NOTE: This was written during the fifth season, in the winter of 1997.

TITLE: The Wind and the Rain
AUTHOR: Birgit Mueller
EMAIL ADDRESS: aerynsun@cox.net
SPOILER WARNING: 4th season (sorta)
RATING: PG
CONTENT WARNING: MSR, Character dies
CLASSIFICATION: V, R, A
KEYWORDS: Mulder/Scully romance
SUMMARY: Far in the future, Scully reflects on life with Mulder.
DISCLAIMER: I own them!! I own them ALL!!! BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!! ...Ok, maybe I'm exaggerating a little. *sniffle* All right, I admit it, 1013 and company own the characters, but please don't sue me. I don't have anything worth taking anyway.

This is just a little scene set far, far in the future...

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The Wind and the Rain
by Birgit Mueller
aerynsun@cox.net
=================

He never stopped calling me Scully.

The strange irony of that beckons to me from the well of memory, and despite the cold ache in my soul, I can smile enough, just a little.

The landscape is dull and frigid and wet against my face. It is only fitting.

Going conventional, are we, Scully? I can almost hear his voice echo the words. Of course -- cliche' endings never did appeal to him.

When we made love for the first time, he called for me -- for Scully -- in the sweet darkness.

The cancer is always there, always lingering in the recesses of my spirit like a dark and baleful phantom. I always thought I would go before him into the breach. I planned on it. I counted on it. I am selfish. I don't want to live without hearing his name for me again spilling from his lips.

When I was forty-six, I took his ring and his surname. And still, he said, "I do, Scully. I really do." And the justice of the peace gave a faint and puzzled smile when I laughed and he kissed me before the ceremony ended.

I am too old to be standing in the rain.

Bewildered, I heard the hesitant, distant voice on the phone call me Mrs. Mulder -- it sounded stilted, artificial, even after all the years. I am Scully, his Scully.

Mrs. Mulder, I'm sorry, your husband...

I am absurdly wounded that I hadn't somehow known. He left me without a goodbye. There had been no visitation, no intuition, no imprint upon my unconscious. It fascinated me to realize I had expected one.

It was because it was him. I expected one from him.

The rain is picking up. I don't want to leave. I have no one to go home to. There is nothing but the sound of my own heartbeat, thudding forth the seconds without him.

I am still.

And I don't know when, exactly, but something changes, and I wonder if it is within me or without. Like the gradual shift from darkness to dawn, I cannot find the moment when I first feel him, but like the first glimpse of the sun, I am sure.

Suddenly, so sure.

I hear his soft breathing in my ears. Even the eternal skeptic in me wants to believe. I can feel his warm and gentle hands smoothing back my hair, tracing the lines in my face, his touch so light, as if it were the wind. Only the wind.

Goodbye, Scully.

His voice is so real in the rhythm of the rain that I am almost startled by it.

He never did stop calling me that.

**END**