Author: melanie (starchica8@cs.com)
Title: Life Without You
Disclaimer: If you see anyone here that you recognize, I don't own them. If you don't recognize them, they're mine. My point? Don't sue.
Feedback: I love the stuff. E-mail me, review this in the form at the bottom, whatever makes you happy, just tell me what you think. Enjoy!
******************************
Dana Scully has always struck me as naive.
In fact, that was one of the first thoughts that occurred to me when she walked in the first day. Her thesis had been well thought out, even a little daring considering that it addressed time travel. But reading it had brought me to expect someone older, darker even, but most of all not the pretty redhead who looked barely twenty. I had been expecting a watchdog, and it seemed that I had been assigned a puppy to babysit.
She really was naive, back then. Her denial of any agenda that her superiors might have had to make them place her with me was childishly trusting and unaware. She was so secure in her scientific certainties and explanations, and her stubborn refusals to believe that there is anything that cannot be explained by modern science still exasperate me from time to time. The other day, for instance.
*****************************
"Morning, Mulder." Scully walked in, looking professional as usual in a skirt suit. I swear I saw her do a double take when she caught sight of me. "Mulder? Did you go home last night?" I hadn't, actually. I had the wrinkled suit, and probably the dark circles under my eyes, to prove it. Scully frowned.
"What was so fascinating that you spent the night here, Mulder?" I leaned forward to show her an article, and she sat down, looking like she was restraining a sigh.
When she got a glimpse of the title she stopped restraining it.
"Mulder, how many times do I have to tell you that tabloid articles aren't a good source for X-Files?"
Hiker Reports Alien Lair in Nebraska Woods
On the night of October 12, Harold Galdon was hiking in dense woods near
his hometown of Abadi, Nebraska. However, what he saw there was never
meant to be found near ferns and evergreens...
The article went on to describe how Galdon had come across the concealed home of several extraterrestrial beings on his camping trip, and his near escape when they became aware of his presence. I thought it was a huge lead. Scully appeared to think it was a crock of shit.
"This man was obviously hysterical when he was interviewed, Mulder. What makes you think that his narrow escape wasn't from malevolent shadows?" I handed her a small stack of papers. One of these was also a tabloid article, but most were skeptical reports from bored sounding local police about sightings. All were reported in the same area of the woods.
"1980, 1968, 1988...the other tabloid is from 1996. These are really spread out. What's making you interested now, if you've known about these?"
"The most recent article. These reports come at intervals of about four years, Scully. Always in the fall. I checked out surveys taken in the area. Belief in extraterrestrial life goes up every four years in the surrounding area, coinciding with the years of the reports. It tends to peak," I checked my watch for the date, "a week from now."
There are a lot of things that I don't understand about my partner. The way she stubbornly refuses to believe in extra-terrestrial life even though she's practically living proof, for instance. But one thing I am sure of. When Scully starts to sound defensive and a little whiny, I always know I've won.
***********************************
Abadi was nothing to look at, as far as towns go. It was more urban than some other places Mulder's dragged me to, but after the first hundred or so small towns, they all start to look the same. The woods were also standard. Basically, it was a daytime version of the set for a homicide thriller. I was beginning to wish for and X-file in D.C.
"I'm sure that has nothing to do with that Robert guy, right, Scully?" I almost groaned as I realized that I'd actually voiced my wish. Mulder grinned in the drivers seat, and I restrained myself from snapping at him.
"Mulder?"
"Hmm?" He diverted his eyes from the road momentarily.
"What do you think this is, besides aliens? No alien abduction site we've been to yet is active at regular intervals."
"And you never change the subject, either." He grinned again and I had to make a conscious effort to keep my mouth shut. "Well, it's not really an abduction site. No one's reported missing time, new scars, or memories of abduction. I think that the aliens are probably doing soil tests or something in that area of the woods and coming back every four years to record the results, or modify the tests."
"Why every four years? Wouldn't an interval of their native time be more logical?"
"No, not if you're doing tests on our soil. If they used native time, the test might be affected differently at each interval. Using a number of earth's rotations would make sure the soil got exposed evenly to all conditions." I thought about that for a minute and decided that it was fairly rational. Especially for Mulder.
