Visitor (5/13)
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.

+ + + + 

5 - Inhale

"You and Dana slept together?" his therapist asks. "I admit I 
find that surprising."

"You and me both, Doc," he says, and he sounds like himself 
again for a moment. Not that he was well-adjusted then, but at 
least he's retreated far enough from the precipice that he knows 
the view.

"You sent her flowers," his therapist says. "Why?"

"It was Mother's Day," he says. "She's the mother of my child."

"No other motive?" her pen scratches over the paper.

He pinches the bridge of his nose. "No. Just to tell her I 
remember. It's not an easy day for her."

"Hmm," his therapist says.

"If I wanted to provoke some kind of conversation, I'd send her 
something on his birthday," he tells her.

"Your son's birthday?" she clarifies.

"Yeah," he says wearily. "William. Wherever he is, he's fifteen 
now."

"How long did you and Dana have with him?" his therapist asks.

He sighs. "He was about eleven months when Dana gave him up for 
adoption. But I was only with them for about a week before I had 
to go."

"You had to go?" she says gently.

"I went," he says, a little brusque, but she's his therapist - 
if she doesn't know how furious and disgusted he's been with 
himself, she's not doing her job. "I felt like I had to go. I 
thought there were answers."

"Did you find what you needed?"

"Of course not," he says, weary to his bones of the whole story. 
The medication helps, the therapy helps, but he hasn't rewritten 
the course of his life. He hasn't made amends for his wrongs, 
and this one in particular. "The only truth I found was that I 
shouldn't have left."

"What were you looking for?" she asks.

"Anything to keep them safe," he says, so fiercely he surprises 
himself. "Anything."

"You couldn't do that from DC?"

"I didn't believe it at the time," he says. "I thought they'd be 
safer without me. I thought I was the target of the men who 
sought our son. Fox Mulder, professional martyr." His voice is 
bitter even to his ears.

"Do you feel like she blamed you for going?" his therapist asks.

"No," he says. "No. Scully believed in me and the work. She 
believed we were in danger. She was disappointed, but she didn't 
blame me."

"Did you blame her for giving up your son for adoption?"

"No," he says. "Yes. She only did what she thought was right."

"But you've never spoken to each other in depth about your 
feelings about your son's adoption," his therapist clarifies.

He laughs, the sound rough in his throat. "What do you say?"

His therapist stays quiet, her pen moving in gentle circles at 
the top of her pad.

There are things they have never been able to say. There are 
things they have seen and done that there are no words for. No 
wonder that at crucial moments, they let their bodies speak for 
them. Hands say what lips can't. Tongues shape thoughts against 
skin. Pressure serves for intonation, urgency for volume. They 
reach some sort of understanding, although the respite is never 
permanent. They have been talking around their wounds for so 
many years, trying to ignore the pain of them, afraid it will 
overtake them if they pay it any attention. Afraid it will tear 
them apart. What they have now is all asunder; he can't damage 
it much further. If he has to live without ever touching her 
again, he can stomach that now. It is not the life he wants, but 
it is a life he can endure.

"When she asked me to be her donor," he begins, "that was the 
end of it. All she wanted of me - all I thought she wanted of me 
- was genetic material. We never talked about being a family. We 
never talked about being together. We never talked about it at 
all. We went to the clinic and I put my arms around her when she 
got the negative results, but there were lines drawn between us. 
It was her baby. Not our baby. Even after we were together, it 
was her grief that the in vitro had failed. Whatever I felt, she 
didn't ask me to share. She didn't ask me to share any of it."

He pauses and takes a deep breath. His chest aches. He taps his 
fingers on his knees, and it calms him a little. "Even when I 
came back, she didn't ask me. I was just there. She accepted me, 
she wanted me around, but she didn't ask. I don't know if maybe 
she was afraid I wouldn't want what she wanted. Maybe she was 
afraid I'd cut and run if she told me that what she really 
wanted was for us to be together, her and me and the baby, 
whatever it took."

"Was that what you wanted?" his therapist asks quietly.

"I wanted to want it," he says. "I could have learned. I had no 
idea what I was doing. I'd wasted my first chance at life. I 
didn't want to waste my second."

"What does that mean to you, to waste your life?" his therapist 
asks.

He spreads his hands in helpless ignorance. "Once it meant not 
finding the truth. Then it meant not being with her. Then it was 
about not finding the answers that would make it safe for us to 
be together with our son. Then it was trying to avert the end of 
the world. Now I don't know."

