Timeline: Fight the Future
Category: Post-episode fiction
Author's Note:
So, I was inspired by the newly available alternate kiss scene from Fight the Future now available on Blu-Ray. I thought it was the blooper kiss I'd seen previously, but it isn't. Boy isn't it. I watched it on youtube and was instantly taken away with the possibilities that scene would have brought up. Watch it, if you haven't! How did they keep this from us for a decade?
So, I've taken into consideration that this is *just* an alternate scene. It didn't actually take place… much as some people may wish it had!
***
Maybe it was the medication. She swallowed a fistful of pills every few hours since returning from Antartica. Maybe that would explain it.
Mulder came by every day when she was in the hospital. He was still dropping in now that she was at home. She believed that his visits had a dual purpose. He was checking up on her—worrying over her in Mulder's typical fashion. He also wanted her to remember. He insistently pressed her about the alien space ship. How could she have missed it?
'What ship?' She didn't remember a ship.
She imagined that he thought she didn't remember any of it. The confrontation in his apartment, him following her into the hallway, his confessions…their near miss. Mulder had moved in to kiss her. And then the world had gone black. But, she still remembered.
It was better that he thought she didn't have any memory of their exchange. They could go on as if it never happened. If he pressed her about it, it would be messy. She would have to set clearer boundaries and he'd be hurt. He'd get that wounded look that she dreaded.
The medication, however, was warping her memory. She was certain she knew how the moment had played out.
She'd told him that he didn't need her. She'd only held him back from making the next big leap. It wasn't something she entirely believed, but she was busy convincing herself that he didn't need her and that she would be fine without him. Or that she could wipe the last half decade clean from her memory; go back to leading a normal life.
He'd denied her assertions in the most vehement of terms. She knew Mulder would put up a fight. He didn't give up. She admired that quality endlessly even though it made it difficult to make her quick getaway. He'd told her that she'd saved him. Kept him honest. More than that, he'd said that she'd made him a whole person. She remembered that clearly, because these weren't the words of just a partner. He was confessing more than that. He didn't want to be alone. And in a raw moment, she had to admit that she didn't either.
Touched by his words and feeling emotionally flayed, she'd walked into his arms and pressed a kiss to his forehead. When she'd pulled back, her heart had begun to race as she looked into his eyes. It was almost too much—to see his soul lay bare like that. And he'd leaned in. Slowly. Determined, but slow enough that if she wanted to she could have pulled away. That's what she would normally do, after all: she would firmly right the ship that was going astray by taking hold of the wheel and putting them back on the right course. But, she didn't. She made no move to stop him.
And then the sting. The painful sting in her neck that put an end to all her memories. And whatever was about to happen.
At home and laid up in her bedroom surrounded by books and magazines, as soon as she closed her eyes to rest—doctor's orders if she wanted to return to work anytime soon—the memory of that exchange acted itself out once more in a distinctly revised form. She saw it repeatedly.
Mulder following her into the hallway, frustrated and full of emotion. Asking her to stay in the only way he knew how: "I don't know if I want to do this alone." It felt incredibly real. As if she was experiencing a particularly acute case of déjà vu where not all the pieces fit quite right. Because, even if she remember nothing after the sting, she did remember everything leading up to that moment; and the images that floated through her mind were more than a little bit altered.
She had convinced herself that she needed to walk away from the FBI, from the X-Files, from Mulder even, but Mulder's pain was making it incredibly difficult to accomplished her planned escape. She couldn't help but step into his arms. Take comfort in his embrace. Reconsider her decision as she breathed in his distinctly Mulder smell for the briefest of moments before pulling back to press a kiss to his forehead. She was offering comfort, but she was also trying to capture a moment in time with her partner in case it was the last they would ever have.
It was strikingly familiar, and yet pointedly different. His forehead touching hers. Him cupping her face in his hand and running his thumb across her cheek bone. The feeling that she couldn't look him in the eye but at the same time she must. The racing of her heart and the moment of terror as she realized that he was coming in closer towards her, holding her gaze with an intensity that he'd never shown her before.
And then in her bedroom in her half conscious state the memory of that moment would take its own course. It all began to slow down as if they were moving in slow motion. He inched towards her almost imperceptibly. She knew what he was doing. She could feel it and sense it and she stood there rooted to the floor. She could feel his breath against her face—warm and strangely sensual against her skin. Locked in his gaze, she didn't move until almost the last second—the moment when she could have turned away, but instead, met him half way.
