by Jean Helms
jeanlhelms@yahoo.com
 

RATING: R for language, mostly.
SPOILERS: Does it still matter? Oh, all right. Season Eight.
CLASSIFICATION: MSR, A, V
SUMMARY: Mulder learns of finalities beyond the grave.
ARCHIVE: I'm afraid not. My agent would hurt me. Now, if you
want to swap copies amongst yourselves, I have no control
over that. :D
FEEDBACK: Yeah ... that would be nice.
DISCLAIMER: "The X Files" is the property of 1013
Productions and I claim no ownership of it. If I did,
there'd already be two movies in the works.
DEDICATION: To days gone by ...
 

*_*_*_*_*_*
 

I have next to no memory of my resurrection.

Not that anyone's asked.

The first few days were lived -- if that's the right word -
- in miniscule flashes of consciousness, each momentary
alertness a painful, confusing blur, much like the horror I
had lived in the months before, except that I was feeling a
different kind of pain, seeing a different light, hearing a
different noise.

Then I was alive. That's the only way I know to express
it. I awoke, my mind cleared and I understood. The horror
was over, I was safe and she was there, holding my hand,
and looking at me with pain in her eyes such as I have
never seen before, not even when her father died, not when
Emily died ... never. I didn't know what had happened, but
I knew that whatever it was, it had nearly killed her.

I wanted to talk to her, to hold her and comfort her, but
I didn't have the strength. The last thing I remember was
feeling her face pressed against my chest.

After a few days I was moved to a regular hospital room.
That turned out to be a long, long damn day, with Scully's
new partner questioning me for-fucking-ever in his
annoying, abrasive New York accent about how I came to
disappear and just where the hell I'd been for seven
months. He was accompanied by several other agents whose
general lack of affect led me to wonder if they weren't
suffering from some kind of anti-social personality
disorder.

Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, AD Kersh --
rather, Deputy Director Kersh -- came in and dryly informed
me that it seemed I was alive, to which I offered no
argument, having arrived at the same conclusion myself.

"When you're released from the hospital, Agent Mulder,
I'll expect a full written report prior to your appearance
before OPR," Kersh said, calmly, standing with his hands in
front of him like a preacher eulogizing a man he barely
knew and didn't like. "There are many things you still
haven't explained to my satisfaction."

"I'm certain of that, sir," I said, wishing my head would
stop hurting long enough so that I could come up with some
witty remark, but it was no damn use and it would just make
matters worse anyway. There wasn't one damn thing I could
tell Kershmallow that was going to make any difference; his
final report was written, signed and filed before I opened
my mouth to make my first statement, so why go to all the
trouble?

Kersh stared at me for a while as though he'd discovered
cockroaches on my bed, then said he'd see me after my
return to duty. I started to ask him to turn off the light
so I could sleep, but one look at his face told me he was
in no mood for favors, so I kept my mouth shut and he left.
I was damn near exhausted from all the questioning, even
though I hadn't moved from the bed all day except to pee,
so I just flopped one arm over my eyes and fell into a
restless slumber.

I don't know how long I'd been asleep when Scully came in,
but I woke up instantly. I knew the sound of her footsteps
so well I could have picked them out of a post-theater
crowd in Times Square. Anyway, I knew she'd come to me when
she could. It was just a matter of when.

I moved my arm, but it was dark and I couldn't really see
her, just her silhouette in the light that came through the
door; someone had turned off my light. She was standing
next to the bed, her hands on the side rail, much the way
she had after she and the Gunmen had pulled me out of the
Bermuda Triangle.

But then she lowered the rail and sat down beside me, a
little more heavily than I'd expected. I thought maybe she
was tired, if I thought anything of it at all. I just edged
a little closer to her, breathing in the scent that wasn't
quite perfume and wasn't exactly soap but was unmistakably
and comfortingly Scully.

