Title: Tonight I've Watched
Author: Emily Todd Carter
Genre: MSR/UST, Angst
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: It's not like anyone who matters will
read this, much less sue me.
Summary: 5/? (Takes place around 5th or 6th season) A
bullet taken one chilly November evening leads to the
merging of two separate paths, two separate people
already walking side by side.
NOTE: This takes place right where Chapter 4 left off...
OTHER NOTE: The microscope is really in the office in a few of the episodes...look for it.
I entered the office while shedding my coat, pausing behind Scully to stare at the man standing in the back of the room. With his back turned to us, he seemed oblivious to our presence and completely absorbed in something atop the file cabinet.
"Can we help you?" Scully asked with a hint of negativity.
Startled, the man jumped and almost dropped whatever it was he had just lifted from the cabinet. Turning, his face reddened behind his glasses, a sharp contrast to his sandy blonde hair.
"I'm sorry to intrude, really. The office was empty when I came down, and I was about to leave when I noticed this microscope on your shelf."
He paused. I glared at him.
"Where did you get this?" he asked.
I kept glaring. "And you are...," I said, feeling slightly less than exuberant.
"Oh, yes, I'm sorry," he replied, crossing the office with the microscope. He extended his hand to Scully and smiled. "Dr. Randall Miller, Pathology."
She forced a smile in return and accepted his hand. "Scully," she said.
"I assumed as much," he grinned, pointing the microscope in the direction of her hair. She nodded slowly and glanced at me. Miller stepped toward me and reached forward.
He was tall, yet slightly shorter than me, and perhaps a little older, though not by much. He wore the standard black coat, badge, and pinstriped tie, his sleeves tightly buttoned and shirt neatly pressed.
"Mulder," I said, shaking his hand. "And it was here when they gave me the office."
He seemed slightly puzzled for a moment, but quickly recovered. "Ah, yes. Well, I don't suppose you wish to sell it then. It's quite beautiful, wouldn't you say? An early Leitz brass and black, three-lens turret still intact. 1921 model, if I'm not mistaken." He continued to gaze at the antique, turning it to inspect every side while adjusting his glasses.
I closed the office door behind me and hung my coat on the hook. Crossing the room to my desk, I lowered myself into the chair and lay back, crossing my ankles on the countertop. Scully glared at me from across the room. Crossing her arms, she interrupted Miller's fascination.
"Is there something you need?" she led, nodding toward a sheet of paper in his other hand.
Sighing, he glanced at the paper, his face lighting up. "Oh, yes, of course." He smiled. "I assume that you've been informed of your temporary reassignment to my division."
She nodded impassively, an obvious display of her unenthusiastic attitude and a sharp contrast to his apparent exhilaration about...everything.
"Well, I thought I'd show you around your new office, maybe help you get settled in before Monday."
She arched her eyebrows in surprise. I spoke up before she could reply.
"She's about to ask if that office comes with a desk," I smirked, staring at her.
She turned and glared at me before responding to Miller's proposal. "Sound's great." She approached the desk to set her stack of papers beside the computer. With a final, unreadable glance in my direction, she allowed the man to guide her out the door of the office.
Miller turned to close the door with a nod in my direction. "Nice meeting you, Agent Mulder."
I mumbled some inaudible reply before the door shut with a click.
The office was silent once again.
I couldn't shake the image of the man guiding my partner out of the door.
She didn't flinch.
The biting chill of Washington in December whipped across my cheeks as I paced out onto the corner of Pennsylvania and 10th. Shoving one trembling hand into the pocket of my coat and waving the other at the onslaught of rush hour cabs, I stepped onto the curb. I paused for the customary mêlée between the oncoming taxis and slid gratefully into the warm backseat of the victor.
Sighing, I said, "Alexandria, please," to the driver and lay by head back upon the cushion.
Leave it to the FBI to issue fleet sedans with defective transmissions.
