Rags of Light
by Aloysia Virgata 

Email: aloysia.virgata@yahoo.com 
 
Summary: Dealing with the past to move into the future.
Spoilers: IWTB/S10 
     
Author's Notes:  This story was written for the very patient
@perplexistan who was looking for some post-IWTB angst. I
hope this fits the bill! Thanks to @contradiction-to-nature, beta
extraordinaire, and my squad sounding board.

The title comes from Leonard Cohen's If It Be Your Will.


She finds Mulder behind the house, drowsing in one of the
hammocks they'd strung between the ancient oaks that tower
above their patch of the planet. Scully loves the clean piney air,
the scents of earth and raw lumber that infuse their home. The
trees are a riot of autumn color, carpeting the grass in gold and
scarlet. Two floppy-eared Nubian goats are munching the grass
nearby, occasionally crunching on fallen leaves. Scully named
them Rosalind Franklin and Elizabeth Blackwell.

"Mmmmm," Mulder says, stretching. "You're home earlier than
I expected."

She gives the hammock a push. "Oh yeah? Were you going to
get up and look busy after your nap?"

"Nope. I'm going to continue to look exhausted, which I am,
because I have been busting my ass around here all day." He
grabs her waistband, trying to tug her into the hammock.

Scully twists away, triumphant. She slings her bag to the ground
and sits in the Adirondack chair across from him. "Your chicken
coop coming along?"

"It's looking pretty good I think. Did you know you can get an
artisanal chicken coop from Pottery Barn for like two thousand
dollars?"

"Does it come with artisanal chickens?"

"No, they're a separate accessory." He rubs a hand over his
stubbled face, shafts of sunlight highlighting the flecks of gray
in his hair and beard.

Scully admires him, still devastating at forty-eight. His physique
is thicker, more heavily muscled from years of manual labor. He
wears a sweatshirt from the Rotarian pancake breakfast, his
jeans riding low on narrow hips. Scully likes the scrape of his
cheek against her made-up face, his calloused hands
unbuttoning her silk blouses.

Mulder bats his lashes in the face of her scrutiny. His eyes are a
deep mossy color in the late afternoon sunshine. "Stop
objectifying me, dammit. I didn't ask to look this fine."

"You love being objectified."

"You can use me however you want, baby."

Scully twists her scarf in her hands. She's nervous about this
conversation, as though she's telling her dad about the FBI all
over again. "I need to talk to you about something, Mulder."

He sits up, looking concerned. "What's wrong?"

"Oh, no, nothing's wrong." She sees him relax, his shoulders
loosening. "It's just...I'm strongly considering applying to a
residency program. Surgical."

"Okay." He still looks unsure, alert to her discomfort.

"It's long," she adds, talking fast. "Six years. Maybe shorter
since I'm switching from another specialty."

"What kind of surgery? Cardiac? Repairing all the hearts you
break?" It's an ongoing joke between them; Scully gets asked
out by patients, by traditionalist colleagues who feel her bare
ring finger constitutes an invitation.

She smiles weakly. "Craniofacial reconstruction." She waits a
beat. "In pediatrics."

Something sharpens in his eyes. "Ah."

She gives him an amused look. "That's all you've got?"

He shrugs. "You know I support your career, Scully. Whatever
you want, I'm good."

"I'd eventually like to do a fellowship in microtia correction,"
she adds. "My, uh, ten year plan I guess."

Mulder squints. "What's microtia?"

"Absent or abnormal development of the external ear."

"Huh," he says. "I didn't know that was a thing."

She grins. "Not everyone has your spotless genetic makeup. I'd
be in DC about three to four days a week, at Georgetown. I'm
looking to see if I can reduce that by putting in time at Sorrows.
Maybe work with some current and former patients."

Mulder's face closes. "Okay, well, we can get an apartment or
something." His voice is logical, reasonable. Devoid of interest
or expression.

"What gives, Mulder? Why the lack of curiosity?" She's hurt,
deflated, but also intrigued by his distant affect.

He sighs, staring off into the watercolor sky. "I just wish you'd
talk to someone."

She shakes her head, tired of this. "Not everything goes back to
William. It's frankly insulting."

"I don't think everything comes back to William, and that's not
a fair accusation to make. But lately...I don't know, Scully. I'm
worried about you. You're not sleeping, you've lost weight. And
now this, essentially out of nowhere. Remember, I was a
psychologist before I became the houseboy."