She didn't say anything at first, just gently brushed the
hair off my forehead. "Mulder," she whispered, and her
voice was an echo of the night we first made love, only
softer, warmer, less afraid. She took my hand in hers, took
it to her lips and held it there for just a moment.

I waited.

And she brought my hand to the soft swell of her abdomen,
to a firm little bulge that rolled away from the pressure
of our fingers, then moved back again.

And she waited.

And then I knew. I'd say I understood, but I didn't then
and I don't now. I just knew what it was I was feeling.

"Scully," I whispered back. "Scully, how?"

"I don't know," she said, and I could tell from her voice
that she was either crying or damn close to it. I was also
very grateful that she didn't make any cracks about the
birds and the bees, which I almost certainly would have,
given a straight line like that one.

I spread my fingers out wide, laying my hand flat across
her very, very pregnant stomach, feeling the slow movement
of the small gymnast who seemed to be performing inside.

"Is it ..." I began, and then I stopped. There were only
two possible answers to that question, and unlikely as one
of them seemed, I was pretty sure it would kill me to hear
it.

Scully understood. She laid her hand over mine again,
guided it to the spot where the Olympic warm-ups seemed to
be in full swing. "It is," she said, with a sniff that gave
her away. She was definitely crying. "It's our child,
Mulder."

Our child. Scully's and mine. I could feel a broad smile
breaking out on my face, and I opened my mouth to say
something wonderful and significant and romantic, but
fatigue or stress or just the cumulative effects of
everything conspired to defeat me and I wrapped my arms
around what was left of Scully's waist and I wept.

I didn't know how long I'd been gone, but I was just
beginning to find out exactly how much I had lost, how much
I could never get back.

She didn't seem to see it, then. All she could see was
what we had gained, what we had made together on a night
that was quite literally a lifetime ago.

That first night that she came to me, I couldn't move; I
just stood there by the window in my pajama pants, my T-
shirt in my hand, afraid even to let myself think why she
was there instead of asleep on the couch where I'd left
her. Maybe she just wanted to wash up before she went home
...

And then that transcendently beautiful smile lighted her
face, and she looked at me with eyes gone dark with shyness
and desire ... she stepped toward me, laying one cool, soft
hand on my arm, and her lips were soft and warm on mine and
in that moment everything I was or ever could be was hers.

I could have gone on kissing her into eternity, but she
pulled back and whispered to me, her voice pitched low and
soft, a voice God made to sing a baby to sleep -- the baby
I couldn't give her -- but she wanted me anyway, and I
couldn't understand it but I wouldn't question it.

That was all she said: She wanted me, she wanted me now,
and I heard my own voice whispering to her, deeper and
raspier and much less coherent and I don't know what I
said, I only know that we were on my bed and she was soft,
so soft, and she sighed and wrapped her legs around me in a
gentle embrace and rocked me and whispered softly in words
I can't recall.

She needed something from me; that was, after all, why she
was there, but I didn't know and couldn't ask what it was.

We made love. There are some things about which you have
to either say everything or nothing, and this is one of
those times I choose to say nothing. Let me just say that I
loved her, body and soul, and she loved me ... and then,
God help me, I went to sleep.

I could blame jet lag, the way-past-midnight hour, the
mind-blowing climax, all those things ... I'm sure they all
had something to do with it, but it doesn't matter. I fell
asleep in Scully's arms and slept the most peaceful,
blessed sleep I've ever slept in my life, but I never meant
to, I swear it, I meant to stay awake and say Scully, why,
why now, why tonight, why me and instead, I just slept and
when I woke up, she was gone.

After that, I spent so many nights awake, lying there in a
too-short motel room bed with untucked sheets, wondering if
this would be the night when that soft tap sounded at my
door.

I got by all right on the other nights. I'd think about
what we were there to do; I read over my notes, examined
the photographs, read Scully's reports, did a little 'net
surfing on succubi, crop circles, the tomb of Marie Laveau,
whatever ... and I'd think, and sometimes even figure
things out.

