Trigger Warning: This chapter contains a portrayal of a first trimester miscarriage.

Chapter IV

It was as if time was passing in slow motion in front of her. The milk he'd poured into his mug of coffee blossoming like a rose on its dark surface, he took a sip without stirring it. She'd always marveled at the way he could live his life without order like that. Most people would stir the coffee first to fully mix the cream, but he knew it would mix well enough when he took the first sip. He closed his eyes for a moment, savoring the taste, trying to inhale the caffeine. The toast popped up but she didn't move to get it, just sat down at the table in the middle of her kitchen and looked at her dark coffee while he leaned against the counter.

"Skinner told me it would be two days," he began, and suddenly she thought, No, I don't care, I don't give a fuck. She didn't owe him anything, she could throw him out if she wanted. He stopped talking, waiting for her to look at him.

"I'm listening," she said. "Go on."

"To help some DEA and Homeland Security agents in Juárez. A new drug was circulating around, from a new dealer, but even the DEA agents weren't sure what it was, what it did." He took another sip of coffee. "They'd read the report we wrote after Texas about the black oil. They thought maybe one of us could identify it."

"And you volunteered?" she asked, finally looking at him. "Why didn't Skinner ask me?"

He fingered the rim of his mug, looking uncomfortable. "He thought you'd stand out too much."

She cocked an eyebrow. "You mean he didn't want a female agent."

Mulder nodded. "And with all that the violence directed at women in Juárez, the rate of missing persons...I didn't argue." She was quiet. "I know you're just as capable of an agent, and I know you didn't want me to protect you, but I did it anyway."

He seemed to be waiting for backlash, but she sat there, waiting for the rest of it, the coffee pot on the table beside her like a witness.

And so he told her. How he'd flown to Texas that December afternoon on a private jet with a few other agents, met with the DEA and Homeland Security agents, gone over it all with some of the Juárez police department. It would be an easy job for him. Cross the border with the other agents in an unmarked van, stake out the drug scene that evening, meet with one of their contacts in the city who worked as a double agent in the drug cartel. Come back across early in the morning, Mulder would try to identify the drug samples, there would be a short debriefing, and he could be on his way home to her.

He told her how they'd driven through to Mexico, scoped the city out, the job almost finished. Driving back towards Texas in the early hours of Sunday morning. Two SUVs following them on the highway, coming at a high speed, one racing up beside them, bullets peppering the side of the van where he'd been sitting. Blood on the windshield as the driver was shot through the face, the passenger taking over with one bullet in his shoulder, how they'd been run off the road.

The agent in charge of the operation opened the back of the van, went out to negotiate. When he said they were with the police in El Paso, the men shot at him point blank. The two SUVs carried men who knew the law, knew the other side. They knew a plainclothed agent when they saw one. Mulder told her how one of the remaining DEA agents had managed to get to the front of the van, how they had pulled the dead body out of the driver's seat. The sound of a dozen bullets hitting kevlar, then the unmistakable sound of a head exploding behind him.

"It happened in seconds."

They'd managed to drive back with a broken, brain-sprayed windshield and two dead men in the back, but the men from the drug cartel had made them out. Cover broken. Mulder's hands wet and sticky with warm blood as he tried to apply pressure to an agent's wound the whole way back as the man faded away, lips white.

"When we got back I threw up so many times I couldn't see straight," he told her.

It was easier for the three remaining agents and Mulder to be dead than alive and out there. At the safehouse in El Paso they underwent therapy for PTSD, the Juárez city police and the DEA trying to identify their attackers. It had taken time, over five months, and then to locate the men, all ten of them, and safely arrest them, the manpower that had taken in addition to the growing tension between two cartels.

Two years. Two years spent in relative isolation with nothing to do but wait to be safe on the outside. They'd watched TV, played ping pong and cards. Hackers in Mexico were onto the DEA by now, using internet was too risky. They had a secure phone line solely reserved for contacting the task force. The task force who'd called Skinner on December eighteenth and told him to fake a death. Where they'd gotten the dead man, just mangled enough to resemble Mulder, he didn't know.

