FADING LIGHT – PART IV

BY

AllyinthekeyofX

SUMMARY - Desire will fuel the weakest flame.

ARCHIVE - Anywhere, but please let me know.

DISCLAIMER - All characters contained within are the property of FOX and Ten thirteen productions.

FEEDBACK - Yes please. Everyone loves a review. It costs nothing but a couple of minutes of your time. The writing process takes MUCH longer and reviews make it worth it.

CHAPTER ONE

We made the remainder of the trip back to DC without further head-injury-induced incidents. In fact, we made it back to DC without really anything at all.

We had finally left our position by the lake and returned to the warmth of the cabin and while Scully had seemed a little quiet, even introspective, I didn't really think too much of it. I put it down to the emotional rollercoaster she had spent the last few weeks riding around and around without the benefit of a safety harness, not to mention the punishing days and nights she had spent keeping vigil over me and the egg sized lump that was still visible through my hair.

By unspoken agreement we both wound up in the king size bed. Scully's curtained alcove and small single was downgraded unceremoniously to a place to dump our luggage and I spent the next six or so hours with my arms wrapped around her feigning sleep as right beside me she did exactly the same. I wondered briefly if she was pissed that I hadn't made any kind of move on her; but I quickly nixed the idea. Scully is a doctor, none practising sure but a doctor nonetheless and she is as adept at reading my state of health as she is at cataloguing the stomach contents of a recently deceased stiff, right down to individual pizza topping and whether they had a preference for thick crust or thin and crispy. And given the magnitude of the headache I'd experienced earlier which still echoed distantly behind the four-hourly pain meds she had insisted I took whether I felt I required them or not, I think we both knew that my brain needed all the blood it could get right now and to send it rushing south would in all probability cause me to pass out. Not exactly how I wanted to reintroduce myself to her it was fair to say.

But as the night wore on, the emotional connection we had shared just a few hours before as I held her beneath the stars began to fade, in fact I swear I could actually hear the sound of bricks clinking together as she quietly and thoroughly began building her walls back up even as she laid there beside me; the patented Dana Scully fortress that she was so adept at hiding behind, throwing up the drawbridge and readying herself to defend it from both friend and foe; effectively shutting herself off.

But for the life of me I couldn't figure it out because the feeling I got from her as that long night wore on, the vibe if you like, was achingly similar to how she had been right back at the beginning of our partnership; the way she had resolutely set her jaw and insisted over and over again that she was fine. Always fucking fine and it's a pattern that has repeated itself more times than I care to remember over the years, the difference being though that as time has wore on I have always been able to see past her denial and to a certain extent ignore it; my analytical mind able to see inside hers and break down her tightly guarded emotions in to easily manageable chunks to work on individually until her defences eventually crumble. She has always given me that at least. Until that night, as I held her in my arms, soft and pliable against me, for the first time in our long and complex relationship, I couldn't read her. So completely had she retreated from me that she may as well have been in another room rather than breathing quietly beside me.

And even when I had whispered her name, a question in my tone that pierced the silence between us and hung in the air, awaiting some kind of response from her, there was nothing.

I had hoped – no expected – that by the time dawn heralded the coming of a new day, she would have had a chance to process; to start to catalogue recent events in that singularly perspicuous way of hers. Using her rationalisation like a protective shield to explain her own version of the unexplainable; but truthfully she seemed as empty and as lost as I have ever seen her. To an outward observer she would have appeared completely normal in the way she fussed over me; ensuring I ate, drank, took my meds. Her hand on my forehead checking me for any signs of fever, lightly berating me when I admitted to feeling a little nauseous during the drive home because I hadn't mentioned it earlier.

Stopping the car so we could take a walk in the fresh air, entwining her hand in mine because it was what she felt was expected of her, not because she wanted to and all the time she smiled that smile at me with her lips but not her eyes. Oh yeah, normal didn't really cut it right now.

In fact she just looked lost; and I didn't know how to reach her.

