Shouting Into a Hurricane
by rachg82

Email: rachg82@gmail.com
Distribution: Yes to Gossamer.  
Otherwise, please ask first.

Rating: PG-13
Categories:  Vignette
Keywords:  Mulder/Scully romance

Spoilers:  This is just my speculation based on promos &
spoilers for the upcoming revival.

Summary:  Happily-ever-after sometimes comes with a detour.

Disclaimer:  I don't own the show or these characters, and I'm
certainly not making a profit off of 
writing about them.  'Nuff said.

***

Jan. 27th, 2016:

"Check it out, Scully.  You actually have a desk now.  Think
we should christen it?"  Mulder's voice was flat, embittered -- a
mere echo of the playfully sardonic man she once knew. 

He'd changed, his spirit dimmed.  Then again, she'd changed
too.

(She kept telling herself it was for the best, the way things
were, but those words were beginning to feel fruitless &
absurd, like shouting into a hurricane.  His presence in her life
had always been a force of nature.)

Still, she arched a single brow at him, outwardly impassive -- a
professional stoic with decades of experience.  *Too soon,
Mulder.*  

Truthfully, she'd been hopelessly adrift ever since she first saw
his familiar, damnably beloved face several days earlier. Her
heart had contracted violently as if it might burst, leaping
excitedly, yet anxiously out of her chest.  

When she met his eyes, it had felt an awful lot like falling. 
Down, down, down -- past the floating clocks & their
suspended time, landing solidly in Wonderland.

He'd looked homesick & desperate more than anything else,
pleading his case to her with measured breaths & a heady gaze
--all the planets in the solar system aligning beside them;
distant, fading stars genuflecting in their wake.  

She hadn't forgotten how it felt to be on the receiving end of his
laser-like focus.  The rest of the world disappeared.  It was part
of what drew her to him in the first place & part of what
eventually drove her away.  It's why she already knew she
couldn't deny him again.  

It had been so long, in reality, but suddenly it felt like no time
at all had passed.  That said, she wasn't going to let him throw
her off even further. 

They weren't there yet.

But they were on their way, weren't they?  (Well, weren't they?)

...She didn't know how to answer that question.

***

Dec. 22nd, 2012:

"The world didn't end."

Mulder spun around slowly in his chair to face her, his
expression grim -- a would-be Spartan with blazing eyes,
waging a quixotic kamikaze campaign as only he could.  

*When was the last time he'd even shaved?*

"That's what they want you to think, Scully."  She could see his
jaw clenching, his throat working each word out with frustrated
purpose.  

"They want the public complacent & distracted.  More than
ever, I need you to trust me on this:   the end has only just
begun.  We can't afford to let them pull the wool over our eyes
here.  There's not enough time."

She shook her head, lovesick & weary beyond measure.  She
felt like they'd had this same conversation so many times now;
it was like that bank explosion all over again.  But she had to
give it one more shot.  Maybe if she just...

Scully took one step closer & felt the chasm between them
expand.

"Time for what, Mulder?  To save the world?  You're not Atlas;
you're not God.  Look at yourself.  Do you really think we have
that type of omnipotent power anymore, after everything that's
happened?  After all we've been through?  Why can't today be
enough?  Why can't this, us, 
be enough?  For years now we've been doggedly chasing the
unknown, the past or the future; 
what about the present?  It's passing you by--it's passing *me*
by--and you don't even notice."  

She sighed, waving a hand halfheartedly in the air like a shrug
that had lost all will to go on, soft eyes glassy with unshed
tears.  

"I'm drowning in the darkness, Mulder.  I can't see my way to
the shore anymore.  What kind of life are you hoping to save
for yourself?  For me?  For *us*?"

He remained silent for a moment, trying to locate the hidden
words that would somehow make it all right.  He couldn't. 
"You're acting as if I have a fair choice.  That it's you or the
truth."

"But you do have a choice, Mulder, and you're making the
wrong one.  I can't do this anymore. Can you?"  

"What exactly are you saying?"  

She drew in a hitched breath, trying & failing to maintain some
semblance of emotional equilibrium.  It felt as if the room were
contorting into itself, walls closing in on them both.

"I'm saying I think we need some time apart."  

There it was -- no turning back.  Mulder closed his eyes for
several seconds,  then finally spoke. "And here I thought you
said the world hadn't ended."

***

July 7th, 2008:

Despite Scully's weak protests (*how could she deny him
anything in that suit?*), Mulder had made a big production out
of carrying her over the threshold.

"Mulderrr," she'd insisted; "you'll throw out your back!"

He gave her an affectionate wink.  "It's tradition, Scully.  Also,
you weigh about a buck-ten.  I could bench-press you with my
left pinky if I wanted to."

