Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to anything pertaining to The X-Files
Coming Out Of the Dark
The FBI kept their promise. As agreed, in return for his help in the case, they dropped the charges against Mulder. He was free to return to society, just so long as he didn't run for office, participate in a reality tv-show or generally commit any other kind of act that would draw large scale public attention to him. Mulder asked if this included posting videos of himself expressing his views on alien life forms on YouTube. We beat hasty retreat before the Deputy Director could change his mind.
Mulder in turn, kept his promise to me, about "escaping the darkness", for a little while at least. Christian needed 3 surgeries, with a six week rest between each procedure. So after the first surgery was completed successfully, we allowed ourselves the luxury of a holiday. I say "we", though in reality, in something akin to our old x-files days, I received a phone call at work from Mulder, asking if I had put in my request for a 2 – week leave. I said yes, to which Mulder replied "Good" and promptly hung up on me. When I returned home that evening, I found 2 suitcases by the front door, and an excitable Mulder telling me to "get changed Scully, we're leaving in 15 minutes!". I sensed there was no point in asking him to explain, so simply did as I was told, figuring that I would find out soon enough. I got to the airport to find he had booked us on a 2 week holiday to the Caribbean. "See Scully, plenty of sunshine, no more darkness, " he beamed. Sometimes I guess it is worth paying out all that money for super speedy broadband.
The holiday was long overdue, and even if I do say so myself, well deserved. Plenty of sun, sea, sand, and ..well..you can guess the rest. I managed to not burn myself and even changed my skin tone from Ghost White to Creamy White, which for me constitutes a sun tan. Mulder, took to going for an early morning swim each day, and in an effort to prove his manly prowess outside of the bedroom, even hired a boat and rowed us out to one of the smaller Islands.
We returned relaxed and happy. We discussed briefly about moving slightly closer to civilisation, but in truth we had both fallen in love with our rickety old house, it was much more of a home to us than our apartments ever were. I went back to work, Mulder began to look for a job, and the cynic in me started to wonder how long it would be before something came along to upset the fairly harmonious applecart.
We had been back about 3 weeks when it happened. I should have seen something coming. I came home from work one evening to find a quiet Mulder, which given my vast experience, is never good sign. When I asked how his day went, he was particularly vague. I should have picked up on this, but I had been in and out of meetings discussing Christians next surgery all day, and I was too tired to probe. The following morning saw the appearance of Fidgety Mulder, which again, should have set off my internal alarm bells, but in the spirit of fresh starts, and knowing that Mulder would not be so stupid as to go chasing Alien conspiracies after all that has happened, I chose to ignore it. I suppose that's why , when I received a voicemail at 5pm that afternoon telling me "not to worry, but I won't be home this evening, can't explain", I realised it was partly my own fault that I was on the receiving end of a Mulder Ditch.
To say I was angry was an understatement, and it's a very good job I no longer have a licence to carry a gun. I spent a sleepless night, plotting all the different ways in which I could rip Mulder a new one on his return, and praying that he was safe, wherever his miserable ass might have been.
Fortunately for me, I had designated the following morning as "admin time", so after a couple of hours brooding in my office, I was more or less fit to communicate with other human beings by the time it came to do my rounds.
I was stood in the children's ward, about half-way down the room, finishing up talking to Christian and his parents, when I heard the sound of an impending ruckus in the hallway, that is, someone or something crashing into cart and sending what sounded like a load of bed pans flying, and the double doors to the ward banging open.
I turned, as did most of the patients on the ward to look at the source of the noise, to find a slightly out of breath Mulder at the top of the room. Giving him a split second once over, I breathed an internal sigh of relief that he seemed fine. However, distracted, by Mulders appearance, I had failed to notice the person running towards me. It was only when I caught a blur in my peripheral vision and then felt a small blow as someone collided with me and 2 arms wrapped around my waist, that the rest of the world came into focus.
I looked down to find a mop of curly red hair and a set of very familiar blue eyes staring back at me.
"MOMMY!" the boy practically screamed in excitement, oblivious to the fact that the eyes of the room are now on him "It really is YOU!"
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TBC.