Though War Rise: Part Three
By: Leese
Notes: The conclusion of the Though War Rise saga. Scully, Mulder and the others soon realise that their new lives post-colonisation are not all they're supposed to be. As another reunion looms, some will handle thoughts of what lies ahead better than others. Follows on from Parts One and Two. AU, with MSR, DRR, Skinner/Other, Gibson/Other.
One
The Skeleton Coast, West Africa
Shannon lifted her head from above the blue, choppy water. Her long, black hair was slicked away from her face and her blue eyes were open, not bothered by the strong salt and wind or the bright sun. Her bare toes scraped against the sand at the bottom of the sea. She was only a few metres from shore. Large dunes rose up before her, higher and more forbidding than any she had seen during her walks across North America with the team she had left behind.
She knew they were there, beyond the dunes. There was less magnetite there than inland, and what was left of the continent which had been turned over to supersoldiers bore little resemblance to the magnetite rich rock formations in other parts of the world. Still, colonies had survived in Angola and South Africa. Shannon had discovered the location of other colonies also, in Western Australia and the west coast of New Zealand.
The supersoldiers had been happy to receive the Southern Hemisphere as part of the Colonisation Convention negotiated with the aliens who had stripped the north of its resources; the Northern Hemisphere held much more magnetite in its geology than the south, across Western Europe and the southern inland and eastern states of the North America. The supersoldiers thought they were safer in the south and that they would have more freedom to move.
But they had made a mistake and Shannon knew it had finally been discovered by the other side. She had been nearing the west coast of Africa and the Equator when the aliens had come back. She had grinned and watched the crafts return to North America, gathering what they had unintentionally left behind under the sand. If Monica, John, Skinner and Gibson were still walking, she knew they would have been awed by the sight of the crafts in the night sky, for surely they had returned to mine Mexico as well.
Shannon had watched them work quickly and then leave. They had retreated straight over her, venturing across northern Africa and towards the Pacific Ocean, where they would be able to safely cross the equator and venture to the Antarctic without drawing the attention of the supersoldier checkpoints, which were focussed on the Atlantic. Shannon had thought of Mulder and Scully then, and their work in Antarctica. They knew more about the magnetite spread in their own country than the aliens would have. Surely the return had been their doing.
Now it was time. Shannon had been waiting. She was prepared.
She waited in the water until the sun fell. Supersoldiers did not sleep, she did not sleep, but she was not attacking the supersoldiers. She wanted more than those machines. She wanted their leaders. And in Africa they thought they were safe. They were well south of the Equator, settled in what remained of a country with few humans. The aliens had not killed the Africans, Shannon knew that. The supersoldiers had; shedding blood to settle because they had nothing better to do. For the first time, humans were on the endangered list in a world that had little life left.
For Shannon, extinction of life on earth was not an option. Though she chose not to acknowledge the fact that she was more human than supersoldier, she knew that underneath she was. She was a mistake of the project. She knew she could feel, and she knew she could love. She did none of those things at present, for when she moved beyond knowing to experiencing, she was weakened in her abilities. And her abilities as a supersoldier would allow her to fight. She had to fight for her friends, for the people she had left behind to fend for themselves in a new world where humans were no longer the dominant species.
Shannon had never played chess, but she had enjoyed her time with Gibson Praise. He had once accompanied her to a supersoldier checkpoint, and she had allowed him to hear the supersoldier's plans, and to know what would become of the team they travelled with: five ex-FBI agents, a blind young woman, and an infant. Little Nicky. Shannon had no concept of the time that had passed since she had left them, and she wondered how big he had gotten. She hoped she would see them again shortly, but that would all depend on how successful she was.
On their way back from the supersoldier checkpoint, Gibson had helped her place the pieces of her plan on the chessboard, something he had been famous for once. His ability to read the minds of all species, human, supersoldier and alien, meant that he was one of Shannon's most important people on the inside. She had a lot of those, within and outside the supersoldier project. Gibson had never been involved with the supersoldiers, but he was very involved with the humans who Shannon knew could help stop the robot race from expanding.
Shannon had been counting on all their team going to the same human colony, but that had been impossible. She remembered Gibson's face falling when he discovered fertility was a requirement of entry into the new human colonies, who were also hoping to expand their population to prevent the extinction of their kind. She had explained that to him, wondering what the problem was.
