Life in Stasis

By: Innisfree
katclar73@yahoo.com


CLASSIFICATION:  SRA, MSR, brief S/O (if you can even
call it that)
SUMMARY: "He doesn't get to be the one who always
decides how things are going to be for both of them."
RATING: R (language, references to intercourse)
SPOILERS: Some of this is based on speculation and
information about XF2: IWTB, which I've interpreted
and spun, and which may or may not end up being
anything close to accurate. I'd really rather be
wrong.
KEYWORDS: MSR, Post-Series
ARCHIVE: Yes -- just e-mail me.
DISCLAIMERS: They're not mine, I'm not making any
money, and there is no intent to infringe any lawful
copyrights or trademarks.
_____________________________________________

She wakes, eyes slipping open but seeing nothing. From
one darkness to another.

Not yet morning, she realizes, as she begins the
groggy process of trying to figure out where she is.
Not at home, where the sheets would smell like that
fabric softener she started using a few months ago.
Tahitian waterfall or some other tropical-floral name
that makes marketers swoon. No, the smell is a mix of
flowers and wood and sweat and something else. That
smell she can never quite describe and isn't even
especially pleasant but which reeks of pheromones and
makes her feel calm and hot at the same time.

Of course. She is at Mulder's. Her left hand drifts
over to the space where he should be. To touch him.
Feel him. Make sure that no one has taken him from her
during the night. Because she lives with a constant
fear that someday, someone, somewhere, will take him
away. Again.

But she only feels emptiness where her hand falls.
Fabric where she should find skin. Not right. Not
right at all. Panic rises, driving away the sleep that
remains in her.

"Mulder?" She is still too disoriented to remember
that she should steady her voice. Disguise the alarm
and the fear that have always crept into her head
whenever she imagined him missing. Habit born from
experience.

"I'm here, Scully."

Relief washes over her as she hears his voice. He's
here. Not like those nights eight years ago when she
startled awake in an empty bed and remembered
immediately that he was gone. Maybe forever. Maybe
dead gone.

Her eyes have begun to adjust to the blackness all
around her and she sees an outline of him, standing
against the window with his arms crossed and resting
on the sill. The new moon is a few days old and it
casts a dim light over his form. From here, she can
make out the shoulders that curve into his back and
the way his waist narrows just above the edge of
ragged old yellow pajamas that hang loosely on him. He
often takes her breath away, even when she can can't
really see him clearly.

"Mulder," she says in a voice rough with sleep. "Come
to bed. It's late."

She waits for him to move but instead he stays like a
statue by the window, the faint light drawing more of
the lines and edges around him as her vision becomes
familiar with the darkness.

"I don't know if I can do this anymore."

He speaks as though he's telling her a secret.
Something he shouldn't say. His voice rumbles just
above a whisper and she strains to hear it.

"Come lie down. Please?" She is tired. Too tired right
now to talk about anything difficult, or painful, or
sad.

Let's just go back to sleep, Mulder. Everything's
better when we dream.

"I don't think so."

"You don't think... wait, what?" His typical failure
to cooperate hangs another heavy bag of sand on that
tired feeling behind her eyes. She sighs. "Why not?"

"Because I'll just fall asleep. And when I wake up,
it'll be morning and you'll leave again. And I can't
do it anymore."

"Do what, Mulder?" she asks, exasperated. Night is
their time together, the time when no one can touch
them and the world stays outside the window where it
belongs. She doesn't want him to ruin the night with
things that ruin so many of her daytimes.

"I can't have you here with me and then keep letting
you go."

She notices that he still hasn't turned to look at
her. He's just staring through the window. Frozen. But
then she looks more closely, struggling to focus, and
she sees that he's not looking outside at all. He's
fixed upon a faint reflection of her in the glass.

"Mulder..." She snaps at him as she pounds her head
back against the pillow. "I don't want to talk about
this now. You know why I go. This is the bed we made."

"I don't care anymore," he answers in a voice that
makes him sound like a little boy pouting over a toy
that was promised and never received. "I don't know
which is worse. Watching you leave or waiting for you
to come back."

