By X-Phylia
xphylia@yahoo.com

Disclaimer: anything you recognize is not mine.
Category: Angst-Comfort
Spoilers: Sein Und Zeit, Herrenvolk, Biogenesis, The
Sixth Extinction,
minors for Demons and Signs & Wonders.
Archive: anywhere is fine, just let me know
Feedback: very welcome at xphylia@yahoo.com
Summary: what happened in the morning after Mulder's
hard night in "Sein Und Zeit", before Skinner knocked?

San, a.k.a. Humbuggie: I hid a few "Easter eggs" here
for you. Let's
see how many you can find! ;->

"The final cut"
by X-Phylia

"And if I show you my dark side
will you still hold me tonight?
And if I open my heart to you
and show you my weak side,
What would you do?"

(Pink Floyd, "The Final Cut")
 

A few years ago, when Mrs. Mulder suffered a stroke,
her son was
desperate. He broke down in my arms, defeated, all his
efforts to save
his mother were futile, including risking his own life
à and mine.
I took him out of the hospital after no small amount
of insistence, and
only when he realized that if he stayed, it would be
in another room,
with an IV stuck in his arm and sedated into
unconsciousness.
Even though he was well past the point of exhaustion,
Mulder had a
terrible night. He hardly slept, afraid that the phone
might ring any
time announcing that his mother had passed away.

Against all odds, Mrs. Mulder not only survived the
stroke, but also
made a full recovery. We never knew for sure how that
happened, her
doctors couldn't explain it. The only clue to such a
miracle was the
testimony of a nurse who had spotted "a gray-haired,
blue-eyed
cigarette smoking man" near Mrs. Mulder's room. For
once in his life,
my partner didn't make questions; he just accepted her
mother's good
luck à or good connections à and thanked she was
alive.

Since they hadn't enjoy a healthy mother-son
relationship in the past,
I expected both of them to take her recovery as a
second chance to make
up for lost time. However, that never happened. I know
for sure that
Fox tried, but instead of coming clean with him, his
mother used her
recent illness as another excuse for her 'bad memory'.
Not a year later
they were at odds again, especially after Mulder
questioned her about
who was his real father.

As the years went by and I got to know my partner's
life better, more
than once I wished I could talk to Mrs. Mulder about
him. I imagined he
couldn't have been an easy child, smart as he was and
with all the
trauma he had suffered. But it was painfully obvious
that his own
mother didn't understand him either. Maybe she was
seeing her husband
projected in her son, someone consumed by work,
estranged from his
loved ones; and feared that one day he might end up
killed too. Not
that she was so wrong, after all. Mulder was always
putting himself in
danger, although somehow he always pulled through.
Mrs. Mulder never
took the time to visit him when he was ill or injured,
it wasn't her
style. She assumed he'd be back on his feet soon,
ready to risk his
neck again. And that was how it usually went.

But the one time I called her to tell her that Fox
might really die,
she came. Mulder was in a coma, trapped inside his own
brain's abnormal
activity, unable to give any sign of recognition. But
she stayed there.
How and why she managed to deliver him to the smoking
man is beyond me.
I knew she'd never hurt him, or let anyone hurt him.
Whatever they did
to Mulder in that DOD facility where I found him had
eliminated the
abnormal brain activity. Whether the procedure really
saved his life or
only bought him time remains to be seen, all I know is
that he was
dying and now he is alive.

I never saw Mrs. Mulder again.
Alive, at least.
I saw her yesterday, cold and stiff over my autopsy
bay. I opened her
up, examined her, and determined that Mulder was
wrong, that she hadn't
been murdered by what she knew.
She had killed herself, she had died a peaceful death
in order to avoid
suffering a horrible terminal disease. That night in
Providence, Mulder
had told me that if there was a person on this planet
who hated doctors
and nurses more than he did, it was his mother; and,
according to him,
it was one of the reasons why she never showed up when
he was
hospitalized.