"What's your theory, Scully?" He looked at me and smirked slightly. I wonder how many times he's asked me that since we started working together. Maybe we should have counted.
I hesitated, wondering if I should bother to give my real opinion. Today, I decided against it. Maybe we'd finish more quickly if I agreed with him. "I think you could be right, Mulder."
He seemed surprised by my response for some reason, at least that's how I interpreted his sudden swerve into the other lane. I felt bad for the driver he almost hit.
"Ok, Scully, what do you really think?"
"Hibernating animals., I replied meekly. There weren't any cars in sight, but I decided the truth was probably safer for everyone involved from now on.
Fifteen interviews later, even Mulder was beginning to think I could be right. No one who had made a report was really clear on what had happened in the woods, what the aliens looked like, or even where exactly the 'lair' was. We were running out of interviewees, Mulder was looking discouraged, and I was beginning to be sincerely irritated with Mulder and anxious to go home. Unfortunately, we still hadn't managed to contact Harold Galdon, and Mulder was convinced that he would be able to tell us something. Maybe we'll be able to finally get out of here tomorrow, if Galdon is as uninformative as everyone else has been, I thought. I knew that the lack of information was frustrating Mulder to no end, but frankly I thought the whole thing was bogus and I just wanted to leave.
'You're whining, Scully.' Damn. I now had a Mulder inside my head. Yes, Mulder, I thought, I am fully aware that I'm whining. I'm a woman. We do that occasionally.
"Hey, Scully, let's head into town and get some early dinner." I smiled. At least he realized that I didn't want to be here, and apparently wasn't going to give me too hard a time.
"Why don't you drop me off at the motel. I'll check us in and look over the file again." Now I was pushing it, but I what goes around comes around, right?
"Whatever." He dropped me off looking slightly miffed. Well, he probably wasn't going to go out of his way to find a good restaurant now, but life goes on.
The lady at the desk looked at me strangely when I asked for two rooms. I explained that they were for my partner and me, and she made some comment about how people don't recognize good opportunities these days. I chose to ignore it.
I walked into the room with only my briefcase, feeling at a loss for what to do. I knew I should look over the file, but I'd looked over it several times already on the plane ride down. I may not have an eidetic memory like Mulder, but after looking at the same papers four or five times in a short period, looking at them again gets to be slightly pointless. Instead, I lay down in the bed to gauge how much I was going to hurt the next morning. Honestly, that was all I wanted to do. I can't swear to how comfortable it was, but it must not have been too bad because I was asleep within a few seconds of my head hitting the pillow.
I sit in a church. I don't recognize it, but there are people all around me, and I recognize them. Skinner is here, and several other FBI agents. For some reason, though, I can't turn my head, so I'm not sure who else is here. It's obvious that there's some sort of a funeral service taking place. A long cedar box is at the front of the sanctuary, and a priest looks like he is preparing to begin the ceremonies. I'm suddenly aware of a horrible ache coming from the area of my torso. Not my torso exactly, but inside of me, almost as if my soul has been wounded. I wonder what's happened to bring this about, but as I near the answer, my soul throbs loudly and threatens to come unhinged, if that is possible. I stop thinking about it, because the priest is mounting the altar now and it seems that I will know soon anyway. He steps up, each footfall echoing loudly in my ears. Boom...boom...boom...how many stairs does the altar have? Boom...boom...
"Scully?" The booming had turned into knocking and I woke up to Mulder at my door. He knocked harder.
"I'm here," I blinked the sleep from my eyes. "Coming."
"Are you ok?" He walked in carrying a pizza box. It smelled like pepperoni.
"Yeah. I guess I just fell asleep."
"It's four thirty in the afternoon, and you're asleep already?"
"I hadn't meant to be...I just lay down for a minute, and suddenly you're knocking on my door." I paused. "It's four thirty?"
"Yeah. So you've been asleep for about forty five minutes."
"Well, at least I won't be too tired to investigate tonight." I smiled weakly.
"Uh-huh. You feeling ok?"
"Fine. Now let's eat."
