Bridges
by Elizabeth Rowandale

Feedback:  Email: bstrbabs@gmail.com
Rating:  Mature
Relationship:  Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Additional Tags:  Angst, Romance, An X-File Case, Mytharc

Summary: A family in a small town in New Mexico appears to 
be suffering the ill effects of an encounter with Black 
Eyed Children. While in the desert to search out the truth, 
Mulder and Scully find themselves confronting more than 
they bargained for, both in the investigation and in their 
personal relationship. Early Season 11, turns AU after 
"This." Past and eventual present MSR.

DISCLAIMER: Mulder and Scully and the search for the truth 
all belong to Chris Carter and Co. I'm just borrowing them. 
I promise to return them in no worse condition than Chris 
would.

Beta thanks to Annie, without whom I would probably still 
be sitting in a corner feeling sorry for myself and 
refusing to post, to Erica who makes me much more 
presentable to the world, and a warm welcome to dear 
Miriam, my Water's Edge beta from way back in the day, now 
back to kick my ass in line once more!

AUTHOR'S NOTE: We've nearly made it! A year and four 
months, and there is finally a light at the end of the 
tunnel! I think it will be about 3 more chapters? Love you 
all for hanging in there with me for so long!


Copyright (c) 2019
 
Chapter 17
 
He took a moment to open the door. The light that spilled 
out from his room felt warm and inviting against the 
oppressive darkness at her back. Mulder had changed into 
sweats and a t-shirt, and he was pulling earbuds from his 
ears. Probably he had been working at his laptop when she'd 
knocked.

Scully shivered in the escalating wind. A storm hovered on 
the horizon. She had not even bothered to pull something 
over her bare arms, still damp from her shower. She wore 
only a tank top and pajama pants, still in her bare feet.

Mulder took in all of this in the first seconds after he 
opened the door, eyes widening and worry flashing across 
his face. He tossed the earbuds blindly toward the bed and 
reached out a hand toward her. "Scully? What's wrong? Are 
you still feeling sick?"

"I remembered something." Her voice sounded small and thin, 
but she was shaking and exhausted and the yellow light of 
that place was still hovering like a sickness behind her 
eyes. And this was Mulder, evening-rumpled and touchable 
and smelling of home.

Whether he understood what she had really said or not, he 
reached out his arm and swept her inside the room and into 
his embrace. Gentle warmth radiated from his body, and she 
pressed her face into his chest, wrapped her fingers in his 
shirt. She breathed him in. His strong arms locked across 
her back, grounding her in the here and now, and she knew 
all the places she melded and fit.

She hadn't meant to cling to him like a child after a 
nightmare before she had said more than three words. But 
the memories had ripped her raw. And maybe the unfettered 
emotion flooding through her wasn't just about tonight. 
Maybe it was everything that had happened in the previous 
wild days; all the closeness and distance that had left 
them ragged and unsteady. Maybe it was about breaking down 
the hastily erected walls they had been straining to 
communicate through for so long.

"What is it?" Mulder whispered, mouth pressed to her hair, 
hand cradling the back of her head. The voice that had been 
near her ear for nearly a quarter of a century, with soft 
words and whispered confessions and the warmest comfort she 
had ever known.

"I remembered something," she whispered again, "from my 
abduction."

He hugged her even closer. "Okay. You can tell me," he said 
softly. "You're safe. I've got you."

The truth of this statement hit her on a level of 
profundity that nearly broke her heart. No matter how much 
she had pushed him away, left him desolate, closed him out, 
broken her promises, he had never let go. He was still 
right here, waiting with open arms.

She closed her eyes and nestled into the front of his 
shoulder, unable to speak or even think with any true 
clarity. She was reduced to sensation.

Countless moments passed, breathing and steadying her world 
in Mulder's arms. Scully turned her head to the side and 
said simply, "I held her."

Mulder's hand nudged the back of her neck and she felt him 
lean down to hear her more clearly. "You what?" he 
prompted.

"Emily. I held her."

"I don't understand. What are you saying?"