Well, nice move, Mrs. Mulder. Congratulations.
At least you could have waited a little, couldn't you?
Didn't you want
to hear you son's voice again, to see him one last
time? Your timing
sucked. Not that there is such thing as a good time to
lose your
mother, but it still sucks. You had to kill yourself
in the middle of a
case like LaPierre, so close to home, and you *knew*
Fox was working on
it. You had to do it not two weeks after he almost
died in Blessing,
Tennessee. You chose to abandon him without explaining
what that
smoking bastard did to his head à or anything else,
for that matter.
Mother Of The Year comes short to you, Mrs. Mulder.

If three years ago Mulder had felt remorse for things
left unsaid and
undone, now it was twice as bad. Back then, he had
fought back his
tears, resisted the urge to cry, but sneaked into my
room to get
himself some company, to attenuate his loneliness.
We shared a bed as friends, and in the morning he was
still sad, but no
longer looked like a shadow of himself. I remember
thinking how little
he needed to regain his composure, how strong his will
to live was. His
capacity to survive has always amazed me.

Our relationship had suffered ups and downs all this
time, but one
thing remains the same: when push comes to shove,
we're always there
for each other. The closeness that has evolved between
us in the last
few months revealed itself last night in the way
Mulder cried in my
arms without holding back, letting me cradle and
comfort him freely. He
didn't pull away immediately when his tears were
through, he wasn't
embarrassed or uncomfortable.
This time it's for real, I am the only person he has
left in the whole
world. There's no one left to hold him, no one left to
cry to. I can't
imagine what that feels like, and God, I don't want to
know. Seeing the
effect it has on someone so strong and resilient like
Mulder is more
than enough, thank you. If our positions were
reversed, I too would
hold on to him for dear life like did with me, as if I
were the boat
saving him from drowning in a raging sea.

Somehow I managed to take him to his bedroom, we lay
down and he buried
his face in the crook of my neck, still breathing
raggedly. I did
something that I hadn't done before, at least not in
*that* way. I
pulled Mulder's soaked t-shirt over his head and draw
him closer to me.
Then I started to caress the bare skin of his back,
inch by inch, with
loving, tender touches. He pressed himself against me
even tighter, if
that was possible, and to my utter pleasure and
astonishment, he began
to calm down. I don't think I would have gotten more
spectacular
results if I had used a chemical sedative. His
breathing grew deeper
and even, his body relaxed in my arms as sleep finally
engulfed him.
Something so simple, and yet so powerful. I wondered
if his mother ever
did this for him, if she knew how sensitive Mulder was
to being
touched.

I made use of my newly discovered trick when he woke
up later due to
his nightmares. It took Mulder a while to go back to
sleep after one of
those, I didn't even want to ask what kind of horrors
his troubled mind
was coming up with. I knew he'd tell me if he needed
to talk.
Tired as a I was, I would have slumbered like a log if
it hadn't been
for my anguished partner waking me up constantly with
his screams. The
clock on his bedtime read 3:16 am, still a long way
until the morning.

It's past 6:30 am now. Mulder woke up a little earlier
and I catch him
watching me sleep when I open my eyes. It amuses me
that he likes to
watch me sleep, I do it with him as well.
Last night's grief has left scars on his face, he
looks so sad. We both
know how difficult the next day can be. How fragile
you can feel, how
easily your emotions betray you. And Mulder hasn't
even had enough time
to get over and process all that happened to him
lately. We're getting
older, we don't heal nice and quickly in a snap like
we used to.

The morning silence is comfortable. Again, it speaks
volumes of the
kind of relationship we have. I still call Mulder my
friend, we're not
lovers in the physical sense; but we can share a bed,
sleep in each
other's arms and wake up feeling like I imagine old
married couples do.
He knows I won't pity him or take advantage of his
delicate emotional
state. It would be so easy to overstep the limits this
morning à limits
that I don't even know why are there any more. But
today isn't a good
time to thread into the unknown.