I had been greeted at 7:23 that morning by such a new discovery in my car and had been forced to call a cab in order to arrive at work before eight. Pissed as I had entered the office, I left my frustrations at the door upon the familiar sight of Scully behind my desk once again.
So quickly did my exasperation return, as I was stunned so many times that day by her offhand refusals to reply to the simplest of requests, the way she cringed whenever I drew near enough to touch her.
I had presumed that her detached demeanor could only have been a result of her injury or month-long absence until she had allowed that obnoxious man to lead her slowly from the office...
I lifted my head from the cushion and stared absently at the park outside the frosty window. Normally, I wouldn't have expected myself to notice such a trivial thing, much less react to it. But, today hadn't been a normal day, and Scully had been even more distant than normal.
She had been injured, yes. But she had been hurt, too.
The cab passed the park and turned at an intersection, barely avoiding a stray pedestrian in the process. My thoughts drifted to Scully's unclaimed coat still draped across the back of the desk chair when I left. She hadn't returned after leaving with Agent Miller earlier that morning.
The day had passed even more slowly than usual, of course, and I had attempted to occupy my time by finishing the task of cleaning my desk that she had begun. Of course, this had taken up the remainder of the day, and a stack of files still remained to be sorted.
Scully would have been impressed, though. Had she been acting normally.
But something was off...something wasn't right. Given, Scully's dispositions could be unpredictable at times--I had come to accept that fact years ago. And she had never been exceedingly comfortable with my constant invasion of her personal space, but...
I closed my eyes to the onslaught of memories of the day...
The coarse fabric of her coat shying away at my touch.
Her eyes cast downward, not daring to meet my gaze, as she walked slowly into the office to leave me alone, confused in the sudden chill of the elevator.
The way she had almost seemed relieved to be leaving me. Almost as if something had changed while she had been away, some wall had been obstructed between us while my back had been turned, unaware.
That night in the hospital, she had seemed so distant, as if some surreal hand had been keeping her away, safe, from me and from death. Had she grasped that hand as she had held mine so precious few times before?
Was it leading her away from me to protect her? Or was she willfully taking a different path, separate from the one we had shared for so brief a time?
I hesitated as the cab approached the bridge to Alexandria.
I don't want to do this alone. I don't even know if I can.
I spoke before I could convince myself otherwise.
"Actually, ya know, uh, let's go to Georgetown. Let's go to Georgetown."
It was already dark when I jogged up the stairs to Scully's apartment building, nodding to her landlord as he held the door for me. The warmth of the white-walled hallway was almost comforting as I passed the golden-numbered doors to reach the stair.
The carpeted passage to her apartment seemed endless; the journey took seconds. My hand instinctively reached to my coat pocket for the key, but I hesitated.
I had let myself into her apartment so many times before without a second thought. So many times before...
But that morning she had pulled away. And that day she hadn't returned.
I would wait outside the apartment. She wouldn't be long.
Placing my hands in my pockets, I rested upon the door and glanced at my watch.
Perhaps I should have brought her something, bought an excuse for my impulsiveness. She had seemed to grow tired of alternating between pizza and Chinese during the past month, though. Besides, bringing her dinner might have been misinterpreted as an indication that I still considered her injured rather than capable of caring for herself.
God, the look she had given me when I had helped her clean the desk that morning...
Perhaps that was precisely the root of her remoteness-my overbearing inclination to protect her. My obsessive tendency to treat her as fragile and incapable of providing for her own needs.
Maybe four weeks alone to reflect on what had gone wrong between us so many years ago, what had led us down this path that had kept us together-though at a comfortable distance, had been enough to realize that she needed more out of the life she had promised herself.
The life she I knew that I couldn't give her.
I waited for hours that night. My thoughts incoherent, suppressed memories resurfacing.
...So you can clear your conscience and your name?! You've been making reports on me since the beginning Scully, taking your little notes!
...Don't ask me for my trust!