MULDER! GODDAMN IT, MULDER! she'd screamed into a dead stranger's face.

Her eyes itched, but she refused to cry, she didn't think she could take more tears after this night and day of resurrection. "How much contact did you have with Skinner?"

He shook his head. "None. Information I wanted shared had to get cleared with their task force. If it wasn't considered urgent, they probably didn't pass it on. They told me I was dead in Virginia, but didn't explain how they'd made me die. I read about the X-Files in the paper in February that year."

When she'd lost them. Lost them. Did he think she was a failure, that she'd given up too easily, not fought hard enough to keep them? The truth was that the F.B.I didn't care, had never cared about the X-Files. They'd kept Fox Mulder out of their hair long enough, and they weren't going to keep the X-Files open just so that the pretty little pathologist they'd assigned as his partner six years ago could spend time uselessly searching for him.

The iron vise she'd kept on her heart for so long loosened slightly. So, it wasn't him who'd killed himself. They had. It wasn't unheard of for an agent to lose their partner, and to grieve for them. His death had been quick and easy to those in control of it. An F.B.I partner but no wife, no children, no real overall importance in the Bureau. They'd made him kill himself, then wiped their hands clean. She was furious. He should have at least been told how he'd died.

She wanted to ask him if he'd thought of her every night. She wanted to ask him if he still loved her after all this time. Had he mourned at the thought of not being able to see her, to hear her voice for an indeterminate amount of time? Did you hear the rain one night, when I heard it? And was there a ring, a ring meant for their Christmas that never was, hidden somewhere?

"Pedro, this guy who worked in El Paso before, when we got out he found out his wife had moved away to New Mexico with their three kids and started seeing someone else. And Luke, his house was destroyed in a hurricane, so he got out with nowhere to live."

It was meant to illustrate how he'd been better off than them, but she didn't interpreted it that way. She'd moved away, packed up both their apartments. He had no place to live, either. So, she'd done the same to him.

"I'm sorry," fell awkwardly from her mouth. He looked at her, confused. "I...gave your things away...your clothes...your fish...I left."

He shook his head, putting his coffee on the counter and moving as if to comfort her. Seeming to remember her No from earlier, he checked himself. "Scully, I'm the lucky guy here," he insisted. "I get to see you. And my couch," he joked as an afterthought.

"But your apartment, your job," Oh, God. "Mulder, your mother…"

He nodded. "I know, Skinner told me when I got back yesterday."

"I'm sorry," she said softly.

He paused, contemplative, then looked at her. "I just don't know how you did it, Scully."

"We do what we have to," bitter words she'd said more than once when someone said I just don't know how you're doing it, as if they knew. As if they had any idea. She'd bitten off Ginny's head for the same remark, and felt terrible afterward. The clothes were the hardest to let go of, she'd discovered. If she wore one of his shirts she could pretend the sleeves were his arms, holding her, enveloping her.

What would he have done, had it been her in the ground? Her cancer had brought them close to the shadow world of Death. How would he have picked up the pieces? Mulder had loved her so much. He would have sacrificed himself to save her. He would have taken a bullet for her without question if he'd known she would be safe. Did that make him a coward? He would rather die than see her harmed in any way, but if he was dead he would be spared from grieving. You love me too much.

"What are you going to do now?" she asked, standing up to go put her coffee mug in the sink.

What was she going to do now? Just let him go again, wherever he wanted? Would she follow him?

"Skinner says I could work in the Behavioral Science Unit for a while to get back into the swing of things," he said, putting his mug in the sink with hers.

"Are you going to take him up on it?" She worried about him profiling again so soon, although he was probably itching to do anything at all, from the sound of the offerings in the safe house.

He shrugged. "I have a meeting with him tomorrow. We'll discuss it."

"What about the X-Files? Do you think they'll open them again?"

He shrugged again. "Who knows. They put me on the X-Files to get rid of me. First I have to convince them to take me back."

If he had a meeting with Skinner in Washington, was he coming back to her afterward? If he got the job he'd be living near Washington, hours from Richmond. She had a very real fear, in that moment, that she was losing him again. If he walked out her door now she wasn't fully convinced he wouldn't fade into thin air. What at four this morning had seemed like a nightmare was now turning into a dream come true, and she didn't want to wake up.

