By Revely

Spoilers: TrustNo1
Summary:  Obligatory "but I need them to see each
other!" TN1 fluff.
Disclaimer: Since I haven't been sued thus far, I'm
going to assume the coast is clear.
Notes: This was a timed improv, written purely to
remind me what having my fingers on a keyboard feels
like. Decently written stories take me about six
months. This one took 3.5 hours. Make of that what you
will. <eg>

====
No eye to watch, and no tongue to wound us,
All earth forgot, and all heaven around us. -Thomas
Moore
====

She realized later, on the ride home from the middle
of nowhere, where she'd gone wrong. Idiot, she
thought, thumping her hand on the steering wheel. Of
course: her watch.

Frohike was going to kill himself for not thinking of
it. He'd already spent the greater part of the last
three months systematically taking apart every
knick-knack in her apartment, including William's toys
and, in a moment of well-intentioned paranoia that
surprised even her, his pacifiers. He took his job
seriously. Scully wished she could tell him the truth,
but she was careful about what she said out loud, and
even what she wrote down - she could feel someone
watching.

Months ago, back when she was wearing elastic-waist
maternity pants and Mulder was six feet under, it had
been the telephone that alerted her to the
surveillance. The line crackled when she spoke to
anyone, and she'd spent hours wandering the rooms of
her apartment, talking to her mother about natural
birth options, waiting for the buzz so she'd know
where the cameras and phone were interfering with each
other. There was one in the clock high on the armoire
by the front door, one in the antique timepiece in the
bathroom, one in her bedside radio alarm and one
staring at her from the blinking blue light of her
microwave timer. She'd thought at the time it was a
good thing she was half-dead inside, otherwise her
watchers would have witnessed her discovery. A few
weeks before William's birth she'd started getting the
telephone crackle all the time, even away from home,
at the office and in her car, and now she knew why.
She was wearing it.

She twisted the watch over to the inside of her wrist
and left it there as she drove. She hoped whoever was
watching her tonight was getting a nice view of the
inside of her knees, if the device included a camera.
Maybe it was only a global positioning device. No
wonder they could find her giving birth in the
backwoods of Georgia.

====

When she was a kid, Scully had been scared of more
than clowns. She was scared of the dark hallway
between her bedroom and the bathroom, scared of her
grandmother's false teeth, scared of the slow wink
Admiral Meyers always gave Missy, scared that there
was someone watching from the closet. The trick, her
father told her, was to pretend to be brave, and
eventually you'd believe it. She remembers this every
time she emails Mulder. The trick is believing the
lie. Every word they exchange sounds like something
she'd read in a book featuring a cover of Fabio and
assorted heaving bosoms, and she fears they're
overdoing the lovey-dovey angle. This tone of
communication is so foreign to both of them her
footing is unsteady. Surely no one who knows them will
ever believe this? But of course the watchers don't
know them at all. "One lonely night," the Super
Soldier had said. She remembered the night he was
talking about, of course, but all the same, he knew
nothing.

"I know your blood type and your resting heart rate,"
he'd told her, boldly. She'd worn her shocked face
while thinking, What do you take me for, jackass, an
amateur? She continues to be amazed at how she and
Mulder are underestimated. The watchers seem to be
convinced that Mulder is the only person capable of
putting things together, yet that he's also too
idiotic to be aware of their presence. They ought to
know better: Mulder is not an idiot. In the past year
he's been buried alive and she's given birth to a
hazel-eyed boy who turns mobiles and is learning to
propel his own stroller. They think a little video
surveillance is going to trip her up?

Not that the soldier's admission hadn't been a shock.
It was his audacity that strafed most. Being on camera
at every moment took something from her, but at least
it was something she could give. If she'd been forced
to lie out loud she never could have pulled it off,
but she'd had years of being silent, of ignoring the
elephant in the room, and years of not letting her
gaze be drawn to the area she wanted to watch most.
She was semi-transparent in the confines of her own
home. Her solitude was disturbed, but from a
distance-like being watched having a tea party at the
bottom of a pool.

