Visitor (4/13) by leiascully Email: leiascully@gmail.com Distribution: Ask, please Rating: T for non-explicit sexual situations and some swearing Categories: SRA Keywords: Mulder/Scully romance Spoilers: XF Revival speculation (spoilers through series and IWTB) Summary: Mulder tries to put his life back together after Scully leaves him. Disclaimer: The X-Files and all related characters are the property of Chris Carter, 1013 Productions, and Fox Studios. No profit is made from this and no infringement is intended. Author's Notes: I had to get all of my feelings out somehow. Stories from all fandoms are archived at http://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully. + + + + 4 - Release October goes by in a muddle, his weeks punctuated by therapy sessions and the occasional call from Skinner. November is the same, the days as bleak and thin and grey as gruel. Maggie invites him to Thanksgiving, but between Scully and Bill Junior and Bill's various Mulder-scorning children, he isn't sure he can handle it. She brings him leftovers in coordinated Tupperware containers. "How are you, Fox?" she asks, putting her hand on his in a gesture that's painfully like Scully's. "I'm surviving," he tells her. "Sometimes that's the hardest part," Maggie tells him, and he thinks of everything she has lost. It's a miracle that her heart is still beating. "Don't be a stranger," she tells him. "No matter how things are between you and Dana, you will always be welcome in my house." He hugs her when she leaves. She's surprisingly frail in his arms. He eats the leftovers and washes the Tupperware. He takes his vitamins. The sun keeps coming up. + + + + "What was the hardest part of coming back?" his therapist asks. "Everything had changed," he says, leaning back in the chair so he doesn't have to look at her. "Everything. Scu- Dana was pregnant, which I'd thought was impossible. They'd assigned another agent to the X-Files, which was at the least highly improbable, because last I knew, they were trying to shut us down. It wasn't anything I could prepare for. It wasn't anything I could fight against. Like Rip Van Winkle, I woke up in a whole new world and everything was different except my apartment." "Why did you feel like you needed to fight it?" his therapist asks. "That's the instinct, isn't it," he says. "Fight or flight. Flight was rarely an option for us. We always had our backs against the wall." "Fight or flight is a fear response," his therapist reminds him. "What were you afraid of, Fox?" He puts his hands over his face and scrubs at his eyes. "Losing." "Losing...?" his therapist prompts. "Losing Scully. Losing the baby. Losing my work," he says. "Losing my life in a metaphorical sense. I died and everyone else went on without me." "Do you think that was easy for them?" his therapist asks. "Easier than it would have been for me," he says. His therapist just makes a "hmm" noise and lets the silence ooze out like molasses. "In a very real way, I was afraid of losing the battle that I perceived we'd been fighting for most of a decade," he says slowly. "The battle for humanity. The battle to stop the shadow consortium embedded in our government, who had taken innocent citizens and experimented on them. The battle to stop the alien colonists from invading our planet." "And what happened?" his therapist asks. He shrugs. "Nothing. The invasion didn't happen. Colonization didn't happen. The super-soldiers didn't happen. The end of the world didn't happen. A whole lot of nothing." "Did that make you feel better, knowing that the events you had feared had not come to pass?" "No," he says. "I was just waiting for the other shoe to drop. I'm still waiting. Any day could be the day. Any day I could wake up to hovering ships or soldiers at the door or my skin falling off. In the meantime, I've spent the last twenty years of my life playing the role of Chicken Little. But if the sky falls and nobody notices, do I still sound like a horse's ass?" "Has the sky fallen?" his therapist asks. "Close enough for government work," he says, and knows he's being flippant. Scully would give him an exquisitely arched eyebrow if she were here, the one that says, "You need to participate in your own healing, even if it hurts, and wit doesn't close wounds." She's right. His therapist is right. They're all right. And after all of it, the sky fell: he lost Scully, they lost William, he lost his job, but he's still here, and he's still standing, even if his footing isn't sure. He isn't afraid of the effort it will take to find some kind of steady ground inside himself. He's never been afraid of the effort. He's devoted himself completely to less worthy causes than his own salvation. What he's afraid of is that he'll make the effort and it will never be enough, the way that all the evidence he and Scully compiled was never enough to expose the sordid machinations of the Syndicate, never enough to stop the avalanche his fathers had started. If he never passes the Bureau's psych eval, if he and Scully never find a way not to destroy each other, if he never finds out what happened to his son, well, at least he's still alive. After