing up such a touchy subject. “And, as you know,” he said in a confidential tone, “I’m right 98.9% of the time.”
Scully rolled her eyes. “Mulder, please don’t make me break out the spreadsheet again,” she said.
He smirked as he put his foot on the gas pedal and drove them home.
~*~
“Don’t think that I didn’t notice the stockings on the roof, Mulder,” Scully announced from her current locale below his chin.
Mulder, roused from the pleasant state of sated half-sleep, ran his hands across her waist and then up her back under the long fall of her hair. “Who says that the pillow talk falls off in a long-term relationship?” he asked rhetorically, kissing the top of her head. “Not us.”
Scully yawned expansively, but made no move to get off of him. “Certainly not,” she countered. “Just tell me that you didn’t fill any of my La Perla stockings with rock salt.”
“Scully!” he said, in a scandalized tone. “What do you take me for?”
She raised her head from his chest and stared at him. “Which ones are the La Perla stockings, Mulder?”
“The fancy ones,” he said promptly. “My favorite ones,” he amended off her look. “The ones with the roses at the top,” he continued when he could see she wasn’t going to be appeased.
“Should I be worried about you being home all day alone with my stockings, Mulder?” she asked drily.
He smiled at the image of himself wearing her sheer black stockings in all his hairy-legged glory. “I think that if you give that just one moment of thought, you’d realize that would not be a turn-on.”
She cocked her head at him, eyes twinkling. “I guess that depends upon your perspective, Mulder. You do have a nice set of gams.”
“Well,” he laughed. “I like to think of myself as being open to new experiences and all, but …” he was rewarded with the huff of her laugh. “I’m not sure they’d come up much higher than my knee.”
She reached for her pillow, ready to belt him with it and he rolled her in the opposite direction. They wrestled pleasantly for a few minutes, ending up with Scully underneath Mulder and on top of her pillow.
“See this is what’s wrong with American society these days,” Mulder said. “Sex and violence all mixed up.”
“Cats and dogs yadda yadda,” Scully continued, kissing him to shut him up.
They lay there kissing for a few minutes until Mulder found himself feeling quite awake indeed.
“So, which stockings did you ruin?” Scully asked when they came up for air. Mulder had begun kissing his way down her neck.
Mulder stopped and looked up at her with feigned indignation. “You have a one track mind, woman.”
She raised an eloquent eyebrow as he continued to kiss his way down toward her breast, arching her back and ruffling his hair. After a few minutes, she pulled his hair lightly to get his attention. “Mulder?”
“The trouser socks,” he said in a distracted tone, “the ones you said made you look like an old lady, OK?”
"OK," she said, wrapping her legs around his upper back. She peered down her body at him. "I didn't say stop, did I?"
He nipped at her hipbone and she giggled, her face losing its mock stern expression. He smiled, and happily continued on his journey.
~*~
By the time Scully woke up the next day, Mulder had checked his various e-mail accounts, surfed the web, read two newspapers and drunk a pot of coffee. When he heard movement from upstairs, he'd already moved from the office to lounge on their too short couch, and was doing some serious reading, or trying to. He'd stoked the wood-burning stove to keep the upstairs warm, and the incredible heat coming off it, combined with the subject matter, was making him drowsy despite the amount of coffee he'd consumed. So, he was slower to respond than usual when she flew down the stairs wearing one of his flannel shirts and nothing else. She blew right past him and threw open the door of his office. When she saw it was empty, she gasped and covered her mouth, clutching the shirt against herself.
"Scully," he said quietly, not wanting to alarm her more. "I'm right over here, Scully."
She turned around and the raw pain that he saw on her face in the seconds before she launched herself at him was almost too much for him to bear.
He caught her and pulled her close, one arm wrapped around her waist, the other holding the back of her head tenderly.
She grappled for a hold on him that was tight enough to suit her; he could feel her heart beating, and the way that she was shuddering against him as she tried to control her fear and struggled not to cry.