Make him stay, she told herself. Don't let him leave. He had no idea how hard it had been, she wouldn't wish it on her worst enemy. Your fragile soul ripped apart like tissue paper day after day. Odette could jump to her death but you couldn't. No, you spent your days in a swarm of swans and raging Tchaikovsky music, and the curtain never went down.


Early March, her bedroom empty save the mattress, she lay on her back, her fingers between her legs, trying to pretend they were his...

...Sirens wailed outside, growing fainter, zigzagging, she felt the blue and red lights flicker over her face for an instant. Mulder went to the window and tugged the café au lait curtains closed. Amber light dripped inside from the streetlamp like honey. She'd already taken her coat off in the living room, thrown it over one end of his couch. The mist of rain they'd walked through to come inside still clung to her hair, microscopic dewy droplets. The frantic energy between them on his couch moments earlier was gone. She was surprised he'd even decided to take her into the bedroom, considering she'd already managed to undo his tie and unbutton his shirt halfway. It could have worked in the living room, they could've done it on the couch. The mood shifted significantly when she stepped into his room, the awkwardness of having sex with a new partner, the way he'd moved away from her to go fix the curtain. She had her fingers perched on the buttons of her own blouse, pale blue but greenish in the light. If she'd known it would happen tonight she might have worn something different, but it had been a regular work day. A Friday with a 'do you want to come over after work' attached.

Mulder was unbuttoning his own shirt as he walked back from the window, revealing a white t-shirt underneath. Why did this feel so strange? He'd had his tongue in her mouth two minutes ago on that couch and now her wrists didn't feel connected to her arms as she pulled the rest of her shirt out of the waistband of her skirt and started on the buttons. He chuckled and came back to her, stilling her hands.

"Please, let me do it," he said, and she nodded, slowly letting her hands fall away, and watched as his fingers nimbly worked the buttons. One cheek glowed, the rest of his face in shadow, but she saw the concentration in his brow. "These are always so small."

"I'm glad you're familiar with women's clothing," she joked quietly as he pushed it from her shoulders, let it fall to the floor, and traced her bared, lightly freckled shoulders with his fingertips. He smirked and pressed a quick kiss to her cheekbone. She reached her left hand behind her to unzip her skirt at the same time that she leaned up to capture his mouth. He kissed her but pulled back, and she felt his index finger brushing along the edge of her bra. She reached forward to undo his belt and fly in a few deft strokes.

He looked up from her breasts, surprised. "Nice move."

She cocked an eyebrow. "I'm familiar with men's clothing."

They shucked off the rest of their clothes, which became two rippled pools on his floor, and she took her bra off without thinking, depriving him of the slow reveal he'd probably wanted, but fear was licking up her spine. She led him to the bed like it was hers and lay back in the mushroom soft sheets. Would this be her side now? What if she'd taken his? God, why was she nervous?

He sat by her hips and she saw herself, willowy and China-white, reflected in his eyes. His fingers on her collar bones, gooseflesh on her chest as warm palms found her breasts. She watched the way his eyes changed, admiring flesh so long guessed at. He pressed a kiss on her heart and sat back. She ran her hand up his arm, over the muscle there.

"What is it?"

He met her eyes and shook his head in disbelief. "You're so beautiful. I can't believe I spent all those years trying to pretend you weren't." He looked at his hands on her body, on her ribcage, her breast. "Are you all right?"

She nodded. "Yes."

"You're trembling," he remarked, concerned.

She sat up on her elbows and put her hand to his cheek, drawing his face down to hers. That kiss. Sewn on her body, stitched into her skin as she pulled him down, their bare chests pressed together that first time, the way he'd rolled them without making her dizzy, keeping a hand on her back when she lay on him, the other in her hair. The way they kissed now was a contrast to how they'd been earlier, a cousin to the first kiss, on her mother's wraparound porch in the rainy night a few weeks ago. He smiled when they parted, but she leaned down to kiss his throat, by his ear, careful to not leave any marks, almost afraid to look in his eyes in the lion quiet. The hand on her back traveled, mapping the wings of her shoulder blades, tracing the staircase of her spine, the swell of her hip.