The pizza was pepperoni. It was also extremely greasy. Mulder enjoyed it thoroughly, and I made good use of the paper towels in the kitchenette. After that, Mulder left for his own room and warned me to get my extra nap in while I had the chance. At that moment, I seriously considered regressing twenty years and sticking my tongue out at him. But I didn't.
I still really wanted to go home.
'You sure Robert has nothing to do with that?'
Ah, and the Mulder in my head makes his second appearance.
'Shut up, Mulder.'
I'm sure he was about to reply anyway when my phone rang.
**************************************
"Mulder, I need to go home." Scully walked into my motel room looking a little shaken.
"Are you ok?" I put down the file and my notes to walk over to her. "Scully?" She shook her head.
"I'm fine, Mulder. I just need to go home." I crouched by my suitcase, and began rummaging through it to find Scully's ticket back to D.C. Obviously, Scully wasn't fine, but I didn't think she would talk to me if I pushed too hard. I handed her the ticket and began to follow her out the door, tucking my own ticket into my jacket.
"There's no need to come with me, Mulder." She glanced at me, her expression a cross between amusement and annoyance. I decided to ignore the annoyance and appeal to the amusement.
"Yes, there is. If you drive to the airport, I'm going to be stuck in the Abadi motor lodge indefinitely. I don't know about you, Scully," I dropped my voice to a whisper and tried for an expression of mock fear, "but strange motels make me nervous when I'm all alone." She didn't smile, but she did loosen up a little.
"Plus you wouldn't have gotten far without the keys." I unlocked the rental car and slid into the driver's seat. There was definitely something big on Scully's mind.
There was about half an hour of unbroken silence as we drove out of Abadi, although my peripheral vision was telling me that Scully was gearing up to say something. It would have been comical seeing her open and shut her mouth multiple times, looking more uncomfortable each time, if it wasn't starting to seriously worry me. I was almost to the point of asking her to explain herself when she finally got it out.
"Robert wants me to marry him." I was shocked out of my concentration on the road, and swerved a little before I regained control. I had never heard Scully sound so small, so unlike the strong, self-assured woman I knew. I was pretty sure I didn't want to hear her like that very often. I wondered if it was the proposal or the fact that she was telling me that made her so uncomfortable. I hoped it was the proposal.
When Scully didn't comment on my mistake I began to get more nervous about what was going on in her head. I pulled over to the side of the road, deciding that I should be ready to devote all of my energy to this conversation. I looked at her.
"Congratulations." I managed a small smile. "Are you gonna say yes?" My own emotions suddenly echoed those on Scully's face. I knew she had been dating Robert, but I hadn't chalked it up to much...and now she was going to marry him?
"I don't know, Mulder." She still sounded small and unsure. Damn whatever it was that made her sound that way!
"Why are you scared?"
"I'm not scared, Mulder," she said, with a trace of her characteristic irritation, "I just got caught off guard. I..." She trailed off.
"Aren't you supposed to be happy when you get proposed to, Scully?" She smiled a little. That was good, but the most important question was one still unasked.
"Would you continue to work?" Damn it! Wrong question, genius.
"Of course, but probably not at the FBI. Maybe as a doctor, or something a little less...hectic." No, of course not at the FBI. Once she had the chance of a normal life, why would she hang around for an instant? She was smarter than that.
"Do you love him?" I prayed silently that she didn't.
"If I knew, this decision would already be made."
"Do me a favor, Scully?" I pulled back onto the road. "Figure out if you love him before you say yes." She stared at me.
"And how am I supposed to know, exactly?"
"When you can't imagine living life without him. Until then it doesn't count." I'm just beginning to know what that means, I realized. A rather awkward pause filled the car.
"Have you ever been in love?" I opened my mouth to say no, but it came out "Only once." What was wrong with me? No, I knew what was wrong with me. I just didn't know what to do about her.
"Diana Fowley?" I almost grimaced, trying to remember if she had even been so far off in her estimation of me. We drove into the airport parking lot, where she got out and I let her go almost without a word.
"Good luck, Scully." Her lips tightened into a tense smile and she walked away.
Maybe the most frustrating part of Scully's naivete is the way she doesn't realize that I love her.
