Disclaimer: The X-Files was created and therefore is owned by Chris Carter, Ten Thirteen Productions and Fox Broadcasting. I am using these characters without permission. No copyright infringement is intended.

Summary: When Scully and Skinner first enter Mulder's cell in 'The Truth', Scully finds it hard to accept Mulder's passive attitude.

Title: First Time

Author: AllyBallyBee

Classification: PG

Keywords: MSR, UST

Spoilers: All seasons and including 'The Truth'.

Descent

"You okay?"

She had had no idea what to say.

Had she survived...lived...without this man for almost a year? Yes, of course she had. It had taken her almost nothing to live without him. Nothing because every thought of having him with her had inevitably appeared with a vision of his suffering, his pain, his death. And that had been more than she could handle. So it had become a normality to deal with his absence.

And to deal with William's existence.

Until William's existence had meant his loss. And his loss had been her descent into every avenue of hell that Dante had failed to perceive. A hell that Mulder would never and couldn't possibly understand.

And yet he had asked whether she was okay. Bastard. She wanted to slap him.

And yet...and this is where the game of love and hate that she played with Mulder had so often become her weakness...she also wanted to run to him and never allow him to let her go.

So often he had pushed her away, acting as if their partnership meant as little to him as the rules that he endlessly chose to disobey. She refused to count how many times she had felt betrayed by his apparent indifference towards her. How many times she had considered leaving the X-Files in lieu of an easier life. Of a life that wouldn't see her in hospital more times than she would choose to remember.

But then he would touch her back, her cheek, the nape of her neck and it had become clear that his past indifference had been a defence mechanism that, even after all that they had been through together, he still struggled to escape. It was not that he didn't trust her, merely that old habits had died hard in Mulder's life and his relationship with her was no exception.

Nevertheless and no matter how many times she had put up with Mulder's obtuse nature, his intermittent return to the distant, lonely, untrusting and sometimes callous man she had first met in that basement office never failed to make her heart fall to her feet.

Nor fail to make her soul feel like oxygen wasn't the only thing that kept her alive.

She wanted to leave and yet she knew that had ceased to be an option the moment he had first taken her hand and it had felt more reminiscent of a lover's touch than of any of the men that she had allowed through her bedroom door. Ceased to be an option the moment her heart had started beating for him as well as her.

Somewhere under her hurt and sensing the guard's gaze on her back, she understood his motive.

Yet, even through her understanding, she was still glad of the slightly darkened tint of the cell...allowing her to cover the tears that lay in the corners of her eyes, intent on breaking free.

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