'Scully is barren.' Shannon had cursed. Her plans had been dashed, but as she had thought, so had the man beside her. Gibson had again come in great use to her. 'What about Antarctica?' he had asked Ted after reading his mind. Shannon and Gibson had discovered more about the Colonisation Convention, and the neutral territory insisted on by the aliens. Scully's infertility would not be a problem there, he had assured them, and so it had been arranged.
Shannon knew Ted was not human, and he was not a supersoldier, but Gibson had confirmed that his intentions were good. Ted had not known who Gibson was or what his ability was, and so had made no attempt to hide his thoughts from the young man. Gibson had found out everything, and shared that information with Shannon on their journey back.
So Mulder and Scully had been sent to the South Pole, to live in what was surely a very comfortable but isolated complex where humans lived only to be used as conservationists and negotiators between the aliens and supersoldiers. Shannon knew aliens resided their also, hiding within the protection of human bodies. She was not sure of their numbers and she did not fear them. She knew they knew of her.
Monica, John and their son Nicholas, and Skinner and his niece Sarah, had been tasked with journeying south. Under the Convention the aliens secured the Northern Hemisphere, and the supersoldiers the Southern, but the human colonies could only survive free from supersoldier threat in areas of high magnetite deposits; the supersoldiers', and Shannon's, true weakness.
It had been a long journey for everyone involved. Monica, John, Mulder and Gibson had travelled from Texas to Virginia to search for Scully, and after a rather miraculous crossing of paths they had come together as a group and walked through the sand from Virginia to Mexico, where they had been forced to go their separate ways.
Skinner and the rest had a long walk ahead of them to get south of the Equator, and though they had walked a similar distance they were now without Shannon to haul the large amount of resources they could not carry, and they were without their friends, one of whom happened to be a medical doctor. They were weary and resources would be harder to come by and carry. If they ran into problems Shannon knew they would have experienced long delays.
She hoped they had made it to the processing centre at least. Shannon had been away from them for many days and nights. She had not bothered to count. She knew when she left it had been just over a year since the earth's territory was divided in two. Perhaps it had been another year since then, or perhaps less. Shannon had taken her time making preparations, and she could work quickly, not needing to sleep or rest, but she had needed to travel long distances to find what she had been looking for.
What she was now just metres away from.
The sun took its time in setting over the picturesque, sandy coastline, but she did not think it was summer. The seasons did not bother Shannon. She felt neither hot nor cold when she was at full strength. She did not know what would happen when she was reunited with those she knew as her friends. She wanted to believe one day she could live with them as a human, but perhaps that was beyond her because of her participation in an experiment which had gotten so far out of hand it was almost unstoppable.
Almost, she repeated silently with a knowing smirk.
Once the sky was dark she strode confidently out of the water, slicking her hair back and brushing the salty drops from her arms. She wore a white t-shirt and jeans. She preferred to swim the Atlantic naked, but the clothes were necessary. Her skin and hair dried within minutes as she strode up the beach, but her clothes would take the usual amount of time to dry. They clung to her tall, curvaceous frame and she reached behind her to her hip, making sure she had that which was most important to her for her operation to be successful.
She climbed easily up the steep dune, not afraid of being seen along the otherwise barren coastline. She knew there were no guards out so early in the night. She had been in the water for days, watching, memorising their routine.
Shannon did not mind working alone. She had enjoyed the company of people for a long time and it had made her more human that she would have liked, and being on her own for so long since had helped her readjust. She was not a human. She was a machine. She could not die. She could breathe underwater and run for days without stopping, and she was the only one capable of weakening the opposition; her creators.
Shannon knew she would only have a small amount of time each night to carry out her plan, between security inspections. The supersoldier premises were protected by a shield that would require her handprint to enter. But she knew the shield did not communicate her identity to everyone within, and it had let her in once before in Mexico. She doubted she had been blacklisted in Africa. The supersoldier was only as smart as the people in charge, and they had more important concerns to worry themselves with beside a rogue supersoldier who happened to retain 'feelings'. What could she do?
"Watch me," Shannon hissed as she approached and pressed her hand over the shield she knew was there but could not see. The space around her palm shifted and tingled, and turned a bright shade of green. Shannon stepped through.
A large, industrial office building sat in the middle of the sandy plain on the other side of the dunes. It was several hundred metres away but Shannon recognised its design and she knew she had found the right place. She jogged down the dune through the sand. Though her bare feet suffered scratches and briefly burned on top of the hot sand, her injuries healed instantly, so quickly that she felt no pain.
The building only looked to be one storey high but Shannon knew otherwise. She walked straight up to the front door, the sand filtering to a rough gravel path.
