Life in Stasis
by Innisfree

E-MAIL: 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'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 what 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 ever 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.