My eyes remained focused upon the whitewashed wall before me, unwilling to close despite the looming fatigue. I hadn't slept well in four weeks. I hadn't eaten well in four weeks, either, and my belts had been traded in for dusty ones from college, settled on the floor of my muddled closet.
...Not everything is about you, Mulder. This is my life.
My own personal well being had been given second priority to Scully's recovery. Sleeping brought dreams of her blood spilled across the tiled floor, her sodden blouse drenching my hands.
Didn't she understand? Couldn't she tell? She may be able to function without me, but her security was the only thing that mattered to me now.
...It just doesn't hold the interest for me that it once did.
True, she had deserved a rest from the chaotic lifestyle she had chosen when she decided to follow me. But, maybe Scully had come to realize that she no longer wished to tag along on every eight hundred mile witch-hunt that sparked my curiosity. She had never ceased to exhibit her lack of enthusiasm for my ever so slightly unconventional case selections, but her façade had always been feigned...
Hadn't it?
By nine I had decided to leave, unsure of whether I was about to make a terrible mistake by confronting her about this, about us. I hadn't a clue where she would be, or whom she was with, for that matter, but drowning myself in the six-pack looming in my refrigerator was becoming an increasingly enticing prospect.
I sighed. Increasingly enticing in the respect that the biting silence would become a hum, a ringing, as I'd slowly drink myself to sleep. Alone.
I'd done it before, of course, even after we'd begun working together. The pain of the solitude numbed, if only for the night. The hangover only another excuse to wallow in self-pity.
But I knew Scully had always noticed. She never once said word, acknowledged the fact that she knew what I had done, was ashamed of the way I treated myself. Her sad glances were enough to keep nights such as those less and less frequent, though.
Because the longer we were together, the closer we became, and the miserable nights alone had been replaced by cross-country car rides and all-night debates about science and the Truth, fate and free will, and the mathematics of baseball...
I thought I had been content to stand alone until she had offered to walk beside me.
And now the hole that she had filled in my pitiful existence was empty once again.
I hadn't realized that my eyes had closed until Scully, paused at the end of the hall, had called my name.
"Mulder?"
I started forward, lifting myself from the wall as I turned to face her. She approached cautiously, puzzled.
"Is something wrong?"
I laughed, rubbing my eyes and shaking my head.
"No, no. Sorry, I must have fallen asleep," I lied, acutely aware that the time was approximately 9:13 and that I had remained more or less conscious at her door for the past three hours. She was glaring wearily at me, awaiting an explanation of my presence.
"Mulder, how long have you been here?" she asked, reaching for her keys as I moved away from the doorknob.
"Not long."
Scully looked up and met my eyes, her gaze continuing down to my coat and tie. She sighed and stepped into the apartment. I hesitated.
Her confusion was obvious. She looked at me again and asked, "Really, Mulder, is there a reason you're here? And, are you coming in?"
I nodded and followed her through the doorway, shedding my coat as she crossed the front room to hang her own in the bedroom closet. I glanced around the apartment for a moment, taking in everything that was so...Scully. Perfectly spotless, but warm and almost welcoming.
I draped my coat across the couch, careful not to disturb an opened medical journal posed on its arm. I heard her reenter the room and looked up. Her jacket removed, she was wearing a light blue blouse, cross neatly resting on the base of her neck. Eyeing me, she stopped and crossed her arms, indicating that the time had arrived for me to explain why I had come.
I paused.
"Hey, Scully, how about those Knicks, huh?"
She didn't respond, but lifted her eyebrows and sighed. I cracked a smile and folded my own arms, turning to lean against the couch beside me.
She continued to wait silently for a moment before replying.
"Mulder, if this is about plotting dissent against these "higher authorities", I refuse to-,"
She paused, reading the slight turn of my head as an assurance of the negative.
