To Wake And Reach For Hands Not There
She has divided their time together into before and after. She thinks it makes it easier, somehow, to quantify their time this way; to separate their lives into then and now.
Then, they were FBI; now they are fugitives. Then they were scientist and believer; now they are players in a government conspiracy. Then they were partners; now they are something she no longer knows how to describe.
Before and after; then and now. Words used to disguise just how much her world has shifted.
* * * *
The morning of the first Christmas they spend together on the run, she wakes in yet another motel room and watches the limp light fall through the cracks in the blinds.
December 25th. The date used to mean something to her, before. December 25th, before, was family and laughter. It was the birth of Christ and hope that her sins could be forgiven. Now it is another date in the calendar, a meaningless day; a day with no family, no laughter, no joy. Simply her and him, and no more words to say to each other
She rolls over, willing sleep; a few hours more where she can dream that things are different. Instead, she sees a battered copy of Moby Dick lying on the bed where she expected him to lie. Its pages are worn and well thumbed and the inscription when she turns the cover, penned in Mulder's familiar scrawl, almost makes her forget the things she has lost.
Starbuck,
". . . because truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself."
I don't exist alone; I don't exist without you.
- Your Ahab
She lies on her side, thumb absently stroking the cover of the book. Ahab chases the white whale beneath her fingers and she remembers her father reading aloud to her when she was a girl. Moby Dick had been her favourite book and she made her father read and re-read it night after night. He called her Starbuck, his right hand girl, and she adored him as Ahab, tough and strong. His death shook her more than anything had before, and there are times now when she still thinks of things she should tell him, before she remembers he is gone.
She remembers the look on Mulder's face when she had confessed her fears about Boggs' claims.
"You couldn't face that fear? Even if it meant never knowing what your father wanted to tell you?" He had asked, and for a second she had seen how stupid that was. But then realisation hit her; she knew, had known all along and could tell Mulder, "He was my father."
Mulder is Ahab. She told him that, once, and she is surprised though she probably shouldn't be, that he remembers their conversation that cold night, alone on a rock in the middle of a lake. She still isn't sure if he was being flippant, when she told him how like Ahab he was in his quest for the truth, his vengeance against life; when he told her that he wished he could be more like Ahab, peg legged and intent only on survival instead of searching for an elusive truth impossible to capture. She still doesn't know if he was being flippant.
Lying on the bed she wonders, absently, where he is. She knows she should be worried, knows he's not in the motel room and so must be outside somewhere, a dangerous place for a man on the run from the FBI. But she can't bring herself to muster the energy to be concerned. If they find him, if they find her, then let them. If they find them then maybe this charade could end, this pretence of normality in a shifting world.
She doesn't know when she started to feel like this. When she realised it would be easier if she wasn't with Mulder. Maybe it being Christmas Day and she being alone in a motel room with the ghosts of her family for company has something to do with it, she tells herself. Maybe Bill was right all along.
It isn't until late that afternoon that she starts to worry about Mulder. She has spent the day reading and remembering, and only now, when the purple dusk seeps into the room, does her concern for him overwhelm her relief at being alone in her own space.
The days pass. She has developed a routine and (though she doesn't want to admit it) has come to enjoy the solitude. She never thought she would be glad to be rid of Mulder's company, but a break from his incessant paranoia has won.
Unease still niggles in the back of her mind, rising to the surface at times when the enormity of what would happen if he has been caught or killed sinks in. Hours tick by, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, but she is always aware of the emptiness in the room where Mulder should be.
She refuses to admit to herself that she is pleased to be on her own, that she his happy Mulder isn't there. She doesn't know how to process those feelings, having been Mulder's constant partner for more years than she now cares to remember, so she pushes them to the back of her mind and concentrates instead on the ticking of the clock, the slow punishment of time.
One night she wakes, roused by some pattering at the window, some nightmarish dream she can only half remember. At first she wonder if Mulder has returned but his side of the bed is cold and empty, no comfortable weight next to her on the bed, no slow and steady breathing in the quiet room.
Lying alone in the stale motel room she remembers the first night they kissed, sitting on his battered couch while the fish tank gurgled and the The Stooges ran from yet more criminals on the silent TV screen. His breathing had been slow and steady as he leaned towards her and all the boyish things she thought he'd do if they were ever in this situation, the yawn and stretch routine, the awkward lunge, the cheesy line, he doesn't. He simply leans towards her, cupping her face in his hands and places a soft, confident kiss on her lips. She had been so shocked, so surprised that it was him kissing her instead if her kissing him, that they weren't drunk or drugged or undergoing a shared hallucinatory experience, that she almost didn't register it was Mulder kissing her until he stopped.