"I'm right here, Scully," he said again. As much as her being traumatized worried him, he found himself humbled by her need for him, especially after all these years. It had taken him a long time to see past his own guilt at all that had been taken from her to realize that her love, as possessive and contrary as it could be, was an enormous gift. No one had ever loved him like Dana Scully had. In fact, there were times when he believed that, aside from Samantha, no one had ever truly loved him until Dana Scully. It obligated him to her, and there were still times when he chafed at such a restriction.
Then again, he'd never had to pick out the clothes to bury her in, or watch a backhoe cover her coffin with yards of earth. Even when he'd been miraculously restored, it had been a perversely cruel tease, a far too brief respite before they'd again been separated, potentially forever. He knew that she had lost far too much during the course of her life. If she lost him, she'd lose all connection to that past, including their son, in an irreplaceable way.
So much of their lives were bound up in the other -- he could only imagine how she had felt when she'd seen Dacyshyn raising that axe above his head, ready to strike the death blow. Many years ago, he'd seen her similarly threatened on the Chaco Chicken case and although he well remembered his terror, his love for her then had been so immature, so untested. He couldn't imagine how he'd feel now. It wasn't rational how intertwined they were, but their life together had conspired to make it so. After all, less than twelve hours ago he'd lashed out peevishly at a total stranger whose only crime had been that she was unkind to Scully. How would he feel if her safety had been truly threatened?
"I'm right here," he repeated, waiting. Despite the heat, he pulled the blanket off the back of the couch and covered her with it, then continued running his hands through her hair.
"I had a nightmare," she said finally, and he nodded, kissing the top of her head.
"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked.
"No," she said firmly. She was still holding him tightly.
Time was he would have felt rebuffed by her abject refusal or pressed her to share her nightmare, but he had enough of his own to know that sometimes the images in them were the last thing that he wanted to revisit for analysis. He pulled gently at a snarl in Scully's hair as he combed it with his fingers. He heard her sigh, and felt her relax a bit against his chest.
"Do you want some breakfast?" he asked after a while. They'd been laying there in the quiet, with only the roar and hissing of the burning wood in the stove for accompaniment. Outside, he could see the snow falling, the large flakes fluttering indifferently this way and that. It wouldn't accumulate to much, he was reasonably certain.
"Mm …" Scully said noncommittally. Her body was still fairly rigid against his.
He gathered her hair up and moved it to the side, sliding his hands under her shirt and massaging the tension out of the base of her skull and down her neck.
She issued a little groan at his efforts, and encouraged, he kept going, widening his strokes to encompass her shoulders and top of her spine. Her hold on him began to relax.
"I made frittata," he said in a sing-song voice. He felt her smiling against his chest.
"Mulder," she said in a whiny tone, "you know that has way too much fat in it."
He smiled at her feigned petulance. "I'm sure you can find some way to burn off the extra calories," he said.
She ignored him.
"I need a bath," she said a few minutes later.
"You are pretty stinky," he agreed.
That got her to turn her head to look up at him. He stroked her brow line, which was still furrowed with tension. The flannel shirt she'd hastily thrown on was pushed back off her shoulders, and her hair was tousled both from his hands the night before and her unquiet dreams this morning. She was, without a doubt, the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.
His expression must have reflected his thoughts, because she reached up and put her hand on his cheek. "Mulder," she whispered. How she could put so much expression, so much feeling into saying his name, he would never be able to explain.
He pulled her up on his chest and kissed her, trying to reassure her that her feeling was, and always would be, returned.
She broke the kiss, reaching beside him to where he'd shoved his reading in his haste to receive her. She braced herself and pulled the large hardback out from where it had gotten wedged. "Abnormal Psychology, Mulder?"
"13th edition," he supplied helpfully.
