It's always the same family of spectres that rise to taunt her- mostly they escape her memory after she wakes, the feeling of insects on her skin serving to remind her of her terrors in broad strokes, their general shapes burned into her memory even after the gruesome details have been scoured away by daylight.
Sometimes- sometimes she remembers.
Often it's the cold, the overwhelming darkness, oppressive and inescapable. She spends her nights under the ice, trapped somewhere beneath the surface of herself, unable to scream around the tube in her throat. She fears she might start choking, stop breathing- she fears she might never breathe again.
Other times it's the ice, violently bright and simply ending in nothing, a gaping maw so wide that she is sire it will swallow the entire world whole. She clings to Mulder's nearly lifeless form her numb lips pressed to his forehead- the earth itself gives a shudder, and the last thing she feels is the ice cracking beneath her before she and Mulder begin to fall.
Most often, it's this: their positions are reversed. It is Mulder who collapses in the hallway, Mulder who goes missing, and there is nothing Scully can do to save him. The bullet that had grazed Mulder's skull is not so kind to Scully- she dies slowly, young, alone, without him. This, if nothing else, seems like the true perversion of fate.
She and Mulder aren't even halfway into their medical leave- the extended time off seems excessive, what with the fact that there isn't much left to recover from.
Scully doesn't remember much of anything, but Mulder has been more than happy to fill in the gaps. Whatever antidote he gave her seemed to have cured her previous anaphylactic-like symptoms. Aside from frostbite, hypothermia and exhaustion, none of them too severe, there wasn't anything medically wrong with her. No evidence to back Mulder's claims that she was being used as an incubator for an extraterrestrial foetus.
It's probably why no one has come after them since they got out of the hospital, or that's what Mulder suspects. From what he can guess, the cigarette-smoking man knows everything that happened- he also knows that nothing to do with it can be traced back to him: thus, no need to silence Mulder and Scully forever. Not yet, anyway. He'll find a reason sooner or later, according to Mulder.
Mulder's recovery has been slower than Scully's. He had a serious head injury to contend with on top of the frostbite and the hypothermia- a head injury exacerbated by his insane adventure. He was barely out of sedation before he went charging off to find her, with no medication to treat the kind of brain swelling he'd been experiencing. When they'd got back, he'd been in a coma, needed more surgery, and had barely pulled through.
It's a miracle he was even able to get to her, to get her out of there. It's a miracle he survived it.
But still, the number of weeks they've been given is more than either of them need. Part of her knows it's because the FBI hasn't yet decided what to do with either of them- part of her thinks Skinner's behind it, that he thinks they should have all the time they want after what happened.
The thing about near-death experiences is that they put your desires into perfect perspective. Scully's done this enough times to know that for sure.
And after what happened- more time isn't what she wants.
Mulder kicks in his sleep, fitful starts at random intervals, one leg flailing out while the other just jumps and shakes. Scully doesn't know if he's always done this or if the lasting effects of his concussion have caused a neuromuscular disorder of some sort.
"If you're gonna just stand in the doorway and watch, you'd get a much better view from over here," he says, and pats the empty half of the bed beside him.
"Sorry. I didn't realise you were awake." She's been sleeping on the couch. He needed someone to help him get around, to check his brain function every few hours, to make sure he didn't forget to take his meds. He got out of the hospital two and a half weeks ago- she hasn't spent a night at her own apartment since then.
"I wasn't." He rolls over and looks at her. "What're you doing up?"
His speech is slurred when he's this close to sleep. It reminds her of the night before they went to Dallas, when he showed up at her door, drunk. She hadn't even bothered to hope that he was there for some normal reason, like ask for cab fare or pass out on her floor or even kiss her.
Absurdly, she thinks about all the times she's wanted to kiss him since then and wishes she'd done it then, or before then; she wonders if that would have changed the course of events, altered any of the outcomes.
"Couldn't sleep." It's not a lie. Since Antarctica, everything she says to him is a half-truth at best.
Two days ago, sometime before noon, she'd been leaving, going back to her apartment for clean clothes, to do some laundry, to grab another book or two. She told him she was going home, and he had said is that what you call it around a mouthful of Cheerios. He'd been in a mood and they had been bickering about nothing at all and now he was trying to draw her out.
"You basically live here now." Was his follow up jab when she'd failed to respond.
"I'll be out of here soon enough," she'd replied, a afterthought almost, though what he'd meant was I'll be gone too soon. Neither of them knew what awaited them at the end of their medical leave. In a few weeks, either one of them could be gone farther away than they wanted to acknowledge.