He turned them again, and she watched his dark head move down, his lips on her breast, on the pebbled nipple, and she had to close her eyes and look away, dovesong muffled into her own hand. He groaned in response, and it vibrated through his lips, wherever they were now. As the weight of him settled on her more fully she opened her thighs to cradle his body, one hand copying his earlier motions on his back. She felt smooth expanses of skin, trapezius muscles and sinew shifting under her palm as he moved. He was hard and heavy between her legs.

Her eyes flew open, and she felt herself tense slightly, although he didn't seem to notice, still busy with her breasts and neck. Things were about to change profoundly between them. Five years of friendship, the most important friendship of her life. He might turn out to be a great partner, but whatever you do, don't fall in love with him...words from a colleague at Quantico after hearing about her new assignment. Friendship. Love. How different were they, really? And why did people insist on making love more profound than friendship? She pushed her pelvis against his to encourage him. It occurred to her that they hadn't spoken for several minutes.

They'd known each other for so long, knew each other so well, she hadn't even felt self conscious about her body when he'd seen her naked, like she had with others, he seemed to know instinctively where she wanted to be touched, how she wanted to be kissed. He pushed himself up on his arms and looked down at her. She pulled a hand up and took his long finger in her mouth, swirled her tongue around it, and watched his eyes widen at the sensation. He bit his lip, and she let him go.

"Scully, do we need anything?" he asked, a bit of desperation in his voice. She wondered if he had unexpired condoms here, although there wasn't any reason why he shouldn't. She shook her head, and her eyes stung. "Scully?" his wet finger on her chin, tipping her face up to look at him, concern in his voice.

She felt like a virgin with him, it was the oddest thing. What is virginity? Is it innocence? Ignorance? Fear? Unripeness? The sound of her name, a name she'd never heard in bed before...that's what it was. She wasn't the same woman, anymore. She wasn't Dana when she was with him, she was Scully, a woman with a gun. Was this the man she would spend the rest of her life making love to? Having perfected our disguises, we spend our lives searching for someone we don't fool. She felt full, filled to bursting. She smiled up at him.

"I love you." It was like a gilded secret in the aureate light.

The expression on his face took her breath away. She pulled him down onto her, guiding him, and leaned back as he slid inside. His voice, warm by her ear, "I love you, too."

She smiled, turned to press a kiss to his head, and squeezed his body with her thighs. Unripeness? She was his pear, dragging down the branch with all of her ripeness.

Afterward, they lay together like drowned lovers flung onto a beach. She pulled up the sheet to wrap around them as sweat made her skin shiver. So much for those gleanings from novels, from paintings, as if love were a matter of posing for picturesque dishabille. No, love was like a wild Schiele sketch. You went into it as a tiger encountering another tiger. You went into it like a person jumping off a bridge. She dozed for a moment, inhaling him. Would he fall asleep immediately? She hummed a little in contentment.

"The world is full of magic things," she said sleepily, "patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper."

Mulder opened one eye and looked at her.

"Scully, did you just quote Yeats in bed?"

She chuckled softly and pulled the sheet back up so that it covered her shoulders, eyes still closed, pressed a kiss to his chest.

On the mattress she let out a frustrated sob and tore her fingers away from between her thighs, removed her own hand from her cold breast, she couldn't do it, she couldn't pretend to be him. The room smelled like Windex and dust, the movers were coming tomorrow. The curtains were packed and moonlight fell in like a belt across her, she hadn't been able to sleep. She desperately needed the release, but it wouldn't come.

Their first I love yous.

I love you.

I love you, too, its echo.

There was something so funereal in that word, she'd never noticed it before. Echo. The death of a sound that had nowhere to go but come back.


In the kitchen she moved toward him, pulled by something she couldn't name, and wrapped her arms around him, holding him fiercely. The tears were on the brink of breaking free now, whether she wanted them to or not.