************************************
I have never been through such an exhausting plane ride in my life as the Continental flight that my partner had left me to take to Washington D.C. and my prospective husband. I tried to remind myself that I had told Mulder not to follow, and that I didn't need him, but the only person in Washington that I could turn to was my mother, and I wasn't sure I wanted to explain this to her. I wasn't sure that I could explain it myself.
Robert was perfect for me in all respects. He was a biochemist, handsome and thoughtful, reliable, and basically everything that any sane woman could ask for in a man. I had been dating him for six months, and had become rather attached to him. Why was I suddenly so fickle? Until Robert called, all I wanted was to be in Washington with him. Now I was scared out of my mind, and the only place I wanted to be was with Mulder chasing little green men.
'Why are you scared?' The Mulder in my head had come with me, at any rate. But I still wasn't sure how to answer his question. I was scared, and I had purged fear from my life as much as possible. I didn't enjoy it any more now than I had when I had systematically exiled it. Of course, the way to rid myself of fear was to find the root of it, and there was only one root that I could think of, the fear of spending the rest of my life with Robert. The only trouble was, I had thought about this before, and until he asked me to marry him, I had thought that I would be happy to marry him. Leave Mulder, the X-files, the FBI, and find a normal life. Suddenly being unconventional seemed much more appealing than a nine to five job, but I couldn't say why. 'Maybe that's what's scaring you, Scully. You're used to understanding your reactions. Now that you can't, it frightens you.' I was annoyed at Mulder's intrusion before the relief of his logic washed over me. It fit: some deep and fundamental part of me didn't want to marry Robert, a part that couldn't be categorized, quantified, or easily referenced. I couldn't explain it, which I expected to be able to do, and the change frightened me. I began to relax and thanked Mulder silently for his help, even as I was a little irritated that he was right again. I still couldn't explain my desire not to marry Robert, but I let it go as a mystery of my heart.
"The heart has reasons that reason doesn't know." I almost giggled at the sound of my own voice and the man next to me glanced at me strangely for a moment.
I felt relieved as I got off the plane, and couldn't help thinking that refusing Robert's proposal would be infinitely easier and less time consuming that planning a wedding. Maybe I'd even be fast enough to get back to Mulder before he got himself abducted.
**********************************
Back at the hotel, I was preoccupied with Scully and needed something to take my mind off her. I almost decided to pack and return to D.C., then decided to attempt to complete the investigation. We still hadn't gotten in touch with Harold Galdon, and I decided to give him a call. His phone rang a frustrating ten times before he finally picked up.
"Hello?"
"Hello, this is FBI Agent Fox Mulder, I'm looking for Mr. Galdon."
"That's me. Can I help you?"
"I'm investigating several alien sighting reports in the local woods, and yours was the most recent. Would you mind answering a few questions?" I was hoping that, as the most recent observer, Galdon would provide more useful information than the other people that Scully and I had interviewed so far, so after he gave me his address, I jumped into the rental car, not even remembering to take my cell phone with me. As I sped over, I wondered if this might not be the break I needed to find the alien in the Abadi woods.
*******************************
"I know this is abrupt. I don't even know how to explain it, Robert..." I regarded him, willing him with my eyes to understand. He just looked at me. So much for that idea.
"I guess the best way I can explain it is I...just don't love you, not in the way that you can't imagine your life without someone." Ah, the intermittent wisdom of Fox Mulder. "I care for you, as a person, too much to pretend to love you."
I walked out of Robert's apartment feeling much calmer, if not feeling like a better person. I felt bad about simply breaking off my relationship with him right after he had asked me to marry him, but it was a relief to do after the irrational fear that had gripped me so hard earlier in the day. In fact, I was beginning to think about the X-file that Mulder was busy investigating. I hadn't concentrated very hard on it before, being at first too indulgent in my homesickness and later too caught up in my fear.