Inside the foyer was empty, as she expected it to be. Instead of the elevator, she took the stairs, unafraid of security cameras. There were no security cameras. Nobody could get in without authorisation. Authorisation only required registration on the program database. It was not Shannon's problem that the power-hungry idiots in charge had forgotten to lock her out. They still thought she could be controlled. It was also not her problem that they left the entrance to such a building unmanned, as though no person wishing to cause harm could cross the barrier. After all, no supersoldier thought such mutinous thoughts, no supersoldier could 'plan' without orders. They were not free-thinking creations. Except her.
She took the stairs which led her further underground until there were no more levels, but she did not open the door there. She crouched down near the handle and retrieved the package the back pocket of her jeans. She quietly unravelled several layers of thick plastic until she revealed the grey, explosive putty and lines for detonation. It was a crude and primitive device, but she thought there was irony in not using anything technologically advanced. It never would have survived the swim anyway. She had brought as much as she could.
She rebuilt the bomb crouched in the stairwell and tucked it into one corner. It was the same grey in colour as the construction materials she was familiar with seeing in all their other buildings she had been in over the years. It would camouflage. No supersoldier would be looking around either; their eyes only searched for what they were told to expect to find.
Satisfied her work for that night was complete, she jogged back up the stairs and left at a fast pace, returning to the sea. Diving underground with her eyes open and her hair suspended around her face, her vision was not disturbed by the salty water and she located her equipment easily. This was only the first night of action, and she had a lot of time to sit around waiting. Underwater, she retrieved the heavy, corrosion-proof box and brought it to the dark water's glimmering surface.
She supported its full weight in one hand as she held it above the water. She needed to keep the contents dry, but carrying it with her as she swam had barely delayed her. She retrieved the second packet of seven, and shoved it into her pocket in preparation for the next day.
Shannon knew she could have spent more time in the building because the security inspections were far apart, but she did not feel like getting into fights with supersoldiers who made the regular checks. She did not want to risk a serious injury which would take time to mend. She wanted to make them pay in the most ironic, humorous, and human way possible. A girl had to have some fun, after all. So for another five days she remained hidden beneath the surface of the ocean off the coast, and at night she ventured onto land, into the building, and created another device on a higher floor of the stairwell. She was never seen.
On the seventh day, she rested. Another little fact that would have made her laugh had she been human. Had she been with her friends. She could see the sky and she would lift her head above sea level when the sun reached certain points to check for the guards along the tops of the dunes. Before arriving in Africa she had seen supersoldiers only from a distance. They had never looked for her. She wanted to keep it that way, to take them by surprise.
Upon investigation, she knew they would discover her method and identify her, but who would be investigating once she destroyed the base? They would need to bring somebody in from another part of the country. That would not take much time, but by the time they realised she had not only caused the destruction, but that she had taunted them with her ability and their own trust in things beyond their control, she would be long gone.
Then the real fun could start.
Shannon knew she took an unhealthy pleasure in causing pain, and she knew it was a product of the genetic manipulation she endured to make her a supersoldier, but at least her pleasure was directed at causing pain to the people now inflicting that pain on the world. At least she was using her dry, unfeeling attitude towards death for some good. And it wasn't really unfeeling, if she was honest with herself. She wanted those bastards to pay. She was in it for revenge, and to help the people she knew as friends. Billions of people had died, and if she lost those she knew were her friends she would be truly alone, and she did not want to be alone. She wasn't like 'them'.
Shannon forced herself to forget the people she had left when she felt her pulse race and breathing underwater become more of a strain. Remembering what she kept underneath made her weaker than the machines, and she had to match them. During the days they watched the coast always. Sometimes others arrived; bring messages back and forth between continents. They always swam, and they always came alone. Luckily none of them ever saw Shannon beneath the surface, and none of them had ever made the mistake of swimming right to her. Her plan seemed simple but there were still risks. But no human could have done what she had done, and no alien would have bothered, and she was looking forward to their confusion.
Finally, it was the seventh night. Shannon exited the water and returned to the building. She was not tired or hungry, but she would be glad to have the first stage of her plan over with. She wanted to return to South America. There was no real need to travel to Australia. The supersoldiers there were so isolated almost no humans of the program were there to monitor and control; their orders came from elsewhere. They had congregated in the south-western corner, so the Pacific was still safe territory for the aliens to cross unseen.