"They're not my primary concern, for the moment," I said, glaring at her as she stared defiantly at me, her hands now resting upon her hips. This silence continued for a moment before she sighed once more and crossed the room into the kitchen.
I watched as she poured two cups of water into the coffee maker and flipped the switch. Her expression, typically perturbed and exasperated in a situation such as this, was almost...resigned, or even tired. As if my presence had become stale to the extent that she barely noticed the little things that used to aggravate her to no end.
Grabbing two mugs and pouring a drop of cream into one, she emptied the coffee pot and turned it off. Padding softly across the carpeted floor, she handed me one and turned, making her way around to the couch.
"So, this is about my returning to work early, then," she said exasperatedly as she placed her coffee on the table and rested her elbows on her knees. I moved to take a seat beside her, placing my mug upon the table and lying against the back of the couch.
I crossed my arms and breathed deeply once.
"Not so much as the fact that you barely returned at all."
She made no response, recognizing the implications of my words. Our eyes locked for a moment before she leaned back, leaving her coffee for the moment.
"What exactly are you getting at, Mulder?"
I sighed and turned away, scanning the room as I formulated a response, praying for the words that would answer a question so pivotal to the events of years to come.
I'm trying to say that I want to know what I've done wrong.
I'm trying to say that I won't let this ruin us.
But, more than anything, I'm trying to say that there comes a time when two paths must eventually merge, whether to cross a river together or to meet for only a moment before continuing along two separate courses.
That time is now.
"Scully, I won't fight this alone."
I met her eyes, unwilling to let her turn away.
God, I needed her to say it. You won't be, Mulder. Of course not.
She kept her gaze locked with mine, her troubled eyes pleading. I wasn't about to allow her to speak the words I knew she had prepared, to utter those things that would send me back to sleepless nights. I wasn't about to walk through that door and leave behind the thing for which I had fought harder than ever before.
She began to turn her head away as her eyes began to shimmer, and I reached forward to gently nudge her chin in my direction, forcing her to meet my eyes.
The shimmer became a glaze, and she turned her cheek into my hand.
"Mulder..." she began, her voice strained and saddened.
Before I had begun to realize it, my head began to turn slowly back and forth.
Don't say it Scully.
God, don't say it.
The glaze formed a tear that rested silently within her eye.
Her blood was spilling between my fingers, spreading like fire across the pale blue of her blouse. Between my fingers as I helplessly, hopelessly fought to keep her with me.
"Mulder, I..." she tried, but couldn't bring herself to speak.
My head continued to shake, the room blurring as I began to feel the creeping heat of panic.
Scully, don't say it. I can't do this. Don't make me do this...
"I can't, Mulder," she whispered, the words barely audible above the deafening silence of the apartment.
...Salt Lake City Utah. Transfer effective immediately.
...You don't need me, Mulder. You never have.
I had always known that this wouldn't last forever, that this couldn't last forever. But the last time I began this, she had stayed. She had walked away and turned around, her glassy eyes pleading for a reason to remain beside me as she had for so long a time.
If only for a moment...
I stroked her cheek softly, but her tear refused to fall.
Forgive me, Scully, but I've always known that it would come to this.
I silently drew closer to her, searching her face, pleading.
If only for a moment...
I paused quietly, gathering the strength I needed to break this bond we had wordlessly established the moment we met.
The tear fell, and Scully kept my gaze for an instant-an instant irrevocable and binding, one destined to haunt my memories for solitary days to follow.
Forgive me, Mulder.
She turned away as I brushed her cheek, pulling her face from my palm. She rose, betrayed, and met my eyes, asking me to leave.
I swallowed and leaned forward, closing my eyes and resting my face in my folded palms, sighing.
Maybe in this life, she needed more than I could give.
I stood and grabbed my coat, walking briskly to the door. I turned slowly as I touched the handle, meeting her wounded gaze.
The silence was unbearable, but the words refused to come.
I quietly opened the door before me and left her still in the apartment.
Alone.
