Post-Kitsunegari.
Mild spoilers for Pusher, Ascension, One Breath.
Obviously I do not own these characters, but I do really like them.
My first fic after a decade-long hiatus. Here goes.
"Mulder, a moment please."
He paused mid-turn for the door. With her hand on the knob, she paused too, looking back with an expression of carefully masked concern. Their eyes met, and at his almost imperceptible nod she slipped quietly out of the room.
That was it. That was all they needed to know each others' minds, their feelings; with just a glance, she gave him the small reassurance that he needed. Nevertheless he felt his stomach clench again at the unbidden memory of earlier that night.
"...I just want to say you did a good job."
The Assistant Director was also trying not to show his concern.
A good job? That stings.
"Yeah, how's that?"
"You're the only one who could have figured this out. You knew it was Linda Bowman and not Modell. You were way ahead of me."
Yeah, but at what cost?
His gaze leveled with the man in front of him. "I almost killed my partner."
Skinner stared back, unwavering. He knew how his agents operated, and knew that when something like this happened, someone had to help Mulder out from underneath his crushing guilt. More often than not, that task fell to him. But Skinner understood, and he couldn't let his best man in the field implode like this.
"Despite that, you prevailed," he said, hoping that his words were being heard. "You won her game."
Mulder gave a half smile, but behind it he was still struggling. "How come I feel like I lost?"
He turned and left the office.
Outside in the hall, he paused, leaning back against the wall. The adrenaline, the anguish, the anxiety had not left him, but suddenly he felt exhausted. He closed his eyes, rubbing into them with the palms of his hands as if he could grind out the image of the gun at her temple, her head on the ground, her red hair fanned out in a halo of redder blood.
He opened his eyes, shaking his head to clear it. I've got to get out of here.
When he looked up, she was at the end of the hall, stepping into the elevator.
"Scully, wait!" He pushed off from the wall, jogging to catch up as she held the door.
She gazed up at him as the doors closed. He couldn't stand the concern in her eyes. He couldn't stand how easy it was for enemies to use her against him; and how frequently that seemed to happen. How much longer could it be before being close to him cost her her life?
"Scully-"
"Mulder, you should go home. It's late. Get some rest." She put a hand on his arm. "Forget what happened."
"Forget what happened?" She knew he couldn't do that.
"Yes," she said earnestly. She didn't want this to torment him anymore. "It wasn't your fault. She got inside your head. And even so, you didn't give in. You didn't give her what she wanted. You didn't hurt me, Mulder."
He closed his eyes again, took a deep breath. When he opened them, he took her by the shoulders, and held her gaze, letting her see his pain. "Scully, I watched you die. I heard you beg me to stop you from putting a gun to your head while there was nothing I could do. And then, as I stood next to what I thought was your body, standing in what I thought was your blood, I almost killed you myself."
His throat hitched and he had to swallow before continuing. Scully stared up at him, his anguish reflected in her eyes.
"I….I can't go home yet. I can't let you out of my sight, or I'll never sleep tonight."
Scully lowered her eyes, which he knew was a sign she was about to close off to him again.
"Mulder, I'm fine. Modell is dead and Linda Bowman is in custody. They didn't kill me, you didn't kill me, and nobody else is about to tonight either."
Mulder gave an exasperated sigh. "It's not about that. I know you can protect yourself, you've proven it hundreds of times, and saved my ass as well."
She looked back up at him, softer this time. "Then what is it about?"
He sighed, trying to find the right words. Dana Scully was an incredibly strong woman, and sometimes she forgot that she didn't need to prove that to him.
"In this profession, we're supposed to be able to deal with extreme situations and death. We're supposed to be able to work together and not show any attachment, because then people can use us against each other, like Linda Bowman did tonight. After all I've seen, after all we've been through, that shook me more than I thought possible. I need to get my composure back, or we'll just be easy targets to people who know what to look for. Even though it wasn't real, I saw you die. And the only way I can get that image out of my head is by seeing you alive."
He lowered his hands from her shoulders and took a step back. Maybe he'd said too much.