"I'm sorry, Scully," he had said, eyes downcast. "I...That never should have happened."
And he had looked so forlorn that she had pulled him to her, kissed his forehead, his temples, trailed kisses along his strong jaw line until she reached his mouth and lost herself in him.
Afterwards, as he slept on the couch curled like a lost boy who'd found his way home, she roamed his apartment, his New York Knicks t-shirt too large for her but still smelling of him, a scent she was reluctant to get rid of so soon. She ran her fingers over his books, stared out of his apartment window at the silent street below then rested her head again the cool wood of the doorjamb and watched him sleep.
She rolls over in the bed and curls the duvet around her, hating him for leaving her.
As the days go on with no sign of Mulder she begins to think seriously about what she should do. Money isn't an issue; she has plenty secreted away, but if has been caught they must know where she is too, and it can only be a matter of time before they come for her. But she is reluctant to leave without Mulder, no matter how angry at him she is, and she spends nights tossing in the empty bed, weighing up her options.
A week after she found the book, a week after Mulder left, she takes the risk and walks into the small town, a mile down the road from the motel. There has been no word from her contacts, either through email or at the local Post Office, and she is both relieved and afraid. She sends a quick message, one promptly answered with the words 'no news' and manages to keep her composure until she is halfway back to the motel.
She doesn't sleep that night.
Two days later, as she lies listless on the bed, as she has done since the trip into town, when her contacts failed to find any sign of him, she hears the key in the lock. For the first time in her life with Mulder she feels her stomach knot as the door closes and she realises he has come back.
He is silver in the morning as he enters the room, the dawn's half light, creeping through the cracked blinds, curving around his sharp edges and smoothing them; deceiving her into thinking that he is softer than he is. For a moment she feels her heart tug, feels that familiar rush of love as he turns his eyes to hers and her anger fades.
But then he turns away, shrugs off the too light jacket he has worn for the last three weeks (the last three weeks that she has spent alternating between concern and grief and fear and loathing, she reminds herself) and disappears into the small bathroom. She hears the thud of water against tiles as he turns the shower on and contemplates leaving, getting up and packing her things while he washes the last three weeks off his snow beaten skin and just disappearing. Would he worry the way she had, she wonders, would he spend nights tossing and turning in the too large bed, waiting for the knock on the door that tells him she is captured, or worse, dead.
He ignores her, when he re-enters the room. Too indecisive in leaving she had thrown together a hasty bundle of clothes and then sank to the bed, where she sits as he towel dries his hair and refuses to look at her. She wonders what it will take to get him to look at her, to warm to her; whether she will get hurt if she approaches him in the wrong way, and then wonders why it is she who has to make the effort. He's the one who's been away with no word for three weeks, she tells herself he is the one who needs to apologise. But she opens her mouth anyway, his name slipping involuntarily off her tongue.
"Muder…"
He cuts through her with a look, the one that tells her she doesn't understand, could never understand. She tries to make things better, rises from the bed and runs her hands over his back, breathing in the scent that she realises she's missed so much, but he steps away from her, leaving her hands to fall to her sides, and she retreats, wondering how it ever got to this.
The first few days after his return they skirt around each other, unsure of what to say or how to say it. They ease themselves back into their old routines as though nothing had happened, as though he last three weeks had been spent in their old routine instead of in worry and concern.
The fourth day, when she trips over the shoes that she has told him to put away ten times since he came back, she loses it.
"Dammit, Mulder! Can't you pick up after yourself?"
He stops in his tracks, the remote control which he has been using to flick through the channels, hanging limply in his hand. He doesn't say anything, simply stares at her as she scowls at him from the other side of the room.
"I'm tired of picking up after you," she says and she isn't sure what this argument means – to her or to them. "I'm tired of asking you to do something and it not being done. I'm tired of you treating me like I'm not here."
"If you're saying you want to leave Scully go right ahead," he replies and she is shaken by the coldness in his voice. "I'm not stopping you."
"You're not enticing me to stay either. You take off in the middle of the night, don't tell me where you are for three weeks then waltz back in like, like you've been out for a newspaper. I didn't know what had happened to you Mulder. I didn't know if you were dead or dying, I didn't know if you'd been caught, if you'd just gotten sick of the sight of me and decided to leave…"
Her voice trails off and he gazes at her. She waits for a reply but there is none forthcoming, and her heart stammers in her chest.
