Starlight
short post-finale fic. Takes place somewhere between the truth and IWTB when they're on the run. please enjoy and if you could spare the time, please review!
It's quiet out.
Somewhat peaceful and yet somewhat eerie. Just silence, except for the occasional chirping of crickets and rummaging of small animals. The desert looks dark in the pale and feeble glow of the almost new moon. It looks like nothing. Nothing but a bleak shade of shadowy grayish tan.
Amongst nothing but the occasional little trees poking up through the ground like spiny fingers and pale sickly (barely) green grass is a van pulled over besides a beaten up dirt road. It's silver, but it's so caked with mud and dirt it's hard to tell. One door is open slightly, a human form leaning out of it. This form leans back in all of a sudden as if called back.
" Mulder? Why are we stopped? " Scully murmurs from the passenger side , curled up against the car door. She yawns and rubs her eyes. Her red hair a mess and her button up shirt unbuttoned near the bottom. She's wrapped herself in one of Mulder's trench coats. Scully's cross is awkwardly sitting on her shoulder.
Mulder is perched on the edge of the seat across from her, half out the door and his body turned away from her. He glanced backward to her as he hears her mumble. He's dressed in a stained grayish t-shirt and jeans.
" We ran out of gas." He replies.
" I though we had a gallon in the back."
" We do. That's why I stopped."
" Oh." She murmurs." Go out and fill the tank , then."
" I was but then you started talking." He retorts. She grunts in reply, shifting in the seat and pulling the trench coat up around her. She turns her head away from his form. They argue like an old married couple. But then again they always have. Around 10 years as work partners, three as romantic partners. They've always argued like an old couple from the very first day.
Mulder rolls his eyes before heading out of the van. He walks around to the back, opens it up, grabs the container and walks over to fill the gas tank .
" It's a new moon tonight. " Scully's voice rang out. Mulder jumps as he finishes filling up the tank, dropping the empty container. He wasn't expecting her to be standing behind him. She's a few feet away from him, staring up at the austere sky.
" Jesus, Scully." He mutters with a slight smile , which she returns, before placing the container back into the car.
Scully is standing by the backseat door when he returns.
Mulder leans against the car next to her, folding his arms and sighs.
She moves to rest on his shoulder, her head cocked up above at the dark sky that's dotted with starlight above. He looks fondly over to her, pressing gently into her.
Mulder studies her face for a few precious moments- the expression of almost blissful serenity on her face, albeit the fact she's half asleep. It's nice to see Scully look at peace for once. Her face has been ravaged by pain for too long.
He then turns to watch the sky with his partner.
Watching a satellite roam across the sky, Mulder begins to daze and fade away into his own mind. After all these years and all he's seen and learned, he still watches the sky with wonder.
He remembers watching the stars with Scully another time after a case. The feeling felt the same then, too.
He doesn't realize that Scully is now staring at him and her familiar voice soon breaks him out of the night sky's entrapment.
" Do you really think there's hope ? Do you think we have a chance, Mulder? She's still half asleep, her voice slurring and cracking with exhaustion.
Mulder stays quiet for awhile.
" I don't know. But we're still here. And that's something."
" So you still have hope?" She says quietly. He nods. " Hope for what, though?"
Mulder's really not sure how to answer her question. He's not sure what he's hoping for. To live? To keep surviving on Burger King meals and three hours of sleep? It's a dreary life to live now. And maybe it's that he hopes one day it won't be. Maybe one day their life will return to normal. Well- as normal as it's ever been, that is. Mulder never replies to her question.
" Mulder are we ever going to get off this road?" Scully proposes another question. He doesn't answer this one either.
Scully sighs and turns away. That serenity on her face is gone now and has been replaced by restlessness and solemnity. The thought of being on the road forever isn't one she particularly likes to think about. She wants it to end, one day. She wants a house. A bed. A job that doesn't involve aliens or the goverment. She wants a normal life. And Scully knows she might never get that. Not now. Not anymore, she thinks.
There's a bleak silence between the two of them. Neither look at each other. Eventually Mulder turns to Scully, and softly squeezes her hand. She turns to him.
They kiss. It's a quick peck of a kiss but a kiss nonetheless. Scully is still getting used to these. And every time they kiss it feels like starlight. Bright and pure throughout the bleak darkness, shining through it no matter how dark.
The two of them head back into the silver van. It turns on with a shrill sound of the motor . They begin to head back onto the beaten desert path, through the barren terrain of jagged rocks, twig trees and pale grass.
Back on the road once again. A road neither of them know they'll ever truly leave.
But maybe there is hope. After all, starlight always shines through the darkness, no matter how bleak it seems.