Hole in the Black
by PD

ARCHIVAL:  Gossamer, no thanks. Stories will be housed at 
my site only. If you'd like to link, I'd love it, but 
please drop me note with a heads up.

DISCLAIMER:  Can I borrow the keys to the franchise, Chris? 
I won't go to any FBI balls, I promise to make a full stop 
at most clichés, and I will try not to dangle my 
participles at the nice couple in the unremarkable house.

CLASSIFICATION: SRA, MSR, IWTB, TMI, ASAP

RATING:  R

SPOILERS:  Through The X Files: I Want To Believe

SUMMARY:  "I wasn't in the group, Mr. Mulder. I was a 
tangential part of the project - in league with those few 
who were adamant on the subject of developing an antidote 
and a vaccine. He was our man on the inside, but we were 
not on the side of complicity with the colonists and that 
meant we were on the outside. Fringe element. We were not 
highly regarded. We weren't even invited to the group 
barbecues." He caught himself and smiled. "Ah. No pun 
intended."


~ Chapter 20 ~
 
To drive to the Rock Springs airport on unfamiliar, dark 
country roads while in an emotional state of complete 
disrepair was a challenge that Mulder was not really up to. 
He had to stop the car by the side of the road three times 
- once to console Scully who was as inconsolable as he had 
ever seen her and twice to get a hold of his own 
overwhelming emotions. The twenty minute drive took them an 
hour and a half.

A redeye and a layover in Denver later, they were back 
home.

They walked into their small, comfortable house and stood 
with the open front door to their backs staring into the 
empty space of the living room in front of them.
They were completely different, absolutely the same and 
everything in between. But they felt it together.

~:~:~

Tuesday, April 22nd
11:22 am
Mulder's and Scully's House
Rural Virginia

They had fallen into bed the night before - emotionally and 
physically exhausted. Their bags were piled like the undead 
in the middle of the living room floor and when Scully got 
up, she was the first to see them. The Navajo blanket they 
kept was crumpled in a heap next to the bags and Scully 
made it her mission to fold it neatly and lay it over the 
back of the sofa. It didn't really go with the couch, but 
it matched the d‚cor which was a mishmash anyway.

Mulder made himself known by stumbling around in the 
bedroom upstairs and apparently injuring some portion of 
himself.

"Fuck!"

Scully waited an appropriate amount of time before she 
stepped onto the first stair. She was about to call out 
when he appeared on the landing above and started down.

"I'm all right," he mumbled. "Knocked my shin."

Mulder gave the luggage in the middle of the floor a dirty 
look on his way to the kitchen. "I'll take those up after I 
have some coffee, Scully."

"Okay," she said, following him to the kitchen. She watched 
him prepare the brew on automatic pilot as she sat at the 
table. 

"We forgot to file taxes," he said, dumping spoonfuls of 
coffee into the filter. "I remembered sometime over the 
Rust Belt."

"Oh."

Mulder poured water in and pushed the button. He didn't 
turn. He leaned into the counter, palms down and pressed 
his forehead against the cabinet in front of him. 

She waited. 

"I miss him," he finally said. "Already."

She nodded. "I know."

When he sighed and sniffled, she stepped behind him and 
wrapped her arms around his chest, pressed her cheek to the 
warm skin on his back. "It's not over, Mulder. I don't know 
why or how, but I know we're going to see him more than we 
could have ever hoped. I don't know if that's necessarily 
what's best for everyone, but I think -" She sighed and 
closed her eyes. "I think it's just the way it is. It's 
like fate, Mulder," she whispered. "Us, William... No 
matter what the circumstances are, we'll find a way to - be 
together. Somehow. It's the way it's supposed to be."

He turned in her arms and smiled down at her. "I'll bet you 
believe in aliens, too."

She smiled and stood up on her tip toes to kiss him. "I 
know what I know," she said against his mouth. He grinned 
and she patted his stomach. "Help me get the bags 
upstairs."

~:~:~

Scully tossed all the ripe clothing into a pile in the 
corner of the bedroom. They'd have to air these suitcases 
out. Maybe they could just buy new ones. Scully began 
rummaging through the zippered pockets and pulled out a 
handful of items she didn't recognize. One item was a plain 
business card with a phone number on it, not even a name. 
She recognized it as a South Dakota area code. A brief 
fantasy floated through her mind of Mount Rushmore and a 
secret installation hidden somewhere behind Teddy 
Roosevelt's mustache.