She feigned a frown, quite accustomed to playing this
particular game.  (I wasn't sure your little feet could reach the
pedals) "You're ridiculous."

He leaned down for a lingering kiss before lowering her to the
ground. "Your face is ridiculous," he rejoined.  She rolled her
eyes. 

Fake annoyance aside, this banter was a welcome reprieve from
the teeth-grinding tension they'd been experiencing more &
more as of late.

They'd struggled to remain on the same page during the case
itself, but afterward they'd somehow felt closer than ever
before.

No more fake names, no more hiding.

They were back as Mulder & Scully and could sing it from the
mountaintops if they so desired.

Not that she would, obviously; she couldn't carry a tune to save
her life.

But she felt freer than she had in years.

It was with this mindset that she admitted to Mulder in bed, one
night, that she didn't want to stop calling him her husband.

It had been a marriage on paper only, technically speaking, but
the truth went beyond that.

They'd discussed the idea very maturely, listing all the pros &
cons of a legal union, but in the end, pure devotion won out.

Not the kind that never goes to bed angry, but the kind that still
remains in full force after a week spent sleeping on the couch.

They'd both stopped trying to quantify their feelings years ago.
They were soul-mates, through & through. It was as simple and
complex as that.

It wasn't a well-planned ordeal. Scully insisted in her typical
rational way that City Hall would more than suffice.

Her rebellious nature took over when it came time to pick a
dress though   pale blue to match her eyes, but she did carry a
bouquet of white flowers as a proper nod to decorum.

Her mother would expect pictures, after all.

She remembered how grateful he'd looked, like he'd been
wandering in the desert for a lifetime, and she'd stopped to
offer him a glass of water.

"You realize you're mine now," he'd informed her afterward,
his full bottom lip curled into a smirk.

"That's very territorial of you," she'd observed, eyes lowered
coyly & hands playing possessively with his tie.

His smirk widened.  "Well, that's nothing new.  Anyway, it's
only fair.  I've belonged to you ever since I read that crazy
Einstein thesis of yours.  You might as well have stamped
'Property of Dana Scully' on my ass."

At this she looked up.  "My thesis was *not* crazy."

Everything had seemed so easy then.

Their spirits were lit like two candles burning bright, casting
out the darkness.

Someone should have warned her that happy endings don't
necessarily last forever or make their way across a shared
journey without any detours.

Soul-mates or not, their love was much more complicated than
a fairy tale.

***

Jan. 20th, 2016:

Scully's left hand shifted restlessly on the steering wheel; she
could feel Mulder's eyes sliding back & forth between her
delicate wedding ring & the dark road  in front of them, his
intense gaze boring a hole in the side of her face.

He hadn't removed his ring either.  It had been one of the first
things she'd noticed upon seeing him again.

Not that she'd been looking.

They'd been separated for three years now, but neither had
possessed the ability to even consider filing for divorce.

She tried not to look at that too deeply; it meant too much and
carried far too much heavy weight.

She couldn't risk sinking into the ocean with him again, not
after all the time it had taken her to reach the surface.

(Could she?)

She may only have been treading water without him, aimless in
her direction except when moving slowly towards an aching,
hollow horizon, but at least she felt like she could breathe.

It was a sense of safety that smothered her inner fire and
stripped her days of all highs & lows, but there was a traitorous
feeling of peace which numbness could provide.

And there was healing to be had; that fact could not be
overstated.

Somewhere along the way, she'd lost her capability to exist
outside of his emotions   to step outside the maelstrom of her
own trauma & grief.

Once on her own, back in D.C., she'd rediscovered the precise
way the light fell on her face when she stopped fighting the
future & reliving the past, and allowed herself the luxury of
breathing in the moment.

Sometimes, the present could be a gift.

How had she forgotten? 

It wasn't what she wanted, no, but it is what she needed.

Anyway, analyzing their convoluted relationship could
sometimes feel like staring wide-eyed into the sun   majestic,
but blinding.

Perhaps it was best to simply let sleeping dogs lie.

*These were the things she would tell herself.*

(Her heart knew better, of course.  It was well-versed in playing
the long game. It worked covertly like a secret agent, planting
seeds of truth amongst tangled vines of overgrown doubt and
miscommunication.)

It's not that she doubted her love for him, nor his for her.

That would be more outlandish than if she were to agree to
pose nude with the real-life Bigfoot.

It was more so that she didn't know anymore how to erase the
towering wall that had been drawn between them.

It had grown insidiously, inch by inch, as she'd watched her
husband dive deeper & faster into the government's black sea
of lies.

He'd tried to put it all in the past. He really had.

But they'd taken his sister. They'd taken his father. They'd taken
his son.

They'd taken their lives.

He couldn't quit now; he couldn't let go, not even for a second.
If he did, it would all be meaningless.

They would win. The men who'd violated his wife, who'd shot
her sister, who'd buried him six feet beneath the dirt.

He couldn't let that happen again.  Not to them, not to anyone.

But it came at a cost. His eyes began to lose their spark; his
words grew acerbic & morose, his affect obsessive &
oblivious.

He knew he was slowly losing the one person he needed most,
and he couldn't force himself to do anything about it.

How could he ever look his son in the eyes if he one day did
find him standing atop the wreckage of all their broken dreams,
and explain why he'd given up & surrendered his child's
unwritten future for a few years' worth of domestic bliss?

He was still his father. It was still his job to protect him.

Scully knew all this, but she also knew in her gut, and believed
in her heart, that the game he was playing had been rigged from
the start.

She no longer had the reserves of strength to trudge alongside
him through endless puddles of  muddy quicksand; to play the
eager, non-jaded Watson to his bitter Sherlock   not when the
effort seemed hopeless in every way.

She'd noticed his deepening signs of depression, but she
couldn't lift him out of that hole, as hard as she tried;
unbearably, she'd been hanging off the side of her very own
cliff.

Both were dangling above an abyss.

This time, she couldn't save him. She had to save herself.

She never did say goodbye.

Neither greetings nor fare thee wells had ever really been their
thing.

It had always been *Mulder, it's me* or the gentle click of a
steady line hanging up on the other end.

She didn't want it to be goodbye in the first place; she wanted it
to be, "I'll see you later."

She couldn't bear the thought that this separation would be for
good. As far as she could see, there was nothing good to be
said about it.

And so, when she'd left, only two days before Christmas, she'd
merely locked eyes with him and let her face do the talking.

So much was left unsaid.

She remembered how he'd sat on the edge of their bed, back
hunched over in the shape of a parabola, his devastated face
buried miserably in his hands.

He'd somehow sensed her approach from behind and lifted her
final suitcase to hand it over without looking up, a consummate
gentleman.

"I hope you find what you're looking for," he'd murmured.

She'd swallowed her tears one by one, replying, "You too." It
was the most she could manage.

He finally made eye contact then, irises stormy & gray, his
voice strong & reassuring despite the fact that his entire known
world was crashing down around their ears.

"That door will always be open to you -- you know that, right?"

Scully nodded.  "I can't make any promises, but..."

She trailed off, unable to go on.  Her feelings refused to be
boxed in by sentences & punctuation marks. They drifted around 
the room, instead, stopping at the bed, the lamp, the nightstand   
all their shared spaces, now subtracted by one.

He was so, so angry when it came right down to it--at her, at
himself, at the universe--but it was an impotent rage.  He
understood why she was leaving; he couldn't truly blame her.

He'd already forgiven her, as frustrated & heartbroken as he
was.

It's what the most insecure part of him had expected from the
very beginning.

And so before she'd departed, he'd opened his arms to her in a
long embrace, silently letting her know that she could in fact
always go home again.

It's just that her home and his weren't the same thing anymore.

He had no way of knowing if they ever would be again.

It took him weeks after she left to so much as step one foot in
the shower   months before he gave in & removed the barren
pine tree from their former living room.

There wasn't much living to be found in that room anymore.

They say life goes on, but his never really did.

(How to floss and do normal things when nothing whatsoever
was normal?)

He dutifully went through the motions, determined to carry on,
but inside he felt like a wind-up toy marching back & forth
upon a dusty shelf, abandoned & obsolete.

New wrinkles seemed to appear around his mouth every time
he caught a glimpse of himself in the bathroom mirror.  He
tried not to look, but there they were: frown lines reminding
him all too well that he had nothing to smile about.

Each night, the vacant pillow next to his haunted him,
questioned him.  Was he on the right path, after all?

Did it even matter anymore?

His arms still reached for her, ached for her, every morning  
the rising arc of the sun doing a fine imitation of the gentle,
warm curve of her conspicuously absent hip.

Now here she was again, sitting next to him in a car like she'd
never left, driving into the unforeseen -- always driving, as
she'd once complained,  past the twinkling lights of the murky
multitude of tired souls coming home to their loved ones,
unaware of the dangers lurking all around them.

The matter at hand was deceptively difficult: how to put
Humpty Dumpty back together again?

They'd always relied on a certain unspoken communication, but
now that fact was biting them in the ass.

There were so many things that needed to be said, but he had
no clue where to begin.