"I'm just tired of this."
He turns his back to her, begins to scrolls again through the channels on the flickering screen and she walks out into the cool air, slamming the door behind her.
Seven days after his return, three days after the argument they still haven't spoken about, they pack their bags. They have stayed too long in this place; longer than they have stayed in any other and although she isn't sure she wants to leave with him, she also isn't sure she has a choice.
They walk in silence to the car, he carrying the heavier of their bags while she trails behind. The sky is a dull grey, the colour of the barrel of a gun; the colour of loss. Thick flakes of snow begin tumbling from the sky as she tucks her bags into the boot and slides uncomfortably into the passenger seat. They head off, another long trip to who knows where, and she stares out of the window.
The thick snow falling around the car reminds her of another time, years ago, when they still worked for the Bureau. They had been chasing another X File, Mulder high on pent up energy while she thought of her comfortable bed and a glass of red wine.
When the flakes started falling they had been 60 miles out of the nearest town, coasting to a halt on a one track country road, shrouded by trees. She'd nodded off to Mulder's talk of sasquatch and Big Foot and "did you know Scully that these could be evolutionary throwbacks, freaks of nature who have seen what modern man does to that which he doesn't understand, and have the intelligence to hide from our so-called civilisation?"
She woke slowly as the biting air swirled around her and the car door slammed shut.
"Why've we stopped, Mulder?" She asked, groggy and confused.
"We, uh, we ran out of petrol Scully. We're stuck her for the night."
He gazed at her, snow melting on his hair, his coat, his ungloved hands.
"Look on the bright side," she'd said, curling her coat around her and snuggling into the seat, "it's prime Big Foot country."
The snow outside carpeted the ground, the trees, the car. She fell asleep to the soft cadence of Mulder's voice, reciting a poem by Robert Frost that she had loved since she was a child, though she wasn't sure if or how Mulder knew that.
"The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, but I have promises to keep. And miles to go before I sleep. And miles to go before I sleep."
Now, sitting next to Mulder in their too small car she realises now how apt those words are. They are prisoners in their own world, tied to each other by promises made so long ago and they have miles still to go before they can sleep safe in each others' arms.
* * * *
The days pass. She dyes her hair; he grows a beard. Shaves it off because she says it scratches too much, grows it back again. She spots the first signs of grey at his temples, and he says nothing about the bags under her eyes. The days pass.
* * * *
They have been on the run for a year. Her hair is now a dull brown; the car filled with packets of dye stuffed in spare spaces small enough to hold them testament to the time she has, and will, put into ensuring her flame red hair remains hidden – for at least as long as they are.
She hasn't spoken to her mother for a year. Messages are passed on in personal ads, items needed and obscure articles in even more obscure papers, and she hears enough to keep up with the family. Bill and Tara have had twins, a boy and a girl now eighteen months old. Charlie is living in England, holed up in some Islington pad with a sometime actress. Family friends have aged, moved, died, and she hasn't been there to mourn them.
They move on every few months; sometimes more quickly, sometimes more slowly, depending on the infrequent communiqués from their friends in high places. Each time they move they change their histories. She has been Joan Fowley, Laura Petrie, Melissa Byers (nods to their past, she thinks, that keep at least a tenuous connection to the them that they were and the them that they are alive). She has been a history teacher on sabbatical, a legal secretary, an aspiring writer but never a government employee, medical doctor or scientist. Never anything that could alert Them to their presence or make her long for her past life.
They are tired and homesick, irritable and withdrawn. They spend some nights sleeping continents apart on their rented beds and others tangled in each other, longing for the lives they have lost. They still have sex, which she is grateful for, though they make love only slightly more often than they fuck. They live off their savings, brand food traded for Wall-Mart's own, clothes bought from second hand stores and patched up as often as they wear out. They are each other's only company: confidante and confessor; ally and outsider; lover and enemy.
Thinking of this, the enormity of what she has lost, she wonders if it really is worth it. Wonders if she blames Mulder for the choices she has made, and whether blaming him is fair.
They are on the road again, moving more quickly now from place to place. They travel a rutted tarmac highway, another nameless, faceless byway destined to be travelled by the hunted, the desperadoes; those who have nowhere to hide. The dry air is dusty, seeping in through her part opened window and swirling around the inside of the car. The air conditioning broke somewhere around three hundred miles ago, and torn between the desire to stay cool and stay relatively clean she chooses the former. After all only Mulder will see her covered in grime and she isn't sure he'll notice - or care.