Scully drew a long breath, pushed her damp and tousled hair 
from her face. Mulder's hold loosened just enough to give 
her the freedom to move. She had left dark splotches on his 
grey shirt. "During my abduction. Or maybe I was taken one 
more time, I don't know. She was just an infant. Tiny. They 
gave her to me to hold."

Mulder exhaled, the action palpable within her arms, cogs 
of his sharp mind spinning behind pale eyes. "All right, 
come on, come here." Mulder turned her as he kept one arm 
wrapped around her shoulders, guided her to sit down on the 
bed beside him. He combed his fingers through her damp 
hair, reached out and snatched his discarded sweatshirt 
from the foot of the bed and draped it around her bare 
shoulders. The warm, worn cloth felt unreasonably 
comforting. It smelled of him, not the acid-sweet of that 
place. "Tell me," he said softly.

She tried to explain. Tried to find the right words to 
describe an experience that she could barely define to 
herself. She admitted to what she had seen at Miller's 
Field, whom she had been running after. She told him 
everything she had seen in the memory. She could feel 
herself gradually detaching from the intimacy and 
overwhelming emotion of the experience as she attempted to 
recount the facts from the perspective of an investigator. 
It slowed her trembling.

When she had stumbled through the essentials, the room fell 
into a silence that pressed down on her skin like unwelcome 
humidity. She felt drained and defenseless and 
overwhelmingly grateful for Mulder's sweatshirt around her 
shoulders and his fingers that had remained tangled with 
hers as she spoke.

Scully closed her eyes and released a heavy breath. 
"Mulder, I'm not crazy," she said, a little too much defeat 
in her tone.

"Of course you're not crazy, Scully." His free fingers 
smoothed her hair behind her shoulder.

"You didn't seem so sure of that a month ago," she 
challenged, turning to meet his gaze with a raised eyebrow.

He frowned, asking as much with his eyes as his words. 
"What?"

"When I told you our son was sending me visions. And now 
I'm telling you something perhaps even more improbable 
about another child. One I didn't even spend real time 
with. Why would you think differently?"

Mulder exhaled on something like an incredulous laugh. "Why 
would I think differently? Because last time you were 
having seizures, passing out, and landing in the hospital 
with a brain scan like a fire storm. I'm not seeing that 
right now, Scully. I'm just seeing you."

She swallowed thickly, lost for a moment in the intensity 
and sincerity of his eyes. "Thank you."

She could see the investigator's analysis running like a 
computer script in his head. She knew he had promised to be 
nothing but a friend when it came to memories of her 
abduction, and she knew he would never break that. It was 
almost enough to make her smile, watching his internal 
struggle. She took pity on him, squeezed his hand, and said 
softly, "What are you thinking?"

Mulder shook his head slowly, his voice softening in a kind 
of wonder. "Do you really think the Black-Eyed Children are 
hybrids? That you saw them on a ship?"

"Mulder, I don't know where I was. I don't know who I saw. 
We still don't really know who took me. Or what they did to 
me."

"But you're sure it was Emily."

She bounced their linked hands softly for a moment, staring 
at Mulder's chest and biting down on her suddenly 
treacherously trembling lip. "Yes," she whispered. She drew 
a shaking breath.

"Okay," Mulder said softly, as he reached out and stroked 
her cheek. "It's all right. No more tonight."

"Is it..." She cleared her throat, tried again before she 
could lose her nerve. "Is it okay if I sleep here tonight?"

A quick flash of pain crossed Mulder's brow. It hurt them 
both when she had to ask questions like this. "Of course 
it's okay," he said, voice deep with tangled emotion. "It's 
always okay."

She nodded her acceptance, leaned into his touch when he 
pressed his lips to her forehead.

Mulder put away his things from the bed. He opened a water 
bottle for her, tucked her beneath the covers, and went to 
brush his teeth. When he returned she was all but balled in 
the fetal position beneath the warm blankets. A soft desert 
rain had begun outside, splattering off the windows like a 
strange intruder in this arid terrain.

