Spoilers: Rush..and a bunch of references to other episodes..you've been warned :)
Feeback: Yes! Please! anything!
Back in the Day
- by jenna -As they coasted down the smooth and empty highway, he let his thoughts drift back towards the case that they had just, more or less, closed. He had stopped thinking about the strange cave, and was now merely pondering the people that had been involved. Those kids had been in way over their heads. And if he could've gotten his hands on that one disrespectful little...well, he would have been in over his head, too. For some reason, he was slightly jealous of the highschoolers that had passed by them, oblivious to the bigger picture as they filled the congested halls. They had their whole lives in front of them, no alien or government conspiracies to worry about, just next week's midterm tests. For some reason he couldn't shake the looks that he had been given by the students. He had half expected to receive the strange power when they had entered the cave, but nothing had happened. Could his theory be right? Were he and Scully too old?
He thought back to the first time he had met her, years ago in the office basement that had become their second home. Her hair had been longer, her face quicker to smile than now, after years of pain and dead-ends. He wondered just exactly what it had been that had hardened her. The abduction? Her sister's death? The cancer? Yet through it all, she had remained by his side. And he knew, knew, that he could still break through her tough exterior and reach into her guarded emotions. He loved that thought. He remembered her expression when he had made some smart comment about re-writing Enstein for her thesis. He smiled at the memory. They had been so young then, he thought. Strange, he could hardly remember the time having passed. He suddenly remembered New Year's Eve, and a perfectly blissful moment where the world, the conspiracies, the aliens, and the aging process had all melted away. In that moment, he realized, he had felt very young, like a teenager experiencing his first kiss. He wondered what she had thought...
He looked over at her again, keeping the wheel steady under his hands. She was beautiful. Her lips were slightly parted as she silently read the file before her. Suddenly aware of his gaze, she looked up and smiled, her eyes bemused.
"Want me to drive?" she asked, rearranging her self into a more comfortable position and placing the file back into her briefcase.
"Nah..I'm ok. We're almost there, anyway," he answered, looking back to the road, a slight smile across his lips.
The rest of the way back, he cleared his mind and paid more attention to his driving, comfortable in the silence that had once again settled over them. Approaching her apartment, he pulled in next to the curb.
"'Night, Scully," he said as she reached to open the door and picked up her briefcase.
"Goodnight, Mulder. See ya tomorrow," she said, stepping out of the car.
"Hey, Scully," he said suddenly, tugging on her hand.
She ducked her head back in, saying, "Yes?"
He grinned.
"You really are a Betty."
She let a rare and beautiful Scullysmile escape her lips before closing the door and walking to her apartment, saying, "Back in the day, Mulder. Back in the day..."
End