"Mulder, you're not the houseboy." She knows he misses the
daily intellectual challenge of his career but it's no reason to
start playing around in *her* head. "Come on, show me the
chicken coop."

His smile is gentle but his eyes are determined. "Not until you
agree to talk to a professional. I'm worried about PTSD. It can
take time to manifest, there can be unexpected
triggers...Christian really got to you last year."

Her laugh is sharp in the crisp air, startling a flock of sparrows
to flight. "Of course you'd turn that into some Freudian
melodrama. I can't want a change, Mulder? I can't discover a
new passion?"

Mulder rests his forearms on his knees, gazing at her. "You've
still never talked to anyone about Emily either, have you?"

She stands, a cold fire rising in her. She feels betrayed,
blindsided by his tenderness. "No, I haven't. Nor do I intend to.
I'm putting in my application for this residency, I'm sorry I
bothered you with my hysterics." She turns to walk to the house,
but Mulder catches her sleeve.

"Scully, come on. Not like this."

She whirls around, her hair swishing against her face. She's
trembling with anger. She thought this had ended with
Christian, when she spoken her son's name without a breath of
resentment. But this? This is not to be endured. "Mulder, I will
deal with what happened to my daughter and my son in my own
way." Scully feels her sinuses burn, her mouth filling with
saliva. She will not cry about this again. She will *not.*

"*Your* son?" he repeats. "He was mine too."

She bores into him with a hard stare, watching his eyes. They've
never done this, not really; only circled the edges of it like
ballroom dancers on a floor strewn with broken glass. "Maybe
so," she whispers, with steely precision. "But you were never his
father."
Mulder's face, the face she loves so much, registers pain. Shock.

"Oh, now it's hard, right? When it's not just about me?"

Mulder stands and casts a shadow over her. "I always -"

"You *left us,*" she chokes. "Jesus, the doctor had barely
cleared us and you were *gone.*"

"I thought I was doing the best thing." He strokes her hair, his
eyes unfathomable.

"No," she hisses, jerking away. "You don't get to do that,
Mulder. Your intentions don't absolve you. You want to have
this conversation after seven years then I will fucking have it. So
here it is: you left me at the most vulnerable time in my life and
it nearly undid me. I will always carry scars from that."

"I know," he murmurs, and in his voice is an echo of her own
suffering, her own regrets. "How many more times do you need
me to apologize?"

Scully shakes her head. "You don't know, you don't know
anything. You don't know what it felt like to pack his things up,
things I'd spent ages selecting. You don't know what it feels
like to have your breasts aching with milk and no baby to nurse.
You don't know a single thing."

"Tell me," he whispers, almost inaudibly.

She doesn't want to tell him this, she doesn't want to remember
the feeling of pain beyond pain. She doesn't know if she's
telling him to hurt him or heal him. "I ran into a woman from
Dr. Parenti's office, a woman who had a little girl around the
same time. And I had just...William, I had...anyway. Anyway.
She had her baby with her and she..." Scully swallows hard, lets
the breeze dry her eyes. "She asked about William and I said, I
told her that he was, that he died." The last word is little more
than a breath.

Mulder stares at her, holds his arms out. "Scully..."

She backs away. "No, this is *my* pain. This is *my* tragedy,
Mulder. You don't get to share it, you weren't there."

"If you can't share with me, then find someone. Please. If you're
going to apply to this program, you have to take care of
yourself." There are tears in his eyes and she knows if they
touch her they will burn.

Scully walks past him, needing a reprieve from his knowing
eyes. She goes to the goats and the black one, Rosalind, likes to
be scratched behind the ears. Scully indulges her. "Who should I
talk to, Mulder? Who specializes in affluent, well-educated
women with family support who give away their children?
Hmmm? You have a buddy from Oxford I can call?"

She hears Mulder's footsteps in the grass and he's next to her
again, clicking his fingers to summon Elizabeth Blackwell. The
goat nibbles corn from his palm with her funny lips. "You know
it isn't just William."

Emily would be a sophomore this fall, William coming home on
the bus from second grade, gap-toothed and grinning, telling his
sister about dinosaurs and Pokemon. Scully feels faint.

"No," she rasps. "Mulder, stop. Please don't do this to me. I
know you're worried, but I am doing the best that I can. It was
medical rape, it was murder..." She presses her face to her
hands, squeezes her eyes against the white place, against her
dead little girl.

"Scully, your best isn't good enough. I've been living with
ghosts since you worked with Christian, and that's been a year
now."

