The Oak and The Cypress
by Aloysia Virgata

Email: aloysia.virgata@yahoo.com

RATING: G 
 
SUMMARY: Separation fic based on the current state of rumors. 

SPOILERS: S10
 
DISCLAIMER: Breaking seal constitutes acceptance of agreement. 
Proceed at your own risk. Do not use while operating a motor 
vehicle or heavy equipment. For recreational purposes only. 
Driver does not carry cash. And, as always, thank you for 
choosing Aloysia Airlines for your direct flight from 1013 to 
fanfic. 
 
AUTHOR'S NOTES: The title comes from the following poem:

Then Almitra spoke again and said 
"And what of Marriage, master?" 
And he answered saying:
You were born together, 
and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when the white wings 
of death scatter your days.
Aye, you shall be together even in the 
silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness, 
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another, but make 
not a bond of love. 
Let it rather be a moving sea between 
the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. 
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, 
but let each of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone 
though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. 
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together, yet not too near together.  
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress 
grow not in each other's shadow.

Khalil Gibran, "The Prophet"


***

May, 2011

Mulder comes home around three on a Monday, invigorated after a 
long walk from the hardware store. The washing machine went on 
the fritz again and he takes pride in the home repairs he can 
now complete. Chickens cluck behind him. They lay green and blue 
eggs, occasionally spiriting some away to hatch into beady-eyed 
puffballs before he or Scully can gather them.

He is surprised to see Scully's dusty car in the gravel drive. 
She maintains an apartment close to work, ostensibly for 
convenience, but they both know she needs a space where 
crumbling newspaper doesn't cover the walls, where the stairs 
aren't doubling as a library of the nightmarish and improbable.

She's sitting on the couch when he enters, her hair loose and 
penny-bright in the spring sunshine. Next to her is the ten-inch 
stack of articles he meant to sort, but one thing led to another 
and time got away from him as time has always been prone to do. 
She's tracing her fingers along the maps he has taped to the 
coffee table. They spread downward and across the floor, marked 
by an elaborate system of highlighters and colored pencils. 
These he stores in red Solo cups on the kitchen table next to 
several books on Mayan civilization and a wooden bowl of fishing 
lures.

Mulder sits next to her, motes of dust rising and swirling when 
he disturbs a cushion.  She doesn't look up. "Didn't think I'd 
see you until Wednesday," he says, watching her sidelong. 
"Aren't you on call?"

A bitten nail follows the Jersey Turnpike, stopping at a green 
Post-It note reminding him to call the Hoboken MUFON chapter. 
Her knuckles are red and chapped. Hasn't she been moisturizing?

She tracks west, towards Iowa and crop circles, swallowing hard.

His belly clenches. "Scully?"

"I love you," she manages, her voice thick. "But it isn't 
enough."

Mulder is aware of his jaw hanging open, cartoonish and numb.

She slaps his plane ticket for the Ivory Coast down on the 
table. "Two trips to Democrat Hot Springs, two trips to 
Bellefleur, Siberia, Pakistan, four to Chilmark and the 
Vineyard, two to Allentown, eight to New Mexico...do you want me 
to continue? How many times have you gone to South America now, 
Mulder? The last one ended in Antarctica and you were gone for 
three months. This blog you're running, you never sleep..." Her 
slender hands, hands that have wounded and healed him, rifle 
through the stack of printouts next to her. "I will never be 
enough for you. And I know it's my own damned fault."

He reaches for the papers, then drops his palms to his lap. 
"Oh...Scully. Oh, no, it isn't like that." Mulder fights against 
grabbing her, against kissing her nutmeg freckles and winding 
his fingers through that stunning hair. She would stiffen in his 
arms if he put them around her.

"Then what is it, Mulder? Tell me what it's like. Because I was 
willing to walk away from everything in my life for you. But if you 
keep walking away too, then why am I here?"

He stares at the ceiling, as though he will find divine 
inspiration in the cracked plaster. "I am not. Walking away. 
From you." His jaw is tight when he says it. "I am trying. To 
fix things."

"Fix *what?* Look Mulder, I believe you. I am sold that there is 
a conspiracy in existence, that information has been withheld 
about the government's knowledge of extraterrestrial life. But 
do I think the world's ending in eighteen months" You know, I 
really don't. And, frankly, if it were, what could you hope to 
accomplish at this point? Can't you stay here so we can make the 
most of the next year and a half?"

He stares at her. "Are...are you kidding" You think I should 
just sit back and pluck daisies like the girl in that LBJ ad?"

"Yeah," she says, weary. "That's exactly what I think. Jesus, 
I'm measuring my life by a man's itinerary, just like my 
mother."

"Cut me some slack, huh? This isn't what I wanted for you. For 
us. But I don't know what other options there are. William is 
out there somewhere, Scully. I want the world safe for him, at 
least. Maybe I can do that." He sees the tendons in her neck 
tighten, her nostrils flare.

"Please do not even discuss keeping him safe to me. You have no 
idea..." she trails off, shaking her head.

He touches her wrist, relieved when she doesn't pull away. "I 
found something in Antarctica. I'm going back with the equipment 
I need. If it's what I think it is, it's going to change 
everything, Scully. I think I found more of the vaccine in the 
wreckage, trapped behind a wall of ice in one of those labs. 
Come with me, I could really use your expertise." He asks for 
form's sake. She never travels with him anymore.