Now, in the time between night and morning, when nothing seems real or permanent or true, Scully can at least admit to herself that she doesn't want to leave him, that she never wants to leave him.
"What time is it?" Mulder asks; he could turn his head and look at the clock, but he's playing some kind of game. It frustrates her that after all these years, she still hasn't learned the rules he plays by.
"It's past four," she answers, and leaves the room, ends up laying awake on the couch until such a time as she can feel like a respectable human being about kicking Mulder's invalid ass out of bed.
The next few days drag on in a slow dirge of reheated leftovers and bad daytime television. Mulder, despite all the sleep he gets at night, spends most afternoons dozing in front of old sitcom reruns. Scully has tried to make herself busy; she's cleaned this place so many times that she's lost count. Mulder's closet has been reorganised, as has his kitchen, his medicine cabinet, his desk. If he has any problem with her going so thoroughly through his things, he hasn't said so.
The nightmares are getting worse. She no longer has the luxury of forgetting them- even the smallest details are now her constant companions, waiting for her in Mulder's cupboard and under his bed, in between the couch and the wall and all the other places dust collects, pollutes the air and gets into one's lungs.
She wakes up three times a night now, different monsters at her back each time. There is an urgency now, as if these dreams are a message, from some alternate reality, some other version of herself who didn't make it out of that hell, who isn't here, listening to Mulder's soft snoring and the canned laughter of a studio audience.
After everything that has happened, she can't imagine what could come next- the story is over, in a way, but it's never like that in real life- stories don't really end. She feels stuck between pages, waiting for the next chapter to start.
The day Mulder was released from the hospital, she'd almost had to carry him through the door- no mean feat. He was tired, which she understood, and drugged, which she also understood. What she didn't understand was anything he was saying.
"What happens now?" he'd asked her, when she'd finally dumped him into bed.
"We sleep," she'd told him.
"And then what?" Mulder had said, petulant, sleepy, with the same effect as a child. "It's over, Scully, now what happens?"
"The rest of it," she'd said, for lack of a better answer.
One morning, after a particularly grueling night of bee stings and sharp ice, Scully catches Mulder watching her; that is to say, she catches him looking at her differently that he usually does. Furtively, like always, not nearly as subtle as he thinks he is- but he's worried now, concerned in a way he isn't always- no longer amused, much more bemusing.
She wants to say something. Ask him what his problem is. She doesn't.
That night, about three-thirty, Scully wakes in a cold sweat, a scream strangled in her throat, to find Mulder standing over her in the dark.
"Jesus!" She bolts upright and away from him, nearly vaulting herself backward over the arm of the couch. "Mulder, you scared me."
"I'm not the only thing scaring you."
"What are you talking about?"
"You're not as quiet as you think you are," Mulder says by way of explanation. "These walls aren't that thick and the drugs aren't that good. Why didn't you tell me about the nightmares?"
Scully sighs, long-suffering though she knows she has no right to act that way. "Mulder."
"Scully." He stands there for a moment, then ambles back toward the bedroom. "Come on."
The proud part of her wants to lay back down on this couch, to not sleep the rest of the night, and then to give him the silent treatment for the rest of the week. But her traitorous spine with its creaking protests won't let her settle back down, and her nightmarish mind with its awaiting claws isn't something she's ready to delve back into yet either.
At least she can distract herself with the itch she gets whatever she has to be stationary within three feet of Mulder for an extended period of time. Instead of counting sheep, she'll just count the reasons why it would be such a bad idea to start something with him now, while they're trapped in this apartment together, while everything is so temporary, the future so uncertain.
She gets up and follows him.
"Why are you still here?" Mulder asks her.
Good question, she thinks.
It's Scully's fourth night sleeping in Mulder's bed. She certainly hasn't had as many nightmares, but only because she doesn't always slip far enough beneath the blanket of sleep for them to find her. Even when unconscious, she can feel Mulder next to her, every time he moves, every second he's there. She's become a light sleeper. It's maddening.
"What choice do I have? You'd light your own couch on fire to keep me from sleeping on it."
Even now, she can see him without looking. She's on her side, turned away from him, and he's on his back, one arm behind his head, the other hanging off the edge of the mattress.
"You know what I mean."
I never know what you mean.
"You're my partner," she answers, keeping things in generalizations and cliches. "You're still healing." Teetering on the edge of personal now. "You saved my life. I owe you one." Tripping and falling right into it.
"You owe me nothing, Scully. You saved me too, remember?"