END Ch. 5
Author: Emily Todd Carter
Genre: MSR/UST, Angst
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: It's not like anyone who matters will
read this, much less sue me.
Summary: 5/? (Takes place around 5th or 6th season) A
bullet taken one chilly November evening leads to the
merging of two separate paths, two separate people
already walking side by side.
NOTE: This takes place right where Chapter 4 left off...
OTHER NOTE: The microscope is really in the office in a few of the episodes...look for it.
I entered the office while shedding my coat, pausing behind Scully to stare at the man standing in the back of the room. With his back turned to us, he seemed oblivious to our presence and completely absorbed in something atop the file cabinet.
"Can we help you?" Scully asked with a hint of negativity.
Startled, the man jumped and almost dropped whatever it was he had just lifted from the cabinet. Turning, his face reddened behind his glasses, a sharp contrast to his sandy blonde hair.
"I'm sorry to intrude, really. The office was empty when I came down, and I was about to leave when I noticed this microscope on your shelf."
He paused. I glared at him.
"Where did you get this?" he asked.
I kept glaring. "And you are...," I said, feeling slightly less than exuberant.
"Oh, yes, I'm sorry," he replied, crossing the office with the microscope. He extended his hand to Scully and smiled. "Dr. Randall Miller, Pathology."
She forced a smile in return and accepted his hand. "Scully," she said.
"I assumed as much," he grinned, pointing the microscope in the direction of her hair. She nodded slowly and glanced at me. Miller stepped toward me and reached forward.
He was tall, yet slightly shorter than me, and perhaps a little older, though not by much. He wore the standard black coat, badge, and pinstriped tie, his sleeves tightly buttoned and shirt neatly pressed.
"Mulder," I said, shaking his hand. "And it was here when they gave me the office."
He seemed slightly puzzled for a moment, but quickly recovered. "Ah, yes. Well, I don't suppose you wish to sell it then. It's quite beautiful, wouldn't you say? An early Leitz brass and black, three-lens turret still intact. 1921 model, if I'm not mistaken." He continued to gaze at the antique, turning it to inspect every side while adjusting his glasses.
I closed the office door behind me and hung my coat on the hook. Crossing the room to my desk, I lowered myself into the chair and lay back, crossing my ankles on the countertop. Scully glared at me from across the room. Crossing her arms, she interrupted Miller's fascination.
"Is there something you need?" she led, nodding toward a sheet of paper in his other hand.
Sighing, he glanced at the paper, his face lighting up. "Oh, yes, of course." He smiled. "I assume that you've been informed of your temporary reassignment to my division."
She nodded impassively, an obvious display of her unenthusiastic attitude and a sharp contrast to his apparent exhilaration about...everything.
"Well, I thought I'd show you around your new office, maybe help you get settled in before Monday."
She arched her eyebrows in surprise. I spoke up before she could reply.
"She's about to ask if that office comes with a desk," I smirked, staring at her.
She turned and glared at me before responding to Miller's proposal. "Sound's great." She approached the desk to set her stack of papers beside the computer. With a final, unreadable glance in my direction, she allowed the man to guide her out the door of the office.
Miller turned to close the door with a nod in my direction. "Nice meeting you, Agent Mulder."
I mumbled some inaudible reply before the door shut with a click.
The office was silent once again.
I couldn't shake the image of the man guiding my partner out of the door.
She didn't flinch.
The biting chill of Washington in December whipped across my cheeks as I paced out onto the corner of Pennsylvania and 10th. Shoving one trembling hand into the pocket of my coat and waving the other at the onslaught of rush hour cabs, I stepped onto the curb. I paused for the customary mêlée between the oncoming taxis and slid gratefully into the warm backseat of the victor.
Sighing, I said, "Alexandria, please," to the driver and lay by head back upon the cushion.
Leave it to the FBI to issue fleet sedans with defective transmissions.
