By Sally Bradstreet
sally.bradstreet@worldnet.att.net
 

Date: 11 Apr 1998
Rating: PG
Classification: VA
Spoilers: "Traveler"
Keywords: Mulder/other
Summary: A quiet dinner leaves room for someone from Mulder's past to
reflect.

Well, here it is, my contribution to the growing number of "ring"
stories. As I don't much care for Mulder at the moment, and as I am
desperately hoping that CC keeps his promise that Mulder and Scully will
*never* get together, I put a different spin on the "Oh, my soul!  Mulder
used to be married!" thing.

DISCLAIMER: Mulder, Scully, Edward Skur, and Arthur Dale belong to CC,
1013, and Fox.  The Cryptkeeper belongs to the folks over at HBO.

Thanks to Anne Vermillion and Heather for their beta reading and to Bonnie
who made the title work.

Send all comments to me at sally.bradstreet@worldnet.att.net
 

Musing of an X-Wife by Sally Bradstreet

He still pulls on his bottom lip while he thinks.

That's what he was doing when I first saw him ten years ago.  Of course,
then he was sitting on a bench on the Mall, not on a chintz covered chair
in a cozy restaurant in Georgetown, but with the stare and the lip it's
all very much the same.

What a cliche we were.  I recognized it even then--two attractive young
people meeting as if fated in the warm May sunshine.  But in spite of the
cliche, in spite of my urge to look around me and see if a gypsy violin
player was lurking somewhere in the lunchtime crowd, I approached him.
Smiled.  Asked if the seat beside him were taken.

He seemed surprised by my request but asked me to sit, gathering up
whatever file he had been reading and moving it to his lap. Our
conversation was stilted, inane, and after 10 minutes or so I wished I had
never spoken to him.  But then I made a pun, one of my criminally bad puns
that make my friends and family groan, and he laughed.  It was a shy,
quiet laugh, but it made his eyes crinkle and his shoulders shake, and I
knew I was hooked.  Besides, anyone who didn't ask me to apologize for a
crack that would make the Cryptkeeper shudder couldn't be all bad.

Our courtship was haphazard, mostly because of his work.  Some weeks he
was in the field, gathering the fragmented clues that his brain jiggled
into impossibly complete pictures.  Some weeks he was so singularly fixed
on the jiggling that he forgot my number, forgot my name, forgot my very
existence.  But then he would show up at my door with a sheepish smile and
I would forgive his inattention, for during those weeks I became the
center of his concentration and his world.

Being the focus of his intellect and passion was a heady experience,
intense and addictive.  I almost welcomed those times when a case was
foremost in his mind, for I knew that when he had finished with the
investigation, when the demon he was chasing was finally run to ground, he
would come to me, and I would be lucky to see the light of day for the
potency of his loving.

Sometimes, though, the demons would do the chasing and I would go to him,
barging into his darkness and chasing the monsters away.  It had taken
several weeks of patient pestering on my part, but at last he opened up to
me, explaining why an English accent made him cringe and why little girls
with long brown hair made him cry.  He told me about his mother's
depression and his father's distance, and I held him while he wept.  But
after he finally told me the nightmares came less frequently and he smiled
more.

His proposal, like so many other things about him, was erratic.  One
minute we were sitting on the couch he had inherited from his fraternity
watching a bad sci-fi movie, the next he was on his knees, offering me a
simple gold ring and a chance to spend my life with him.  I looked into
his darkening hazel eyes, felt the trembling in his hands, and knew I had
to accept, for when I was offered the world, how could I not?

Our wedding was a small affair, performed by a justice of the peace on a
sunny May afternoon much like the one when we had first met.  My family
was there, of course, mom, dad, brother, sisters.  His mother attended but
not his father, not that this surprised either of us.  After the ceremony
we drank champagne and laughed and left for a quick honeymoon on the
Vineyard before his next case.

I am momentarily drawn from my reverie by movement at his table.  A petite
woman with red hair and a great suit has joined him and is spreading a
collection of what appear to be photographs on the clean white tablecloth.
It must be his partner, oh, what was her name?  I know about her from the
friends I have kept at the Bureau.  I have heard about their fierce
devotion to each other, how she has saved his life on more than one
occasion, how she even went to jail for him once.  Scully, that's it.

I wonder if she knows she's standing on the event horizon of a black hole.
I wonder what will happen to her when she is finally drawn completely in.