As I contemplated it at first, the case seemed like many that Mulder and I had investigated together over the years. There were several reports from different people, all having similar experiences in what appeared to be the same area of the woods. However, thinking back to the tabloid article, I remembered Galdon's nearly hysterical account of a flight from pursuing creatures. I wondered if Mulder had checked to see if many people had gone missing from the woods. Since I couldn't recall his mentioning anything like that, I decided to check myself. I went home quickly and pulled up the missing persons file for Abadi, Nebraska on my laptop. Only five people had ever disappeared from the woods near Abadi, and four had been found. I looked at a profile of the fifth, and man named Marty Baker, who had disappeared about four years ago. He seemed to have been a fairly normal, if introverted, archaeologist with no wife or living parents, and, ironically, had been somewhat of a UFO fanatic.
*********************************
I arrived at the address that Galdon had given me just as the first wisps of sunset started to appear in the sky. He let me in immediately, smiling broadly. He was 50 years old, according to his file, a widower whose two children had moved off to more urban areas. In person, he was a stout, strong looking man that could easily have been a farmer or even a military man.
"I never thought that the FBI would get interested in Abadi's aliens," he drawled, shaking my hand firmly. "What've you learned so far?" He looked calmly interested, the opposite of the terrified, shaken man that the article had depicted. I related my theories and our lack of success in learning anything from the other people in town. He smiled thoughtfully.
"You've got the right idea, I think. There's always been rumors of aliens and what not round here, and every now'n again someone falls into a hole out in the woods a comes out purty scared. Didn't think there was anything to it, til I found it myself." He looked at me steadily. "The woods in these parts are pretty flat, you know, but there's one place where they slope down real steep- not a place most people like to hike. But, purty regular, some fool gets lost, or else some kids decide to go alien-huntin', and they go down into the dip. Course, they only find anything every four years, like you say. I dunno bout soil tests, I'm not a scientist, but there's something goin on out there that they wanna keep quiet. Guess you're gonna blow the cover off it, though."
If I had a dollar for every conspiracy I hadn't blown the cover off of...
"What did the aliens look like, sir?"
"Well, I'm a little ashamed to be asked that, to tell the truth." My heart sank a little, wondering if he was going to have forgotten that like the others. Apparently it registered on my face. "No, I remember what they look like clear as day, don't worry. I just feel like the town crazy, you know? They were aliens, I'm sure of it. Two arms, two legs, real wiry, fast as hell," he grimaced, indicating his firsthand experience, "but their heads weren't human, Mr. Mulder. They were big, round on top with pointy chins. And- I couldn't swear to this, it wasn't light enough when I saw them- but their skin was grey, far as I could tell. Not like anything I've ever seen. That's why I don't like to talk about it. It was just like in all those UFO movies, with the little grey men." I looked at him hard. He seemed to be telling the truth. 'Mulder, he just described Hollywood aliens. Don't tell me you believe him?' Yeah, Scully, I do.
"Mr. Galdon, would you mind showing me where this place is?"
********************************
"I'm sorry, ma'am, but that flight is full. We can get you on the 10:00 flight later this evening, but I'm afraid we just can't get you on this plane." I rolled my eyes at the gate agent on the other end of the connection.
"Book me for the 10:00." I gave him the information that he needed to make the reservation, then hung up and tried again to call Mulder. He still wasn't picking up. There was something about this case that was making me distinctly uneasy, and the fact that I couldn't get in touch with Mulder wasn't doing anything to ease my feeling of anxiety.
Well, how much trouble could he get himself into between now and the time I got down there?
********************************
Galdon and I walked towards the dip the woods as the dusk melted into twilight, our shadows fading in the dimming light and the crunch of an occasional twig under my own feet making me nervous. I was just beginning to wish that I had waited until the next day to make this trip when the ground started on it's steep slope downward and I forced myself to be alert. I was determined, just this once, to find the truth.
Galdon walked beside me wordlessly as we got closer to the place where her had seen the aliens; the tension got thicker with every step we took, mine about yet another chance to prove the existence of aliens, his, presumably, about returning to the site of his close encounter before. It occurred to me that I should feel guilty for making him return here.
I decided that I could feel guilty after I'd seen the lair.
"There it is," Galdon stopped and I followed suit, following his line of sight to what could be a building several hundred yards in front of us. He seemed to set his jaw a little, and I admired his courage. I waited until he started walking again and let him lead the way towards the small gray rectangle in the distance. I grinned at him as we approached it, and he shook his head ruefully.