There had been one night in her bed, of course. And
there had been a few dozen non-lonely nights in his,
to say nothing of moments when she found herself not
so alone in hotel rooms. But that first night he'd
undressed her slowly, quietly. Everything had been
removed: earrings, necklace, watch. Watched.
Afterward, she'd drowsed while outside the window snow
gilded the trees and ice frosted the pane like a
wedding cake. He'd drawn snowflake patterns on her
stomach with his fingers and she'd traced runes on his
neck with her tongue. The watchers knew less than
nothing.

She hadn't been lonely that night. Maybe lonesome, but
that was hardly the same thing. She thought about this
as she read his email:

To: queequeg0925@hotmail.com
From: Trust_No1@mail.com
Subject: No Rest for the Weary

Dearest Dana,

I can't tell you what it means to me to know I'll see
you tonight, have a chance to put both my arms around
you again. Our time apart seems to have weakened my
spirit as well as my body, and should something go
awry tonight you must never think that there was some
possibility of intervention, something you might have
done. I appreciate the need for caution, and for your
concern, but I need to see you, and am counting the
hours until I'm able to leave these cars and bars and
this war and come home to you. Maybe we can finally
get around to making that honeymoon video? Until
tonight, Dana.

Yours ever,
Fox

She put her hand over her mouth as tears swam in her
eyes. It was the dual nature of it that always
sucker-punched her, the glorious smart-ass sarcasm of
a man who was cribbing his lines from her dying
journal and Three Dog Night, and yet under that
bathos, sparks of a truth they hadn't had enough time
to explore.

He had absolutely no shame.

She could not possibly love him more.

====

The plan was simple. In every human construct (and
non-human, Mulder had pointed out while setting the
white noise machine near the clock to muffle their
whispers) there was a root of disorder. A system that
aspired to world dominance suffered from its own
labyrinthine network. There were more conspiracies
than a body could keep track of, and the autonomous
left and right hands of their oppressors left gaps
large enough for the truth to leak out. The barriers
could not be breached by armies, but one man and woman
could slip inside. Mulder had whispered that to her in
the early hours, their son a fuzzyheaded heap between
them, one hand curled around his father's finger.

She'd been moved by his idea, by his lips next to her
ear, by the hormones coursing through her body that
conspired to make her, a non-crier, into a weepy mess
befitting daytime television. A plan was born on the
day William let loose his first fitful yelp, and at
five a.m. on a Tuesday morning they shared an orange
at the kitchen table, and Mulder kept picking up his
coffee mug and not drinking it and setting it back
down, and she'd refrained from clutching his hand as
he finally pushed himself out the door. Before their
son's eyes opened on his fourth day, Mulder was gone.
 

====

By one minute after twelve, she'd figured out where he
was heading. It was the bullfrog that gave it away.
Surveillance, high technology and resting heart rate
notwithstanding, nobody had a memory for the minutia
of the X-Files like Mulder. It had been his idea to
let her know where he was by case file, and, more
often than not, by referencing something that had
never been recorded anywhere but their respective
memories. Super Soldiers and their ilk could take as
many pictures of her as they wanted, but they'd be
hard pressed to uncover the significance of "Jeremiah
Was a Bullfrog."

He was on his way to Florida now, for whatever reason.

Fear and disappointment washed over her, and she could
hear in her pulse the steady clatter of the train that
had passed without stopping. Whatever it was that
existed between them stretched tight; she could feel
the pull. Scully concentrated on breathing evenly to
restore equanimity. It had been a long shot, that the
source had their best interest in mind, but she'd
built a fragile fortress of hope on the desire to see
him again. He'd signed his letter 'Fox', which meant
he had something to tell her, something important. She
was not going to cry again, dammit. This was out of
control.

Scully sat down on a bench next to Agent Reyes and
tried to stop shaking, turning her mind back to DC,
where the Gunmen were holed up in their bunker on
babysitting duty; Frohike on feedings, Langley on
entertainment, and Byers the only one who would
consider changings. The Gunmen were going to miss
their baby bonding when she left, which, according to
the face on her watch, was in exactly 96 days, four
hours and six minutes. The thought of waiting to see
him again tore something right out of the center of
her.