So this is one of those nights, she thinks. Great.

She rises from their bed, naked and chilled by the
night air. Tracing a path to where he stands, she
shapes her body to his. Breasts fitting perfectly on
each side of his spine as if they could hold it steady
and straight. Stomach flat but for the slight feminine
swell of her abdomen, filling the gap where his lower
back curves slightly inward. She presses against him,
skin on skin.

"I'll always come back," she whispers as her arms
surround him, taking hold of his chest just above
where his heart beats out a strong and steady rhythm.
She wants to soothe him. Quiet him. She doesn't want
to think about any of this at three o'clock in the
morning.

"It's not the coming back that's a problem," he tells
her angrily. "It's the leaving. It's the not being
here."

She lets her arms fall and she pulls away from him. So
tired. Why does he have to make this more difficult
than it already is?

He reminds her of Bill when he's like this. A
comparison she never thought she'd make, until she
figured out that Mulder often acted just the way Bill
used to act when they were children. Her father would
be shipping out and Bill would sulk around the house
for days, slamming doors and refusing to look anyone
in the eye and pushing his food away at dinner. And
even though she was much younger than Bill, she
remembers thinking, "Why are you making this harder
for Daddy? He feels bad anyway and you just make it
worse." She always tried to be brave about those
goodbyes while Bill pouted and fussed about how it
wasn't fair.

"I can't help the way things are, Mulder. We're doing
the best we can."

She stalks back over to the bed and pulls on the light
silk robe she finds there to cover up her bare skin.
As if it's the next best thing to armor.

"Do you think I enjoy all this cloak and dagger crap?"
she asks bitterly. "Which, let me remind you, was your
idea in the first place?"

Mulder slams his hand on the wall next to the window
and the sound is not as loud as it should be. The
walls are old and thick, and what she hears sounds
like nothing more than a soft slap on hard plaster
despite the quick and forceful movement of his arm.
This is his life now, she thinks with a sudden twinge
of regret. He pounds and rages and still barely makes
a noise. Sometimes she thinks that all of the power
has seeped out of their lives.

"I know it was my idea! Don't you think I remember?!"

His hand is still flat against the wall where he
struck it, and he brings the other hand up to make a
pair. He leans and braces himself, and she's not quite
sure if he's holding himself up or holding himself
back.

"But that was then, Scully. That was then and I was
wrong."

Goddamn him, she thinks, as she seriously considers
walking over there and kicking him. He doesn't get to
do this. He doesn't get to be the one who always
decides how things are going to be for both of them.

***

When he told her right after William was born that he
had to go away because his presence was only putting
her and their son in danger, she argued. She
questioned his logic. She cried. She even begged a
little. But his bags were packed and he was ready to
go. Didn't know when he'd be back again. She actually
thinks she can remember him saying, "Kiss me and smile
for me," even though she knows he'd never say anything
so trite. But she couldn't make him stay when he was
so convinced that leaving was the right thing to do.
If there was an opportunity to play the martyr, Mulder
was always first in line at the audition with a
headshot and a long resume of credits.

Then he came back to her, albeit in an orange jumpsuit
with a capital murder charge. Fate and Deputy Director
Kersh were kind to them for once and he escaped a
death sentence. They went on the run. Together on the
run, she had thought at the time. Mulder and Scully:
Coming to a Town Near You in 2002.

But damned if he didn't do it again, barely three days
after they settled into a motel room in Roswell, New
Mexico. Three wonderful days in bed with Mulder, only
getting up and going out to fetch ice or soda, and
twice to have "breakfast" just after midnight at the
diner down the road where you could get bacon and eggs
anytime. Three days of making up for all that lost
time. Three days of working out all the kinks in her
body and reacquainting herself with every little thing
about his.

Three days and he informed her that he'd stay in
hiding but she needed to go pretend to live a normal
life.