the apocalypse, or lack thereof, there is a time to rebuild, to fail again and fail better. He came back from a dead stop to a flat out sprint, trying to keep up with the pace life had set, and he hasn't stopped running since. Of course he's tired. Of course he's lost. He sighs, and feels a little bit of the tension inside him unwind. Not a miracle, but a beginning. "Fox, I'd like to suggest that you consider a kind of therapy called eye movement desensitization and reprocessing," his therapist says. "I think it might help you process some of these memories without becoming overwhelmed by the associated emotions. I'd also like you to consider taking an antidepressant for a few months." "Okay," he says, surprising himself. He never thought he'd accept medication from anybody but Scully again, but the worst has already happened. He's got nothing to lose, even if his pills are laced with hallucinogens or poison or an alien vaccine. Maybe the simplest explanation, however outlandish it might have once seemed, is true. Maybe there's hope. Maybe he doesn't have to feel this way anymore. Maybe he doesn't have to carry the sins of his fathers to his grave again. Maybe he's free. "Thank you for being open to these possibilities," she says, and he laughs. "Is something funny?" "Nobody's ever thanked me for that before," he says. "At least, not anybody with any credibility." "One amazing thing about the world is that life keeps giving us chances," she says. "I'll schedule your first EMDR appointment and I'll call your prescription into the pharmacy. Make sure you follow the directions. It's very important that you build up gradually. The pharmacist should explain it to you, but call me if you have any questions." "I will," he says. She smiles. "I'll see you next week, Fox." The pharmacist is extremely thorough, but Mulder passes the pop quiz. His memory isn't what it used to be, but he's not that far gone. Before he leaves, he buys a packet of slim candles. The holiday things are easy to find, thanks to Scully's methodical boxing and labeling. He blows the dust off the menorah and mumbles the words of the prayer to himself. They taste like bitter herbs in his mouth, but it's a start. It's a change. The flames are small in the dark, empty room, but night by night, they cast enough light to see by. + + + + The therapy is strange. He moves his eyes back and forth, or taps his fingers, and thinks of all the worst things that ever happened to him, but somehow, it helps. Like cleaning out a wound or getting a deep tissue massage, the benefit is worth the agony. The pills help too. One morning he wakes up and there isn't a weight on him, pinning him to the mattress, or at least, it's light enough that he isn't incapacitated. He goes out and buys Christmas presents for Scully and Maggie. He has a bottle of whiskey sent to Skinner's office. The Scullys still do Christmas at 6 a.m. Maggie gives him a cup of coffee and a grey tie. Scully gives him a small smile. "I'm not trying to intrude," he tells her in a quiet corner. Bill glares at him. "Your mom seemed disappointed when I didn't come for Thanksgiving." "It's fine, Mulder," she says, and there doesn't seem to be any double meaning in it. A Christmas miracle. Yes, Mulder, there is a Santa Claus, and you've been good this year. "Merry Christmas." "Merry Christmas," he says. She tips her face up for a kiss on the cheek. He makes his excuses and leaves before she opens his gift. He isn't completely surprised when the doorbell rings that evening. It's snowing and the flakes are caught in Scully's hair. "You don't have to ring the doorbell," he says. "This is your house too." Her eyes search his face. The porch light turns them into fathomless pools of blue. He could drown in those eyes, or fall through them to the other side of the world. "Mulder, what are you doing?" she asks. "Living," he says. "Do you want to come in?" She reaches up and cups her hands around his face and pulls him down for a kiss. His arms slip automatically around her waist. They stand there, lost in each other, for a long moment. The heat from the house washes around their bodies and into the night. When she pulls back, the glow of the Santa next door glazes her hair with copper. She takes his hand and leads him inside. He locks the door behind them. She's already walking up the stairs. They undress each other without speaking. He remembers the first time she bared herself to him, in the hotel in Oregon. Back then he wrapped her back up like a fragile package. He knows better now. Her skin is the only thing about her that bruises easily. They were young then, and arrogant, but twenty years later, she still overawes him. She lifts her chin and lets him kiss the pale line of her throat. Her hands explore him. She still knows every scar. Even where he has no sensation in his skin, he can still feel her touch. "If we don't let go," she whispers, "how will we ever know if we can be whole on our own?" He has no answer for that. He only holds her closer, and she fits herself against him the way she always did. Whatever mess their minds have made of their lives, their bodies have always worked