A sudden gust comes from the slightly open window. I'm
wearing one of
his t-shirts and not much more, so Mulder slides to my
side and
embraces me. My whole body is wracked by a chill. As
if to prove my
point, he doesn't realize that it's actually the heat
coming from him
and not the cold breeze that made me shiver. For
someone so fond of
innuendo to miss such a blatant sign, it's obvious
that his mind must
still be clouded by pain and grief.
Or maybe it's just tiredness. He lets out a big yawn
and closes his
eyes. I resume the backrub and once again Mulder
surrenders to it with
the abandon of a pampered cat. His soft groans of
pleasure even remind
me of a purring sound.
"Feels good, huh?"
"Mm*hmm*"
"Did your mom rub your back often when you were
little?"
"No, not really," his voice feels raspy and sore. It
also carries an
infinite sadness that wasn't there yesterday.
"Then who did it? Some girlfriend, maybe?"
"Samantha. Whatever she wanted from me, she'd get it
if she promised to
rub my back," he said lowering his eyes, as if ashamed
of that little
secret.
"You mean nobody else caressed you like this ever
since?"
He shakes his head and a sob escapes his throat,
breaking my heart.
"Shh* I'm sorry, I shouldn't be asking so many
questions today, should
I?"
He rolls to his other side, a clever maneuver to both
give me full
access to his back and get himself some space to deal
with his pain on
his own.

"I don't think I'll go to work today, Scully," he
murmurs a while
later. "Are you?"
"I don't know. Do you need some time on your own,
Mulder? Just say so
if you do, I'll understand."
He rolls back to face me and shook his head.
"No, I think I could use some company," he says
sheepishly.
"Then it's settled. I'll call Skinner later."
"Scully*?"
"What?"
"Thank you. You know, for staying over* I don't know
what I'd do
without you."
"You're welcome, Mulder. That's what friends are for,
or so the song
says."
He stares at me with his red and swollen eyes, I and
just know what
he's going to say.
"You're more than a friend to me, Dana. You know it,
don't you?" He
doesn't disappoint me. Well, well, it seems I'm not
the only one with
mixed emotions. No, scratch that. I know *exactly*
which emotion we're
dealing with here. The fact that we're both shy about
letting it out in
the open doesn't mean it isn't there.
"Yes, I know," I reassure him. "You mean a lot more
than that to me
too. But I think we should postpone this conversation
until you feel a
little better."
"Haven't we postponed it long enough? We may not have
all the time in
the world, Scully. I don't want to leave all those
things unsaid
between us. If anything happened to you*"
"Shh* don't think about that, Mulder, not now. We'll
talk soon, I
promise," I soothe him as new tears are pooling in his
eyes. He's way
too raw for a conversation of this sort yet. "Why
don't you try to get
some more sleep? You look so tired."
"Yeah, I don't feel so great. My head hurts."

It isn't at all surprising that his head is hurting
after crying so
much last night, but every time he complains of a
headache, I stir.
After the surgery, the pain was almost paralyzing; in
his delirium he
even asked me to shoot him and put him out of his
misery. It was so bad
that the only thing that calmed him was a shot of
Demerol. His rear was
bruised for a while, especially when they removed the
IV. And not long
after that, those damned snakes really did a number on
him. That was
pure agony too, he screamed in pain even saturated
with painkillers. He
had so many bites that no matter how they positioned
him on the bed, it
still hurt like hell. I held his hand and cried with
him, it was so
hard to watch him suffer so much and not being able to
help him.
Geez, that was what? Ten, twelve days ago? Mulder
doesn't believe in
God, but I can't find a better explanation as to how
he survived such
ordeal almost unscathed. And now he has to bear this
pain, one that
drugs cannot obliterate. I can touch him and he
doesn't yell as if I
were prodding him with a red-hot iron, but my hands
cannot reach the
place where it hurts now. I can only kiss his
forehead, rub his back
and thank my lucky stars that he's alive and well.