He'd even worked out the details, which just pissed
her off even more. At what point during three days of
marathon sex had he found the time to formulate a
coherent plan for deceiving the rest of the world? She
certainly hadn't been mentally cataloging where they
might go next while he was rocking her on his lap at
the foot of the bed, using strong hands to lift her
hips up and then back down, over and over again. She
wasn't pondering whether she'd ever be able to
practice medicine again while she was sliding her lips
and tongue around hard, twitching muscle, creating a
vacuum with her mouth for all that pressure there, and
making him moan in that stuttering cadence he fell
into just before he was about to lose control.

Mulder, on the other hand, had done everything but
offer her a powerpoint presentation and handouts. She
was irritated at first when he started to lay it all
out for her. Irritation quickly turned to shock,
however, as she came to understand that this plan
entailed them living apart again.

"No," she told him. No way. She wasn't doing that a
Second - no, a third - time.

"But you have to," he pleaded. "This way you'll still
have access. Access we need if we're going to stop
what's coming."

"Let them come. Right now, I want to be with you."

"You don't mean that," he said with a sad smile.

"You have no idea how much I mean it." She used that
voice she had only used with him a few times before.
Once when she'd told him that personal interest was
all she had left if they didn't have the X-Files, and
another time when she'd broken news of her
reassignment to Salt Lake City and told him he didn't
need her and never had.

"We have to keep fighting, Scully. We're the only ones
who know and care enough to try to change it."

She was tired of fighting then. Bone-tired. Tired of
fighting for everyone else. They'd been fighting for
years and she just wanted some time to enjoy the thing
it turned out she'd been fighting for all along.

But he was always Mulder. He had to have what he
wanted, and he wouldn't give it up, and eventually he
wore her down just like he always did. Some of the
things she admired most about him were also the things
that made her want to tie him to a chair and pummel
him for a couple of hours.

She would go back to D.C. She'd leave the FBI, but
she'd keep in close contact with Skinner, and Doggett,
and Reyes, and they'd feed her the information that
she and Mulder needed. She'd pretend that she didn't
know where he was and that she was angry at him for
leaving her again. That last part wasn't going to be a
huge strain on her acting skills.

Mulder even had the gall to suggest that she try
dating a few men now and again. Just one or two dates
with any particular guy before she decided it wasn't
going to work out. All for the sake of appearances. It
was one thing not to date anyone while they were
partners all those years, he had explained. But if
they were going to sell the idea that he was
permanently out of the picture, she'd have to appear
as though she were going on with her life.

She fumed. He did not just say that, she'd thought.

"And what makes you think I won't meet some wonderful
guy on one of these dates that I'm so unaccustomed to
having after all those years of chastity by my
partner's side?" The venom that dripped in her voice
had surprised her. But that vision of herself as some
sort of pathetically loyal lonely-heart had stung, all
the more so because it wasn't exactly false.

Not surprisingly, Mulder looked like a puppy she'd
kicked with a steel-toed boot cleverly disguised as a
question.

"Well... I guess if you met somebody who was good to
you... somebody normal... I mean, I guess I'd
understand."

"God, Mulder!" she yelled. "That is not the right way
to respond to what I just said! I don't want you to be
understanding when I ask you what would happen if I
met another man! I want you to tell me that it's just
too fucking bad if I meet someone else because I'm
yours and you're not letting me go. Why is that so
hard?!"

"Oh," he mumbled, looking hurt and confused. And then,
much to her relief, the fire came back into his eyes
after the full import of her outburst finally hit him.

"Well, of course that's how I feel! But I don't
want... I mean, I don't think it's fair to ask you..."

"Yes it is, Mulder," she interrupted him urgently. A
little hysterically. Why didn't he get this? She
didn't want a relationship that played out like
something from "Born Free." Love something and let it
go and see if it comes back to you or some noble crap.
She wanted him to plant his stake in their ground and
write "Mine" on it, once and for all.

"Yes it is! I want you to ask me. I want you to expect
me not to take a second look at anyone else. And I
expect that of you. Are we clear? Are we clear on what
we're talking about here? Because I just want to make
sure you're clear..." -- she grasped his arm to get
his attention and moved her other hand back and forth
between her chest and his as though she were playing
ping pong -- "...on what this is."