Agent Doggett strode toward the bench with a look on
his face she'd come to associate with disbelief and a
small, surprised expectation, and before he could get
the words out of his mouth she felt herself going cold
right through her skin. The Soldier was going to kill
him. It didn't make any more sense to her now than it
did last year, when Skinner was taking Mulder off life
support and John was playing chicken with Krycek in
the badly-lit FBI parking garage. They wanted Mulder
or William dead, and for a brief minute, as she
sprinted over the worn planks of the train platform
toward the car, she wished that it could be Krycek she
came face-to-face with tonight. She waned someone
human. Someone she'd be able to kill with one
well-placed bullet between the eyes.

====

The white lights above the quarry reflected off fog
and stone dust, washing everything in its milky glow.
Behind her, in the hole of the rock, a rivulet of
steam rose into the air, as though the soldier were
still burning. Scully turned from her perusal of the
gash in the quarry wall and cast her thoughts out
toward Mulder, wherever he was. Calling for him might
be dangerous, she thought, making herself go quiet.
After a moment, her thoughts seemed to turn her North,
like a compass, and she took off at a run through the
soulless bodies of machinery toward a tree line behind
which the light dwindled to nothing. She was trusting
her intuition -- he'd be proud of that, she thought.

She saw him as she crashed through the underbrush, his
evanescent image reflected in the silver light that
rained through the bare branches of the trees, his
devil-may-care grin. For a moment she wondered if this
was another moonlight mirage, like the one that had
appeared moments before she found his body cold in
another forest, but this one didn't fade. Funny, she
thought suddenly, usually she was running from things
in the forest, not toward. They crashed into each
other, not bothering to stop the full-tilt until they
had their hands on one another - hers on his waist,
his on her face.

He felt taller and more solid than she remembered, but
he smelled comfortingly familiar, like gun-metal and
travel, and his mouth tasted exactly like it always
had, exactly like she'd known it would in the long
years before she'd tested her hypothesis. The kiss
wasn't quite sexy, was more desperate than savvy,
which was a relief. She'd been worried all their
emails might sway them toward some odd new method of
personal communication, something that included actual
endearments, and she found that idea petrifying. She
couldn't handle him calling her Dana, to say nothing
of Dearest.

"Scul--" he started to say, but she clamped her hand
over his mouth and shook her head at him. This
entailed pulling back to look up at his face, which
put more space between them than she'd like, but it
had to be done. He looked at her quizzically,
searching out the darkness around them, alert for
danger. She felt his body tense like he was preparing
to run.

No, she shook her head and tapped her watchband,
trying to make him understand. It took him a few
precious seconds to catch on, and then he nodded. This
would be a silent meeting, since she didn't know if
they could hear her with the device, or if it was just
for keeping track of her. She was struck with the
unfairness of it, aware of the dialogue they could be
having right now, the things he could be telling her.
Instead he pulled back and tried his best to come up
with a reasonable form of sign language.

They'd always been lousy at this kind of
communication. At some point a few years before, on an
unproductive stakeout one night in the suburbs of
Roanoke, sharing a box of take-out nachos, they'd come
up with a series of facts to be used in case one of
them was not who they were. On more than one occasion
they'd had to reaffirm their identity with one another
in stressful situations, and, for intelligent people
they'd always come up with ludicrous things. Like his
mother's name, or her badge number - information her
paperboy probably knew. They hadn't considered coming
up with a non-verbal system. That was something they'd
have to work on one day.

Mulder pointed toward the quarry where the Super
Soldier had disappeared, and then released her to bend
down. The ground was covered in rock chips and sprigs
of dead grass, and he swept them aside for a clean
dirt slate. He used his pocket knife to scratch the
word 'iron' in the dust. She could barely make it out
in the darkness, but knew that if they could be
talking right now he'd be telling her about Excalibur,
and about iron being the holy metal, and about fairy
lore. She knew this by the way he wielded the knife
like a sword, and by virtue of the fact that after
nine years, if she listened closely, and if she put
her head right next to his, she could tell what he was
thinking. It was as good an excuse as any to lean in
to him.

Mulder smoothed over his word with a hand, re-setting
the dirt like an Etch-A-Sketch. She was surprised to
see that she was still gripping her gun, and she
steadied herself with a hand on his thigh and used the
muzzle to draw a clock face in the dirt, complete with
staring eyes and moody frowning face. He'd know about
the watching clocks before he left, but not that she
was wearing one.  Mulder nodded his understanding, and
then unsnapped his own watch and pointed at her wrist.
She smiled. Yes, she could take it off and leave the
surveillance behind, and she would - when the time
came, but she wasn't going to alert them that she knew
just yet.