She drops her hands. "I lived with your ghosts for decades and I
never complained. Maybe you're the one who needs to talk to
somebody. This feels a lot like displacement, Doctor Mulder, so
heal yourself before you start on me."

He closes his eyes.

She stalks past him to her car. She gets in and drives away.

***

It's easy to hide at the hospital, to grab a few hours of sleep in
the call room, to sneak off for a cup of coffee when someone
observes that Dr. Scully sure has been around a lot lately. She
takes scalding showers and freezing ones, she runs until her legs
are jelly and her throat is raw.

She submits everything for the residency application, excited
and wishing she could share it with Mulder. This hasn't broken
them, there is too much between them for that, but she isn't
ready to hammer the dents out of her armor just yet.

The worst part is that Mulder isn't wrong; she probably ought to
talk to someone. But who? She's a rape victim who wasn't
raped, she lost a child she never carried, she gave up a son she
was terrified to lose. She's been pared down to some essential
core of herself and is afraid of letting anyone take away another
sliver to biopsy.

Her phone rings and it's Mulder, of course it's Mulder.

"Hey," he says. "Wanted to see if I need to get more Greek
yogurt when I head to the store."

She smiles, sad. "I need a couple of days. I need to figure out
what I'm doing."

"Okay, sure."

"Okay."

Silence for a time. She knows he's pacing the kitchen, the living
room, slouchy jeans and bare feet.

"Listen," he says. "Scully, I stand by what I said but I didn't
mean to hurt you like that. I just need you to be okay."

"I know," she says.

"We've been through a lot. A lot of trauma, really, and I just..."
He trails off, sighing.

Scully chews the inside of her cheek, imagines him running a
frustrated hand through his hair.

"Look," he continues. "I just think that you're owed more than a
half-healed wound for it. And you're not getting help on your
own." The screen doors snaps in the background.

"Yeah, well, I do too. But Mulder, the world has no place for
our trauma. And I need to figure out what to do with that. I
understand your concern but it can't manifest as control, as
emotional blackmail."

"Whoa, whoa, wait a damn minute." She hears anger in his
voice now. "Emotional blackmail? What the fuck, Scully? You
want to shut me out then give me hell for doing my best to make
you get the support you need? Maybe you do need to take a few
days."

He hangs up and she heads to the gym to run and run without
going anywhere.

***

She calls him two days later, but there's no answer. "Hi, you've
reached Fox Mulder. Are you sure this can't be handled by e-
mail?"

She hangs up, certain that it cannot.

***

Six days from home and she's eating an apple cider donut at the
nurses' station.

"You moving in, Dana?" asks a nurse, stirring her coffee.
"Gonna start charging you rent, babe."

Scully blinks. "It's complicated."

"Yeah, it's always complicated. But what are you going to do
about it?"

Scully pauses, chewing. She doesn't know, honestly. She's done
a very good job of keeping her body and her mind distracted for
the past week, but that well of nepenthe will run dry soon. She
pours herself a cup of coffee.

"I'm figuring that out. Hey, do you have that list of therapists for
parents when they lose a child? I have someone who, ah, needs a
referral." She helps herself to a second donut.

The nurse passes her the list and she folds it up into a small
rectangle, like a secret map that can help her get home.

***

In the three long weeks since she last saw Mulder, she's had
several appointments with Dr. Frey. He's a good fit; he doesn't
press her and has expressed frank admiration that she's managed
to avoid catatonia. She's learning to forgive Mulder. To forgive
herself.

She spent an hour trying to decide on an outfit for tonight.
Ultimately, as ever, she settled for good lingerie under basic
black. Her hair hangs in loose waves, held out of her face by a
pair of thick earmuffs

She parks her car at the base of the hill and hikes up the
crunching grass. The weight of the duffle on her back makes her
hunch forward, letting the wind slip down her collar. She shrugs
the bag higher and her knees creak in protest.

He's wrapped in a heavy blanket at the summit, his face canted
to the stars. Before him is a small campfire, cheerful in the dark.
"Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania," quotes Mulder. The moon
is hardly up to the task, being only a couple of days old and little
more than an icy slice in the frozen sky.

She heaves her bag to the ground, next to the fleece-lined tarp
he's sitting on. "You didn't think I'd come," she huffs.

"I knew you'd come. You always come when I tell you the sky
is going to fall." He pats the ground next to him. "Warm
yourself by this roaring blaze."