But she gave a small smile, and Mulder saw the fondness in her eyes before she looked at the ground.
"Ok," she said softly. "Come on."
They rode the last couple of floors in silence, and when the doors opened, he walked with her to her car.
Scully pretended not to notice how he glanced sideways at her every couple of minutes on the drive to her apartment. She didn't think he even knew he was doing it himself. They drove in companionable silence, the murmurs of a late-night talk show drifting from the radio.
When she shut the door of her apartment behind them and dropped her keys on the counter, the clock above her kitchen sink read 12:03, but Scully didn't feel tired at all. In fact, she felt a slight anxiety at what she was supposed to do now; usually the time they spent at each others' homes was at least somewhat work-related, poring over case files or swapping evidence and theories. Tonight, he just wanted to be with her, to ease his mind and erase the confusing and disturbing visual evidence of her forced suicide by seeing her breathe, move, talk.
He let himself in with ease, taking his usual spot on one end of the couch. Scully went to the fridge.
"Want anything to drink?" She asked, poking around for a moment before deciding against soda and pulling out a red-enameled tea kettle and filling it with water.
"I'll have what you're having," he called back. She could hear the playfulness in his voice and was glad to have happy Mulder and not brooding, distant, self-loathing Mulder. She supposed that him being here is what made the difference between the two, and understood why he had all but begged for her company for the night.
She put the kettle on the stove and went to her bedroom, halfway closing the door before slipping out of her formal work clothes and into an oversized t-shirt and sweatpants. Damn, that was a good feeling, especially after a day like this had been.
She went to the bathroom to wash her face. As she dried herself with a towel in front of the mirror, she looked back at her reflection, trying for a moment to imagine what Mulder had seen just hours ago, and how she would have felt in his shoes. He had already been under the influence of a Pusher once, and still Linda Bowman's mind games had gotten to him. Even when it was her standing right in front of him, Mulder had been convinced that she was dead; the hallucination, or illusion, had been so real that he had almost killed her.
Scully herself had not experienced a push, and although she believed it could happen she had no scientific basis to explain it. She almost wished that she had been a target of the twins' mind games, so she could know what he was feeling. She had seen him crouched, grief-stricken and enraged, over….nothing. To hear him recount it, he had held her face in his hands, brushed back her hair to see the bullet wound in the side of her skull- but all Scully had seen was Mulder grasping at air while Bowman whispered her instructions with a smirk.
She sighed and hung the towel to dry, making her way back to the kitchen. It would not help to dwell on these things.
When she set the two mugs on the coffee table, Mulder was flipping through channels on her TV. She took her end of the couch, drawing her knees up to her chest and waiting for him to say something.
"Nothing good on this time of night," he said, switching the TV off and taking his mug.
"Hot chocolate," he said with an air of amused surprise after the first sip, apparently not having looked at the contents first.
Scully gave a small laugh. "I thought it might help with the sleeping thing. In the bathroom just now, I was thinking that I might have a hard time with that tonight, too."
"Why's that?"
"I was just thinking about what you said earlier...how these strangers, these people that we follow and form profiles on and research in order to beat them….sometimes, they're doing the same thing to us. They're playing the same game. And when they're good at it, like Modell and Bowman, they- ...they learn the same types of things about us as we try to learn about them; our behavior, our tendencies, our habits….our weaknesses. They learn how to hurt us without ever even laying a hand; by using us against each other."
As she spoke her voice had grown solemn, and when she finished she realized she was staring down at the floor. After a long, silent moment, she looked up and met his eyes. His gaze was intense, but unreadable.
He couldn't bring himself to respond.
He wondered if she knew just how deep in she was. If she knew that even if he had her reassigned, even if he walked away and never spoke to her again, she'd still be in danger. She'd still be the last thing in the world that there was to use against him.
He had thought about it. Long and hard, actually. When she had first disappeared, and when her body eventually resurfaced, comatose, under incredibly suspicious circumstances. When she woke in the hospital bed, with no memory of her abduction. She had been lucky somehow that time, but what if there were other times? How long could it be before her ties to him took her to an early grave?