"Ya really wanna do this?"
"Yeah," I said, trying not to look to much like an overeager schoolboy. "And besides, it's my job," I added as an afterthought.
There was a strengthening odor of smoke in the air, and I wondered if someone was having a bonfire.
The building's exterior was a dark metal with a smooth texture and very little shine. There were no windows and from the outside, it looked to be perfectly square, though only about six feet high. I walked around it but couldn't find a door. I looked to Galdon but he shrugged and looked around uneasily, as if he thought someone might be watching us. I rapped on the wall to see if the metal could be broken, but it seemed sturdy and thick and probably impregnable unless one had a diamond tipped saw.
And if it really was built by extra-terrestrials, probably even that wouldn't do anything.
I had a sudden brainstorm and pulled myself onto the roof of the building. I was rewarded for my efforts.
A small round hatch was built unobtrusively into the roof.
Galdon was reluctant to come inside with me, but in the end he hoisted himself onto the roof and followed me down the hatch and into the building.
The smell of smoke was strongest yet inside the building, and though Galdon was unaffected, my vision clouded momentarily as I dropped into the single room below me.
"Wonder if cigarettes are bad for little grey men," I said, coughing loudly.
When my vision clear, I could see that the room was lit from within, although there didn't seem to be a specific source of the light. The interior walls were made from the same dark metal as the outside, and shelves of the same metal protruded seamlessly throughout the perimeter of the room. What appeared to be blue-tinted plastic vials lined the walls, filled with soil, leaves, water, insects, and a few contained what looked like sap. Picking up one of the vials, I noticed that there was a pattern on the bottom that could be the equivalent of a computer chip, providing test information on the specimen. On the wall, there was some dormant equipment that could have been either for tests, or data storage, or both.
"Doesn't look like anyone's home," remarked Galdon in an almost reverent drawl.
I was feeling a little awestruck myself.
I stuck the vial into my jacket pocket. "You're right, and I don't think I'm qualified to operate that system," I said gesturing towards the panels and buttons that I assumed were a computer. "Let's go."
I lifted myself out of the open hatch, crouching on the roof as I waited for Galdon to emerge, and I noticed two figures heading this way from the direction we had come in. It was getting dark, and I wondered what they were doing out in the woods at this hour. 'Well, they could ask the same thing of you, Mulder.'
True.
"Mr. Galdon?" I turned around, realizing that it was taking him longer than it should to get out of the hole. But it wasn't Galdon that I found behind me.
It was one of his little grey men.
"Oh my god," I breathed. I cautiously turned the rest of the way around, facing the grey figure fully now. It shook it's head at me and pointed behind me. I turned in the direction that he pointed, and saw that not only the two figures that had been there previously, but several new figures emerging from the woods. I counted seven, then saw another two and had to change my count to nine. No, there were another few that I could see now...why were all these people out here? I turned around to face the figure behind me again. It sat down on the roof of the building and I followed suit, more than a little unsure about what was happening. I tried to ask my new companion simple questions, but it didn't respond, just sat gazing ahead toward the approaching figures. I squinted, trying to get a good look at them in the failing light. Every one of them was an alien. They couldn't be. Could they?
"Oh, Scully, you're really gonna think I've gone nuts this time."
"No, Mulder." Scully sat down beside me. "This time I'm with you."
"Wha...I thought...aren't you in D.C.? With Robert?"
"I came back. And now we finally get to see them, Mulder. They're coming." She took my hand. Needless to say, I was a little overwhelmed by the situation. Some of the figures were beginning to reach the building, and seemed to be communicating in gestures with the alien beside me. One or two made a high pitched noises when they were deep into their gesture-conversations. I watched avidly, trying to absorb everything about them. More and more were congregating at the ground below our resting place as I watched, transfixed. Suddenly, all movement ceased as they turned to look at me. I felt a bit like an exhibit at a zoo.
Several climbed to the roof of the building with agility, making gestures at me. I turned to grin at Scully.
Who was no longer there.
"Scully?" Damn it! Why did everyone keep disappearing? I looked around for her among the aliens or on the ground, but couldn't find her anywhere. By now the aliens had lost whatever shyness they might have had and were reaching out to touch my hair, or grab an arm. I shook them off, trying to stand up. Where was Scully?
They weren't letting go.
The aliens on the roof held onto me more tightly, and several more started surging onto the roof. "Scully! Scully, where are you?" I was getting very nervous about this, very fast.
"SCULLY!!!" More aliens were grabbing hold of me, moving me towards the circular hatch in the roof. "HELP!! HELP ME!!!" One of them clasped a hand over my mouth and they started lowering me into the building. The wind was knocked out of me as I hit the dirt floor with a thud. A part of me noted with curiosity that a building made seamlessly of metal should have a dirt floor. I saw the vial fall from my pocket- only now, instead of a vial, I saw what was probably once a small bottle of bubble soap for children. I was beginning to understand, and I looked up to the hatch for confirmation.
The building wasn't made of metal, it was the rickety shack that Galdon had seemed to be seeing earlier. And the aliens, weren't aliens at all, but people. I recognized one from my visit to the pizza parlor. A few I had seen on the street. And at the front of the crowd was Galdon, beginning to climb down towards me.
***********************************
I sit dead in a well lighted church. There are people sitting in the pews, a few crying, most talking quietly, reverently. My crying and talking are done, my life had been leeched as if some medieval doctor let a spiritual bloodletting go on too long. Only my soul remains, and it is a swollen, throbbing entity that nobody would recognize as mine. I see people walk towards the coffin by the altar, their faces sober and their heads shaking in a prescripted rhythm as they mourn the dead. I walk towards the coffin, and as if I am walking towards my destiny, I feel apprehensive and anxious. I can almost see the body when someone speaks to me.
"Ma'am? Excuse me, the plane has landed." A nervous looking flight attendant tapped me lightly on the shoulder. "Ma'am?" Oh, God, where have I been?
"Thanks, I'm awake now." I managed a small smile and brushed a strand of hair out of my face, yawning. That dream again.
Mulder still wasn't answering his cell phone as I reached the Abadi Motor Lodge in another rental car. I was to the door of his room before I noticed that the first car wasn't in the lot. Fumbling in my purse, I pulled out a credit card and slipped it between the door and the frame. I drew my gun and unlatched the door cautiously, hoping I wouldn't find Mulder being held hostage, or worse.
I didn't. In fact, I didn't find Mulder at all. However, I did find his cell phone, with the 'You've Got Voicemail' display flashing. Guess he hadn't gotten my messages.
I picked up his cell phone, almost willing it to tell me where Mulder was. I t occurred to me that this was a little much to ask of a cell phone. 'No, it's not...' What's that supposed to mean, Mulder?
Suddenly I smiled and hit the redial button.
"Mmmp...Hello?" A distinctly sleepy voice answered the phone. I glanced at the phone quickly. The connection display read "Harold Galdon".
"Mr. Galdon, this is Special Agent Scully from the FBI and I'm trying to locate my partner, Agent Mulder. Did he contact you today?"
"Yes, yes he did. He, uh, came over to interview me."
"Do you have any idea where he might be now?"
"Well, I...I told him where that place in the woods was. He might be there." Shit. Mulder, the woods, and a dark night were rarely a good combination.
"Mr. Galdon, give me your address and then don't go anywhere. I'm coming over, and I need you to show me on a map where this place is."
"All right, Agent Scully." He sighed. I wondered how badly Mulder had terrorized him.
I entered the woods about thirty minutes later, after a short visit to Mr. Galdon in which he had reluctantly given me directions to the site. I would have enjoyed the nature walk, something I never got in D.C., except that my mind kept replaying my unsettling dream from the plane, and the face in the coffin was getting clearer each time. Not to mention the fact that it was pitch black and I had to navigate by flashlight. Despite this, my stride lengthened almost involuntarily when I neared the dip in the woods that Galdon had told me about.
"Please be ok, Mulder." I broke into a trot when my flashlight found a brown rectangle in the distance that could be the building. As it got closer, I moved faster, ignoring the burning sensation in my thighs and seeing only that the clouds around the face from my dream were clearing.
I desperately didn't want to see that face.
The remains of an ancient wooden shack stood before me, the walls sagging and threatening to collapse despite the valiant attempt of the frame to keep it stable. I peered into the shack through a hole that had rotted into one of sides, then entered the abyss.
"Mulder?" I squinted into the darkness. "Mulder? Are you here?" Nothing. There was nothing here, no Mulder, no truth. Only a few spiders, comfortably spinning their egg sacs. I exited. Without warning, the haunting vision of the anonymous coffin came back and I had to steady myself on the frame of the old building.
"Dammit, this has got to stop." I opened my eyes and swept my flashlight around. I was horrified to find a suspicious mound of dirt a few feet away. "Oh, God." I ran to it and started digging with my bare hands, disregarding forensic procedure in my anxiety to escape the vision of...of whoever. My hands tore more quickly into the newly turned earth. Could Mulder really be here? Could he really have met his nemesis here, of all places?
I walked stiffly towards the coffin-
"No!" I wiped sweat from my forehead savagely and continued digging. I was beginning to understand what Mulder had meant by not being able to imagine life without someone. I had never even tried to imagine life without Mulder- I didn't want to.
People stared at me unabashedly, I knew they could tell that I was dead but I didn't care, I pushed on towards the cedar box and my destiny. I was close-
I was filthy past my wrists now, and getting closer, I could feel it. My nails slipped past something smooth and I cleared the dirt away furiously, unaware that the sweat was streaming down my face and back, cutting trails through the light coating of dirt that I had acquired in the last few minutes. It poured into my eyes, stinging and blurring my vision.
I approached the coffin, successfully bypassing the ritical stares of those around me. I looked over the edge of the wooden box, gasping as I saw that it was full of dark brown soil. And the face peering lifelessly up at me through the grime was-
"Scully?" I broke from the waking dream, whipped around and drew my gun all in one frantic, adrenaline-powered movement. And then, as my heart beat wildly in my chest, the voice registered. Mulder.
"Mulder!" I called in disbelief and relief, running towards him. I found him there in the dark, and the dream was forgotten for the moment as I hugged him fiercely. My flashlight lay on the ground next to the hole I had dug. The hole that didn't contain Mulder. All I knew now was that I had found him, and was willing to hold on as hard as I could to make sure he didn't escape again. I had imagined my life without him, and had seen myself dead in a living body.
"Are you all right?" I whispered to him, still clinging to him to remind myself that he was here.
"I'm fine. I'm ok now." He felt as sweaty and filthy as I did, but in that moment nothing else mattered between us but that we had found each other.
************************************
"What do you think was out there, Mulder?" I looked at her from the driver's seat of the rental car. We were heading for the airport again, and no one was happier than me to be leaving Abadi.
"I honestly don't know, Scully. I think that there was something in the air, a smoke odor that I kept smelling, that made me hallucinate those aliens, the building, you...I don't know what it was, Scully." The townspeople of Abadi had left me lying in the woods after they dragged me out of the shack. I had come to when Scully was digging the hole. I heard her breathing hard, almost sobbing...and then I had realized that she was looking for me.
"Mulder, the body in the hole I was digging when you woke up- it was a man named Marty Baker. He was the only person to ever permanently disappear in the Abadi woods, and incidentally, he was also a UFO buff. What do you think?" I looked at Scully a smiled a bit.
"He probably did the same thing I did. He wanted so badly to believe, he took the hallucinations at face value. He saw exactly what he wanted to see. For him, it was fatal. For me...why did they leave me alive, Scully? I just can't figure that out."
"I don't know either, Mulder. Maybe they knew that the disappearance of an FBI agent, here specifically looking for something in the woods, would cause too much publicity. Maybe they didn't realize that you knew what was going on. But," she looked at me, "What matters is that you are alive. And that dream didn't turn out the way that I thought it would. And maybe next time you see an article on a UFO sighting, you'll take it with a grain of salt."
"Scully, have I ever told you that I love you?" She leaned over and kissed me.
I love Scully. I love her strict rationality, her hard-nosed stubbornness, and her naivete. But when I least expect it, she surprises me, and reminds me of my own naivete. And of all the things I love about her, that is what I love the most.
I pulled the car over to the side of the road, then kissed her back.