She put the business card aside and picked up a postcard. 
It was stamped with a Holiday Inn, Kayenta logo. On the 
front was a picture of Monument Valley at sunset. On the 
back was William's email address and phone number. Below 
that, he'd written, 

          it was the bullfrog song

          love William

"Jeremiah," she whispered, smiling ear to ear. She shook 
her head, amazed, and she allowed his face to float into 
her thoughts. *I'd rather hope than think it won't happen at 
all,* he'd said.

"I'm glad you're growing up an optimist," she whispered 
into the air.

She continued her investigation in the zippered pocket and 
found yet another oddity. It was a small acrylic tube 
filled with water. She frowned, shook it slightly, peered 
at it closely. There, floating in the solution was a tiny 
chip. She sifted through the extraneous items in the pocket 
and came up with another piece of paper:

          Dr. Scully,

          Just in case -

          Roy

Scully dropped down on the edge of the bed, the little tube 
clutched in her hand.

When she found her legs again, she walked downstairs to 
show Mulder. He, oddly, didn't seem all that surprised. 

"It's kinda sneaky and sweet at the same time," he 
shrugged. "That seems like exactly the kind of thing Roy 
would do."

Scully nodded. "We'll have to talk about this, Mulder. I 
don't want this to be - *just* my decision. Okay?"

He leaned over and kissed her forehead. "I'm yours. 
Whenever you're ready," he said. "Coffee's almost ready - 
did you check messages?"

"Not yet," she said. She ventured into the living room and 
absently tapped the buttons on the answering machine. She 
was still marveling at the chip in her hand, when the 
machine beeped.

"Dr. Scully, this is Father Ybarra. We thought you should 
know that Dr. uh - Boyce at the University of Minnesota 
Medical Center called us and wanted us to relay this 
message to you. He said, your boy undergoing the Sandhoff 
clinical trials? Christian Fearon? He is - improving," he 
managed with a hint of surprise in his voice. 
"Congratulations, doctor," he finished and the call 
disconnected. 

"No more messages," the machine announced.

Stunned, Scully smiled. When she turned toward the kitchen 
door, she found Mulder, a cup of coffee in his hand, 
leaning against the door jam. He was smiling at her. 

"Don't good things happen in threes, Scully? Should we just 
wait for the third thing to come to us?"

She couldn't quite form the words around the smile on her 
face so she had to wait it out. Mulder waited with her. 
Eventually she shook her head and said, "Let's go find it." 

 
The End
 
END NOTES: I'd been itching (in the way that poison oak 
tortures you until you reluctantly have to tear your skin 
to shreds to do something about it) to write a William 
story of some kind because the way it was approached and 
finally dealt with irked me. 

Still, it was not my intention to insert him and my agenda 
concerning him into this story. Believe it or not, this 
started out as a simple little post-movie vignette. As I 
started writing, though, William kept drifting into 
Scully's head, thus forcing me - and Mulder and Scully - to 
deal with that whole debacle in what - to me - was the most 
realistic way I could. Not so much happy, but not so much 
sad either. I also apparently felt the need to right some 
of my own perceived wrongs that occurred at the end of the 
series. Well, really just the one big ball of wrong as is 
evidenced by the scene involving AD Clarke.

I haven't written an X Files story of this length since 
China Lake, so imagine my surprise when I realized I needed 
to start keeping track of an actual plot. Now, imagine my 
chagrin when I realized I needed to revisit the mytharc. 

I've tried to stay true to reality and to plausible 
extensions of known scientific fact. For instance, cell 
phones work (or don't work) when it suits the story, Jeep 
rental companies can be invented in towns where they don't 
exist and Mulder and Scully can always manage to go where 
normal people are not able. Of course, it would be silly to 
have Mulder and Scully teleport from Virginia to Arizona, 
especially since a perfectly realistic and plausible plane 
ride can be substituted. It might also be considered silly 
to build an entire state of the art complex under and 
within a mesa in Monument Valley, but in that, I 
respectfully and unashamedly cry "Creative License!" And 
let's let it go there. 

Hope you enjoyed. Thanks for seeing it through to the end 
with me.

PD