My fingers massage his scalp, I know he likes that. He
gets closer and
puts his over my left shoulder. His hair is soft
against my cheek, his
breathing warm and reassuring.
This is not just comfort, I think to myself.
"I should have been there for her, Scully," Mulder
whispers, startling
me out of my not-too-partnerly thoughts. "I should
have visited her,
called her more often. I can't believe she was so sick
and I didn't
find out until it was too late."
"How could you know? She decided to keep that to
herself."
"But if I had visited her, I would have known she was
sick, wouldn't
I?"
"Not necessarily. If she was as good at hiding her
illnesses as you
are, you probably wouldn't have noticed. Don't beat
yourself over it,
Mulder. Just think that she passed away peacefully,
she didn't suffer
at all. Maybe that's what she was trying to tell you."
"Then why couldn't she wait and tell me in person? I
heard her last
words to me from a fucking answering machine!"
"The last time I spoke to Melissa it was on the phone,
too. In the end,
it doesn't really matter."
"Melissa would have done a lot better if she had known
those were her
last words, don't you think?"

I'm going to lose this argument, so I give up. I can't
really defend
Mulder's mom, even though I tried last night.
"Remember that time in Providence, when she had the
stroke?" he
continued. "I tried to imagine what it would feel like
to lose my
mother then. I wasn't even close. I thought I knew
her, Scully. It's
hard to accept that it was her choice to cut her life
short and leave
me behind like this, as if I hadn't lost the rest of
my family already.
You know what? I'll take the snakes any time. Any
time*"

He breaks in an anguished sob and wraps his arms and
legs around me, as
if to make sure I'm not going to abandon him too. I do
remember that
night, he asked me to stay with him; and in a moment
of weakness he
confessed how tired he was of everyone leaving him.
It's a little past seven now, Mulder cries quietly in
my arms. Time
passes as he calms down a little, then breaks down
again as another
memory or painful conversation replays in his mind,
repeating the cycle
time after time. I hope that his mother is somehow
watching him now,
seeing the consequences of her actions. I hope she's
hurting as much as
Mulder is. In the meantime, I'm forced to remain
strong; his constant,
his touchstone. And paradoxically, I draw that
strength from him, from
the faith he has in me. He trusts me take care and
protect him while
he's in an utterly vulnerable state, when even a
simple comment brings
tears to his eyes.

I wish he could just drift off to sleep, but he
remains awake. He
raises his body and moves over me to land on my other
side, which is a
good thing since my left shoulder was beginning to
feel cramps. He
doesn't waste time and cuddles up against me again.
"It's nice being here with you," he says, a yawn
distorting his voice.
"I only wish the reason why you're doing this weren't
so damn bad. We
can't just have this if there's nothing wrong, huh?"
Ouch! That catches me completely off-guard, but I
don't have the nerve
to deny his words. He's right. Comfort comes easily
when one of us
needs it, but true physical intimacy has always been
like walking
through a minefield; and the funny thing is that *we*
put the mines
there in the first place. I thread carefully into the
explosive
territory.
"Yes, we can, Mulder. And we don't need reasons, good
or bad."
He raises his head to meet my eyes. "Does that mean
that I can hold
you, just for the sake of it? That you will you rub my
back like this
if I ask you to?"
"Of course you can hold me! As for backrubs* well,
that depends on how
much paperwork you're willing to do," I grin
mischievously.
"Sculleee*" he groans.
"All right, it stands from tomorrow on. Today is free,
as much as you
want."
"Hmm* I don't think I'm going anywhere far from this
bed today."

Grief and banter, tears and smiles. Fragile one
minute, throwing
innuendos at the next. Mulder's emotions are wide open
this morning,
he's not holding back anything. And he's not on the
phone, or sitting
across the room - he's telling me all this while he's
lying next to me,
tangled up in my embrace, after we spent the night
sleeping in the same
bed. In a way, reality hit us both today. Mulder knows
that he has no
one else in the world but me, and I realize I wouldn't
want anyone else
in my life but him.