Shannon knew South America needed her more. She wanted to be there somehow when it all happened. She knew it would happen quickly, but she could not see into the future. She did not know how it would end. She was not sure what the fate of humans would be. Would they be traded in once again? Would they be exterminated in a war that had very little to do with them? It was hard to tell a human from a supersoldier after all; the key difference was in their mortality, and how could that be figured out 'before' killing them?
But her tasks came first and they always had. She had to prioritise. The building was again deserted as she entered the stairwell by the entrance. She completed a final check of her handiwork, pleased to discover everything intact and operational. She opened every door off the stairwell just a crack, peering in on each floor to double check the contents of the building she was about to blow up. She took more time than she had on previous nights.
As she left the building, she looked to her right to see a supersoldier approaching in the darkness. They had not seen her, and she ducked around the opposite side, her footsteps soundless in the sand. She reached into her pocket to retrieve the last remaining package of explosives, resting it in her palm and slapping it into the cement wall by her hips.
Unlike her own footsteps, she could hear HIS footsteps easily, his heavy boots crunching. Shannon thought it was ridiculous they dressed like military men. They had no 'need' for clothes. Clothes served no real purpose. Shannon wore them to blend in, and because she was still human enough to know that she should have felt discomfort with nudity around others, even if she really didn't. But the supersoldiers around her dressed in what they were told to wear, and they marched. It was an army run by a group of military dictators who had initially created the machines to win wars, then to fight against alien colonisation. Yet that was hypocritical, for all they really wanted was to colonise the world themselves.
Stupid, Shannon told herself. And she was about to blow their plans to Mexico and back. Her finger rested on the detonator she had revealed amidst the final package, pressed into the thick putty which was splattered on the wall. This was going to be big, she thought. Very big.
"I am a supersoldier," she told herself firmly, banishing whatever else she felt or wanted underneath her current self. "I cannot die. I will return from this."
She knew the approaching supersoldier had heard her because he had switched on his torch. She waited, repeating her thoughts silently in her head. I will return from this. I will return from this. She grinned when she came face to face with the military drone, tall and muscular and attractive beneath his khaki uniform. A gun was pointed at her chest instantly and she remained still.
"When you come back," she stated coolly. I will return from this. "Tell your leaders that Eve says go to Hell."
Her finger closed over the detonator, and her world imploded.
xxx
Mulder huffed tiredly when he stepped into the doorway of his bedroom to locate his partner and found her reading on the couch. The only light at her disposal was that of the tropical fish tank that spanned the wall of their living room. Her knees were bent up, she had a spiral notebook in her lap, and he could see the edge of her reading glasses against her profile, her head mostly turned from him. He rubbed his bare chest and scraped a hand through his brown hair, having woken confused by her absence from their bed.
"Honey it's late," he groaned, even though it could have been three o'clock in the afternoon. They had re-invented their own time, sleeping when they were tired and declaring that to be their night time. They referred to the time they were awake as 'today' or 'yesterday' or 'tomorrow' but they used no other words. If something had happened several days previously they might say 'a while back' or 'not too long ago', but they shied away from trying to measure what could have been years underneath an Antarctic ice sheet at the south pole.
Though Mulder did not think it had been years. He and Scully had arrived in the southern spring or summer, and it had been constantly light outside for a long time afterwards. Now it was constantly dark and had also been that way for a long time. Shortly it would be light again, he hoped, and then perhaps it might have been one year. The season was the only means left of measuring their time, but even that cycle would, after the first few, become too much effort to notice. They barely went outside. It was ridiculously cold, and the sun was either unbearably strong or nowhere. The only good thing was that they were inland, and they escaped the harsh winds and blizzards that probably plagued the coastal regions. Mulder could never know the weather for sure. He had never been far beyond the complex.
He and Scully did not look much older, another indication they had not been at the complex too long. In fact he thought they looked younger than before they had come to Antarctica. He knew they both certainly felt younger. The time in their lives leading up to that point had been hard, demanding and rough. They had since recovered from the months spent wandering in the desert and all the tears they had cried thinking the other had been lost. They had put healthy weight back on, they had purpose to their days, and they were content and secure. There was an excitement in their smiles when they worked that had not been there in the desert. They no longer made love as some sort of desperate attempt to prove to one another that they would be okay, they both 'were' okay, and they had been allowed to be happy.
Mostly happy, he corrected when he heard Scully swallow a sob. He frowned, walking over to her from behind and leaning his tall form across the low back of the chair, snaking his arms around her shoulders, clad in a familiar, white singlet top. As his eyes came over her shoulder he noticed that she had not been working, as he had first assumed.