"Those are heavy burdens to carry," his therapist says in her 
gentlest, most soothing voice.

He sighs.

"Fox, if you think it would help, I could invite Dana in to 
start a conversation," his therapist says.

"No," he says immediately, the word snapping out of him. He 
can't imagine talking to Scully about all of this in front of 
someone else. It's taken months for him to be comfortable in 
therapy; she has more practice, but the things that have 
happened to them, between them, are too private to reveal. 
They'll talk - he can feel the day approaching - but they'll 
talk only to each other.

His therapist looks disappointed. "I respect your boundaries," 
she says, "but it will be easier for me to help you facilitate 
your own healing if you're open with me."

There is no way he can sit in this office and call Scully 
"Dana", or hear her call him "Fox". They can't pretend they're 
not the people they are, or that the last twenty years have been 
something they can resolve with a conversation. Their past is 
like those trees in the old growth forests in Washington, rings 
and rings of old hurts pressed around the people they used to 
be. He is terrified of unleashing some horror that will suck the 
life out of them. How many years did they whisper into the bare 
inch of space between their faces, afraid of being overheard? 
How many years did they make a universe of two, because there 
was darkness all around them? No telescope, no outside observer 
can calculate the laws that govern them, the strange gravity of 
grief and love and loss and loneliness that warps the fabric of 
their relationship. Therapy makes the past easier to bear, but 
it does not erase it.

"It's not you," he says. "I can't explain."

His therapist looks at him with careful skepticism, but he's 
immune to even the precise arch of Scully's eyebrow, and no 
lesser expression of disbelief can sway him. He'll add his 
therapist to the list of people who have decided he's spouting 
impossibilities. It's a long list. It's filled file cabinets. 
It's kindled fires.

There he goes again, he thinks. Mulder the martyr. He has kept 
score in his mind for too many years, cataloguing the wrongs 
done against him. No wonder Scully left him. No wonder he tried 
to flee himself. He's no better than his father, measuring out 
his vengeance and imagining the bitter doses are medicine. When 
she looks at him, she probably sees him marking tallies of each 
perceived slight. He would be lying if he said there was a blank 
slate between them. With his few words on Mother's Day, he tried 
to wipe out the bold block print of his son's name, but the 
letters are still visible. The debt is not redeemed.

Psychologist, heal thyself. His physician doesn't want the job 
anymore. He can't blame her. He's always been the kind of 
patient who just ripped off the bandages and kept bleeding and 
bleeding and bleeding.

The end of days was scheduled for 2012. They sat together, 
breathless, waiting, a little bit drunk just in case. And 
nothing happened. The world didn't end. She kissed him, pulling 
him down, and they stripped off each other's clothes and 
celebrated the way another disaster had skimmed past them. But 
maybe it didn't. Maybe the world he knew quietly died in the 
moments between the ticks of the clock, while they were occupied 
with the way heat rose everywhere they touched. He has been 
living in the ghost of a world he thought would endure forever. 
No wonder everything surprises him. He has been waiting for the 
sky to fall, not realizing it lay under his feet. He can look 
around now, thanks to the interventions of his therapist. He can 
see his life for what it is, a shadow just like the ones he 
chased. Maybe he can build a new world that isn't populated with 
men with no names or enemies with no substance. The work will be 
back-breaking, sweat-stinging; he'll go to bed with sore muscles 
and wake up with calluses. But he'll sleep at night, exhausted 
from an honest effort, and at least it's a new idea, not the 
ouroboros consuming itself he's lived for so long.

All it takes is breaking the ground.

+ + + +

He calls Scully when he gets home. She doesn't answer. He isn't 
surprised. She engages on her terms or not at all, because it's 
all she can do without dashing her heart to bits on the wreckage 
of what they had. A physical once a year. A desperate fuck or a 
tender one, fine, but only on her schedule.

"Scully, it's me," he says, and he knows that's enough to get 
his message across. She can read his cues in any language. But 
things have changed. Their survival these days isn't based on 
their ability to speak in code. In the name of personal growth, 
he needs to verbalize more than the bare minimum. He needs, as 
his therapist would say, to facilitate conversation, and the 
only way to do that is by using the words he's avoided for so 
long. He takes a deep breath, taps his fingers, feels his heart 
beating strongly in his chest.

"We need to talk."

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Feedback is welcome at leiascully@gmail.com.  Stories from all 
fandoms are archived at http://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully.