I can't see the stars anymore living here
Lets go to the hills where the outlines are clear
Bring on the wonder
Bring on the song
I pushed you down deep in my soul for too long
- "Bring on the Wonder", Susan Enan
Chapter 4
She felt like they had been walking for miles. Her boots hit the snow, each step making an audible crunch, and after awhile, the cadence of her pace was irritating to her. There was about three feet of snow in most places on their walk, but there was a walkable path, so she wasn't wading through the snow at her looming five feet, two inches.
She began her pace count somewhere after the ranger station, out of a habit. Growing up in a military family, they never did normal family activities. One afternoon, as a child, she remembers her father taking she and her brothers out and teaching them basic land navigation – how to keep pace count, use a compass, et cetera. However, she'd lost her pace count several thousand meters back, and her ability to convert meters to miles in her head was somehow frozen in time, and her body was going to follow suit at some point.
They started out early as originally discussed, because the alleged snowstorm of the century that was supposed to show its ugly face never did. They started out from the ranger station, on foot, because the remains we inaccessible by vehicle, even in the best of weather.
Scully checked her watch. Nine-thirty. They'd been walking about two hours. So she accounted for maybe three miles in, more or less, if they kept maybe a forty-five minute pace. She couldn't be sure, it was too fucking cold, and the snow was now starting to fall, and she felt in her gut that this was about to be an epic mistake, being out here right now.
The entire walk ensued in silence. So much silence this trip. It angered Scully, and the longer they walked, the angrier she got at the thought of it. Her hair was beginning to be damp from the light snowfall, snowflakes getting caught in her eyelashes, and that, too pissed her off. She stopped, shrugging off her daypack that she thankfully brought, and kneeled in the snow, fishing out her toboggan.
Mulder, hearing Scully stop walking, turned around to investigate. There she was, a vision in… royal purple. Obviously Scully had gotten the short end of the stick in the winter weather gear, because she was clad in head-to-toe royal fucking purple, and looked none too pleased. That amused Mulder more than anything. He thought she looked beautiful regardless, but the fact that Scully has been sulking in silence, like the fucking Purple People Eater, made Mulder want to dissolve in laughter.
"Are you cold, Scully?" he asked with a smirk, trying to hide his amusement.
Her eyes shot daggers at him. "No, I'm not, Mul-DER," she said, like a petulant child, biting the end off his name. "I'm just getting out my toboggan, because, if you haven't noticed, it's fucking snowing."
He hid a grin. "No, I guess I didn't notice."
She glared at him in response, then focused on her bag. She secured her hat and shoved the rest of the contents back in, zipping it with such force that the zipper got snagged in the fabric. She swore at the bag, unable to zip it.
That was all it took for Mulder. He tried to stifle the snicker but it made its way out, despite him, and eventually he dissolved into laugher.
Scully froze, furious. What the fuck was so funny?
"Hey Scully, you kind of look like Grimace, from-"
"ALL RIGHT, THAT'S IT!" she bellowed, dropping her bag and the forgotten toboggan in the snow and stomped towards him, until there were only a few inches between the two of them. Her eyes were blazing; a fiery cerulean reserved for only a select few in life.
The laughter died in Mulder's mouth, who was too shocked to laugh again.
"I don't know what the FUCK you think is so god DAMN funny, but you have been pissing me off this entire trip, and I am SICK of it!" she screeched, now completely out of control, jabbing him in the chest with her pointer finger for emphasis.
Mulder looked at her incredulously. "Oh, YOU are pissed off at ME? Well that's a fucking shocker, you've made that blatantly obvious since the car ride to Deadwood!"
"And you don't think I should be?" her tone escalating. It echoed in the woods and she was suddenly glad that ranger dipped out of going with them.
"No! I don't even get why you're mad in the first damn place! I tried to share with you something personal, you know, quid pro fucking quo, Scully, and in return I get the fucking silent treatment for twenty-four hours? Wow thanks."
"UN-believable, Mulder!" she said, shoving him firmly, open-palm, in the chest, packing a bit of punch behind her, because Mulder struggled with his balance for just a moment, before regaining his footing.
What the fuck? Angry Scully was out in full force. He'd never seen her like this, so out of control, and he still had no idea what the fuck happened in the first place. All he knew was, the snow was beginning to pick up, and Angry Scully was sexy as hell.
He decided to try this without shouting. "I don't know because you won't tell me! You might have noticed that you're not a fountain of information when it comes to how you feel."
"I may not be, but it doesn't take a fucking genius to know that maybe you shouldn't cryptically insinuate to your best friend that you're in love with some woman that I don't even know about!"
She placed her hands on her hips, trying to regain control of the situation, but her head was spinning right now.
Mulder's breath caught in his throat. Wait a minute. Wait one fucking second here. Scully DID think he was in love with another woman! So this person he'd been dealing with, masquerading as his partner was Jealous Scully. And because he was a dirty, lovesick, perverted bastard of a man, he felt himself grow hard, in the middle of a snowstorm in the woods, with subzero wind chills.
"Oh my god…" he said in realization.
Adrenaline rushed through Mulder's veins, and without thinking, he grabbed her face and kissed her, hard.
Scully immediately reacted by shoving him away, and slapping him square across the face, disgusted that he would kiss her after saying he loved someone else. How fucking dare he play with her emotions like that?
Mulder clutched his face, which stung from a combination of the ball of fury that was his partner and the blistering cold. He probably deserved the slap, maybe just a little, but still.