I had been greeted at 7:23 that morning by such a new discovery in my car and had been forced to call a cab in order to arrive at work before eight. Pissed as I had entered the office, I left my frustrations at the door upon the familiar sight of Scully behind my desk once again.
So quickly did my exasperation return, as I was stunned so many times that day by her offhand refusals to reply to the simplest of requests, the way she cringed whenever I drew near enough to touch her.
I had presumed that her detached demeanor could only have been a result of her injury or month-long absence until she had allowed that obnoxious man to lead her slowly from the office...
I lifted my head from the cushion and stared absently at the park outside the frosty window. Normally, I wouldn't have expected myself to notice such a trivial thing, much less react to it. But, today hadn't been a normal day, and Scully had been even more distant than normal.
She had been injured, yes. But she had been hurt, too.
The cab passed the park and turned at an intersection, barely avoiding a stray pedestrian in the process. My thoughts drifted to Scully's unclaimed coat still draped across the back of the desk chair when I left. She hadn't returned after leaving with Agent Miller earlier that morning.
The day had passed even more slowly than usual, of course, and I had attempted to occupy my time by finishing the task of cleaning my desk that she had begun. Of course, this had taken up the remainder of the day, and a stack of files still remained to be sorted.
Scully would have been impressed, though. Had she been acting normally.
But something was off...something wasn't right. Given, Scully's dispositions could be unpredictable at times--I had come to accept that fact years ago. And she had never been exceedingly comfortable with my constant invasion of her personal space, but...
I closed my eyes to the onslaught of memories of the day...
The coarse fabric of her coat shying away at my touch.
Her eyes cast downward, not daring to meet my gaze, as she walked slowly into the office to leave me alone, confused in the sudden chill of the elevator.
The way she had almost seemed relieved to be leaving me. Almost as if something had changed while she had been away, some wall had been obstructed between us while my back had been turned, unaware.
That night in the hospital, she had seemed so distant, as if some surreal hand had been keeping her away, safe, from me and from death. Had she grasped that hand as she had held mine so precious few times before?
Was it leading her away from me to protect her? Or was she willfully taking a different path, separate from the one we had shared for so brief a time?
I hesitated as the cab approached the bridge to Alexandria.
I don't want to do this alone. I don't even know if I can.
I spoke before I could convince myself otherwise.
"Actually, ya know, uh, let's go to Georgetown. Let's go to Georgetown."
It was already dark when I jogged up the stairs to Scully's apartment building, nodding to her landlord as he held the door for me. The warmth of the white-walled hallway was almost comforting as I passed the golden-numbered doors to reach the stair.
The carpeted passage to her apartment seemed endless; the journey took seconds. My hand instinctively reached to my coat pocket for the key, but I hesitated.
I had let myself into her apartment so many times before without a second thought. So many times before...
But that morning she had pulled away. And that day she hadn't returned.
I would wait outside the apartment. She wouldn't be long.
Placing my hands in my pockets, I rested upon the door and glanced at my watch.
Perhaps I should have brought her something, bought an excuse for my impulsiveness. She had seemed to grow tired of alternating between pizza and Chinese during the past month, though. Besides, bringing her dinner might have been misinterpreted as an indication that I still considered her injured rather than capable of caring for herself.
God, the look she had given me when I had helped her clean the desk that morning...
Perhaps that was precisely the root of her remoteness-my overbearing inclination to protect her. My obsessive tendency to treat her as fragile and incapable of providing for her own needs.
Maybe four weeks alone to reflect on what had gone wrong between us so many years ago, what had led us down this path that had kept us together-though at a comfortable distance, had been enough to realize that she needed more out of the life she had promised herself.
The life she I knew that I couldn't give her.
I waited for hours that night. My thoughts incoherent, suppressed memories resurfacing.
...So you can clear your conscience and your name?! You've been making reports on me since the beginning Scully, taking your little notes!
...Don't ask me for my trust!