Finally, he grabbed the hand flying back and forth
between them and held it against his heart. With a
crooked smile, he told her that he didn't know why
she'd tied herself to him. Why she had never let go.
But he was glad for it.

And so she returned home alone as instructed. Dana
Scully, reporting for duty. Skinner and Reyes met her
at Dulles and she relayed the plan to them in
Skinner's Lincoln Navigator as they drove back toward
the city. Mulder had always said to trust no one, but
they had to trust someone now. So they hesitantly
expanded their circle to include the only three non-
deceased people who had put their own lives on the
line to save the crazy couple from the basement.

The rest of the world would hear that Mulder had left
Scully somewhere in the Southwest. That he'd told her
he didn't want this life for her and he wouldn't let
her come along and she should forget she ever knew
him. That they'd argued about it and he'd led her to
believe she'd changed his mind. That he had left
anyway while she was sleeping.

It was uncomfortably close to the truth. She cringed
both times she actually had to tell the story, before
it traveled reliably along all the right gossip lines
and everyone from her former life started looking at
her with discomfort and pity that made her want to
scream.

But she managed to swallow every scream even as it
made her throat burn, and she tried to cobble together
something resembling a regular life. She found a
position as an attending physician at a local
hospital... one of the less prominent ones in a part
of the city that mostly served the poor and the
elderly and other people unlikely to know who she was.
Or care.

Every once in a while, she'd meet some quick-witted
guy who worked at a bar. Some awkwardly handsome guy
who was finishing a residency in the emergency room.
Some guy at the gym with a nice smile who couldn't
match his ties to his suit. Guys who reminded her just
a little of Mulder without reminding her too much.

And they'd ask her to dinner, or coffee, or a movie,
or a hockey game. And she'd accept, feeling bad about
lying to them, feeling bad about being out with a man
who wasn't Mulder, and feeling especially bad that a
tiny part of her wanted to discover that some normal
guy taking her on a normal date was the true love of
her life. As opposed to the one who was a wanted man
and chose saving the world over making her happy.

Other women her age couldn't seem to meet anyone. She
couldn't seem to beat them off with a stick. She'd
have a bad time with some, an okay time with others,
and occasionally, a nice time with a guy who seemed
like he would treat her well if given the chance. But
every date ended the same way. Thanks, it's been nice.
Call me? Sure. I won't call you back, but feel free.

And nearly every Friday night, she'd head out of the
city to a cabin that she'd bought in a remote section
of the Blue Ridge Mountains. She told her curious co-
workers that she liked to get away to a quiet place
where she could concentrate on an article she was
writing for one of the medical journals. The
explanation seemed to satisfy them, and no one ever
asked why she'd been working on it for years and never
published it, and they didn't really care anyway. So
she'd pack a bag, throw it in the car, and drive until
it seemed that there were no more cars or people
around for miles.

And that's where she'd find Mulder. Living in a cabin
in the middle of nowhere that was titled in her name.
Waiting for her to bring food and supplies. Waiting
for her to bring the mail in from the box on the
access road that he was usually too lazy to visit more
than once a week. But mostly, waiting for her to bring
herself.

She'd stay with him until late on Sunday night, unless
the weather threatened and she had to make an early
exit back to D.C. They'd laugh, and they'd fight, and
they'd banter, and they'd argue. Read, watch
television, and walk outside in the snow or in the
overgrown summer grass. Lounge in bed listening to the
radio, stay up all night making noise no one could
hear, sleep late in warm sun and cold winter light,
and share a bath in a tub not quite big enough for
two. Talk about the latest data and information from
Skinner and the two people Mulder called "The
Replacements" until she finally told him to knock it
off. Sometimes all in the same weekend. Lives that had
once been spread over seven days were condensed into
two.

It was wonderful and it was awful. And the more time
that passed, the more it became clear that Mulder
wasn't dealing well with being by himself most of the
time. She finally came to understand the true meaning
of "cabin fever."