"Jesus, Scully!"
"How dare you, Mulder!" tears springing in her eyes, turning away.
Clearly she had no fucking idea what was going on, and Mulder had to right this, very quickly before things complicated further.
"Scully," he said quietly. "It was you."
"What was me?" she said, avoiding his eyes, her voice cracking, but not even bothering to care anymore.
He firmly, but gently grabbed her shoulders, and looked directly down at her. "You Scully, it was YOU in the car I hinted about… I said I found someone and she was kinda perfect… YOU. You're kinda perfect… I love YOU… God Scully, I love you so much… you're killing me here."
Scully was taken aback. So she'd had it all wrong this entire time… she raked him over the coals, and then he kissed her, something she'd only dreamt about for YEARS, and she reacts by slapping him in the face?
There were a million and one scenarios she played out in her head, over and over again, every day, about how she wanted this moment to happen. It would be perfect, her words kind and thoughtful, and the kiss soft and tentative, exploratory. No, they couldn't possibly be further from that.
She began to cry, because she had no other reaction left in her bag of emotions.
"Mulder… I'm so sorry… I didn't mean to… I didn't know…" she stammered, tears streaming down in her face, mixing with snow and making it hard for her to see.
"Shhh," he said wrapping his arms around her, drawing her to him tightly. "It's okay, you couldn't have known."
Her cheek rested on the wet material of his parka for several moments, before she drew back, looking up at him, needing him to know what it was she's been hiding too.
"I love you too, Mulder… I… I love you too."
He sucked in his breath and closed his eyes. Was this a dream?
Leaning towards her, he decided to go for round two, slanting his mouth over hers. She responded immediately, this time with hunger, returning the kiss eagerly. She laced her gloved hands behind his head, needing to be so close to him right now. The warmth of his mouth, the taste of him, was all so overwhelming.
After several moments, Mulder finally broke the kiss, because the snowfall was noticeably heavier. He could barely see a few feet in front of them
Noticing the same thing Mulder did, she gasped. "Oh shit Mulder, we gotta get outta here!"
"I know, I know,"
"Mulder, we're a several hour walk from the ranger station!" she exclaimed, beginning to feel panicked.
"I know we are, we need to find something here to wait out the storm, there's no way we'll make it back in this weather," he said, now rifling through his pack, looking for his map.
"What are we going to do?"
Mulder opened up the map, trying to quickly orient himself to it. He quickly found where they began, and then estimated in his head how far they'd walked, measuring it out. He looked up, searing for any terrain features that might help him figure out where exactly they were.
As it turned out, they headed due west the entire walk, and he was able to identify a ridgeline on the map that was next to them.
He smoothed his hand over the map to clear off the freshly fallen snow. The map was starting to get wet so he needed to think fast.
"This map is the map they use for the archaeological digs, the ranger said when he gave it to me, so it identifies all the cabins that are in the area used to house them. He said they're everywhere."
Scully sighed with relief. That was good news, at least. The snow was really picking up and they needed to get moving.
Mulder identified the closest cabin to them on the map, and fortunately for them it was only roughly 900 meters away, moving southeast.
"Okay, the good news is, there's one that's going to be a little bit of a walk, but not too far. Definitely much closer than the ranger station."
Scully tensed. "What's the bad news?"
"Well I don't have a protractor to get our exact direction we need to move, so I'm going to have to dead reckon as best as possible. I think we'll be okay because the vegetation isn't thick, but the snow might fuck us up so we need to move efficiently but not too quickly, 'cos if we get off course, then I'll have no idea which way we drifted."
"Okay, well let's go then," she said, picking up her forgotten pack, and shaking off her toboggan that was now completely covered with snow.
Mulder put the map away and shrugged his pack on as well, before looking back at Scully.
"Are you okay? Are you cold? Do you need anything?"
A smile tugged at her lips. He was so perfect. She grabbed his hand in reassurance.
"No, I'm okay, let's just find this cabin, okay?"
He smiled back at her, kissing her nose gently. "Okay. We'll talk more when we get some shelter, okay?"
She squeezed his hand in agreement, and they set off.
About thirty minutes later, Mulder began to get worried. It shouldn't have taken them more than fifteen minutes to walk just under a kilometer. He began looking around for a cabin that should have been on a small incline to their right. The snow was falling increasingly harder and he couldn't see that far out, and he thought he saw something – but he didn't want to move too far.
Sensing Mulder's distress, Scully spoke up. "What's wrong, Mulder?"
"It shouldn't have taken us this long to walk this."
She smiled, bumping his hip with hers. "Keep your pace count, silly. We're only at seven hundred meters. We're moving really slow because I'm fucking wading in this snow… never keep you pace on time… always count."
Mulder looked at her, bewildered. Scully never ceased to amaze him.
Scully shrugged in response. "I'm a military brat, I'm full of useless knowledge. We're almost there, two-hundred more meters ahead."
He smiled, putting his arm around her and squeezing her. "Love you," he said softly.
She felt the warmth rush through her, despite the snowfall. "I love you back," she said, smiling.
They walked for several more moments in anxious silence, hoping to spot something soon, otherwise they knew they were completely fucking lost and stranded thanks to natural lines of drift in the terrain.
Scully began to shiver. Her snowsuit was very warm, but all the walking had caused her to sweat, and now it was drying and she her body was beginning to get cold. She really needed to eat something but wanted to get there.
And finally, like a mirage in the desert, there it was… the cabin.