Her sigh is heavy. "Mulder, I can't. You know I can't."

"Can't or won't?" He is losing his patience with this stoic, 
put-upon act.

"Can't, won't...does it matter? You go, Mulder. Go to Antarctica 
and tell me what you find. And if the world ends, you can say 
you told me so."

"For Christ's sake, Scully. I need to know you're with me on 
this." He hears a note of panic creeping into his voice, though 
given what he's feeling, it's minor.

"With you? I don't even know what that looks like anymore. I go 
to work, I come home."

"Sometimes," he points out. "When you're not in your little 
clubhouse."

"You really don't get it, do you? You know why I have that 
apartment, Mulder? Because I love you. I love you so much that I 
am maintaining a small haven away from the things that stress me 
out the most so that we can have a life together. I have that 
apartment so that when I feel like I can't take the suffering at 
work, or your endless mountains of data, I have a place to call 
my own and to put all of my anxiety so that I can be here with 
you. That's why I have that apartment."

Her eyes are bright, wet.

She returns her attention to the map. "I'm so sorry. I thought 
I...I thought we could do this. But I think we are too broken, 
Mulder, to hold each other together. At least right now. Scars 
are not a bandage."

They have been at the periphery of this moment before, the event 
horizon of a deep and abiding sorrow. Post-traumatic stress 
disorder would be the likely diagnosis for the pair of them, but 
they've been weathering it for so long it just feels like 
living. There has been fury, shouting, tears. Doors have been 
slammed and, on one memorable occasion, books have been thrown. 
But this quiet defeat is new.

The mantel clock is the only sound in the room, a steady 
heartbeat marking their passage through the fourth dimension. 
The open window illuminates her in vivid detail, and he is 
reminded that she is astonishingly beautiful in a way he could 
not have foreseen twenty years ago. She represents the most 
profound things in his life, the purest experiences he has ever 
had.

The time that got away from him so capriciously, nine minutes 
here, nine months there, stalls and stutters. There has to be a 
right thing to say, some forgotten talisman or cantrip he's 
tucked away in the journey of his life, just waiting for this 
moment.  Surely it doesn't end like this, not for them.

"Even death couldn't stop us, Scully."

He sees her fight back a sob.

His throat aches with similar effort and it is a moment before 
he can continue. "You're all I have," he chokes, and it nearly 
undoes him.

"I know." Her voice is a ragged whisper. Scully pauses, 
gathering herself.  When she speaks again, it is with 
painstaking calm. "I keep hurting you, Mulder. I keep asking you 
to choose. I keep asking you to change. But I'm the one who's 
restless while you've always been honest about who you are and 
you deserve better. I'm all you have because what I feel for you 
is too intense to be good for you. I lost myself in you, in this 
passion you have, when I should have found the courage to pull 
you back from the abyss. Even if it made you hate me. I should 
have loved you enough to give you that. Instead I've spent most 
of a decade punishing you for my own weakness."

"No," he breathes. Is this really how she sees them? She has 
been his Beatrice, his beacon in the night. "You tried to save 
me when I was drowning but instead I pulled you under."

She shakes her head. "This is what I mean. Do you see? We can't 
live like this. We can't live under two decades of 
misapprehensions and trauma. I'm supposed to be healing other 
people and I can barely keep myself together most days."

He sees the shape of things now, the two of them like mirrors 
facing one another and bouncing back endless distorted views. "I 
didn't know," he murmurs.

"I don't tell you anything, Mulder, except that I'm fine when 
you ask if I'm okay, and then I expect you to know what's going 
on. You're a profiler, not a mind-reader." She tugs a loose 
thread from her cuff.

He notices how thin her wrists are beneath the edges of her 
sleeves, her patrician face verging on gaunt. Not a mind-reader, 
no, but he is becoming sickly aware of his own willful 
blindness. "Let me help you. Us."

Scully plucks at a hair tie on her wrist. "Years ago, I asked 
about getting out of the car to live a normal life. And you 
just...you looked at me like I was crazy. It was funny then, I 
guess, but I'm not thirty anymore, or even forty. I've lived 
more than half my life and I just feel like you spend all this 
time trying to resolve the past or untangle some nebulous future 
while the scenery whizzes by. And I can't travel like that 
anymore. I can't."

He remembers the conversation, or at least one like it; there 
may have been many. She isn't wrong, he knows that, but it 
doesn't do anything for the weight crushing down on his chest. 
"Can we compromise, Scully? What if we pull over sometimes to 
see the World's Biggest Radish Museum or something?"

This earns him a watery smile. "I love you," she repeats. "But I 
have to get out of the car, at least for a while. Or maybe I 
need to be the one driving."

Mulder takes her hands in his. "Stay if you love me, then. Stay, 
and we can do this right. Dammit, Scully. You told me this was 
worth fighting for. I will make you a home, I swear." He means 
it this time. He *does.*

She draws her hands free to trace the shape of his face. Her 
pointer finger follows the orbital rim, the bridge of his nose, 
the curves of his ears. Scully's palms plane his cheekbones, 
resting finally to cup his jaw. She kisses him so gently he 
wonders later if he imagined it.  Their eyes meet and he knows, 
then, that she is already gone.

***

Thanks for reading! You can contact me at 
aloysia.virgata@yahoo.com or http://aloysiavirgata.tumblr.com/

All fic archived at 
http://archiveofourown.org/users/Aloysia_Virgata/works