If we weren't on an X-File -- if it was one of those
"real" FBI cases, ranging from security clearance to serial
murder -- well, I either thought about it or I didn't. If I
needed to think about it, I thought about it, and if I
didn't, I watched television or I read or I surfed the 'net
for something less intellectual than the history of Kirlian
photography.

Sometimes I'd watch one of those movies that doesn't show
up on your hotel bill.

But what I really did was wait, because there was always
the hope.

I used to think I knew what would bring her to me. I
didn't know shit. Then I started trying to figure out what
kept her away. No good trying to go there, either. There's
no fathoming Dana Scully's mind, and no, being a profiler
didn't help me one damn bit. Having a good understanding of
the modus operandi of various types of violent serial
criminals doesn't give me or any other profiler any special
insight into the workings of the average person's thoughts,
no matter how they portray it on television. Criminal
investigation has become quite trendy on television, but no
one ever really gets it right.

The truth is, profiling is not a psychic phenomenon. If
Scully were a serial killer, I could figure her out, but
because she's just Dana Scully, just the most beautiful,
mysterious, brilliant, confusing, desirable woman on earth,
I haven't got a fucking clue what's in her head.

Am I doing a good job of sounding as though this doesn't
bother me? As though it's just another fascinating puzzle?
Scully is most definitely a fascinating puzzle, but the
puzzle was just a distraction from the ache and the
emptiness I felt when I came back to life and I realized
that she wouldn't be coming to me anymore.

It took me a while to accept it, but eventually I did. I
stopped waiting and thinking; I just lay there in the dark
and savored the hurt, because it was so huge and
unfathomable that it was all I had to remind me of how it
was when she was with me.

And now so many things have changed and yet nothing's
changed and God, I want her with me. But I can never ask
her. I never have. I don't know why; it's not as though
I've asked and been rebuffed, because that's never
happened. I just haven't asked. I wouldn't dare. Scully's
love is as fragile and beautiful as frost on a windowpane
that a touch could destroy.

I don't know why she came to me. I don't know what she
needed. I don't know whether she found it with me.

Maybe it was the child; maybe that was all she needed,
maybe her body can only wrap around and protect and love
one Mulder at a time, and it's my child's turn now, not
mine.

I could almost live with that.

What I'm afraid of is that, to her, I'm still a corpse ...
cold ... rotten and foul, inside and out ... something
discarded, not needed, best forgotten.

They brought me back at the wrong time of year. I should
have come back to her in September.

September is a promise and threat, a welcome coolness in
the morning that says the long, sticky Washington summer is
over, but tinged with the threat of winter, all rolled into
a sky so blue it seems impossible.

September is when the new year really begins, for me and
for her; for me, because no matter how long I stay away
from the faith of my childhood, I can never let Rosh
Hashanah pass without some awareness of it. For her, it is
because of the years and years she spent in school, in
college, in medical school ... not until she began her
residency did she come to know a year that seemed to begin
at any time other than fall, and the feeling of newness and
rawness will never leave her in any September of her life.

My coming back to her was a beginning and the threat of an
ending, like a September morning. I returned to her, but
she doesn't know, cannot know, whether it is forever, and
because of that, I know that she is holding back from me.
The perfect union of body and soul that time and love and
pain created between us is gone, lowered into the grave
with my mortal remains but, maybe, never to rise again.

And when the wind blows chilly through the golden leaves
of autumn, she shivers and I know that she is afraid, and I
shiver with her. The wind is a sign from the heavens that
winter will come and the snow will fall soon, covering all
my hopes again in a brilliant light, brilliant and
beautiful and as white and cold as death.
 

-30-
 

Note: Obviously, things didn't turn out quite as dire as
Mulder thought they might at this point, unless you're
among those who just couldn't stand a minute of Season
Nine.
 

Elements of this challenge were: A Sign Asking a Favor A
trend (any kind, past, present or created) Ssomething or
someone getting lost