Staring out of the window at the barren countryside sweeping past she is drawn back to the places where she has lived, the houses and their neighbourhoods: travelling miles of dusty, one track roads in places too small to be called civilisation, where the only songs playing are those lamenting lost loves and broken hearts, she visits them again and again in her mind.
One summer, when her and Missy were small, they had stayed in a place like this. Their father had been on some training exercise, the family shipped out to accompany him. The boys had been left to their own devices, happy with pellet guns and lizards to aim at. She had been content, at first, to play house with her Mom and Missy. The girls together had conspired, baking cookies and making lemonade with real lemons. But slowly the appeal wore off and she rebelled under her mother's constant vigilance.
One slow day, when it was too hot and arid to bake or play with Missy's dolls, she had persuaded their Mom to let them take a walk to the small bluff overlooking their rented home. They packed a small bag of rations – oatmeal biscuits and ginger beer, and tramped across the dusty grass together, two small figures under an August sky.
They had walked for a mile or so before Missy began to tire. She stopped in the shadow of a Joshua tree and refused to move, her bottom lip trembling. Scully had threatened to leave her behind, tried to cajole her into moving with threats of rattlesnakes and deadly spiders, bribed her with the cookies, but Missy refused to go. It wasn't until Bill and Charlie passed them, hours later on their way back to the house, that Missy stood and walked home.
Thoughts of her family and all she has lost are too much for her and she tears her attention away from her past to Mulder, sitting next to her. Oblivious to her thoughts he drones on about some provocative story behind a photo of a Grey taken not far from here in the early 90s.
"There's a reason for the words you and I," she thinks. "We aren't a we anymore."
At some point, they stop driving. The car slows and they turn into the parking lot of another motel on another dead end tarmac track. All roads have led to here, she thinks as she pulls her bags from the trunk. All the roads we've travelled have led to this. And it stops here.
She can't go on any longer.
That lonely night he reaches out to her across the expanse of their bed. He has become almost a stranger to her now, the bond they had shared so long ago at the FBI; as partners and lovers, has worn thin, severed and fragmented. They travel miles together each day but they never speak. They sleep in the same bed but they never touch. They are dreams to each other now, and become less substantial as each day passes.
She feels his weight shift in the bed, the duvet rustling above him as he turns towards her.
"You awake?" He asks and she wonders, for a moment, whether she can feign sleep, prevent the discussion she is sure will come, but they have slept together too long for her to be able to fool him, even if she can fool him about so many other things.
"I can't sleep. I can't stop thinking, Scully, about us. About where we are and how far we've come."
Gently, he touches the cross that hangs around her neck and she closes her eyes.
"I know this isn't what you wanted for us. Isn't how you saw us together. I know that I haven't been able to give you the things you've needed, that I've been a pretty lousy boyfriend. But I'm trying, Scully. I'm trying because I don't want to lose you."
His fingers play with the cross around her neck as his breath whispers in her ear. She can feel the heat of him, so close to her in the bed, and the familiar scent of him that she has always loved.
"It's always been you Scully," he says and as his voice cracks she hears his longing.
She surrenders to his touch as he takes her in his arms. It is futile to resist, she thinks. The only person she has left in this new world is him, and she is more frightened of a future without him than one with.
She senses his need and moves with him as he towers above her in the bed, feels the muscles rippling under his taut skin and she calls his name while tears fall down her cheeks.
* * * *
One night, months after they have stopped running, he pulls her to her feet and leads her to the back door. The moon is shining down over their deserted garden and somewhere the strains of a song she knew once filter through the air. He has placed candles and flickering lanterns in the trees that surround their home and for now, at least, they are less of a barrier to the outside world, more of a cocoon that shelters them while they prepare to turn into someone new.
He turns to her, standing on the step below her, and reaches out his hand, that shy boy look on his face as he averts his eyes. She imagines him like this, 20 years ago at his high school prom, and smiles at how little he must have changed.
She knows the song that plays now, remembers another time, another place, where he took her in his arms and they swayed gently to the music, and for a moment, as she stares at the man she has loved for so long, she can pretend that nothing has changed.
Cher's voice drifts across the shadowed landscape as she takes his hand, rests her head against his chest and moves softly with him, feeling his heart beat under hers.
Things are not right, she thinks, but maybe they can be. Maybe they will be okay.