By the time we arrived at my apartment, my apartment not hers, she looked like she was about ready to break in to pieces in front of me. Fatigue had begun to strip away her carefully created facade of normality and truthfully I think that maybe, just maybe, if I'd pushed hard enough I might have got to the core of what was bothering her so deeply that she felt the need to shut me out completely. But knowing her like I do I was also painfully aware that if I even went just the tiniest degree over what she might be comfortable divulging, that she would rebuild those damn walls quick time this time replacing bricks with reinforced steel girders and then there would be no reaching her at all.

So, trusting my instincts in the complete absence of anything else remotely tangible I backed right off. Both physically and emotionally; giving her the space she obviously desperately needed.

And to a certain degree at least, it worked. She became slightly less guarded over the following days although she still kept me at arms length, calling every few hours to make polite small talk as to how I was feeling, was I sleeping, eating, taking care of myself? And I was slightly heartened to hear the genuine concern in her voice. Whatever was going on with her, I was pretty sure I wasn't exactly the cause – at least not in any obvious way.

She had returned to work a couple of days after we returned from Tennessee, a decision that didn't sit too well with me. Because I knew, oh yeah I knew, that the minute she arrived in our office, she would gravitate straight to the damn filing cabinet and pull out the file that bore her name, a file that had continued to thicken as the years went on, neatly type-written sheets that coldly catalogued just what the cost of my quest had been on her. The abduction, her coma, her sister, her cancer, the children created from that which had been stolen from her even as she came to terms with never becoming a Mother herself, the insidious way in which her life had been invaded, casually used and then discarded as though she were merely a lab rat to be experimented on, a pawn in a game that seemingly had no standard principles of behaviour; or at least not in any tangible way.

She had read through the file before, several times, and each time I had seen how it affected her as she resolutely refused to discuss it with me. I had never pushed her; maybe I should have.

Even better than that, maybe I should have removed the fucking thing from the office and burned it long ago. Because whatever she might feel whenever she read it, she could never be defined by what was in that file, that she was more, so much more than a fucking X- File. I should have removed it; destroyed it. But I hadn't. In fact, that piece of folded cardboard now bore witness to the events of the last seven months by the new reports I had added. And by doing so I had added substance to her fears that everything that she would ever be was all bound together in that terrifying bundle of photographs and paper.

She would never tell me she had read it; of that I was fairly certain. But I just knew. I just knew that she would use this opportunity to pore over it whilst I was out of the picture on medical leave; waiting for my battered brain to stop playing depth perception tricks on me and for the headaches to abate.

So in all honestly, as much as I had hoped it wouldn't happen, I was unsurprised when her tightly constructed armour began to unravel and she went in to freefall although I was slightly surprised at the methods she had chosen.

My cel had rung at just before 11pm and initially, since I couldn't immediately think who else would call me at all, let alone at such a late hour, I had assumed it was Scully. As it turned out I couldn't have been more wrong because actually, the voice on the other end of the phone belonged to Mike Calvert, the owner of Callahan's – a bar that Scully and I often frequented after a particularly trying day, a way to unwind before heading home. We generally didn't stay for much more than an hour at a time – just enough time for me to down a beer and Scully to daintily work her way through a spritzer or tall glass of something feminine and Scullyesque. Neither of us were big drinkers.

Yeah right.

Mike sounded vaguely embarrassed as he apologised for calling me, explaining that he had pulled my number off Scully's phone and would I mind coming and picking her up because currently she was too drunk to stand and well, he needed to shut up shop for the night.

She was drunk. Not tipsy, not gently inebriated or wobbly on her legs.

No, Scully was apparently drunk enough to be gravitating towards unconsciousness or the back of a police cruiser, whichever happened to come first.

I was off the sofa and grabbing my car keys before he had even finished speaking.

Christ almighty Scully what the hell are you doing?

Continued chapter 2

Notes – See I promised Saturday. And it's Saturday lol. Hope you enjoyed. Keep those reviews rolling in. :D

I will buy you a spritzer if you do!

Ally x