I glance at the watch again and I'm fully aware that
it's late and I
that I forgot to call Skinner. However, the cell phone
is not within
reach and I don't want to disturb Mulder, who's now
sleeping soundly
for the first time since last night. I don't think
Skinner expects any
of us at the office, anyway. He knew I was coming here
after finishing
Mrs. Mulder's autopsy, and it didn't take a psych
degree to figure out
the impact the news would have on my partner. So I
close my eyes and
join Mulder, basking in the perspective of a lazy day.

The silence is interrupted by a loud knock on the
front door.
Mulder hasn't heard it, and I'm tempted to let it go.
Who can it be
this early, anyway?
I curse my sense of duty as I get out of the bed,
hoping not to wake
Mulder up. It better not be a vendor or a Jehova
Witness, or I won't be
held responsible of my actions.

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

I feel quite uncomfortable about what I'm going to do,
my hand
vacillates before it knocks on the door of apartment
42. Mulder has
just lost what little was left of his family, and here
I am, summoning
him back to work because a disturbed woman from
California wants to
talk to a specific FBI agent from Washington DC.
I finally knock and the door opens a few moments
later. I can't say I'm
surprised to find Agent Scully here. She looks weary
and tired.
"Hi."
"Hi."
"How's he doing?"
"It's been a hard night for him."
She doesn't elaborate any further, or invites me in.
If I didn't know
better, I'd think she's irritated by my presence; so I
go straight to
the point.
"Billie LaPierre is asking for him. She's got
something to say and
she'll only talk to Mulder."
"It's not a good..." Scully starts, when her partner
shows up behind
her, looking just as tired as she does.
"What is it?"
"This case has heated up. I've booked two flights for
us."
Mulder nods and goes back inside the apartment, not
even mentioning
that he's supposed to be on leave, or that he's tired
because he lost
sleep. His partner, however, doesn't look quite happy
with this
development.
"Well, then you'd better book three."

I meet them again a few hours later at the airport. To
my surprise,
they are dressed casual àvery casual, indeed: jeans,
t-shirts, hiking
boots. They look eerily young in that outfit, no one
would ever mistake
them for seasoned federal agents.
Mulder looks composed for a man who just lost his
mother to a bottle of
pills; Scully seems worried, she doesn't take her eyes
off him. By the
way she fusses over him, "it's been a hard night for
him" was probably
a broad understatement.
They spot me and walk in my direction. Mulder makes a
quick run the
restroom and Scully joins me.
"With all due respect, sir," she says with a stern
voice, "I don't
think Agent Mulder should be here. He's been through
enough already."

She's right, of course, her accusing words hit me hard
when Mulder
approaches and I can see him clearly in the light of
day. He does look
like he should have stayed at home. I do my best to
hide the remorse I
feel, if Mulder even hints that he's not up to this
assignment, I'll
call it off.
But he doesn't, the man's a professional. It surprises
me when he
doesn't make any subtle remarks about my reprimanding
him for adding a
fairy tale touch to the La Pierre case only to have to
call him back in
because he might be right after all. I study him
discreetly; he's not
himself today. He doesn't walk so proud, his eyes are
on the floor or
fixed at some faraway point. His hand unconsciously
tends to go in
Scully's direction, needing the reassurance of the
contact, but then he
retreats it, as if remembering that he's not supposed
to do that in
public.

I wonder if Mulder and Scully are aware of how much
they give away
about their relationship just by the way they behave
around each other.
I don't pretend to know if they are lovers in the
biblical sense, and
what most people fail to understand is that sex isn't
really the issue
here. I am supposed to be the one who will settle the
pool at the
Bureau some day; the way I hear it, there's big money
on it. What I do
know, however, is what my bet would be.