He grew a beard and wasn't good about keeping it
trimmed the way she liked. It became apparent that he
didn't shower much unless she was going to be there.
His frame stayed muscular from running around the
property but he became a little too thin from not
eating enough. He talked too much about Langly, and
Byers, and Frohike and sometimes she worried he might
have forgotten that they were dead.

And every Sunday night became harder than the one
before. He'd find reasons to make her stay later and
later, and when she finally insisted that she had to
get on the road, he'd act like she was leaving him
forever. One night he'd cling to her like a mother
chimp cradling a dead infant. Another night he'd say
something cruel and storm into the room where he'd re-
created their office from the Hoover Building,
slamming the door behind him. It reached the point
where 60 Minutes would come on the television and
she'd start to feel slightly ill, a Pavlovian response
to Steve Kroft and the signpost half of America
observed as marking the end of the weekend.

On one trip, she brought him a two-year old
Lab/Rottweiler mix that she'd rescued from the shelter
in D.C. Mulder named him Walter and she couldn't
decide if that was a good sign or a bad one, but it
seemed to help for a little while. Walter kept him
company during the week while she was gone and stood
faithfully by his side every time she drove away. She
sometimes imagined the dog was speaking to her as she
said her goodbyes and he licked at her hand. Don't
worry, Dana. I'll keep an eye on him. If he starts
paying too much attention to his gun or something like
that, I'll just press "1" on the speed dial and bark.

She often wondered what the hell they were doing. They
weren't finding what they needed to stop the final
invasion. Half the time, it felt to her like they were
just counting days until December 22, 2012. The other
half, it felt like they were waiting to see how long
it would take Mulder to lose his grip on sanity.

Early on, once or twice, she had asked him.

"Are you sure this is what you want, Mulder?"

"This is how it has to be," he'd tell her with eyes
that were a sad portrait of determination and
desperation. "I don't want it. It's what we have to
do."

So she'd sigh, and shake her head, and that would be
the end of it. Life in stasis. Waiting to wake.

***

And now he wants to change. After all this time, and
all the sacrifices they've made, he wants to turn the
car around and head in some new direction. And she's
so goddamn tired of it all.

"...that was then, Scully. That was then and I was
wrong."

She presses her fingers against tired eyes and drags
them down her face.

"That's great, Mulder. You were wrong. You've been
wrong for six years and you're just figuring that out
now." She can hardly even see him through the anger
that's filling up her head like a faucet gushing water
into a bucket.

He turns from the wall and reaches her in just a few
long strides. She feels his hand on her shoulder
before she sees it out of the corner of a clouded eye.

"I need you here. I've tried, but I can't do it
anymore."

"You." She spits the word out and he recoils almost
imperceptibly at the sound. "You can't do it anymore,
so full stop, reverse course. Is that it?"

"Well, yes," he says uncertainly, as though he's
asking her if that's the correct answer.

"What about the aliens, Mulder? The super soldiers?
Saving the world? Remember that part?"

She sees his lips moving, struggling to form words but
failing miserably. Finally, he just shakes his head
slowly and shrugs his shoulders as if to say, "What
about the aliens, Scully? What aliens?"

"I see." She jerks out from under his hand on her
shoulder and backs a few steps away from him so he
won't suffer contact when she begins gesticulating
wildly.

"Well, what about me, Mulder?! What do you think this
has been like for me for the past six years? I'm alone
too you know. I don't even have a dog. And the
difference between you and me is that none of this was
ever my goddamn idea. I went along because it's what
you asked me to do. And frankly, I resent you making
me feel like I'm the one who's been doing this to you
all these years."

"That's not what I'm saying!" His internal alarm has
tripped as he realizes that she's upset with him, and
his tone modulates immediately to something placative.
"I'm not angry with you. I'm angry with myself... and
I'm angry at the world and I just want to make things
right... make them the way they should have been all
along!"