She was clearly mystified, but moved to drop the book onto the coffee table, only then noticing the others. He watched as she turned the small stack, looking at the titles, Biological Psychology, The Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Sourcebook, The Handbook of Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy. He watched her expression change as she got to the last book on the pile. "What's going on, Mulder?" Her question was not challenging – he could see that she had moved from being worried to being honestly curious. "Is this research for a new novel?"
His hand sifted through her hair. "No," he said. "Yesterday, when Skinner was here, he asked me what I would do now, and I talked about you, about how you'd continued your education, but changed your focus, and it made me think. Why do I have these books, Scully? I haven't been a profiler for years, but I ordered all of these books from Amazon."
She nodded, listening.
"This morning, I was sitting there in my office looking at my walls, and then my book shelves, and it struck me how many of my books are psychology texts. And I realized that I ordered them, but I haven't read them. So, I decided to give it a shot."
"Are you thinking about practicing?" she asked him.
He shrugged. "I really don't know, Scully. I just thought that I should see what happened when I started reading these books, see if it sparked anything."
She was regarding him in her clear-eyed, assessing way. "I think you'd be an excellent psychologist, Mulder."
He smiled at her, knowing that he was hardly likely to get his head cut off as a practicing psychologist.
"No, I'm serious," she said. "I think that you have a lot of insight into motivations, and real compassion," she hesitated, then leaned over and picked up the textbook on top of the stack, "especially with children. You were always so good with them, no matter what the circumstances were in the case." She was speaking dispassionately, but he could hear the sincerity in her tone. "I'm glad you're considering this," she said.
"We'd be a two-doctor family," Mulder pointed out.
"We already are," she said, laughing at him.
"Technically, I never completed my practicum, so … I never really finished that doctorate."
She grimaced. "Does that mean that you’d have to go through therapy yourself?" She made it sound as if the very idea was torture.
"That's really more for psychoanalysis," Mulder said, "and I was always much more of a Jungian."
"Naturally," Scully said, with a giggle.
"No, it would be about conducting therapy while being observed, and advised," he said. "I just don't know if it's possible, or if it's what I want."
"Is there something else you're interested in?"
"Actually, yes," he said.
She looked at him expectantly.
"I want to go on that vacation," he said firmly.
"Oh, Mulder," she began, "I'm not through with Christian's treatments, and …"
He held up a hand. "I know," he said. "But we can go away when you're done, right?"
"Well … " she began, "I don't really know."
"Scully," he said, "you haven't taken any vacation since you started re-qualifying. You must have some time squirreled away."
She looked thoughtful. "I just never thought about it," she said. "But I must have something. Maybe two weeks?"
Mulder smiled. "Think about it, Scully." He closed her eyes. "You and me, on a tropical island somewhere. Warm ocean breezes, palm trees and sunsets, fruity drinks, dolphins leaping from the water …"
She sighed wistfully. "I'll need a lot of sunblock," she said speculatively.
"I can buy you sunblock," he said, "and plenty of tiny bikinis."
"Oh, Mulder," she said, opening her eyes. "I think those days …"
"Bikinis," he said firmly, "and you know that you are totally gorgeous."
She smiled.
"I want to go to one of those places where you have your own little island to yourself, where it's just you and the ocean and a well-appointed hut with a big hammock."
Scully looked intrigued. "You can do that?"
Mulder nodded, "Yep. There's usually a main house somewhere nearby, but if you want total privacy, you've got it." Off her expression he continued, "There was a time that I was thinking that's where we should go, but that was before Skinner made it clear that the best strategy was for you to come out of hiding."
"You never told me this, Mulder," she said drily. "I might have chosen the beach instead."
He smiled at her. "No, you wouldn't have," he said. "And we're going to go now, anyway, right?"
She was looking at him, but he could see the wheels turning in her head. "Can you wait until sometime in February?"
"February's perfect," Mulder said. "Valentine's Day. Your birthday. We could celebrate it in style this year, just you and me."
Her smile was like the sun breaking through the clouds. "Just you and me," she echoed.
~*~
Part 3