"Please, don't leave me," she begged. It was like the morning he'd left. His arms around her, standing in her kitchen...crushing her to him, she could feel every rib in his chest. Only today he was being careful. He just kept a palm splayed across her back. Oh, God, what if he really didn't feel the same about her? She looked up at him, her throat burning. "Kiss me."

He hitched her up so her mouth was easier to reach and she was standing on tip-toe in her bare feet, almost dangling as he started kissing her. Never before had she experienced a moment so intensely. Latent grief crashed with overwhelming love inside her and she felt tears rolling down her cheeks as they broke apart for air and she dove immediately back in, wanting to consume him. Although he hadn't seen her in two years, she had never been dead, so while he made sounds of pleasure hers sounded more like sobs, kissing him again and again, everywhere, she couldn't ever get enough.

He pushed her back a little, her feet found the cold ground again. He recognized her behavior as wild desperation, and ran his hands from her shoulders down her arms and up again, trying to calm her before she started hyperventilating. She came to her senses and started wiping her cheeks, smearing the tears, taking deeper breaths.

"Okay?" he asked after a few minutes, and she nodded.

"Yes."

He smiled at her. "I'm not going anywhere," he promised. She exhaled in relief and hugged him again, eyes closed. He held her close. The hum of his lips on her head.

"If I'd known you were pregnant I'd never have gone, Scully. Never."

She wept a little for that. "I wasn't sure. It was like before."


September, a dark velvet night with stars flung in the sky like white flecks on a black enameled roasting pan, frost on the window at two AM. A hand on her back, stroking a bit insistingly. "Scully, wake up." Mulder's voice, gravelly with sleep. "Scully."

She woke up and looked up at him, made a sleepy humming sound. She still had one leg over his, her head tucked onto his shoulder. Her head felt fuzzy. He leaned away from her to turn on the lamp on his bedside table.

"Scully, I think you got your period," he said, pulling down the sheet. She furrowed her brows, still half asleep, and sat up, looking down. There was blood on the grey sheets, staining them dark, some on his upper thigh where she'd thrown her leg across. It was on the inside of her thighs. She never bled like this.

A cold sweat passed over her like the sensation right before vomiting. "Mulder, I'm-"

He shrugged. "It's no big deal. They're just sheets."

"No," she said, gripping his arm. "I'm really dizzy." The words felt thick in her mouth, like she'd gotten a shot of novocaine in her gums.

He put a hand on her shoulder and slowly lowered her back down to the bed, leaning over her, another hand on her brow, feeling for fever. She closed her eyes. There was a dull ache in her lower back. "Better?"

Scully took several deep breaths, then opened her eyes. "Better, yeah. Bathroom." She sat up slowly, then went to the bathroom and closed the door, sat on the toilet. She brushed hair out of her eyes and waited, closing her eyes as more tissue dripped out. As she woke up fully she took toilet paper to the inside of her thighs, shocked by the amount of blood, the clots. It was never like this.

After several minutes the doctor inside her woke up as well. She realized there was really nothing to do but wait. Her eyes fell to the cabinet under the sink. She didn't have what she needed here.

"Scully? You okay?" Mulder's voice, tinged with worry, from the other side of the door. She'd been in here for fifteen minutes.

Her eyes went to the door. "I'm fine. Will you change the sheets?"

"Already did," he called.

She wiped again and flushed, watching the bright red and black blood swirl away. She went to the door and opened it. He sat on the edge of the bed, disheveled and sleepy, shirtless, waiting for her in a pair of boxers he'd pulled on. She stood there, tense, wearing one of his large Knicks shirts.

"Mulder, I think I'm having a miscarriage," she said softly.

His eyes widened and he looked at her, swallowed. "Okay," he said, clearly trying to remain calm. "Uh, okay, I'll get the car. We'll go to the urgent care center, it's closer."

She shook her head and went to him, holding his head gently in her hands. He looked up at her, not knowing what to say. Her voice was calm for both of them. "I didn't even know I was pregnant. I don't need to go anywhere."

His eyes didn't leave hers. "Tell me what to do." His voice was small.

"Could you go to the store and get me some Ibuprofen and some maxi pads? Super absorbency, if you can find it." He nodded, pulled her close and hugged her gently, his cheek against the warm swell of her breast. She ran her fingers through his hair slowly.

