Maybe there's something to it-the smoking.
There shouldn't be, she knows, but then she finds herself standing at the counter of a skeezy gas station and handing over cash to an attendant who looks her up and down, she hears her voice asking for a pack, I don't care anything but Morleys, thank you and next thing Dana Scully knows, she's standing outside with a lighter in her hand.
The movement comes back to her. Easy, practiced, and she's fourteen again and sitting on the roof and praying her father doesn't catch her.
Her hands shake as she lights it, and she knows if Mulder were here he'd frown at her in concern, but Mulder isn't here. He's back at the motel, waiting.
She told him she had to get air, had to get out, but the truth is she had to get away from the way he looked at her, like she was a fragile thing that might break at any moment.
He's looked at her like that since she came back, since she woke up, and she hates him for it. She doesn't want to be fragile, not to him.
She doesn't need him to fix her.
She takes a drag off the cigarette, inhaling smoke into her lungs, and she knows as a doctor she shouldn't, but as a human being who was abducted by aliens, she does.
She thinks of the Cigarette Smoking Man.
Why does he do it? What motivates him to go through a pack a day, two, three? Is it habit at this point? What was it before?
God, is this how it starts?
Panicked, suddenly, she throws down the cigarette and stomps it under her heel, curses under her breath.
She doesn't want to become him, hiding her face and her weakness in a cloud of smoke. She doesn't want to be fragile, but she is.
She hears an engine and she looks up, and it's like he knew, because there's Mulder in the car, and she's swearing again and trying to hide the pack like she's fourteen and been caught by her dad, and shit.
"How'd you know where I was?" she asks.
He doesn't say anything, just takes the pack from her hand, and without a word, throws it across the parking lot. A big, stupid, grand heroic gesture, like he would.
"I just needed-" she starts, but then realizes she doesn't know how to explain.
"I know," he says, and he keeps his distance until she closes it, until she kisses him lightly, because he always knows what she needs even if she doesn't.
And he holds her, and she lets herself be fragile, she lets herself be weak, because with Mulder it's okay, with Mulder she can be, because he can't fix her but she doesn't need to be fixed, she needs to be held, she needs to be loved.