Author's Note:

This is a story I began to write in early 1999. I've never really been happy with it, hence the fact that it hasn't gone any further than it has. However, I think it still has some merits, so I'm putting it up here for your perusal. I think my problem with it is that it's just a little to romance novel for my taste. All the same, enjoy. Perhaps one day I'll work out where it's going and finish it.

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Six Months

Walking into the small diner, Dana Scully felt overwhelmed. Early morning light flooded the warm, yellow room, falling on the white linoleum floor, almost too bright for her sickness-weakened eyes. For a moment she wanted more than anything to turn around and walk straight out again, but she knew she wouldn't. She had decided to face this, the demon which had haunted her for six long months, and face it she would. She was always the strong partner, the one in control, and it was that face she would now present, no matter what the next few hours might bring. She knew she would walk out of here with her head held high. She would not have her world fall to pieces, her last fragile hopes thrown away like so many leaves on the wind, not in a roadside diner. Not here, not today.

Moving from the doorway, Scully slipped quietly through the rows of tables and booths, her eyes darting from one pale face to the next, searching them. She saw no one she recognised. Manoevering herself into a booth near the back of the diner, her cotton slacks whispered on the cracked red vinyl as she settled down to wait, eyes trained on the door.

She hoped he wouldn't be too long. She didn't have any idea how this meeting would go, and a long wait would just make her more nervous. It wasn't fair of him, to call her out of the blue like this, after six months of nothing. Nothing! Not a call, not a letter to say where he was or how he was doing. Scully shook her head, almost imperceptibly, as she told herself again that she was still angry at him for this. That she had not forgiven him.

Pursing her lips and glancing at her watch, however, Scully knew that she had not come here out of anger, or indeed out of any sense of curiosity. She had, she reluctantly admitted to herself, come here today, to this nowhere diner thirty miles out of town, because she missed him. Desperately. She missed everything about him, his wild theories, his dry sense of humor, the way he'd push his glasses back on his forehead when he was deep in thought in the middle of working on an important report, and then not be able to find them again.

But most of all, she missed having a partner, a foil, a better half - or, more often that not, a worse half. She smiled to herself, in spite of her mood. She missed his wild speculation against her scientific reserve, his unpredictability, emotion to reason, his heart to her mind. She missed *him*.

And yet, here she was, nearly six months to the day of his sudden disappearance, not a word since, waiting for him to arrive. Was it any wonder she felt nervous? She had realised long ago that her first, burning anger at his leaving her so suddenly had all but evaporated, leaving in its place only a low, smouldering ache. Over the past six months it had settled uneasily in her stomach and begun to eat away at it like acid. It was an ache that, no matter how much time passed, Scully had a feeling would never quite leave her. That ache, and until the day before yesterday, a mortal fear that something had happened to him - a fear that he was gone, disappeared without a trace - that she would never see him again. The regret she felt when she realised that if this were the case, she would never have a chance to say goodbye, or to fight it, this regret was overwhelming. And so Scully had found herself grieving, in a way, for a man who was just as likely still alive.

As it had turned out, he was. The nagging voice in the back of her mind that for six months had been warning her not to give up all hope had been right. The letter arrived two days ago, written in that unmistakable scrawl, asking her to meet him here, at this time, on this day. Just a few lines, written, she assumed, in a tearing hurry, giving no clue as to why, to where he had been or what she could expect to find when she met him. But she could feel the underlying sentiment, the emotion behind the bare words, the unspoken need to see her, to talk to her. But still, Dana Scully was afraid of what she might find.

The ringing of the small brass bell above the door interrupted her thoughts. Scully had always hated those things, ever since she was a kid, where a similar bell hung above the door at the entrance to the school cafeteria. As a shy, insecure schoolgirl it seemed that everyone was watching her as she walked through that door, watching and judging her. Those bells made it impossible to enter a room inconspicuously, jangling out their warning, announcing your arrival to everyone.

This time, the bell tolled for Mulder, her partner, her best friend, from whom she had not heard for half a year.

Scully saw him, silhouetted, vulnerable in the doorway, before he saw her, tucked away in her little corner of the diner. The sun had shifted, and her booth lay mostly in shadow. Glad of this fact, she used the few moments of anonymity afforded her to take a closer look at Mulder and see how the interceding months had treated him.

He was thinner, she noted. His hair longer, disheveled, as if under pressure he had run his hands through it. To Scully's amusement, he did exactly this now, scanning the diner just as she had done earlier, searching for a familiar face in the small early morning crowd. His blue jeans and woolen sweater were worn, as were the boots on his feet but Scully could not suppress the warm rush of excitement that welled up in her as she looked at him. Even thinner, he was as attractive as ever; his face, although slightly gaunt still bore that distinctive look of pride, power. The hazel eyes still betrayed the complex depths of a man tortured most of his adult life by undying ghosts of the past.

As he walked toward the booth he saw her, a small smile playing about his lips. Scully smiled back, unsure, hid her twining hands in her lap - out of sight where they wouldn't betray her. She knew that if she laid them prone on the table they would shake uncontrollably. Head still angled down, Scully looked up through her lashes, suddenly shy. He stood over her, a towering presence next to her diminutive form, and yet somehow diminished himself.

Something wasn't right, Scully thought, as her partner - ex-partner, she chided herself - folded himself effortlessly into the seat opposite her. Those eyes, those deep, unfathomable eyes, they had lost their gleam, the lively sparkle which she had learned to look for even in the darkest times. Mulder's eyes were dark, clouded, and sadder than she had ever seen them before.

Scully continued to look down as her partner stared at her, scrutinising her, drinking his fill of the friend he had not seen for long months. It seemed an eternity to him, especially when he considered that his exile was self-imposed. So this moment, the first time in so many months, he etched her deep on his memory. She looked so striking, he thought, with the early morning sun turning her auburn hair to copper fire, that he never wanted to forget. Even if he had to go away again he would remember her as she was now, the way she lit up the dingy surroundings with her very presence.

Scully continued to stare at her hands, not trusting herself to look up, fearing that if she did the tears she had conquered the week after Mulder left would finally escape her. She had no idea how to begin.

In the end, she said the only thing she could.

"Mulder…"