"Fox, for once, maybe you should just shut up."
A laugh. A chuff, really. "I have no idea what you are talking about, Mrs. Scully. I just know I need to talk to her."
"Bill and I… Ahab. We were married for over thirty years you know. Together for two before that. Thirty-five years with the man and it took me nearly half that to realize that sometimes, I just needed to let him talk."
"Oh, she talks," he mutters. "I let her."
"You argue. You challenge. Dana and her father, they both come from the sea. You can't fight the tide, Fox, any more than you can change it."
"So you let him talk. He came back, obviously. More times than she lets herself come back to me."
She smiles as she stands from the kitchen table. She runs her hand affectionately through the man's hair as she goes to pour him more tea. This irritating man who's ingratiated himself into their lives, mostly through no fault of his own. "The Captain sailed on big ships, Fox. They were out longer, but in longer as well. And took longer to get underway. Dana's the same personality on a smaller platform, and you are caught in the riptide. Just let go and you'll pop up right where you need to be. Try to swim parallel for once."
He doesn't speak in metaphors. All he knows is there hasn't been a day in their lives together they've moved in the same direction. Somehow, they both end up on the right path anyway. One phone call, one visit to the hospital, that's all it will take. He's convinced her for the past twenty-two years, in one way or another. He will again.
He tries. This time she doesn't come back.
In the end, people never really die the way we want them to; the way we imagine them to die. We can work in or near hospitals our whole lives: doctors, nurses, vendors - but when we sit in the ICU ourselves, on the cold, plastic, hard chairs, circumstances never follow the rivers and currents we envisioned when we imagined how we would cope.
And we do imagine.
For Fox Mulder, though, well, he'd never really imagined that he would be sitting here, in the Northwest, on this log next to his current partner and ex-whatever. He'd never really imagined that. His mother, his sister, his father, long dead, and she'd been there for every single one. He can't count on one hand the times he's had to collapse on to her, into her strength, and so he tries to be here for her now. But he has no words.
"I believe you will find all your answers, you will find the answers to the biggest mysteries… and I will be there when you do."
He turns to her at this. And realizes she is coming back, though maybe she doesn't realize it yet. She does this, this ebb and flow from him, the same as the sound lapping near their feet as the tide rolls back. He always fights the ebb, just as he fought her in the hospital, to not go back to work. And just as in the hospital, he's never fought it successfully. Maybe, just maybe, it is time to learn from one's mistakes. And so, as she slowly flows back, he stays silent, for the first time in his life.
There is a time for dark wizardry and then maybe there is a time to just shut up.
She continues and she slays him, and herself, with her words. Their choices, their decisions. It would be disingenuous to pretend she made these choices on her own, as much as he's blamed her before. He left, the first time. And he's been making up for it ever since. Maybe that's the trick then. Instead of trying to make up for where ever he has failed her in the past, maybe he just needs to swim parallel for a minute. So though he takes a breath, begins to speak, attempts to find the words, Margaret's voice stops him in his head. "For once, maybe you should just shut up."
He pulls her to him, holds his breath, and ducks the tide. Turns parallel. It's time to bring them both back to shore.
The service is small, but sunny. A contrast to the days before when Margaret joined Captain Ahab in the sea. San Diego is a stark contrast to Seattle and the rest of the Northwest, and he spends the morning and the subsequent family meal learning that Bremerton, Washington, was where the Captain commanded his first ship.
He meets the estranged son. Charlie is the opposite of Bill Jr. in every way. He looks similar, receding red hair, the wife and 2.5 kids, the broad Scully-boy shoulders and seaman's frame, but his smile comes easier. Easier than Bill's or Dana's, anyway. Charlie stayed in the Northwest when the rest of the family moved south and Dana left for Maryland. He's a chiropractor and his wife teaches yoga at a local gym. His arms, bare past his t-shirt sleeves in the San Diego sun, are covered in tattoos. They shop at their local farmer's cooperative and own a 3D print shop where they help people "create their ideas." Dana rolls her eyes.