My eyes remained focused upon the whitewashed wall before me, unwilling to close despite the looming fatigue. I hadn't slept well in four weeks. I hadn't eaten well in four weeks, either, and my belts had been traded in for dusty ones from college, settled on the floor of my muddled closet.
...Not everything is about you, Mulder. This is my life.
My own personal well being had been given second priority to Scully's recovery. Sleeping brought dreams of her blood spilled across the tiled floor, her sodden blouse drenching my hands.
Didn't she understand? Couldn't she tell? She may be able to function without me, but her security was the only thing that mattered to me now.
...It just doesn't hold the interest for me that it once did.
True, she had deserved a rest from the chaotic lifestyle she had chosen when she decided to follow me. But, maybe Scully had come to realize that she no longer wished to tag along on every eight hundred mile witch-hunt that sparked my curiosity. She had never ceased to exhibit her lack of enthusiasm for my ever so slightly unconventional case selections, but her façade had always been feigned...
Hadn't it?
By nine I had decided to leave, unsure of whether I was about to make a terrible mistake by confronting her about this, about us. I hadn't a clue where she would be, or whom she was with, for that matter, but drowning myself in the six-pack looming in my refrigerator was becoming an increasingly enticing prospect.
I sighed. Increasingly enticing in the respect that the biting silence would become a hum, a ringing, as I'd slowly drink myself to sleep. Alone.
I'd done it before, of course, even after we'd begun working together. The pain of the solitude numbed, if only for the night. The hangover only another excuse to wallow in self-pity.
But I knew Scully had always noticed. She never once said word, acknowledged the fact that she knew what I had done, was ashamed of the way I treated myself. Her sad glances were enough to keep nights such as those less and less frequent, though.
Because the longer we were together, the closer we became, and the miserable nights alone had been replaced by cross-country car rides and all-night debates about science and the Truth, fate and free will, and the mathematics of baseball...
I thought I had been content to stand alone until she had offered to walk beside me.
And now the hole that she had filled in my pitiful existence was empty once again.
I hadn't realized that my eyes had closed until Scully, paused at the end of the hall, had called my name.
"Mulder?"
I started forward, lifting myself from the wall as I turned to face her. She approached cautiously, puzzled.
"Is something wrong?"
I laughed, rubbing my eyes and shaking my head.
"No, no. Sorry, I must have fallen asleep," I lied, acutely aware that the time was approximately 9:13 and that I had remained more or less conscious at her door for the past three hours. She was glaring wearily at me, awaiting an explanation of my presence.
"Mulder, how long have you been here?" she asked, reaching for her keys as I moved away from the doorknob.
"Not long."
Scully looked up and met my eyes, her gaze continuing down to my coat and tie. She sighed and stepped into the apartment. I hesitated.
Her confusion was obvious. She looked at me again and asked, "Really, Mulder, is there a reason you're here? And, are you coming in?"
I nodded and followed her through the doorway, shedding my coat as she crossed the front room to hang her own in the bedroom closet. I glanced around the apartment for a moment, taking in everything that was so...Scully. Perfectly spotless, but warm and almost welcoming.
I draped my coat across the couch, careful not to disturb an opened medical journal posed on its arm. I heard her reenter the room and looked up. Her jacket removed, she was wearing a light blue blouse, cross neatly resting on the base of her neck. Eyeing me, she stopped and crossed her arms, indicating that the time had arrived for me to explain why I had come.
I paused.
"Hey, Scully, how about those Knicks, huh?"
She didn't respond, but lifted her eyebrows and sighed. I cracked a smile and folded my own arms, turning to lean against the couch beside me.
She continued to wait silently for a moment before replying.
"Mulder, if this is about plotting dissent against these "higher authorities", I refuse to-,"
She paused, reading the slight turn of my head as an assurance of the negative.
"They're not my primary concern, for the moment," I said, glaring at her as she stared defiantly at me, her hands now resting upon her hips. This silence continued for a moment before she sighed once more and crossed the room into the kitchen.