"It's okay," she whispered.

After a moment of silence he swallowed again and nodded, clearly not liking the idea of not being able to take her to a hospital. He let her go. "I've got Ibuprofen here," he said, standing and going to the bathroom. His movements were nervous and rushed -bandaids, floss, and Q-tips falling onto the counter and into the sink. She couldn't stand still here anymore. She followed him to the bathroom, lifted the lid of the toilet and sat down again, taking a deep breath.

"Here you go," he said, and she took the slightly smushed package from his trembling hand, 400 milligram dosage, something left from one of their many trips to the ER. She swallowed one pill dry.

"What did you say before? Pads?" he asked, and she nodded.

"Get the maximum absorbency. There's money in my purse."

He shook his head quickly. "Don't worry about it. There's a twenty-four hour Walgreens about seven miles away. You gonna be okay?"

Scully nodded again. "I'll be fine."

He left the bathroom and she heard him getting dressed, then going to the kitchen, the sound of the tap. He came back dressed, carrying a glass of water, and handed it to her, putting his wallet in his back pocket. She took a sip and the water moved quickly and coldly down her throat. He leaned down to kiss her forehead tenderly, then smoothed a thumb over her cheekbone.

"I'll be right back."

In bed he lay spooned behind her, one arm wrapped around, his wet face nestled in her neck. The song of an ambulance from outside, orange and red lights dancing like fairies on the ceiling as it passed. Neither spoke for a long time. It had been so mundane, so calm. The thick pad was uncomfortable, and she lay on a brown towel. Mulder put a hand on her abdomen and circled slowly. "I wasn't too rough, was I? Is that what caused this?"

She thought back to earlier, her breath catching with the force of his thrust into her, then moaning at the deep pressure, wrapping her legs around him to pull him close. Her hand smoothed down his arm to cover his, still worrying over her belly. "No, Mulder. It wasn't anybody's fault. It just wasn't meant to be."

He pressed a gentle kiss to her neck, over the chip, holding it for several seconds.

She closed her eyes, knowing the timer would wake her to change the pad, and let the soothing weight of his hand on her lull her to sleep.


Birdsong from outside, a cool-pink sunrise after seven AM. She opened her eyes and looked out the kitchen window, her cheek still on his chest. The snow from the night before clung to the trees in wooly clumps, it glimmered as the weak sun bounced off it. She smiled -tired, happy, warm.

"It's a beautiful day."

He chuffed out a laugh. "Scully, I am so tired."

She tilted her head back to look at him, smiled understandingly at the exhausted expression on his face. She took his hand, large in her small one, and led him to her bedroom, to the slept-in sheets, her pajamas thrown lazily at the end. He went easily, and kicked off his shoes before climbing in. She watched him settle, wanting to join him, but something held her back. The idea of his body, resting still beside her was not a pleasant thought, even if he was warm. When Mulder realized she wasn't coming to sleep he tugged her pajama top from the foot of the bed and held it by his face, already buried in pillows, keeping the smell of her close. She patted his foot, feeling awkward, and went out of the room, closing the door most of the way behind her. The phone rang.

She rushed to answer it.

"Hello?"

"Dana?" Her mother. "I've just had a very strange call from Walter Skinner."

"Mom-"

"He tells me that Fox is alive, that he's there at your apartment, and-"

She tried to calm her mother down. "It's true, he is, don't worry."

"'Don't worry'? A man who was dead for two years is alive again? I don't believe it. You shouldn't be alone with whoever it is, Dana."

Now she could fully appreciate the complexity of the situation, but she understood her mother's concern. "Mom, I'm fine."

"I'm coming down there," her mother snapped. "Don't go anywhere with him." A clink as she hung up the phone.

The hell her poor mother had endured after Fox Mulder's death -her daughter's grief, her own, Dana's move to Richmond, the loss of a man she already considered a son-in-law...If Dana's reaction had been extreme, they were in for a whole other storm.


A/N: I hope Scully's miscarriage, which would have happened at 2-3 weeks, was written appropriately and respectfully. Thanks for reading.