She opens her bag and begins unpacking it. She pulls out a
Thermos, a deck of cards, two Hershey bars, a box of graham
crackers, and a bag of marshmallows.

"How'd you know I'd have a fire?"

Wordlessly, she adds a box of matches to the pile.

Mulder laughs. "Atta girl."

She pulls out a Coleman sleeping bag, extra large, and dumps it
beside him.

"Jeremiah was a bullfrog," he sings. "Was a good friend of
mine."

An unexpected surge of delight flusters her and she fusses with
the supplies to hide it. He remains the great love of her life,
however unconventional both her love and her life may be.
"Take those two sticks - no, the other one - so we can roast the
marshmallows. I brought some coffee too."

"Indian Guide approves of your camping preparedness this time
around. C'mere, Scully." His expression is roguish and it melts
her as it always has.

Scully pulls the sleeping bag next to him and crawls in,
unzipping it enough so that she can sit up. She unscrews the lid
of the Thermos, filling it with boozy coffee. She passes Mulder
the bottle, sloshing a little on his blanket and her good calfskin
gloves.

He takes a swig, blinking in surprise. "Damn, Doc. Put a little
coffee in your Bailey's next time."

"I'll give you a saline IV tomorrow if you need it. Mulder, I've
been seeing someone."

Mulder blinks in surprise. "Pardon?"

"Oh...oh, no, professionally I mean. About William. And
Emily."

His smile warms her more deeply than the fire. "I'm glad," he
says. "But I'm sorry it was...the way it was."

Scully shakes her head. "I needed it. You've always stirred me
out of my complacency."

"Isn't that just a nice way of saying I drive you crazy?" He
spears a marshmallow with his roasting stick.

"Yes, but Dr. Frey tells me I need to improve my
communication skills."

Mulder chuckles. He holds his marshmallow over the fire,
rotating it gently above the flames until it develops an even tan
crust.

She prefers them set alight and carbonized on the outside.
"Mulder," she begins, preparing graham crackers and chocolate
for him. "Are we okay?

He looks puzzled, assembles his s'more. "We're always okay.
We just have low points. It's a process, right?" He licks
marshmallow from his fingers.

"I'm afraid of the low points. I don't know how to roll with
things." Dr. Frey has also been helping her vocalize her fears.
She is proud of herself and sees surprise on Mulder's face.

"Even at our lowest we're pretty great, Scully." He takes another
sip of his coffee. "You roll better than you think. Stop being so
hard on yourself. Given everything that's happened, it's
impressive that we're still mostly sane."

"The world is too much with us," she quotes, leaning against his
arm. She loves the scent of him, the indefinable essence she
sought from his empty things when she carried his son in her
belly.

Mulder unfurls his cocoon to crawl behind her. He arranges her
between his knees, the blanket over both of them. Then he
unzips the sleeping bag, tucking it around her. Goosebumps rise
over her body when his chin nestles against her cheek. It's so
easy to forget things aren't always this simple between them.

He holds his s'more to her mouth and she takes a bite for the
giddy pleasure of tasting his fingers. "S'good," she mumbles
stickily.

"Thanks," he murmurs into her hair. She knows he has a thing
for her hair. He has a thing for buttoned up suits with
unbuttoned blouses he can look down. He has a thing for
intellectual foreplay, for the click of high heels and of a round
being chambered in her Glock. He likes her lab coat and
stethoscope.

The fire crackles. "Do you think William's out tonight,
Mulder?"

He tightens his arms. "Probably. They've been saying this is
supposed to be one of the best years for the Leonid. Eight's a
good age for that kind of thing."

Their baby is eight. She burrows in tighter, head lolling against
his chest. Mulder's breath stirs the tiny hairs on her forehead.
The susurrus of his heart, his breathing, steadies her and she
wishes she were more like him. More accepting of her place in
the scope of creation. Mulder, perhaps due to his quixotic
notions, is a far more tranquil creature than she.

"I still want to do this residency," she says. "Are you okay with
it?"

"I love you," he replies, gazing at her beneath the starlight. The
night is timeless; it could be any one of hundreds they've spent
together. Scully marvels for the thousandth time at the way his
bottom lip is grooved to hold the top, thinking of the way active
sites on enzymes allow them to catalyze reactions. Just you and
me, Mulder, she thinks. We're the destination and also the
journey.

The meteor shower begins, dreamy trails across the night sky as
she stares in rapture at the universe. Mulder's arms are about her
as they huddle close, two lighthouse keepers at the edge of the
galaxy.