She wrote again in the dirt. '96 days', and they
smiled at one another, feeling heartened by their
proximity, regrouping for what would be another
stultifying three months of secrets and solitude.
Mulder's face was comfortingly close to hers. She
studied his irises, the black-hole pull of them, and
the choppy, uneven haircut he must have given himself.
She'd never seen anything so beautiful.

Minutes passed. Lately, she was fighting the clock on
several fronts, including trying to alter time -
slowing this moment down, speeding up the days until
she saw him again. Mulder rubbed his hand methodically
across her back, staring down at the 96, his leg
pressed against hers. She watched his weary profile
and realized that in the past two years, she'd spent
twice as much time without him as with him. No wonder
she couldn't keep her eyes dry these days.

Mulder rose to his feet, pulling her up as well, and
in the half-light she could make out the dust on his
jacket and in the creases of his jeans. She wished she
could have brought him a warmer coat, but he was
heading south now, away from the stunning cruelty of a
northern winter.

Some nights, lying in her warm bed, she felt
overwhelmed with grief wondering about simple things,
like where he slept at night. Last winter he'd slept
with his arms crossed over his chest, dressed in his
best, sleeping underground with worms and bones. She
wanted him in her bed again, or stretched out on his
couch, which was currently suffering neglect in the
alcove of the Gunmen's place pushed behind a hanging
curtain of Mardi-Gras beads. She wanted to take his
hand right now and lead him back home to DC and their
son and a life free of men with spines like
scaffolding.

Somewhere in the distance John and Monica called her
name frantically and she looked around toward the
light in the distance and the sound of shoes crunching
on gravel. Around her, the night shifted from magical
back toward miserable, and she knew they only had a
few seconds more. They'd only gotten a quarter of an
hour - hardly one one-millionth of the time she'd
spent dreaming about him in the past months.

Scully took a step forward into his chest, and his
arms clamped around her, his chin on her head,
insulating her for another minute. She determined not
to cry for probably the tenth time that day, even as
tears swam in her eyes. Something huge had happened to
her when he died, and even after his return the cavern
that had opened when she tossed a handful of dust onto
his coffin hadn't closed yet; she wasn't sure it
would. Scully stood on tiptoe to place a kiss on the
cleft of his chin before his mouth landed on hers. He
didn't seem to be considering letting her go. If she
were going to be fair, it was her turn to do the
leaving.

With deliberation, she disentangled herself from his
grasp. He let her move away, trailing his hands from
her shoulders until he held her wrists, his hand
clamped over her watch. A decade ago she'd never have
guessed she had it in her to be this sentimental. She
wanted to take the shirt off his back for the baby's
crib at home, so their son would know his smell like a
puppy learns his owner. She wanted to tell him that
sometimes, in her letters, she was telling the whole
truth. Instead, she settled for taking one long look
at him before stepping away.

Overhead, the wind pleaded through the trees, the
branches chattering like teeth. She wished she could
hear him say her name just once, for reaffirmation, so
she could remember who she was. He looked down at her
and shook his head, his expression pained. She knew
the feeling, he was a hard man to leave. She'd tried
it once, years ago. The look on his face choked her
up, and she reached for him again. He lowered his
mouth next to her ear.

"Scully," he said, and the word was naked with love
and quieter than a kiss. She held her breath and
memorized the feel of his breath on her face. "96
days." He pulled back and she kept her eyes closed in
order to walk away from him, trudging out from under
the trees, still feeling the clutch of his arms around
her shoulders. From the top of the quarry John and
Agent Reyes were jogging toward her, calling her name.
She didn't answer, hesitating at the tree line,
listening to the trample of her partner's boots as he
set off again toward the sleepy lights of the Southern
Railway.

====

The End.

====

There were all those close-ups on timepieces in the
episode. That, paired with the "They're watching" tag
got me thinking.

Acknowledgements: Carrie, Jet and Shari put more
effort into this than it deserved (though not more
than was needed, Lord knows <g>). Thanks again!

Complaints about the schmoop factor (I know! <blushes>) go to
revely_c@yahoo.com