What We Know of Time: Hanging in the Balance (2/?)
by Tessa Moore

A series of vignettes, counting backwards from 
2016. Here be minor Revival spoilers!

E-mail me if you so please! tess.moore.xf@gmail.com


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The sky looks a little charged and dangerous when 
he finds her, legs absentmindedly dangling from the 
slat of the old wooden swing. It's partner has long 
rotted into the ground, but there are flecks of red 
paint still clinging to the remaining counterpart. 
Its chain is fiery-rusted and the entire contraption 
looks a deadly sort of unstable. Mulder doesn't 
mention it. The swing set lives in the 
nether-regions of their back yard, curiously pointed 
to look at the dense trees hugging their property 
line. When they first moved in, they'd argued back 
and forth about what had happened preceding them -- 
terrible, ghostly things tended to take the blame 
for long-abandoned houses, no? The pieces of toys 
half-settled into the ground are unsettling and make 
him shudder -- it's a disturbing sort of graveyard.

"Why didn't we ever clean this up, Mulder?" He knows 
she could hear him rustling through the sun-baked 
grass, but he lets himself imagine that their 
inexplicable tether tells her when he's near.

He shrugs, though he knows she can't see him. Her 
hair rustles out of it's braid when the wind picks up, 
it's catchy vermilion dulled in the green-gray 
atmosphere. "I don't know, Scully. It just 
seemed... wrong to disturb them."

Now her sweater has joined her hair in a game of 
wind-borne tag. "You always have believed that the 
dead deserve their peace."

Mulder knits his brow and hops over a large stone 
walk into her line of sight. She still watches the 
swaying trees beyond the yard, her lips set in 
melancholy. She finally turns to look at him when 
his hand falls to her shoulder. His thumb kneads at 
her collarbone through the sweater. "They're just 
toys."

Her smile is more like a conciliatory wince. "But they 
belonged to somebody once. A little boy or girl who 
loved them and needed them before they were suddenly 
thrown to pasture." Mulder isn't lost on the parallel 
to their own lives and paths, and he's always enjoyed 
the more poetic side of his partner. She continues, "I 
think I'm just bothered by the things I didn't take the 
time to fix, or even notice. You've been a free man for 
years, and you're still secreted away in our little 
house of horrors. Meanwhile, I haven't stopped to 
enjoy you; to enjoy our home. I'm being uprooted before 
I've had the chance realize how much I'll miss it. How
 much I'll miss you."

"You've been busy, Scully." He urges her to stand up, 
and she does so reluctantly. Unsure what to say, he 
places the focus squarely on her, taking attention away 
from the piles of maps and books and oddities awaiting 
him in the house. "You've been finding yourself again."

Scully lets him pull her into a warm hug, and the wind 
whips violently. They'd best be heading inside if they 
don't want to be soaked. She does take the moment to 
savor his closeness, though. "Actually, Mulder, I think 
I've managed to lose sight of myself."

He pulls out of the hug and slips his hand over hers, 
ready to lead her back to their simple little house, soon 
to be his simple little cave. "I seem to recall you said 
that to me once before. I also seem to remember that it 
wasn't so much that you lost sight of yourself, as that 
you'd lost sight of the changes along the way. It happens 
to us all, Scully."

"What am I going to do without you?" She smiles at him 
coyly while they meander up to their porch. She'd begun 
stacking packed boxes outside of the door frame, and she's 
hopeful the rain doesn't leave them a soggy mess - it'll 
take several trips to get them all to her crisp, clean 
new apartment.

"It's only temporary... and it's going to be worth it." 
Mulder's hand tangles into her hair. "You'll see."

Scully's own hands come up to his shirt collar, 
affectionately straightening it. "It better. I'm too old to 
start over, Mulder."

"You're not old." His smile is shy and goofy, and she loves 
it. He can still make her feel good about herself. "You're 
still a Betty to me."

The melancholy has returned to her face. "I'd better pack 
the car and get started out. If I don't get on my way to 
DC tonight, we're going to screw up the plan tomorrow."

Mulder's hands drop from her hair, and he goes to grab one 
of the packed boxes from the doorway. On his way to the car, 
he precariously balances the box between a wrist and knee so 
he can press a peck of a kiss onto her make-up free and 
gloriously freckled cheek. "One year, Scully. We can do 
this."

A moment later, the first of many boxes is placed into her 
new car, ready for the new life she doesn't at all want.

End. 

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