Mulder turned out the lights, crawled in the bed, and 
wrapped himself around her from behind. Without a word, she 
welcomed his every offered touch. There was no hesitation 
once the lights went out. They had slept too many nights 
tangled in their safe cocoon. Their bodies knew how to 
interact. Her cells remembered safety and home. She was 
surprised when she could already feel the potential to 
drift off to sleep.

"Why didn't you tell me any of this sooner?" Mulder 
breathed, mouth nestled near her ear, breath warm on her 
skin. "Really, why?"

She took a long moment to choose her response. It was too 
late, too quiet, too intimate for anything but honesty. 
"Because I was scared. Of what I was remembering. And if I 
came to you when I was scared...I couldn't trust myself to 
keep my distance. Not to just crawl into your arms. Like I 
just did."

"And you didn't think you could do that?"

"I didn't think I could stop." They were quiet and still 
for a breath. His hand was heavy and warm across her 
stomach. Then she said, "Because it's the only place in the 
world I've ever felt truly safe."

Mulder's heavy breath was his reply. It took her a moment 
in the drowsy and drifting night to realize Mulder was on 
the verge of tears. She shifted in his arms. His strong 
hold kept her from turning fully. "Mulder? What is it?"

He shook his head. "It's okay, Scully." He placed a 
lingering kiss near her temple. "Just sleep."

"Mulder?" She curled her fingers around his hand, squeezed 
in silent prompting. "Tell me."

He remained quiet for so long she feared he wasn't going to 
share, that she had lost his trust, even in these precious 
moments of closeness. But his breath was still uneven and 
she could feel the emotion pulsing beneath his skin. "It 
just...," he began, "I've spent a long time being someone 
people tolerate. But never quite what they wanted me to be. 
So, for you to say... Just...thank you."

This time Scully was insistent. She pushed against his arms 
until he let her roll fully to face him, here in the 
shadows of a motel room like a thousand others in which 
they had lived their lives. She cradled his cheek, felt the 
slight dampness on his skin. She leaned in and pressed her 
lips to his. The kiss was soft and tender. A whisper of 
passion was inevitable between them, but this moment was 
about comfort. About love. Always love. She traced his 
mouth with the pad of her thumb. "How did you not know 
this?" she whispered, echoing his words to her with as much 
feeling as she could convey.

Mulder didn't speak, but he cradled the back of her neck, 
kissed her eyebrow, then tucked her in close. Their legs 
tangled beneath the covers.

They listened to the soft whoosh of cars passing in the 
distance, the rise and fall of the rain, a thump from the 
now occupied room down the way. "Mulder do you remember...a 
long time ago...we'd been working together, maybe five 
or...six years...." She was too sleepy to figure it out, 
and she could feel Mulder's amusement as her usual 
insistent preciseness wavered in the face of fatigue. She 
had seen that exact affectionate smile. "I was going 
through a hard time," she continued. "With the work. A 
little burned out on all the violence. And you called me on 
it. Made me talk to you. Took me to dinner. You remember?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I remember."

She hooked her thumbnail beneath the elastic of his sweats. 
"And you told me to take a vacation. Go to the beach or 
something."

He smiled into her hair. "But you didn't."

"No. I didn't. Do you know why?"

"Because, secretly, you're just as much of a workaholic as 
I am, you just disguise it better?"

She almost smiled. "Maybe that was a small part of it," she 
conceded, letting her appreciation for the humor bleed into 
her tone. But her focused sincerity returned when she said, 
"Mostly it was because when I'm feeling scared 
or...vulnerable, the last thing I want to be is farther 
away from you."

Mulder breathed this in for long moments. Then he rested 
his open hand on the side of her head, holding her close to 
his shoulder, and said, "I'm right here."

They slept.


//////////

She's sitting on the edge of his kitchen counter, midnight 
long gone and little light but the glow of the fish tank 
and the forgotten television. Mulder has dropped to his 
knees between her legs, pulled loose her blouse, and he is 
kissing her midriff with something like reverence and 
desperation.

"You really want this, Scully? You want me?"

She can't help but laugh, and she is a little regretful for 
the half second that the little boy still in the man looks 
up at her, hurt by this, as though she were laughing at 
him. As though she could ever reject him. "Mulder, how are 
you still asking that? You have been all I have wanted for 
so long... I can't remember wanting anything else."

The words are sincere but the tone is still too light, and 
it does little to soften the lines in his long-suffering 
brow. Scully has never been as good at this part, at the 
words, at the poetry. He is the romantic, the one who 
paints his love for her with phrases like "my touchstone" 
and "whole person" and "one in five billion". She feels 
every tug and passion with equal depth, he owns her very 
soul, and she has known it for so long. But she 
communicates far better in heavy breaths and tender strokes 
and extended gazes. She talks nonstop all day sometimes, 
science and data and endless information. When she melts 
into Mulder she just wants to be quiet, wants all the 
demands and expectations to stop, wants to be enough for 
him in her most pure and silent form. But Mulder needs the 
words, and sometimes she has to rip them from her tongue, 
because she owes him that much.

She nudges him with a hand under his arm. "Come up here for 
a minute," she says, tugging him to his feet. He rises at 
her command, responding to the depth and sincerity thick in 
her voice. They are face to face as he stands close between 
her legs, hands resting warm on her thighs and sending 
waves of tremors from the hot point of contact direct to 
her core. She lifts a hand to cradle his face, a trace of 
five o'clock shadow tickling her palm. She knows his scent 
and the texture of his skin like the contours of her own 
body. She never wants to be anywhere else but wrapped up in 
him. All these years of hesitation and doubt and in this 
final moment of stepping off the precipice she is 
unexpectedly positive that there is nothing in this world 
she wants more.

"Fox Mulder," she begins, voice low and deep and each word 
spoken with excessive care, "I've wanted you for so long, 
my body calls out for yours at night until all I can hear 
is the rush of blood in my own ears and I think I'll never 
make it until morning without you." The little flinch of 
his eyelid that tells her he is blown away by this 
admission makes her ache. "I want you, Mulder. All of you. 
Your crazy passion. Your stubbornness, your irrationality. 
Your kind and beautiful heart. Your devotion. Your 
instability, your wildness, your humor, and your pain. And 
if you don't make love to me right now, I might just melt 
onto your floor."

She draws a soft breath, his captivated gaze looking right 
through her like he can't believe she is real, like he 
can't fathom what she is saying, like he can burn her with 
a thought. She closes her eyes, lets her arousal bloom as 
she feels the heat and desire wafting off of him and 
fueling her fire. She leans forward until her words are 
breath against his cheek. "I want you to 
please...pleeease...fuck me. And if possible, no one else, 
for the rest of your life. But right now, tonight -- 
I...want...you."

This finally seems to be enough. With a sound like an 
animal growl, Mulder exhales, grasps a hand to the back of 
her hair, and guides her mouth to his for an all-consuming 
and breathless kiss. Her body catches fire.

Seven years of waiting, of wondering, of teasing and 
flirting and dancing all around the elephant in the room, 
and she has wondered sometimes if after so long it will 
simply be gentle and comfortable and sweet. And though she 
knows there will be these moments as well, there is no 
shortage of wild fire burning through her veins, and the 
dark passion in Mulder's eyes tells her this is a two-way 
street.

"God, Scully. I've never wanted any woman like I want you."

She pushes forward, and, in a synchronicity of motion born 
of years of partnership in so many senses of the word, she 
wraps her legs around Mulder's waist as he scoops his hands 
beneath her hips and takes her full weight in his arms. She 
is kissing him like her life depends on absorbing his 
essence, and they stagger with little sense of direction 
and a great deal of urgency through his living room and 
into his bedroom.

The first time is fast and beautiful and passionate and 
desperate. The next hour is intimacy and closeness and 
gentle exploration. They sleep a little, then wake again to 
so much accessible skin.

The second time, she is on her stomach, and he enters her 
from behind, and his comforting warmth is sheltering her 
all around like a blanket. Her arm is close bent at her 
side, and her fingers have threaded with his and she can 
kiss his knuckles as he moves within her. She is tucked 
into him and feels protected and safe and fully loved in a 
way she has never known yet has tasted at the edge of her 
horizons all these years. "You're so beautiful, Scully. So, 
beautiful," he says as he slides his other hand up her 
exposed side and follows the length of her arm until both 
their hands are shoved beneath the tousled pillows, 
gripping tightly to one another. He kisses her ear. 
Breathes against her flesh and sends goosebumps the length 
of her spine.

"Stay with me, Mulder. Stay with me," she whispers, a trace 
of tears in her voice, fingers tightening painfully around 
his hands.

"Always, Scully. Always."

He frees the hand near her lips, nudges until she lifts her 
hips just enough to let him slide his hand beneath her. 
He's close to coming, and he's determined to bring her 
along for the ride. His fingers on her clit are like 
gasoline to a flame. Five more thrusts in time with his 
skillful circles, and Scully's body is burning and Mulder's 
climax is not far behind. She hunches her back up against 
his chest, claws at her own hair, cries out with a throaty, 
primitive sound that hardly seems like her voice. Mulder's 
cry is breathless and needy above her and in that moment 
all she knows is the rush of blood and the beat of their 
hearts and this second of utter surrender and all-knowing 
devotion with the man she loves most in the world.

//////////


Scully lay in the 2am quiet of a motel in Verdad, New 
Mexico, shaking with the intensity of the half-conscious 
memory. Mulder snored softly against the back of her head, 
his long limbs still cradling her in sleep. She had 
promised him she wanted him with all of his flaws, all of 
his instabilities, all of his obsessions. She had begged 
him for promises of forever. And now, nearly two decades 
on, the knowledge sank in the pit of her stomach like a 
stone -- she was the one who had let go of the rope. The 
one who had failed him. The one who had broken her promises 
and let him fall. She knew she had lost all perspective 
here in the middle of the night, exhausted and scared and 
utterly off balance. But the emotion flooded through her 
unbridled. This was Mulder. This was the love of her life, 
steadfast and strong beside her. And when he had 
needed *her* the most, she had run. She had let him think 
she didn't love him enough to stay. That she had been 
happier on her own.

She loved him more than anything. In this moment, when the 
sky seemed to stretch forever, and they were the smallest 
specks of light in the sand -- she wanted to impress the 
truth of that love upon Mulder's flesh with the ink of her 
soul, write her apology on every inch of his skin. She 
pressed her face into his inner arm where it lay beneath 
her neck, kissed the tender flesh, stroked his inner wrist. 
Mulder's breathing shifted, but he continued to sleep. *I'm 
sorry, Mulder. I'm so sorry. I love you. I've always loved 
you. I'm here. I'm so sorry.* She closed her eyes, clung to 
his wrist, feeling his pulse against her palm. She breathed 
beneath the heavy arm across her midriff and hoped for the 
merciful reprieve of dreamless sleep.


*****

"Hmmm?" Mulder was barely conscious, reacting to the buzz 
of his phone on his nightstand, because in the middle of 
the night it could be Scully, Scully might need him and he 
always had to answer, because it could be Scully.

But, no, Scully was here. She was here, tangled in his 
arms, smelling of coconut, mumbling softly and 
discontentedly at the disturbance to her sleep, and the 
facts of their circumstances tumbled into his consciousness 
as his fumbling fingers found his phone. "Hello?" No hint 
of dawn showed around the curtains.

"Agent Mulder?"

"Yeah...yes, this is Mulder. Who is this?"

"It's Donna Garcia. I'm sorry to call so late. But I need 
your help." The woman's voice was shaking.

"Mrs. Garcia, what's wrong?"

"It's Mariela. She's gone."

Mulder was suddenly fully awake. "Are you at home?"

"Yes."

"We'll be right there."

As he disconnected the call, Scully bumbled to life from 
her nest beside him, shoving onto her elbow and pushing at 
her tousled hair. "Mulder, what is it? What's happened?"

He turned the covers off his own legs, touched a meaningful 
hand to Scully's hip as he said simply, "We gotta go."

"Go where?"

"The Garcias'. Mariela's disappeared."

*****
(End Chapter 17)