Lunch starts tense but the white wine breaks up the apprehensiveness and finally the brothers and sister are all talking and sharing stories.
So this is death in a big family, Mulder thinks. A big family that has stayed, mostly, together through the thick of it. Funny how death for Mulder's family has always ended with him by himself with Scully. An apartment in Georgetown after his father died. An apartment in Arlington after his mother died. And a motel room in California after he found his sister in the stars. That was the first time the tide rolled in to him. The first time she accepted his then-recently opened invitation to stay in his motel room.
"It's funny, you know," Charlie tells him as Bill and Dana argue over one subject or another, Tara playing referee when needed. "We all stayed by the sea. I stayed on land and Bill went on an aircraft carrier, but Dana well… She was always more of the surfer in the family. Her and Melissa both. You wouldn't know it looking at her now, but her and Melissa loved the rough stuff, the big water. Landed themselves a beach bum or two, back in the day, much to Ahab's chagrin. I thought it was hilarious."
Mulder scuffs a rough laugh. "Somehow that doesn't surprise me. She must have been a betty back in the day… and I learned long ago that your sister would always keep me guessing."
"How long you been together?"
"Sixteen years. Over twenty since we've met." No use to delve into the intricacies of partnerships, odd romances, and breakups. She ebbs and flows but has never left him. Not really, anyway. He knows this, as much shit as he gives her for it, for this most recent breakup. It's been the worst one yet. But he's got to trust the tide. It's a universal invariant. He has started to learn you can't really fight it.
Charlie whistles. "Twenty years, eh? That's a long time to put up with that shit." He cuts his eyes over to his older brother and sister, still sniping and jabbing at each other.
Mulder smiles. "I have a penchant for being second guessed, I suppose." He's older. This newest catch on the X-files reminds him of that every day. He's weathered just about every Scully-storm imaginable.
The family moves from the little restaurant on the dock back to Bill Jr's place. The four kids, almost all adults now themselves, head to the family room and fire up the Playstations. The cousins haven't seen each other in three years but you're never far from home with a smart phone in your hands. Mulder finds it remarkable that they all managed to have red hair. He selfishly hopes his own son inherited brown. The Scully boys are thick, like their fathers. The girl, Bill's, is a slighter frame, and not a pound over 115. She's shorter, and Mulder imagines that when she goes out she wears three inch heels.
Bill, for his part, has called an uneasy truce with this man his sister continues to force into their lives. One estranged brother is enough for him. He doesn't need two. And so as the sun sets, and Mulder heads outside to watch the stars begin to shine, Bill joins the slightly younger man on the beach behind his house. He sizes him up as he nears him. Mulder has grown, physically and metaphorically, like the rest of his aging family. Bill has always seen this guy as a kid in so many ways. The kid trying to pick up his sister. The prick whose ass he was going to whoop the first chance he got him alone and outside of a hospital. Bill would have to reassess now.
Mulder's probably put on fifteen or twenty pounds over the years, closer to 200 than 180. But while Bill has softened, Mulder's just thicker, broader in the shoulders, chest and arms than Bill ever remembered him being as a young man. 'I should probably hit the iron,' Bill thinks. He still needs to be able to kick the guy's ass, if Dana ever needs him to.
Mulder, for his part, regards Bill warily. Ever since their "conversation" on the log, he's been starkly reminded that no matter how quiet he stays, this family's words have the ability to cut through him like a knife in hot butter. So he's moderately surprised, and surprisingly almost speechless, when Bill, without a trace of his usually scathing sarcasm, asks, "Mind if I join you? Sometimes I look up, too."
Mulder nods, stays quiet. This family that he's caught himself up in. Ebb and flow. He'll take it while he can. The horizon lowers and the stars being to pop.
"You know," Bill says, "I stood out here on a beach like this with my father decades ago. Sailors, back then, they still had to learn how to celestially navigate. Ahab," Bill pauses, smiles. His reverence for his father is matched only by his youngest sister's. "He saw the tides shifting, knew the Academy had dropped celestial nav from the curriculum, so he brought us all out here and taught us to use the stars."