*"I've missed you.  I need you.  I'm sorry I stopped taking the
time to see you as you really were,"* seemed woefully
inadequate.

She was still so painfully beautiful, a seamless sculpture of
porcelain and steel. Thinner now, yes, but still soft at the edges
  crisp & regal, yet hot & vulnerable at the core.

He couldn't stop staring.  *That mouth of hers...* Jesus.  The
things she still did to him after all these years.

He was afraid if he blinked, she might disappear.

He knew her heart still trembled when he stepped  too close.
His own felt not unlike an ancient engine sputtering back to
life.

It was as if he'd come back from the dead  all over again. He'd
been alone for so long. He had to actually work at
approximating the correct facial expressions and mannerisms
of a casual social being.

Nothing felt casual anymore.

He'd felt frozen to the touch since the day she left, his passion
running along icy tracks, now rapidly melting in the powerful
glow of her petite presence.

He couldn't run fast enough to escape the rushing floodwater
she'd unleashed.

(He was gonna need a bigger boat.)

***

Feb. 3rd, 2016:

Scully hesitated at the front door to their office.  Mulder was
standing with his back to her, facing the new poster she'd left
hanging on the wall for him.

*I Want To Believe*

She cleared her throat, gently announcing her arrival, and he
quickly turned around, offering a shy, sheepish smile.

"I can't believe you found one of these still floating around out
there for sale."

She stepped further into the room, sensing an invisible force
guiding them together as if their bodies were composed of two
opposing magnetic poles.

(She should've known they were inevitable -- they always had
been. The laws of physics never lie.)

"I have my ways," she replied, enigmatically.

He sucked in his lower lip, biting it briefly before releasing it
with a sigh.

It sounded like he'd been holding that breath in for years.
Maybe he had.

"You still sure about this, Scully?"

She tilted her head to one side, questioningly. "Are you ever
going to stop asking me that?"

He shook his head in the negative & laughed. It was a gorgeous
sound after the week they'd had   hell, the past three hundred
weeks.

"Probably not for a while, no."  He paused, then continued. 
"You know, even once you were my wife, I actually missed
calling you my partner."

She took his hand, now standing merely an arm's length apart.
"I'll always be your partner."

She had her answer.

(They were on their way)

***

Feb. 1st, 2016:

Scully had known it was bad news before she even picked up
the phone.

No one called at 3 a.m. for small talk.

Some stranger had knocked her frail, elderly mother's head in,
and she'd been brought to the ICU for observation.

Undoubtedly, the assault had been anything but random. *This
was her fault.*  This was the price one paid for uncovering
truths that the rich & powerful had already laid claim to.

She'd never seen her mom look so small as she did now, lying
in that enormous, sterile bed with tangled cords & a gaping
gown that was at least two sizes too big.

It took her eight hours to first open her eyes, and from that
point on, she weaved in & out of consciousness unpredictably
& at inopportune times -- sometimes for an hour, sometimes
for five minutes, sometimes fading away without a hint of
warning & leaving her daughter talking reassuringly to herself.

She was going to be okay; Scully knew that, but that didn't
make it okay.

Was all this really worth it? Was she making a mistake taking
Mulder's side once more?

It didn't feel like a mistake, but here they were, regardless.

She'd told Mulder that she didn't feel as though they had a
choice anymore whether to bury their heads in the sand, but
hadn't she once been convinced of the exact opposite?

Was she just making excuses?

If it wasn't her mom, would it simply be somebody else lying in
that bed? Some other victim without a voice?

Maybe trying to avoid pain would only invite more of it.

Lost in thought, she failed to notice her mom's eyes opening
again until she felt her soft, weathered hand tightly gripping her
own.

"Dana," her mom mumbled.  "You're still here?  Where's Fox?"

She gripped her hand back, clasping it between both of her
own; she could have lost her -- the woman who'd raised her,
cared for her, who always kept the lights on for her.

It was inconceivable that the Earth should continue to orbit
without her standing somewhere on it.

"I told him to go get some sleep," she answered.

Maggie gave her an inquisitive look, her bleary eyes suddenly
clear as day.  "And what about you?  Don't you need sleep?"

Scully found herself staring down at their joined fingers.  "I'm
fine."  It might as well be her motto in life:  forever fine.

There weren't many people who could successfully crack that
facade.  Mulder was one of them, her mother another.

"You should've gone with him."

She was right, but it wasn't that simple.  How could she
explain? She decided to go with the obvious route   denial.

"We aren't together anymore, Mom.  You know that."

There was that face again.  "Aren't you though?  I didn't see any
other men at the foot of my bed today, bringing you coffee &
reminding you to eat.  I have eyes, Dana.  I can see the way you
two still look at one another, especially when you think the
other isn't paying attention."