I watched as she poured two cups of water into the coffee maker and flipped the switch. Her expression, typically perturbed and exasperated in a situation such as this, was almost...resigned, or even tired. As if my presence had become stale to the extent that she barely noticed the little things that used to aggravate her to no end.
Grabbing two mugs and pouring a drop of cream into one, she emptied the coffee pot and turned it off. Padding softly across the carpeted floor, she handed me one and turned, making her way around to the couch.
"So, this is about my returning to work early, then," she said exasperatedly as she placed her coffee on the table and rested her elbows on her knees. I moved to take a seat beside her, placing my mug upon the table and lying against the back of the couch.
I crossed my arms and breathed deeply once.
"Not so much as the fact that you barely returned at all."
She made no response, recognizing the implications of my words. Our eyes locked for a moment before she leaned back, leaving her coffee for the moment.
"What exactly are you getting at, Mulder?"
I sighed and turned away, scanning the room as I formulated a response, praying for the words that would answer a question so pivotal to the events of years to come.
I'm trying to say that I want to know what I've done wrong.
I'm trying to say that I won't let this ruin us.
But, more than anything, I'm trying to say that there comes a time when two paths must eventually merge, whether to cross a river together or to meet for only a moment before continuing along two separate courses.
That time is now.
"Scully, I won't fight this alone."
I met her eyes, unwilling to let her turn away.
God, I needed her to say it. You won't be, Mulder. Of course not.
She kept her gaze locked with mine, her troubled eyes pleading. I wasn't about to allow her to speak the words I knew she had prepared, to utter those things that would send me back to sleepless nights. I wasn't about to walk through that door and leave behind the thing for which I had fought harder than ever before.
She began to turn her head away as her eyes began to shimmer, and I reached forward to gently nudge her chin in my direction, forcing her to meet my eyes.
The shimmer became a glaze, and she turned her cheek into my hand.
"Mulder..." she began, her voice strained and saddened.
Before I had begun to realize it, my head began to turn slowly back and forth.
Don't say it Scully.
God, don't say it.
The glaze formed a tear that rested silently within her eye.
Her blood was spilling between my fingers, spreading like fire across the pale blue of her blouse. Between my fingers as I helplessly, hopelessly fought to keep her with me.
"Mulder, I..." she tried, but couldn't bring herself to speak.
My head continued to shake, the room blurring as I began to feel the creeping heat of panic.
Scully, don't say it. I can't do this. Don't make me do this...
"I can't, Mulder," she whispered, the words barely audible above the deafening silence of the apartment.
...Salt Lake City Utah. Transfer effective immediately.
...You don't need me, Mulder. You never have.
I had always known that this wouldn't last forever, that this couldn't last forever. But the last time I began this, she had stayed. She had walked away and turned around, her glassy eyes pleading for a reason to remain beside me as she had for so long a time.
If only for a moment...
I stroked her cheek softly, but her tear refused to fall.
Forgive me, Scully, but I've always known that it would come to this.
I silently drew closer to her, searching her face, pleading.
If only for a moment...
I paused quietly, gathering the strength I needed to break this bond we had wordlessly established the moment we met.
The tear fell, and Scully kept my gaze for an instant-an instant irrevocable and binding, one destined to haunt my memories for solitary days to follow.
Forgive me, Mulder.
She turned away as I brushed her cheek, pulling her face from my palm. She rose, betrayed, and met my eyes, asking me to leave.
I swallowed and leaned forward, closing my eyes and resting my face in my folded palms, sighing.
Maybe in this life, she needed more than I could give.
I stood and grabbed my coat, walking briskly to the door. I turned slowly as I touched the handle, meeting her wounded gaze.
The silence was unbearable, but the words refused to come.
I quietly opened the door before me and left her still in the apartment.
Alone.
END Ch. 5