Because we had both been single for so many years, we went through several
creative compromises on our way to marital bliss.  If he would eat the
real food I cooked him, I would agree to the take-out of his choice once a
week.
 If I would not play Gilbert and Sullivan at odd hours of the day, he
would not make me watch reruns of _Logan's Run_.  If I would stop
lecturing him about squeezing the toothpaste tube in the middle, he would
stop drying his socks in the microwave.  In spite of these wrinkles,
though, we were happy, the peaceful, substantial kind of happy that stems
from a relationship between equals.

During our first months together, many of our friends predicted an early
end to our marriage.  With his out-of-town investigations and time
consuming work, they said, we would drift apart and go our separate ways,
and I suppose that if we had been an average couple they would have been
right.  However, his absence served only to draw us together as we
distilled all of our love and experience into the days and weeks we had.

Our first Christmas was one of those times.  He darted from tree twinkling
with lights to advent calendar to holly wreath like a little boy, and
after spending Christmas Eve with his mother I could understand his
excitement. Dinner was delicious and impressive, served on the best china
and with the family silver, but it was so utterly polite.  Such a contrast
to the joyous ruckus of Christmas Day at my grandparents' sprawling house
in Delaware. As we lay in bed that night, shivering between the attic cold
sheets, he relayed in detail the poker he'd played with my cousins, the
stories he'd read to my nieces and nephews, how my grandmother had charmed
him into washing the dinner dishes.  "I never knew family could be like
this," he whispered.  I could only nod, knowing my voice would betray my
tears if I spoke, and I swore then that I would cram his life as full of
happy memories as I could.

I succeeded in this quest for over a year.  Then there came Edward Skur.

At first I thought it was just his normal preoccupation, the way he always
got lost in a new case.  But then his insomnia came back, and he started
smoking again, and I knew something was wrong.

It took more than pestering to get him to talk to me this time.  I begged
and pleaded and bullied until he told me of the serial killer who had used
his last breath to utter his father's name.  He looked so sad, so lost as
he told me that I made the only suggestion I could--investigate.

He did.  He showed me the statements from the current investigation, the
old reports with McCarthyist censorship to make the Communists proud.  He
studied every photo, every snatch of information he could find to no
avail, and finally we decided that perhaps he should search out the
original investigating agent and hear what he had to say.

When he came back after speaking to Arthur Dale, I didn't recognize him.
Another cliche, I know, but no less true because of that.  He was quiet,
withdrawn, and the happy light I had come to see in his hazel eyes began
to flicker.  He started listening to those damn regression tapes again,
started spending more time at the office, started bringing home files that
other agents had buried and forgotten.

When did our marriage begin to fall apart?  X marks the spot.

As he slipped deeper into his obsession, I tried to be supportive.  I
asked about the cases he was studying, didn't grumble when he came home at
unholy hours, didn't complain when he spent the hours he was at home with
his nose buried in dusty reports and grainy photographs.  I tried to tell
myself that it was just a phase, that he would soon turn his attention to
me like he had when we were first married.  But he never did.

Perhaps a stronger woman would have stayed with him, would have remained
at his side as he tilted at his paranormal windmills, but when he came
home one evening and told me he had requested a transfer to this X-Files
Division, I knew I couldn't do it.  I couldn't stand by and watch as he
destroyed himself in his blind search for the truth that he might never
find and that would never satisfy him.

I almost balked when it came time to sign the divorce papers.  Though I
knew the crisp white pages before me held a clinical explanation of our
irreconcilable differences, to me they seemed an indictment of my failure
to love him enough.  But then I remembered the vague way he had looked at
me over the last few weeks and my self-preservation instinct kicked in.  I
signed.

My hand tightens convulsively at the memory of that signature, and the
smooth edges of my fork dig into palm.  I look at the empty plate in front
of me and realize that I have reminisced my meal away.  I sigh at my
distraction, and another hand closes over mine, squeezing it warmly.

I lift my gaze to the man who now sits across from me and read the
sympathy in his blue eyes.  He caresses the ring he gave me three years
ago and asks softly, "Do you want to talk to him?"

I twine my fingers with his.  "No.  I've made my peace."

"All right."  He lifts my hand to his lips and kisses it.  "Let's go
home."

But as we pass their table on the way to the door, I can't resist the
opportunity to bump into his chair.  He instinctively scoots closer to
table and turns to me, and I watch as the apology he was going to offer
dies on his lips.  His eyes widen in panic, and I know suddenly that he
hasn't told her.  His partner doesn't know about me or our marriage, and
he silently implores with me to say nothing.

After a moment I take pity on his poor tortured soul and flash a generic
smile.  "I'm sorry," I murmur, and then continue toward the door.

The End

------------------------------------------------
Musings of an X-Wife
Sally Bradstreet
sally.bradstreet@worldnet.att.net
------------------------------------------------