There they are again, those words, taking her right back to that moment in the hallway, bright and shining and too far away to ever get back to- just a point of light on the horizon, and yet-
But you saved me. As difficult and as frustrating as it's been sometimes, your goddamned strict rationalism and science have saved me a thousand times over. You've kept me honest- you've made me a whole person. I owe you everything, Scully, and you owe me nothing.
"My point is, we're even," he says, keeps talking like what he just said wasn't significant. "And I'm going to be fine. Maybe you'd sleep better if you were in your own bed."
"Do you want me to go?" She swears to herself, she's not afraid of the answer to that question.
Mulder pauses. He is not a man who pauses often. When he speaks, his voice is soft in a way that makes her want to look at him so badly that she knows if she does, she'll give in immediately.
"I didn't say that."
The first time she sleeps through the night without a single dream to speak of, she is so relieved that she cries. The exhaustion hits her in a way that she hasn't allowed it to until now- she lays in bed, sprawled on her back, and lets the tears run down her cheeks, burning her eyes and stinging her ears. It's an eruption, a release of things she hasn't been letting herself feel.
She expects Mulder to mock her, but he just stands in the bedroom doorway, sipping his coffee with a satisfied smile on his face.
Twenty-four days after Mulder was released from the hospital, Scully packs up her things. Her clothes are all rumpled, her books have new dog-eared creases from where Mulder has been reading away at them. Everything she brought with her has situated itself into his apartment, into his life, and extracting it all is a strange sort of surgery, one that no one has ever taught her.
She stands at his front door, surveying the living room with a strange sort of finality- strange, because she has no reason to believe this is the last time she'll be here, the last time she'll see Mulder- they have plans to meet for coffee next week. They'll be going back to work the week after that.
This isn't an ending, she reminds herself. That doesn't stop it from feeling like one.
"Thank you, Scully," Mulder says, and his arm is around her- hugging her over the bag of things hanging from her shoulder. "I'll see you around."
On one of her first nights here, Mulder had woken up with a low grade fever, localized pain, disorientation. Scully had helped him sit up to drink his water, get his pills down, and as she had gone to leave the room, Mulder's hand had seized hers, a feverish brand on her skin.
"Stay," he had said then. "Stay."
She wishes that he'd say it again now.
The nightmares return in full force.
As the last days of her medical leave wind down, Scully begins to consider her next step, something she stopped doing after Antarctica. But now- she'll have to make a decision sooner than later. The X Files have not officially been reopened, but she knows they will be, albeit on several conditions. No one wants Mudler anywhere but exactly where he is, where they can continue to watch him and monitor exactly what he learns and when he learns it.
If it was as simple as being with him, as protecting him from himself, she wouldn't question it. But maybe this was the last straw for her- she's nearly died far too many times already, and for what?
For him. For the truth.
Maybe it is that simple.
She wakes in a panic, alone, her nightmare evaporating even though the fear does not. A single thought, a single feeling- Mulder, danger- a compulsion- warn him- she reaches frantically for the phone.
Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring.
You've reached the phone Agent Fox Mulder, please leave a message after-
A knock comes at the door.
She flies out of bed, already fearing the worst. Her bare feet slide and nearly slip on the cold floor as she races out of the room, running through the dark, just more ice for her to survive, more obstacles, more distance.
In front of her door, she stops. Another knock, hollow and haunting in the dark. She turns the light on and flinches at the brightness of it. Her other hand will not reach for the door.
"Scully." That voice, muffled but unmistakable.
Her hand cannot move fast enough.
"Mulder," she breathes.
"Scully-" she moves before he can say anything else, throwing her arms around him, buries her face in his chest and feels his heart beating against her cheek.
"What was that for?" he asks, but his arms are already around her too, hands spread across her back, steadying, tender.
"Nightmare," she whispers, hoping he can hear her. "I thought you were dead."
When she steps back, he lets her, through his hands remain on her shoulders, hers on his chest.
"What are you doing here, Mulder?"
He shrugged. "Couldn't sleep." His hands move to the sides on her neck, then her cheek, then smooth her hair away from her face. "I keep having the same dream."
"About what?"
"About this," he says, and then he kisses her, so suddenly but without surprise at all, so firmly and so surely that she is overwhelmed, consumed, swept away. And she knows now, for certain, that everything that's ever happened or could have happened every choice she's ever made or could have made has led up to this moment, that nothing could have prevented it from taking place.
Months later, Mulder still hasn't left her apartment. It's theirs now, really- he broke the lease on his own place a week ago. His books are on her shelves, his coat hangs by her door, his warmth is in her bed, night after night, morning after morning. The night before he came to her door was the last night they've spent apart.
Scully hasn't had a single nightmare since.