"So now you decide that something needs to change."
Her tone does not modulate to match his. "Do you ask
me what I want? Ask me if I think we should reconsider
all of this? No. You throw a tantrum and you announce
that you can't do this anymore. Well, I never wanted
to do this. But you didn't ask me that either."

"Scully..." Mulder waves his arms around for a few
seconds like he's trying to catch the right words, his
mouth occasionally falling open to start sentences he
can't finish. "I... it's... what... this... I mean..."

"You mean what, Mulder?! Jesus! Just say it!"

"I mean..." He looks so lost, standing in the middle
of a thin sliver of moonlight and reaching out to her,
afraid to move forward and close the distance between
them. "I thought... you'd want this too."

She pulls her silk robe a little tighter around her
body and folds her arms to keep it in place.

"Well, I do, Mulder! I did. I have. I just want to
know why what I wanted didn't matter until you wanted
it too."

The arms that have been reaching for her fall to his
sides, defeated, and he hangs his head to complete the
pose.

Walter whines near their bedroom door, troubled by all
the angry noise he hears coming from the other side.
Somewhere beyond the window, a bird chirps at the
thought of sunrise coming in a couple of hours. And
she and this maddening man, the one who started as
her assignment only to become her improbable soul mate,
stand completely still in the middle of a cold room
with a hard floor and a silence that echoes through
all of the empty places that have grown so large
inside them.

She wonders if this is what the end feels like.

"I'm so sorry, Scully. So sorry." The voice she hears
sounds like someone she doesn't know. Someone she met
once but hasn't seen in the longest time. Someone who
moves closer to her and pulls her into his arms,
closing them tightly around her until there is not
enough room in her chest anymore for all of the rage
she has in there. Only room for some.

"I'm such an ass. I know that. I'm better when you're
around but then I just fall back when you're gone and
I forget I can be something more." His voice is barely
a whisper, but she feels his breath so close to her
ear that she senses his words more than hears them.

Now she is the one who doesn't have the language. The
word "sorry" passes his lips so infrequently that it
resonates through her like a taiko drum whenever he
says it. Some people say they're sorry all the time
and it means nothing. He says he's sorry and it makes
her want to pull his head to her shoulder and tell him
right away that he's forgiven.

It makes her feel weak and inconstant that one word
from him can make her forget why she was so incensed
with him in the first place. Can make her want nothing
more than to deliver him from his pain.

But once again, he is Mulder, as he always is and
always has been, and she knows that he means it
completely. Sorry. Love. Always. Three words that
other people throw around like breadcrumbs for pigeons
but that he gives only to her and only with all his
heart.

"I didn't listen when you told me you didn't want
this." His words seem to carry all of the self-
loathing and remorse that swirl just at the edge of
his every conscious thought. "And I should have. I
just thought we were doing the right thing."

He holds her with such force that she finally allows
herself to go limp and rest against him. She thinks
she is more tired than she has ever been before.

"And what about now? Why isn't it the right thing
anymore?" Her voice starts strong, and then breaks,
and then drops to a whisper.

Mulder takes a deep breath. His chest is molded so
perfectly to hers that she feels as though she's
taking that breath with him.

"It probably is still the right thing. And I want to
want to do the right thing. Maybe I wanted to be a
great man. Save everyone. But I'm just ordinary. And
all I really want anymore is you."

"Mulder." She whispers to him as she pulls out of his
embrace and looks up into eyes full of longing and
regret. "You're anything but ordinary. I think you
know that."

"No. Great men sacrifice for what they believe in. The
cause, the fight, the war, the dream, the future,
whatever. They leave their wives at home and ride off
to start a nation. They get shot on a balcony because
they stood up for something. They fall on grenades to
save their friends. I just want to wake up with you
every morning and I don't really give a shit about
anything else. That's what an ordinary man is." He
sounds resigned and she realizes that he is resigning
himself to having failed.

"I don't believe that," she tells him softly, trying
to maintain a little of the fading outrage in her
voice without sounding too harsh. "You're just tired.
We both are."

"You're wrong. I don't care what happens to anyone
else. Not as long as you're safe and you're with me."

"Maybe that's true, right now, at this moment. But
it's only because we've already sacrificed so much."
She thinks of the best way to tell him he hasn't
failed. Yet. "Even great men stumble."

"I'm not stumbling. I'm stopping. I'm sitting down at
the side of the road. I'm not letting you go away
again."

She shakes her head, sad and amused, all at the same
time. She reaches up and brings his head down to where
she can touch her lips to his. Lightly. Gently. As if
he's something infinitely breakable that she needs to
handle with the greatest care.

"Your mistake wasn't thinking that you could do this.
It was thinking you could do this alone. You never did
it alone before. How far did you really think you'd
get without me around to keep you honest all the
time?"

She allows herself a smile because he is truly a ship
without a rudder when she's not with him. So confused
and misdirected after six years of intermittent
solitude that he's framed his future as a choice
between her and the world. And how could she not love
a man who thinks he can only have her at the cost of
everything else, and yet still chooses her? She almost
hates to tell him that he's wrong when she's finally
broken the tie for number one on his top ten list.

He mumbles and she thinks she hears him saying, "Not
very far apparently."

"What I never understood is why you thought we'd have
a better chance of beating this if we split up. I'm
your partner, remember?"

"I don't know," he sighs. "Divide and conquer. One on
the outside, one on the inside. It made sense six
years ago."

"Actually, it really didn't."

"Well, maybe there was more to it." He sounds almost
defensive. "Maybe I didn't want you stuck with me in
some hole in the ground when you could be out there
living a real life."

"Oh, enough already!"

She pushes against his chest in frustration and he
falls back a step, stumbling before he rights himself.
Just like great men often do.

"This is my point. I would really like you to stop
making decisions for me, and decisions about you think
is good for me, without asking me or even telling me
that you're making a decision on that basis."

"I only want what's best for you."

"You don't get to decide that, Mulder. I decide what's
best for me. We decide together what's best for us.
You stop deciding everything for everyone all the
time... because that's the thing that *I* can't do
anymore."

"Scully, it's only because..."

"Listen." She says it as a command and, as if to
underline the point, she forces him backward until
he's sitting on the bed and - for a change - looking
up at her.

"Listen to me because I don't think you've heard me in
a long time. You haven't been listening to what I say
and what I don't say because you're too busy deciding
things for me." She is no longer angry, but her voice
is as firm and as clear as he has ever heard it.

"I choose you. I choose us. I chose it a long time ago
and that, to me, does not mean living a hundred miles
away from you and picking up random men for show dates
that probably aren't convincing any of the people or
things we're trying to convince anyway. But you asked
me for something and I wanted to respect that because
it's my nature. It's now clear to me, however, that
you needing to be right all the time and me needing to
respect what you need is not working for anyone."

"Okay." Mulder swallows hard and nods at her, looking
as though he's bracing for a blow to the head.

"So here's what's going to happen. You are not
deciding that you're not letting me go. I am deciding
that I will go back to D.C. tomorrow morning."

She pauses, unable to help herself from drawing out
the agony for him just a little longer. As if on cue,
his head falls to his chest and he leans into his lap,
arms crossed and hands gripping his elbows with what
looks to be an uncomfortable degree of pressure.

"I will go back to D.C. and I'll give notice at the
hospital and talk to Skinner and otherwise put things
in order, and then I'll come back here and we'll
figure out what to do next. Because I'm deciding that
this living apart business is coming to an end."

Mulder slowly raises his eyes and the look on his face
tells her that he's not completely sure he's heard her
correctly. He quirks his head as if to ask her for
confirmation that she said what he thinks she said,
and she nods once in silent response.

"I could point out that this is all really semantics,
Scully."

"I don't think it's a good idea for you to point that
out right now, do you?" She raises her eyebrows to
punctuate the point.

"Uh... nope."

"Right answer."

She sits down next to him at the end of the bed and
rests her head against his.

"I'm really tired, Mulder."

He moves his left arm around her back and pulls her a
little closer.