together. They make love with a melancholy tenderness, the glare of the neighbor's Christmas lights throwing colored shadows across their skin. He focuses on her pleasure, not the way he once did, desperate to make her stay, but because he wants to give her this, one uncomplicated moment of release, if anything between them could ever be anything less than fraught. She opens her eyes and in the dim he watches the waves crash over her. "I'm here," he says. "I'm here." She holds onto him without clinging. The blue of her eyes is swallowed up by darkness. When he loses himself in her, she strokes his hair and murmurs his name. They fall asleep wrapped up in each other, her knee wedged between his, her hair spilling over his face. In the morning she's gone, and he's not surprised by that either. He gets up and showers the scent of her off his skin with a gentle reluctance. He takes his vitamins and his meds. He brushes a few red hairs off the pillows. Some gifts are sufficient. + + + + He sends flowers for her birthday - he has a standing order with the florist, and he thinks she got a bouquet even when he was temporarily deceased - and she calls to thank him. "Can I take you out to dinner?" he asks. "Just dinner." "I've got plans," she says, "but thank you for offering." "Say hi to your mom for me," he tells her. She pauses. "I've got a date, Mulder." "Oh," he says. "We've been out a few times," she tells him. "Is it serious?" he asks. "I don't know," she says. "But I thought I should tell you." "Thanks," he says. "I'll talk to you later," she says. "The flowers are beautiful." She hangs up and he finds the world has not fallen to pieces. + + + + His therapist is proud of him. He doesn't have panic attacks anymore when he passes a graveyard. He can talk about his lost time without shouting. In the moments that the gravity of his memories does flatten him, he has strategies to cope with it. He can gradually unbend himself, shifting the weight of the past until he can hold it comfortably. He throws out his jeans that don't fit and has his suits altered. He makes an appointment to retake his psych eval and the rest of his requalifications. If he passes, he's not sure what he'll do, but that's progress too. Special Agent Fox Mulder is a look he can wear, but it's not the only one he owns anymore. + + + + He sends her flowers for Mother's Day too. Every year since they discovered the existence of Emily, he's tried to do a little something for her. It's not an easy occasion for either of them, but it's an important one. They still haven't talked about William, not the conversation they need to have, but this isn't the day for it. He's ready now, any time she's ready. He opens a bottle of wine, just in case. He's in the kitchen when she comes in, breezy in a silky blouse and a skirt that fits her like a glove. "Mulder," she says, her voice melting at the end, and he knows she came over ready for a fight. He gives her his most belly-up look. She clips to a stop, confusion and sorrow and sweetness creasing around her eyes. She is even more beautiful now than she was when they met. He has never loved her more. He has never loved her less. "Happy Mother's Day," he says, handing her a glass. "Have a seat." He gestures towards the couch and she sits, looking distracted. "I'm not going to move back in just because you sent me flowers," she says. "Beautiful flowers, even." "I don't expect you to," he tells her, filling her glass. He sits down beside her. She give him a skeptical look. "No ulterior motive?" "I forgive you," he says. "I'm sorry I wasn't around. I should have found another way." She sips at her wine. "And that's that?" "No," he says. "But I hope it's a start." She sets down her glass and sighs. "It's a start." Her thumb brushes over his cheekbone and he closes his eyes. He hears the creak of the couch and feels her other hand on his knee as she steadies herself. Her hot breath puffs against his cheek and then his lips brush hers. Their hands explore each other as if they haven't mapped out every inch of this territory over the years. There's always some surprise, he thinks, some undiscovered country. They keep most of their clothes on. Her skirt is too tight to hike up around her hips when she straddles his lap, so that ends up on the floor. His jeans hamper his ankles. It's not peaceful or kind, exactly, when they touch each other, but he didn't ever think it would be. There are things they can only say without words. She sinks her teeth into his shoulder when she comes and leaves a ring of lipstick on his shirt. Afterwards, she gets dressed in the middle of the living room, settling her breasts back into her bra, tucking her shirt back into the sleek high waist of her skirt. "Is this all we'll ever be?" he asks, fumbling with his clothes. His fingers are still shaking. Her composure is astounding, but he can see the way her calf muscles quiver as she steps into her shoes. "Ask me again sometime," she says, and leaves without kissing him. + + + + Feedback is welcome at leiascully@gmail.com. Stories from all fandoms are archived at http://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully.