AUTHOR: Mnemosyne
SUMMARY: Post-ep to "The Truth." Doggett, Reyes, Mexico, and a choice.
DISCLAIMER: If they were mine, Scully and Mulder would have retired joyfully into wedded bliss at the end of the 8th season, and Doggett and Reyes would have had an entire season all to themselves. *happy sigh* Joy for one and all. But alas, 'twas not to be.
RATING: PG-13, for some strong language
ARCHIVE: Let me know if you'd like to post it! :-D
CATEGORY: V R A
KEYWORDS: Dogget/Reyes UST
SPOILERS: "The Truth" parts I & II, and every single Doggett and/or Reyes episode that came before that.
NOTES: This is my first X-Files fic, so please be gentle! :D Funny, really - I watched the show for nine years, and I'm only NOW writing fic for it, after it's been off the air for almost a year. *shaking head at self* Amazing. LOL! While I love MSR madly, I'm a DRipper to the hilt, so this story is for them. Who knows - perhaps one day they'll give us another movie and we'll SEE this kind of thing happen. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed!
MUSE-IC: "Top of the World" (over and over and over and over… LOL!) and "Travellin' Soldier" by the Dixie Chicks; "New Favorite" and "I'm Gone" by Allison Krauss and Union Station.
I wish I could bear the pang for both.'
'I wish I could bear the pang alone:
Courage, dear, I am not loth.'
-"In The Round Tower at Jhansi"
Christina Rossetti
"I'm never gonna see Luke again."
They were the first words either of them had spoken since taking this dirty motel room in the middle of Godforsaken Nowhere, Mexico. If there was one thing Monica Reyes hadn't missed about her home country, it was the dust that seemed to cover everything like a death shroud. She remembered writing her name on the back of Tio Jorge's pickup truck when she was ten, in dust so thick, it turned the tip of her finger black. Aliens and invasions and invincible super soldiers hadn't existed to her then. They hadn't even been a passing fantasy.
They were curled up on the room's single bed, which took up most of the floor space in the small area. What remained was covered by a threadbare red carpet that hadn't seen the right side of a decent vacuum cleaner since 1975. A grainy black and white TV with crooked rabbit ears sat atop a cigarette- and beer- stained chest of drawers near the foot of the bed, leaving a path barely wide enough for a pair of slender hips to pass through unhindered. A scratchy version of Neil Diamond's "Desiree" was playing on a '50's era radio beside the TV. The bathroom was dodgy at best, but at least there was no fungus openly growing on the cracked tiles or in the weather beaten tub. It was too dry here to encourage mold.
She knew he didn't mean his son - she knew he meant the beach where he'd scattered the boy's ashes. They were one and the same to the man beside her. Sighing and closing her eyes, Monica let her head rest heavily on her partner's shoulder. John Doggett. He wasn't technically her partner anymore, in the legal sense - she doubted the FBI would even admit to their existence after today. Partner in crime, perhaps. Partner in loss.
"I'm sorry," Monica said quietly, not sure what else to tell him.
"All I've got's a picture in my wallet," he murmured gruffly, as though she hadn't spoken. One rough thumb unconsciously stroked up and down over her tailbone, making her shiver. She was wearing a t-shirt bought at a gas station in Tijuana. He had stripped down to his boxers. Cotton rubbed against bare flesh as she hitched her knee up over his thigh and pressed closer to his side.
"We won't be running like this forever," she told him softly, not believing the words for a minute. They were empty - hollow, like a spent shell casing. Any effect they might have elicited had faded that morning at the pueblos, when they'd watched Knowle Rohrer die, only to discover his death was a beginning, not an end. "Something will happen. Mulder or Scully will think of something. WE'LL think of something. Skinner…" She trailed off, closing her eyes and curling her fingers into a loose fist in the center of his chest.
Skinner was probably dead. God alone knew where Mulder and Scully were. And she and John were lying tangled together in a rundown Mexican hotel. Even she couldn't imagine any silver linings to decorate this cloud.
"I hadn't planned on goin' on the run when I took this job," he said. His voice rumbled low in his chest, making pleasant vibrations against her cheek. A wry chuckle followed. "Hell, I hadn't planned on a lot of this happenin'. Best laid plans, I guess. Wonder if that makes me a mouse 'stead of a man."
Monica stretched her fingers out on his chest, watching them with an oddly detached gaze. "Am I a mouse dreaming I'm a man, or a man dreaming I'm a mouse," she murmured, paraphrasing the old adage.
John sighed, and she felt his body slowly collapse in on itself, as though he were deflating a balloon. "Kinda makes you feel like a mouse, doesn't it?" he said, his gravelly voice moving over her hair like fingers. "All this stuff. This real big, high end stuff. End of the world, apocalyptic hell on wheels stuff." He paused before finishing. "How the hell'd they do it for so long?"
Monica shook her head faintly. She didn't know how to answer, and she was too tired to fight for the words.
They lay in silence for several minutes after that. Monica had convinced herself he'd fallen asleep when he spoke again.
"You wanna keep going?"
For a moment, she didn't know what he was talking about. Pushing up on one elbow, she looked down into his clear, icy blue eyes, washed out and turned pale by the milky moonlight that filtered through the grimy window. "What do you mean?" she asked.
"You wanna keep going," he reiterated, looking up at her. "The running I mean."
Monica tilted her head to the side. "I didn't really want to turn myself over to those men back at the canyon," she said slowly, watching his face, somehow knowing that wasn't what he was talking about.
"I don' mean that."
No. She hadn't thought he did.
"Then what do you mean?"
For a moment, he didn't answer. Her body twitched as he ran a hand up her side, then down again to rest on her hip. It wasn't a sexual gesture - she got the feeling he was trying to steady himself before speaking.
"I don't wanna turn myself over either," he said softly.
"Then we won't," she murmured, touching his cheek.
Clear blue eyes met brown.
"They'll find us, ya know," Doggett continued.
"No they won't."
"Don't argue when you know it's a lie." He shook his head. "They're gonna find us, then they're gonna string us up with even less of a trial than Mulder had. They're gonna want the X-files dead in the water, so that any sane agent would be scared shitless to work there. They're gonna haunt that basement with all kinds of rumors; 'bout you and me, Mulder and Scully. Maybe Skinner. Then they'll whitewash; move all the files to some warehouse in Tuscaloosa and start fresh with some cadet who barely knows how to handle his piece. Or maybe they'll use Follmer."
Monica's body stiffened at the rancor in his voice at the mention of Brad. "John…"
"He's already proven he can be bought, Mon. You bet your ass they'd use that to their advantage."
Monica said nothing. She wasn't going to try defending Brad. He didn't deserve defense anyway.
"They'll take us out, Mon," John continued, softer than before. So soft, she could barely hear him. "But not before they strap us to steel tables and do whatever the hell it is they do to people. You wanna end up another Alex Krycek? Another Jeffrey Spender?"
Monica shivered, remembering Spender's ruined body. "What do you suggest we do then?"
John shrugged. "I say fuck 'em. Don't give them the satisfaction."
Monica frowned. "What?"
John didn't look away, but tucked his hand beneath his head under the pillow. "We're the prize, right? You, me. Scully and Mulder." He shrugged again and left it at that.
Monica nodded slowly, her eyes going from his face to where his hand disappeared under the pillow. "Right," she murmured.
She knew what he was offering her then. Some kind of modern day Romeo and Juliet, all grown up with nowhere to go, and a wolf at the door with teeth like scimitars. Bills piled on the table and unwelcome in-laws trampling the roses and ruining the guest bedroom. A Romeo and Juliet who had lived, only to be confronted with the fact that life is a hard place. That a rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but a thorn is a thorn and it has no qualms about pricking eager fingers that carelessly try to pluck its blossom. Only in this Romeo and Juliet, the poison and the dagger were one and the same, molded together in the form of a matte black 9mm with a half spent clip, tucked under the pillow within reaching distance, to ward off night invaders and fear.
It could be glorious, to die like that. Not for love, not for honor. For revenge. To rob those suited bastards of two more perfectly good murders.
Would he make her do it? Or would he take the reins in this sick little pantomime? Gunmetal flavor soured her tongue as she imagined opening her mouth in a perfect O-shape. In any other situation, it would be sensual.
A shiver coursed down her body, and she shook her head. "No," she said firmly.
"Why not? I don't have any immediate plans. You?" His hand twitched beneath the pillow.
"As a matter of fact, I do."
"Yeah?" He sounded genuinely surprised. "What're those?"
Monica rolled onto her back, so they were shoulder to shoulder on the tiny mattress. "To put things right," she told him, staring at the water stains on the ceiling. "Clear the ghost rumors out of the basement and restart the X-files. Stop the invasion." Closing her eyes, she sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. She suddenly had a pounding headache. "Save the world."
After a moment, the bed tilted. When she opened one eye, John was hovering over her, propped on one elbow. "You're an idealist, Mon," he said with a small smile. The first real smile either of them had shared since the canyon.
"I like to think I'm a realist," she murmured, smiling faintly in return. "Only my reality is the undiscovered ideal."
"Gotta agree with you there," he said with a wry chuckle. "This isn't what I'd call ideal."
"What, this?" She gestured to the dingy motel room, but meant the movement to encompass their lives in general. "This is all shadow. Fog. Clear all this away, and you'll have your ideal."
John stared down at her for a moment. His always intense eyes seemed even more firey than usual, lit with mutual licks of cobalt flame.
She squirmed beneath the penetrating gaze, but didn't look away.
"Yeah," he finally murmured raspily. "I think you're right."
With a sigh, he flopped onto his back again. "It was a good plan, though," he said to the air. "Tight."
Monica tilted her head to the side and watched his profile. "If they do come for us, John," //IF, not WHEN//, "they won't take us without a fight." She wrapped her fingers around his wrist, sandwiching their arms between their bodies. "I won't let them have you."
He turned his head to the side and locked gazes with her.
He squeezed her hand.
"I won't let them have you either, Mon," he whispered. "And I'll take it between the eyes."
She nodded, but didn't speak.
He didn't say anything more after that, and she watched him close his eyes and drift off to sleep. The tense, vigilant sleep of an ex-Marine on a secret op.
"Sweet dreams to you, too, John," she murmured with a small smile. Turning onto her side, she cuddled close to his warm body and snuggled her face into the side of his neck. He made a hard cushion, but she preferred his shoulder to the prominent bump in her own pillow. It dug into her skull and made her think about death.
He hadn't said he needed her. She hadn't said it back. It might never be said; it might not even be true. But Monica Reyes was a realistic idealist, which meant her roses were always covered in a thin film of grime, but they were STILL roses.
Curled up in a tiny Mexican bed on a dirt-paved back road, with Juice Newton crooning through static on a 50's era radio, Monica closed her eyes and dreamt of Old Spice-scented gunpowder.
THE END