"Yeah, me too... me too."

She massages his thigh, slowly and affectionately.

"Now. Will you please come back to bed?"

"Oh... okaaaaaaay."

He lets out a short laugh, soft and low. And she
laughs in return, a light sound filled with relief and
exhaustion. He slides back on the bed and starts to
drag her along with him, but she pushes him away
gently as if to say that she can make it there on her
own, pulling off her silken armor and tossing it to
the floor. They end up together where they began the
night, even though they get there separately, and she
places her head in the crook between his arm and his
chest. His arms surround her and, distracted, he
brushes his hand soothingly back and forth along the
plane of her back.

"So, ummmmm... what do you think we should do next?
When you come back?"

She lets yet another deep sigh fall away. "I don't
know, Mulder. I don't want to plan out our lives at
this particular moment. I want to rest. We deserve to
rest. Just for a little while."

"Alright." He kisses her forehead and the rough hairs
of his beard scrape against her cheeks and the edges
of her eyes. She is going to make him shave the thing
if she's going to have to see it and feel it every
day.

"Scully?"

"Hmmmmm?"

"Do you think we'll ever win? Do you think it'll be
over someday... and then we can just live?"

"I think..." She pauses to consider what she really
does think about the future, and their chances, and
whether four years from now everything they've tried
to do will make any difference to them or anyone else.

"I think that you and I have been on a long journey.
And when people like us face all their enemies, and
all their tests, and fight their greatest battles...
if they succeed, they're resurrected in the fires of
everything they've sacrificed. And then they return to
the world that they've saved and are given the gift of
an ordinary life. It doesn't always happen that way.
But sometimes it does."

"People like us?" His words are like an echo that
travels toward her from far away.

"Yes," she tells him slowly, sleep starting to
overtake her waking mind again. "Great men. Great
women. Heroes."

He is quiet for a moment.

"I don't know if I'm cut out to play the hero,
Scully." His voice sounds small and uncertain, the way
it only ever does when he's alone with her and the
world can't hear him.

"It's not a part you play, Mulder. It's who you
already are. I knew it when we first met."

She lifts a heavy hand from where it rests on his
chest, reaching up to slide her fingers softly through
his wild hair.

"How did you know?" He sounds full of wonder, amazed
that she ever saw him at all.

"Everyone knows the hero when he comes onto the stage.
And we're luckier than most."

"Why?"

"Because most heroes take their journey alone."

She has begun to drift away, imagining herself in a
land that never was, in a time that exists outside of
all known time. She is on a steed, in the center of a
vast field of grass, moving slowly toward a man who
sits on a dark horse and holds a sword at his side.
And then she is next to him, stopping as their horses
shake their heads and snort greetings to each other.
Side by side, she and this strange knight stare in
silence at windmills that turn in the distance.

"There's so much to lose," he whispers, full of fear.

"There's so much... to fight for. So much to win. And
if I were the world..." Sleep begins to cover her like
a blanket and falls over the ends of her thoughts.

He shakes her a little too sharply and startles her
back from the dreams that lure her away.

"If you were the world what?"

"If I were the world," she mumbles, "I wouldn't bet
against us."
 
She feels him crush her against him as if he's sealing
a pact, and the sense of power she feels when the
force in each of their bodies presses together like
this makes her think that nothing could every stop so
much strength.

"Well, I sure as hell wouldn't bet against you,
Scully."

Even as she finally allows herself to fall back into
the quiet of her own mind, she imagines that they are
waking from some deep frozen slumber where all their
vital signs were still and nothing ever changed. Like
she's on the Nostromo, with the foresight to see that
terrible things are coming and that more people will
be lost, but with a strange faith that they will
survive to guide their ship home... simply because
someone has to.

From life to stasis and back to life again. This cycle
of their journey is complete.

END


Author's Notes: I'm not a fan of the possibility that
Mulder and Scully have been separated in any
significant way for the past six years, but I can read
the writing on the wall, so I wanted to explore that
concept in a way that I could reconcile with their
characters and their relationship.