"Oh Dana," he whispered painfully when he read the words in the book in her lap under the dim light of their aquarium. Scully had her journal in her lap, one she had written mostly to him in a time of despair, and one which he had found and savoured until he had been lucky enough to be able to return it to her. Now they shared it, and they protected it, but they very rarely opened it. Not since first arriving in Antarctica. Not since time had gotten away from them. Mulder let his eyes drift over one of her paragraphs. It was one of her sad entries, he realised. He had memorised all of her words long ago. Some days she had been hopeful, or funny, but most entries had been sad. She should not have picked that particular entry to read.
"You should go back to sleep," she whispered, her voice low and choked with emotion. Mulder shook his head, effectively nuzzling her as she leaned her cheek towards him.
"No Dana," he replied seriously. "What are you doing up so late?"
"I had a nightmare," she hissed. "About Monica, and I...I wanted to remember. I was sitting here picturing you reading this with her the night you found it. How you told me you did."
"Still has that water stain on the back page I bet," he mumbled. "From one of your own tears. You're not trying to damage the rest of those beautiful pages, are you?"
"No," she whispered, reaching up and brushing her damp cheeks, before settling her hands comfortably around his forearms.
"What was the dream?" Mulder asked curiously once her tears had stopped. "You don't dream about them very often."
"I think it was Nicky. He was a little boy. He came into this room and took my hand in bed and woke me up. He said his mommy was hurt. I got out of bed and instead of stepping into the hallway I was back in the desert on the edge of a cliff. Nicky pointed over the edge and I looked down and Monica had fallen, and she was dead. Nicky said we had to help her, and before I could grab him he scurried down the cliff and slipped, and his body fell on top of hers, and I woke up. I thought I would come out here just to check, and then I thought I should maybe read something to help me settle."
"And reading this particular journal relaxes you?" Mulder asked, suppressing a chuckle and brushing his lips over her ear, signalling to her the question was not meant to be patronising.
"No, but reading little pieces and then thinking about us reading it together in bed when you came back that first week was comforting."
"Then why were you crying?" he asked curiously, looking back down at the journal as she closed it.
"I still feel so much pain when I let myself remember," she whispered. "And I feel like I shouldn't. I feel guilty for holding onto it. Our time, everything that once controlled and defined our lives has been taken from us, including our friends. I was remembering those weeks and months in our house, all of us together, little Nicky when he was born, us sobbing afterwards because of our own son, and just...life, Mulder. Do you know how many anniversaries or birthdays or holidays we've missed? I'm never going to be able to whisper 'Merry Christmas' to you again."
"We can have our own Christmas if you want," he offered. "I don't think we can do much about presents or decorations, but we could have a nice dinner and maybe go outside and build a nativity snowman in the dark."
"Mulder I don't think it would be the same."
"Why not? I could recite Charles Dickens and we could curl up and think about how lucky we are, and how thankful we are to be here, and then you can say Merry Christmas and oh, I could make some non-alcoholic eggnog!"
"Non-alcoholic eggnog," Scully repeated dryly, smirking as he pressed a wet, noisy kiss to her cheek. "Mulder it's not quite the same. I guess I was just feeling nostalgic. You're right. I haven't dreamed about Monica or the others for a while now, and I've had scarier dreams since. I don't know why this bothered me so much."
"It's good to go back and remember every now and then."
"I just don't want to forget who I am," she whispered.
"Scully, you are working here as a scientist. That is who you are, a part of you. And you've taught me a lot, and I like that I'm helping you too, and I think we have a very good grasp on our memories, and our sanity. Are you...having problems you want to talk about?"
"No," she assured him seriously, shaking her head so that her loose, long hair tickled across his face. "No, I'm not depressed or questioning my sanity. You would be able to tell, darling. I'm just a little homesick. I'd give anything to be back on that schooner, sailing, stopping in at different ports. I fantasize about that sometimes. I never got to do a big, exotic trip."
"If you brought a whole bucket of motion sickness patches, I would come," he quipped hopefully. She laughed, tugging on his arms in a silent invitation for him to move around from behind her. His long legs rounded the arm of the chair in a second and he plopped down beside her, the soft cushions bouncing around him. He stretched a long arm along the back of the chair and Scully leant her head back against the white skin of his bicep.