He would have walked away in a heartbeat if he thought it would have made a difference. But it wouldn't. And he needed her more than he cared to admit.
"Mulder?"
He snapped out of it, realizing how he must look to her.
"I don't think you should lose any sleep over that, not tonight at least. Whatever the consequences, we're in too deep to change them by now."
He paused, aware of her somber eyes on him but unable to meet her gaze.
"Besides, as much as our….partnership has put us at risk, it has also saved us."
He looked up with a slight smile. "You always know what I'll do next, even if I don't know it yet myself. Tonight you knew exactly where to find me….and exactly what to say to convince me not to shoot you."
He paused, letting the night replay itself in his mind. "I….literally looked down and saw you dead at my feet, and looked up and saw your killer pointing a gun at me. But I couldn't shoot, even though the proof was all around me that the woman standing there was the one to kill, because the things that she was saying sounded so….you."
Scully smiled. "And that's why whatever happens, we'll be ok."
She stretched out, laying her head back on the arm of the couch and letting her feet fold up next to Mulder's legs. He raised his eyebrows at her.
She caught his look and rolled her eyes. "I'm going to stay up with you, I'm just getting comfortable." She grabbed the blanket from off the back of the couch and pulled it over her legs. "Talk about something, Mulder. Something happy."
"Something happy?" For a moment he didn't think he could come up with anything happy to talk about. It seemed like for years, all they had known was fear and deception and loss. But if he could keep the darkness at bay for just this one night, he would.
"Ha...well, this isn't much of a happy memory for me, but it will probably make you laugh. When I first got to the academy, I hadn't had much of a chance to work on my squeamishness. You probably didn't have to do this, having come right out of medical school, but the rest of us had to do a course on forensic pathology, and they made us watch a bunch of autopsies…."
"Oh, no," Scully chuckled.
"Needless to say, I'm glad you're around to handle that area of our investigations."
She laughed throughout his story, and then shared a couple of her own. Slowly they forgot about the perilous real world they lived in, and the dangers they shared in their friendship.
Mulder caught himself yawning in the middle of recounting a prank he once played on a college roommate, and looked down to find that Scully was fast asleep. The clock on the wall read 3:27.
He studied her for a moment; her breath was coming in even, light almost-snores that stirred a loose strand of hair that had fallen across her cheek. After fighting the urge for a moment, he reached across and tucked the strand back in place. "Dana," he whispered, then decided that was no good. "Scully," he said a little louder, laying his hand on her arm. She snored a little louder.
With a good-natured sigh, Mulder carefully extracted himself from her blanket and feet to stand up. For a moment, he thought about leaving her asleep on the couch, taking her car back to his place, and picking her up before work in the morning. But no, he had committed to staying the night with her for his own peace of mind, and if she woke up to him gone she might worry.
Gently, he slid one hand under her neck, the other behind her knees, and scooped her up off the couch, blanket and all. She gave a quiet mumble as her head drooped against his chest.
As he carried her to the bedroom, he marvelled at how someone so small could be so strong; how she could be the thing that held him up when he most needed it. It made him feel protective of her in a way he never had before.
Shifting her weight, he reached down with one hand to pull back the covers. As he laid her down slowly, she stirred. "Here," she said as he went to pull the covers over her. "Take this one." She pulled the blanket from the couch off and pressed it into his arms.
"Thanks," he said, lingering at her bedside as he switched the lamp on the nightstand off. "Sorry I woke you."
"Mmm, no," she murmured, her voice thick with sleep. "S'fine."
He chuckled softly and turned to leave.
"Mulder?" she reached for his hand, pulling him back for a moment. In the darkness, she found his eyes and gave him a sleepy smile. "I'm glad you didn't shoot me."
He smiled back down at her, giving her hand a light squeeze. "Me, too, Scully."
He brought her hand to his lips for a moment, tousled her hair, and left.
On the couch, he kicked off his shoes, pulled the too-small blanket up over his shoulders, and closed his eyes. He breathed deeply, vaguely aware that the blanket smelled like her. He smiled as he drifted to sleep, because tonight at least, they were safe. Tonight, they had been happy.