Scully brushed a stray hair behind her ear, feeling oddly
self-conscious. "I asked him here as a friend."

Her mother scoffed, not unkindly.  "If you two are just friends,
then Bill Jr. is the next president of the United States of
America. He'd better call Hillary and let her know."

She exhaled on a laugh.  "He would like that, wouldn't he?  His
first order of business would be sending Mulder straight to
Gitmo."

Making jokes was always a good way to change the subject, but
her mother wasn't taking the bait.

"Don't you think it's been enough time, Dana?  He loves you,
and I know you love him."

She withdrew her hands, wiping them on her slacks, restless &
agitated. (When had her palms started sweating?)

Her head leaned back of its own accord,  eyes drifting briefly to
the ceiling, not sure who she was really talking to anymore. 
"Of course I do.  I never stopped loving him.  The question is,
is that enough?"

In their time apart, Scully had learned again how to crawl, how
to walk.  She'd regained her balance and found her way back to
the middle   back to who she was at the root, stable in the
stillness of an anchored soul whether the wind tossed her to or
fro.

All that was true.  But what she didn't know was whether she
could still safely cross the high-wires that loving Mulder
entailed.

Working together was one thing. Living together, loving
together, & learning the nooks & crannies of each others lives
all over again was another.

Her mother gave her an understanding smile, wan but wise. 
She too had traversed her own detours in life. She knew from
hard-won experience that any relationship worth its while
involved far more than a direct route from point A to point B.

"Well, you can't find out unless you try."

That morning, when Scully had gotten the call, her husband
had been the first person whose voice she wanted to hear. The
only person she wanted to see.

Surely, that still had to count for something, maybe everything.

Ridiculously, sitting there next to her injured mother, Scully
suddenly found herself frantically  wanting to touch her
long-lost lover   to kiss him and remind them both of what
they used to be,
and, miraculously, what she realized with a start they could still
become.

It seemed so obvious in retrospect, but she knew she wouldn't
have been ready for this revelation any sooner.

Now, it was as if her body had been waiting for permission to
feel, and all bets were off   bonfires of raw desire being set
alight across dozens of reawakened nerve endings.

Decisively, she stood up, leaned over and gave her mom's
forehead a short, grateful kiss.

"I've got to go."

***

Feb. 1st, 2016:

Mulder sat in his hotel room, distractedly flipping through the
channels on the room's lone TV.

His mind was still back at the hospital, wondering how his
partner, his wife, was handling the latest in the string of crises
he'd brought into her life.

He knew it was her choice whether to join his crusade once
again, but he couldn't help feeling responsible for the
consequences of her decision.

Maybe he never should've come back here.

He also knew, however, that these self-pitying thoughts of
martyrdom meant nothing when faced with the reality of seeing
Dana Scully again   smelling her, holding her, hearing her
voice.

He couldn't get that out of his head, the fact that she'd let him
hold her, standing together in a long, white hallway outside her
mother's room.

Her head still fit just right tucked beneath his chin.

Their bodies seemed so incongruous when viewed apart, but
they fit together like interlocking puzzle pieces.

Simply put, they were meant to be. He knew this to be true, and
yet there was still this looming silence that stretched between
them now.

It felt like riding a bicycle again, but one without handlebars.

Long looks & crowded mouths   too many words to narrow
them all down. He could imagine the stubborn letters colliding
into one another and ricocheting away, taking with them all
courage to act.

He'd wanted to kiss her so many times since that first reunion,
but it had to be her move first.

She'd been the one who left; he'd never closed the door behind
her.

It remained wide open.

Pondering this, Mulder almost didn't notice the knock at his
actual door until it was too late. Scully was already half a step
away from fleeing the scene, her heightened emotions
triggering  an eruption of insecurity.

She was sure of what she was doing, but not the how or when.

Fortunately, he saved them both by appearing at her feet
mid-flight.


For several moments, she merely stood there, staring, lips
parted, struggling to articulate anything  & everything all at
once.

"Scully?  Is everything okay?"

And just like that, the ice was broken. She grasped his face in
her hands, leaning up-up-up on her toes, and kissed him again
& again.

Once for every day they'd spent apart. Twice for every night
they'd slept alone.

Three for each of the words they now realized they didn't need
to say.

(I love you)

(I missed you)

(Come on back)

The words could wait.

Now was for bodies colliding, hands stroking, and hearts
beating.

It had been a long, dark turn in the road, but they were, at last,
homeward bound.

Later, they would watch the sun rise in the east   the start of a
new day, facing the dawn together as one.

Their horizon was plain to see.

***