He had been tanned once, from running and then long days in the desert, but he had paled underground, and he was not the only one. His fair partner was as white as the snow. Any freckles that had once adorned her cheeks had faded, and though soft lines of age around her mouth and eyes were visible, Mulder knew he had the same lines, and all he really wanted to do was press his lips along them and listen to her sigh as he kissed her worries away.
He drew his arm back towards him until his hand cupped the crown of her head, and she turned to look at him, her eyes half-open and her smile crooked.
"What?" she asked softly.
"You know what I'm going to miss that I haven't thought about before?" She raised her eyebrows, urging him to continue. "Happy New Year, Scully." Her smile widened. Mulder leant forward on the couch and pressed his lips to hers in a gentle kiss.
"Mm, thank you," she mumbled as he pulled away and smiled kindly at her. She allowed her eyes to reopen slowly and returned his gesture. "I'm sorry for waking you up," she added, observing him as he sat back against the cushions. She turned towards him so that they could face each other and talk. "Mulder, do you ever think about time?"
"Constantly," he reassured her. "I was just thinking about it before. I worked out one day that I think about time as often as I think about sex." Scully giggled. "I was just thinking that based on the light outside, or the lack of it, we haven't been here for a year yet, but it feels like so much longer. Maybe that's why you dreamed Nicky as a boy, not a baby."
"But do you think what we experience is in 'real' time?" she asked. "Do you think we still sleep for eight hours?"
"I think sometimes we sleep longer," Mulder laughed. "But biologically we're still programmed to need a certain amount of sleep. If we had a way to compare now to our old life, I think we might be surprised by how similar a pattern it is. Now, Doctor Scully, I thought you were out here doing work, and I was prepared to let that fly, but did you know you can be homesick in a comfortable bed?" Scully sighed as he rubbed his palm against the back of her head, his hand still trapped there by her skull.
"I don't know if I can sleep tonight," she admitted. "I don't want to take anything either."
"I know just the cure for insomnia," he assured her, pushing her head carefully forward to both free himself and urge her to stand. She complied and turned to him with hands on her hips and a suspicious grimace on her face. She wanted to tell him it was late, and she didn't want to have sex with him, but he was smirking back at her as though he could read her mind and thought her assumptions were funny. He put his finger against his lips and reached his other hand out towards her. Her fingers slid into his palm willingly and she allowed him to lead her back to their room. The cute twinkle in his brown eyes confused and intrigued her.
"Lie down," he urged, pulling back the covers and waiting until she was lying on her back with her hands folded over her stomach before he too got in beside her and pulled the blankets up to their waists. He lay on his side and covered her hands with one of his, smiling as her felt her breath move them. "Close your eyes," he continued. She rolled her eyes in the dark and sighed, but she did as she was told. "Are you relaxed?" he asked.
"No," she mumbled. Mulder grinned cheekily. She certainly sounded tired, but he could feel the tension in the way her hands were folded on her stomach. That was not how she slept.
"Take a few deep breaths," he urged seriously, his grin fading amidst his desire to see her peaceful and not in pain. "I'm going to take you away from Antarctica for a little bit okay?"
"Mulder if you're trying to hypnotise me, you forgot to count me in," she teased, giggling when he squeezed her hands and scoffed. "Okay, okay, I'm 'breathing'," she promised. "I'm not tired." Mulder smirked. He knew she was. "So where are we then?" she asked after a long pause, her voice curious. The woman never could resist a good mystery, he assured himself.
"We are sitting on a white, sandy beach, and that huge luxury sail boat you love so much is moored in the water in front of us, and the sun is setting behind it-"
"Figures in your fantasy you're not ON the boat," she mumbled.
"Do you want to hear the story or not?" he exclaimed. He laughed when she opened her eyes and looked over at him. She was giggling at him again and he loved her for it. He leant down to rub his nose over hers because he knew it settled her. Her laughter faded quickly. He heard her sigh, and he allowed himself a moment to revel in the power they had over one another. Her eyes shut and her lips parted. She let her head turn towards him, calm and trusting.
"Go on Fox," she whispered, relaxing her hands beneath his and linking his fingers with hers.
"I'm sitting behind you on a blanket and I'm nibbling on some sunflower seeds and reading to you. It's an old book, first edition, very delicate but a bit sandy, and you are helping me turn the pages. Can you see the book?" Scully nodded. Mulder shut his eyes and focussed his memory, recalling such a book from his childhood. "Stave one," he began, seeing the words in his photographic memory as though the pages were in front of him. "Marley's Ghost."