Trains of Thought
by Lilydale

* * *

Email: lilydale10@yahoo.com

Timeline: "Babylon" post-episode

Category: MSR

Summary: Picking up where the episode ended,
Mulder and Scully keep talking outside. Stuff
happens. Mulder briefly wears a blanket.

Archive: No. But ask me nicely and I'll probably
say yes.

Disclaimer: Do people do these anymore? The
characters you recognize are not mine.  They
belong to 1013 Productions, Chris Carter, and
Fox.

Notes: Thanks to Anjou for the read-through and
encouragement! More notes at end.

* * *

They stand facing each other, clasping hands on
the path that leads to the house. Mulder says,
"Did you hear that?" Scully answers, "What?"

Mulder quizzically looks at the sky, as he is
wont to do, asking if she heard something, but
she just laughs and says, "The train?"

"That was no train, Scully."

"Yes it was, Mulder," she says, smiling and
swinging their hands back and forth between them.
Sometimes she has to literally shake him back to
this Earthly plane. "You know that trains go by
here."

X X X

Mulder and Scully sit on opposite sides of the
living room under dim evening light reading
vastly different texts. Hers includes photographs
of things he cannot pronounce, and his contains
hand-drawn eyewitness renderings of things she
doesn't believe exist. They are very good at
companionable silence.

Outside a train approaches, rattling some of the
house's looser floorboards and prompting Scully
to whistle along with the train's faint call. She
says it's good for them to have something break
the silence every now and then, to remind them
that the world outside spins madly on. He says
it's good that the world didn't screech to a halt
like a scratched record at the sound of that
whistling. She picks up and throws some sunflower
seeds at him. He leaves bowls of those things all
over the house, to her resigned chagrin. None of
the seeds get anywhere near him since he's too
far away, plus her aim was thrown off by her eyes
having narrowed to a faux glare.

Later that night, after the comforter had fallen
to the floor and taken the sheet halfway with it,
Mulder's head is resting on Scully's bare
shoulder. She rubs his head lazily and sing-songs
that the earth just moved. He doesn't fall for
the belie of seriousness and asks her to whistle,
to stop the world at this moment forever.

X X X

"No. It was trumpets, Scully." He tilts his head
to the side. "Wasn't it?"

"Power of suggestion, Mulder. You've been
thinking about the sound of trumpets coming from
seemingly nowhere for days on end. It's no
surprise that your unconscious mind made the leap
in processing a sound out here where it's fairly
isolated and typically quiet."

"But the angels and their trumpets--"

"Or," she interrupts, "it could have been a sort
of palinacousis, an auditory preservation. You
heard the trumpeting sound now even though you've
finally stopped listening to the sound of
trumpets on that recording - that is, the alleged
sound of trumpets."

He hurrumphs.

"Placebo or not," she continues, "who knows what
happened to your brain in Texas after taking
those pills. They could be having residual
effects on your interpretation of sound."

"Maybe that's what's beyond words, Scully. Sound.
It's not opening hearts and listening to them
that humanity must do to rediscover its common
language. It's the quiet sounds of God that are
all around."

"Like trains?"

He smirks. "Listen, Scully. Listen." He turns his
glance back up to the sky.

Scully starts to do the same before she shakes
her head. God doesn't work that way, whether
Mulder believes it or not, believes in God or
not.

"Mulder." He shushes her with a wave of his hand.

"Mulder," she says with a little more vigor. He
shushes her with both his hands.

Scully makes him pay attention. She pulls his
head down one-handed for a very sudden, very
emphatic kiss. If Mulder is surprised, he doesn't
act like it. His hands thread into her hair, and
he leans closer. Her free hand rides down the
side of his shirt before sweeping under its hem
where her fingers tuck into his waistband. Her
other hand somehow followed suit, maybe at the
same time, maybe later. She isn't terribly
focused on her hands.

After a time, they part. Scully looks up at
Mulder, but his eyes are closed.

"Scully, did I hallucinate that?"

"No," she says. His eyes slowly open in reply.

"Folie a deux, a madness shared by two," she
thinks.

X X X

They've been trimming hedges together all
afternoon. This house has so many hedges and out
of control weed patches that one Tuesday off work
is not enough for her to help him tame the yard
into presentability. She doesn't think she's
helping all that well. Mulder has done much more
of the work since he doesn't have to keep moving
around a little step ladder and climbing up and
down like she does to reach most hedge tops. This
is not a complaint until she's standing on the
ladder one moment and falling off of it the next.

Mulder is responsible for what's more of a forced
exit than a fall. He had snuck up, grabbed her
from behind, and moved her right off the ladder.

He spins her 180 degrees and holds here there.
Her legs hang ineffectually, wiggling quite
absurdly in the air. She cries out that she has
shears and is not afraid to use them. In reply,
he spins her around a bit more.

They're both screeching and chuckling and
generally violating the codes of decorum when one
of her squirming heels connects with his leg,
eliciting a yelp that pleases Scully very much.
He deserves it. He's insane.

It's only then he sets her down with a firm hold
of her waist. Without saying a word, he gives her
hips a quick pat and turns around to resume the
untangling of a garden hose. Insane.

X X X

They hold hands again and continue walking away
from the house. It's quiet, save the shuffle of
their feet, although it's a soft sound since they
are walking slowly down the familiar path.
There's no talking for a spell as they walk
farther.

"Do you think we're going to lose the basement to
those agents? Miller and Einstein?"

"I don't know, Mulder."

"Maybe we could booby-trap the office."

"I don't think that's recommended FBI procedure."

"They've kept us on after worse."

"True," admits Scully, as her slickly soled shoe
slips on the dirt. She turns to her left, giving
Mulder's arm a light tug to follow her onto the
grass. He does.

"Do you want to stay on, Scully?"

"Do you, Mulder?"

"It's given me a place to be again. Really BE,
Scully. And you're always there, so...."

She squeezes his hand. She feels like they should
sit down, be grounded for this, but she's wearing
white pants. A gross misjudgement.

X X X

Scully wants them to watch the space station fly
overhead and insists that the best view is not
through a window and not from the porch but down
the drive away from the light of the house.
Mulder is still tying his shoes as Scully
scuttles out the front door and down the porch
stairs. It's not often that Mulder's legs don't
outpace hers, but he actually has to jog a bit to
catch up with her.

In the rush, Scully forgets to bring the blanket
and binoculars she had carefully set out that
morning on the table inside the front door. She
knew that the binoculars wouldn't make the space
station any clearer to see, but the moon would be
out, and Mulder likes pretending that he can see
little green men in the craters who call them
"Miss Scully" and "Mr. Mulder." Being out in the
country with him has been an experience.

They sit on the grass, wanting to avoid the dirt
of the driveway path. The ground, however, is
unexpectedly damp and soaks into their clothes,
making a mess. The entire walk back to the house,
Mulder circles around and around Scully, pointing
and hooting at her disarray. Perhaps she should
not have leaned back on her elbows to better see
the sky, or leaned over to Mulder to whisper in
his ear, although it's his fault that ended in
more exaggerated leaning after her whispering
turned into kissing.

They are down to their underwear not six feet
into the house, their wet clothes spotting the
floor. Scully grabs the previously forgotten
blanket and wraps it around Mulder, telling him
it's a space blanket. He pushes it off, saying he
doesn't need it, as his hand that dropped the
blanket reaches out to her.

The stains on the pants she had on that night
never washed away.

X X X

It's a brilliant sunny day, but there's a brief
burst of wind that blows Scully's dark jacket
open. She immediately drops Mulder's just
squeezed hand and uses her palms to brace either
side of the coat against her body. She keeps
walking like that for a few paces, holding the
pockets safe, before working her hands into them
where her fingers fuss around to the corners
before pulling out the necklace that was inside
one of the pockets. It's her mother's framed
quarter on a chain.

Mulder glances over and asks, "Do you have any
new ideas about what it means?"

"I've thought so much about where Mom got this
necklace, Mulder, and why she had it with her at
the hospital, but I just don't know. I don't
think I'll ever know."

"Maybe not," he says, reaching over to hold her
hand again, but she's holding the necklace with
both hands now and swerves them away from him.
His hand falls back, empty, to his side.

"But you know what? I don't think it's about that
anymore."

He looks at Scully questioningly as they continue
ambling along the grass.

"I think I know why I have it, or why it found
me."

"It found you, Scully? Now who's open to extreme
possibilities?"

It's Scully's turn to induce silence with a hand
wave, which she does with flourish and with a
smile. "It's a mystery, this necklace. It has
secrets," she says as she holds it out in front
of her by its chain. She moves it toward Mulder
and stops walking. "Here, take it," she says as
he halts too.

"Scully?"

"Yes, take it." He does, but he still looks
unsure.

"Nobody will know why you have that necklace,
Mulder, or where you got it, but we'll know."

"We'll know," he echoes, and they smile. He flips
the coin over and over in his fingers, the
movement drawing both their eyes to his hands as
he says seriously, "I'm a quarter of the person
you are."

She guffaws, right out there in the sunshine. Her
outburst at his expense comes even as she knows
he's not being entirely facetious, that some part
of him actually believes that.

Mulder still hasn't looked up, so it's easier for
her to reach him and swipe a kiss across his
cheek as she pushes against his elbow, urging
them both to turn around and walk. He slips the
necklace into one of his pockets with one hand
while his other hand finds hers as they start
their way back home.

* * *

Notes:
I thought "Babylon" was a mess, but I liked how
Scully had the necklace in her hands before she
left for Texas, and I liked the looks on Mulder's
and Scully's faces in the episode's last few
minutes. When I first watched the episode, I
thought it was a train noise at the end, so I ran
with Scully hearing it that way too.

You can find most of my other stories at
Gossamer: 
http://krycek.gossamer.org/author/14922-1.html

lilydale10@yahoo.com
February 19, 2016