I booked three consecutive seats in a row.
Mulder lets Scully get the window, he accommodates in
the middle and I
get the aisle. Mulder hasn't said anything except a
weak 'hello, sir'
when he arrived, Scully is silent too. But as usual,
their unspoken
communication makes me feel like a third wheel. Quick
glances, discreet
touches, soft grunts* they all are part of a language
only they
understand.
Mulder falls asleep even before the plane takes off
and his body slumps
slightly against Scully, who nonchalantly ignores the
fact that they're
FBI agents on duty à not to mention her boss being
watching in the next
seat - and takes her partner's hand in hers.
"Um* Scully, I'll take the seat in the next row, so he
can* um* stretch
a little," I suggest trying to hide my uneasiness.
"That'll be great, sir, thank you," she answers
quickly with a grin
that leaves me with the feeling that she counted on my
being
uncomfortable around them, starting with their casual
outfit
contrasting violently with my business attire.

She pulls a sleeping Mulder to a pillow on her lap and
covers his
hunched six-foot frame with a blanket. Her hands
brushes his hair as
she stares blankly out of the window. The scene would
have looked out
of place if they were wearing suits, but they looked
like any normal
young couple. And I'll bet Scully spent most of the
night doing pretty
much what she's doing now.

I find myself envying Fox Mulder at this very moment.
I never had
anyone remotely close to Dana Scully to comfort me in
the dark moments
of my life. That someone so paranoid and estranged
like Mulder were
capable of having that kind of relationship is an
X-File to me. But
then again, maybe *Scully* is the X-File. From the
beginning, she was
able to see something in Mulder that no one else
seemed capable of.

One of the most impressive evidences of the bond they
share took place
earlier this year when Mulder ended up in a padded
cell with a very
bleak prognosis regarding his health and sanity.
His partner, who had flown across the country in
record time in order
to see him, demanded to go in; but Mulder's doctor
wouldn't let her,
claiming he was a danger to everyone.
"Not to me," she defied him.
I don't know how many people would have risked being
alone in the same
room with a visibly crazed Fox Mulder. Certainly not
his ex-partner,
Agent Fowley, who was directly responsible for his
being there in the
first place. But Scully wasn't afraid. To her, Mulder
was still Mulder,
crazy or not, and he wouldn't hurt her.
The doctor finally relented, but not without making
his warnings.
"Whatever you do, Dr. Scully, don't get too close him.
He has attacked
every person who tried to touch him. If he gets
violent, we'll be
forced to come in and restrain him."
Scully looked at the man with derision.
"That's not going to happen," she simply stated. I was
moved by her
faith in her partner. Fowley, on the other hand,
seemed eager to see
Scully run away from that room in fear, as she had
done herself.

We followed the scene thanks to the video camera. I
wasn't surprised
when I saw Scully walking straight to an agitated and
frenzied Mulder.
"What's she doing?" The doctor protested. "I told her
to stay away from
him! I don't want to be held responsible if she gets
hurt!"
"She won't," I said confidently. "Just watch."
From one minute to the next, the allegedly crazy man
was being held by
his petit partner. His shoulders were trembling, his
head was buried in
the crook of her neck.
All in all, Mulder looked as dangerous as a rag doll.
The doctor couldn't believe it, and Fowley looked
green, something I
know Scully would have paid good money to see.

I smile at the memory as I throw furtive glances at my
agents. Mulder
stirs in his sleep, startling Scully, who holds him
tight and murmurs
something to him. He wakes up and seems a little
disoriented and upset,
but with only a few words, she calms him down.
"Go back to sleep, Mulder, it's still another three
hours before we
arrive to California."
I can't help a smirk when he lies sideways across the
seats and lowers
himself into Scully's arms. A few tears run down his
cheeks, his whole
expression suggests grief and exhaustion. Scully wipes
them away and
draws him closer to her. When she thinks I'm not
looking, she even
kisses her partner's temple with great tenderness.

Watching their intimacy has left me with a bad taste
in my mouth. I
never had a love like that, and as the clock ticks my
time away, I
don't think I ever will. I wish I did, though.
Hell, I wish *everyone* had what they have.
Maybe then we'd live in a less crazy world, and I
wouldn't have to drag
across the country a man who has just lost his mother
to comfort a
mother who has just lost her child.

Fin

__________________________________________________