Huh. Scully looked up more than she let on, it might seem. Always guessing. Mulder stays quiet.
"Sometimes, I come out here, look up. That starlight, Mulder? That's billions of years old, you know. Everything this earth has ever been and ever will be, someone or something in that starlight is looking down on us right now. I like to think they are seeing the past, the present, the future. Somewhere out there, someone is looking back at us, I think, and I hope they can see me and Ahab still standing out on these rocks."
Mulder stays quiet.
"You listen to her, Mulder," Bill says simply. Not an order but an observation. "I guess more than I ever did." To Mulder's absolute shock, Bill smiles and actually chuckles a bit, even if self-deprecatingly. "Maybe I'm the only one in the family that missed the memo where it's impossible to fight with my sister."
Now Mulder laughs and finally breaks his silence. "Bill, trust me, we haven't stopped fighting in twenty-three years. It's only recently that I've learned sometimes I just need to shut the hell up."
Bill smiles, nods a soft laugh and claps Mulder on the shoulder as he turns to head back in. It's an olive branch. Bill's an older man now. He's tired of estrangement. His and his sister's.
The thing about the tide is that for every time it goes out, it has to come back in. Gravity demands it. When you're caught in a rip, you have to let go. The surf spills over and the rip washes you out and eventually, if you swim parallel long enough, you have to hold out the hope that you will head back to land. You really just have to tread water long enough.
And so he fights his surprise when, hours after landing back in D.C. and heading home to West Virginia, he hears the key turn and the locks tumble in his door. He's exhausted. He's tired of treading. And he allows himself the small hope that he won't have to for much longer.
She sits at the kitchen table with him. This table has seen more laughing, fighting and loving than he ever thought it would when he first brought it into his apartment in Arlington. It has somehow made the journey with them.
"Somehow Bill's become your big defender, Mulder. When did that happen?"
He laughs. "Hell if I know, Scully. I think he just really likes pissing you off."
She smiles back. "He's my brother."
The tide has begun to flood. He thinks it might be safe to finally open his mouth. He's out of the rip.
"Scully, I will be there, you know. When we find your truths. They're out there, and I have to believe you know I'd never let you look alone."
She smiles fleetingly, maybe disbelieving, grabs his hand and squeezes. The smile doesn't reach her eyes.
"Let's go out on the porch. Come sit with me. I miss you." He stands, pulls her with him, and she finally lets him. She's been letting him pull her all week. He hates the circumstances but he loves her, so it's not an unwelcome change.
She stands instead. Looks up. The stars are bright out by this house. He joins her, arm around her shoulders affectionately.
"I once stood under these same stars with Skinner," she begins.
Well that went a different direction than I thought it might, he thinks, but lets her continue.
"Right before we found you. In that field. I told him then what you told me when we found Samantha's diary. I had William with me, then, you know."
He nods. Brings her closer, flush against his side. "Scully I think… I think what you said is true, out there on that log, but I also think your mom was trying to tell us, to tell me, that maybe I needed to be a little more forthright with you about William-"
"Mulder…" She heads him off, beings to pull away, but he's done with quiet for the time being. He's out of the rip.
"No Dana, I… You have to know that I think about him all the time. I was angry with you, and myself, for a long time. I left you to make decisions alone that no one should have to make. But I am done letting you push me away and make these decisions alone, or blame yourself for them." She's quiet, for once in her life. He continues to bring her in.
"I imagine him too, Scully, what it would have been like. But we are back now, we're fighting for him. For us, too, maybe, I don't know. You have to remember that. And I have to believe that he's out there somewhere. He's out there, and right now, he's looking up too."
She does smile then. Not the thousand-watt, Mulder you're awake in the hospital smile, but it's a start. She leans into him and they both look up again.
The sea and the stars. Gravity pushing and pulling, forces at work together and in opposition, and as old as time and life itself. He squeezes her shoulders into him and drops a kiss on top of her hair. Lets her go. Turns back to the house. "C'mon Scully. C'mon home. Let's get some sleep."
She laughs as she turns and follows him inside. He's glad Margaret Scully taught him to swim parallel.