No sting. No bee. Nothing to interrupt them.
The kiss was immediately intense. The kind of kiss that will take your knees out. His lips crushing hers with those lips that she had contemplated in their earliest of days together. The lips that she had imagined would be rather nice to kiss—under different circumstances—and they were from what she imagined in her heated day dreams. Their kiss was desperate. He didn't want to be alone and neither did she, so they kissed each other with increasing abandon and pressed their bodies together. She laced her hands behind his head, trying to draw him into her so nothing would separate them. He lifted her up. Carried her back from whence they'd come.
She flushed thinking about it. For the tenth time she had to remind herself that no matter how vivid the images—that's all they were. The reality had been different.
Taking a deep breath to clear her system of these thoughts, she looked at her watch. She wasn't sure when Mulder was coming by today, but she knew he'd come at some point. Her partner. Her friend. Everything to her, but nothing more. No boundaries actually crossed.
She'd read somewhere once that rescue fantasy romance literature sold better than any other subcategory within the genre. She hoped that wasn't the case. She didn't care to believe that all women merely wanted to be saved—that was the sort of thing that set the feminist movement back twenty years or more. Of course, if it was generally the case, the desire must have been built into women's psyches early on. In childhood, stories of rescue proliferate within the canon: Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, and countless other helpless women all in need of rescuing were the model for fairytale happiness.
Scully liked to think she was different, however. She liked to think of herself as fiercely independent and completely capable. Someone that didn't need saving, let alone crave it. Moreover, if she ever had entertained a rescue fantasy, it should have been fulfilled ten times over. She had saved Mulder a time or two and he had done her the same turn. And yet, her medicated mind kept playing it out. Her rescuer in real life was the man in her half-conscious dreams that kissed her passionately and literally and figuratively swept her off her feet.
She desperately needed these images to be the result of the medication. Or some residual stress reaction to her experience. The thought that she might entertain either hopelessly clichéd yearnings…or yearnings for her partner simply wasn't an option.
***
Scully was awakened by the sound of keys turning in the lock of her apartment door. She shook off her hazy sleep, knowing it was Mulder come to check in on her. She glanced at the alarm clock: it was a little later than she had assumed it would be and the world had gone dark in the time she lay asleep.
"Scully?" he called from the door.
"Come in," she called back.
He strode into her bedroom, coming around her bed.
"Did I wake you?" he asked.
"No," she lied as he leaned over her and pressed a kiss to her forehead.
He paused, cupping her face in his hand and running his thumb over her cheekbone. The brief moment of déjà vu caused bumps to rise along her arms. She felt herself begin to flush and looked down over the tip of her nose, avoiding his gaze.
"How's my favorite agent?" he asked, standing upright.
"I'm fine. I think I should be able to come back soon."
"Why don't we leave that to the doctors to decide?"
He wasn't sure she should come back…ever. She would be better off not working on the X-Files. She'd be better off as a doctor. Doing some good. She'd be better off if he wasn't in her life. But, right now he didn't want to think about that. He just wanted to be near her. That's why he kept coming over to see her. Her rehabilitation gave him the excuse to drop by that he usually lacked, so he couldn't help indulging himself. He'd come so close to losing her forever. It wasn't the first time, but each time became exponentially harder to bear. The panic that would set in thinking that he might not be able to save her. That he might not be able to see her again. That he would never have the opportunity to tell her the things he kept locked in his heart.
"I am a doctor, Mulder."
"Rather biased in this case, I think, however."
"I know, but I can't stay home forever. I'm bored out of my mind," she said with a sigh, smoothing the covers in front of her with her hands.
"I could bring you some videos to watch."
"I don't share your fetishistic voyeurism, Mulder," she replied flatly, her mouth turning up at the corners just the slightest bit.
"I could bring you a chick movie," he assured her, sticking his hands in his pockets, looking somewhat awkward.
Maybe her teasing was a little much, given that they were alone in her nearly darkened bedroom. She patted the bed, indicating that he should sit down.
"Did you get any rest today?" he asked, sitting down on the edge of the bed and causing it to sag underneath his weight.
"A little. I keep having these waking dreams though."
"Are you beginning to remember?" he asked, leaning forward in an expectant manner.
Well, not exactly.
"No…I mean, they're just dreams. Dreams don't mean anything."
He smiled indulgently at her. She knew he would be happy to debate that point with her.
"I wouldn't mind them…if…" 'I they weren't so jaw-droppingly unprofessional.' And dozens of other things that Scully wasn't comfortable admitting to herself.
"I've been dreaming a lot too lately," he said with a shrug. "I just thought maybe if you talked about it, you might remember."
These weren't dreams she could share with him. She steeled her gaze away from his hand, which he rested nonchalantly on her knee that was obscured by several layers of covers. It felt as if there was nothing between his hand and her flesh, however—like a crackle of electricity through her cream colored blankets. She wondered if he ever felt that sensation when he touched her. He looked composed: no evidence that he was in any way affected by their intimacy. Perhaps Mulder was by nature a more intimate creature than her and these moments didn't throw him the way they could her.
"I told you, Mulder. I just don't remember. I'm sorry."
She wished she could give him what he wanted. He had gone the extra mile for her—so to speak—and she couldn't remember the ship he swore had risen from the ice and nearly taken them with it.
"Nothing?"
No ships? No hallways?
"It's a blank, Mulder."
Was it? If she remembered what had happened in his hallway, he expected that she would never want to discuss it. Whatever moment they had been about to share had passed. Scully was back to being reasonable. Sensible. Professional. It was frustrating, but it wasn't surprising.
Once he had her back and he was certain she would be alright, his feverish brain didn't waste any time concocting different endings to their aborted kiss. Endings that didn't involve laying her down on the floor of the hallway so he could go call in an agent down, but that did involve laying her down. The fantasies were nothing new, but now they were tinged with a tantalizing aura of reality or unmistakable possibility. So, yes, he was most definitely experiencing some dreams of his own—both waking and otherwise—but they weren't the sort of dreams he imagined Scully was experiencing.
He couldn't deny it. Something had been about to happen with them in his hallway. He had no idea what would have transpired if the moment had been allowed to progress without an alien virus laden bee putting a stop to it. Maybe it would have been passionate. Maybe he would have lifted her up and carried her back into his apartment. Maybe it would have been the beginning of a new chapter in their relationship—a chapter he'd been too gutless to contemplate outside of his fantasy life. Or maybe she would have hauled off and slapped him.
"I'm sorry," she added once more.
"Don't be," he said with a smile, squeezing her knee through the covers. "I'm just glad you're back."
"Thanks to you," she said pursing her lips.
"You would have done the same…you have," he replied somewhat seriously.
"Because, even if you could, who would want to do this alone?" she asked quietly.
Mulder watched her silently for a moment. Her face revealed nothing. From the look of things she might as well have just have stated that protocol required agents to watch each other's backs. Nothing of consequence. Her wording was peculiar, however. Was she recalling what he had said to her in his hallway moments before he'd tried to kiss her? Moments before she'd clutched at her neck and said, "Ouch," leading him to believe he'd royally screwed up? If she was, then she remembered more than she was letting on. Chalk it up to another moment in time that would remain untouchable between them. Her reserve, his cowardice: he was becoming all too familiar with this dance.
He bent forward and watched with some pleasure the nervousness that swept over her for the briefest of seconds as he tucked a strand of her red hair behind her ear. He wouldn't ever admit it to her, but he greatly enjoyed ruffling the seemingly unflappable Dana Scully. He might be deluding himself, but he liked to think that his ability to occasionally throw her off balance spoke to their deeper connection. Scully just ignored the comments and actions of those people who were outside of her circle of intimacy. Office gossip and the suave comments of overly friendly agents deflected off of her armor. It might not seem like much to the outside world, but Mulder knew when he made her squirm that he successfully had worked his way into her life more so than the average person could boast. Perhaps to what she found to be a slightly uncomfortable degree.
Hovering at her ear, he whispered to her, "If you ever do remember…anything…know that I'm here." Aliens. Space ships. His hallway.
She nodded almost imperceptibly and it seemed as if she might be holding her breath.
"I'm going to let you get some sleep," he said standing up.
He hated leaving her, but he knew that Scully would be with him for the rest of the evening: his thoughts would stray to her as he pored over the files he had taken home with him that evening and she would be there in his dreams when he finally went to sleep.
"Want me to get you anything before I go?" he asked, glancing at her well-stocked bedside table.
"No, I'm fine."
Always fine. Always independent. Never in need of anything that she couldn't provide for herself. Except, sometimes you need a partner…a friend…to bring you back from Antartica.
The End
Author's Note:
The title is a take-off on the phrase Coitus Interruptus, and also evidence that I spend my days translating 13th c. inquisitorial records in Latin. Maybe I need a break ;)