My last installment (finally). Sorry about the wait. It at last came to me. Hope you like it as much as I do.
The sweet smell of blueberry pancakes wafted out into the living room, invading Mulder's nostrils with the irresistible scent of any Scully family recipe. She could almost hear him drooling, and for one short moment she smiled, but then it was gone as if it was never there. Their romantic evening did nothing to change her mind; she loved him, as much was certain – in fact, she perhaps loved him now more than ever before.
She carried the cooked pancakes into the dining room, Mulder's stack nearly twice the size of hers; his appetite had always amazed her in some way. "Down, boy." She smiled, and Mulder made an obvious effort to restrain himself. When the silence was too much for them, Scully began to talk. "Mulder, I still love you."
He smiled. "I know. I have never loved a person the way I love you, and I never stopped."
"Why, then?" She asked the one question she needed the answer to, but it was the hardest one to ask.
Mulder's stomach did a lazy roll-and-flip, and he could almost imagine a gymnastics tournament going on in slow motion down there. He knew what she wanted, but couldn't quite bring himself to answer. "Why what?"
Scully, frustrated as hell, replied, "Why, Mulder, if you loved me so damn much," her calm had scared him at first, but he jumped when she began to scream through her tears, "DID YOU FUCK ANOTHER WOMAN BEHIND MY BACK!"
Slowly, he whispered, his voice cracking as he cried in shame, "I wasn't strong enough to bring us together, and I wasn't strong enough to lose you."
"Well, you did." her voice cut through him better than any knife ever could, and she regretted causing his this pain, but goddammit, he cheated on her. How could he have loved her then?
"I didn't know what to do."
His answer stunned her for a moment in it's childish logic, but she saw it was the only way he could reason out his complex feelings, and she saw it was exactly the same viewpoint she had taken. "You could have come to me."
He looked at her, then, with tears in his eyes and bruises on his heart. All the pain he had ever known was reflected in his aging eyes. "I'm coming to you now. I need you, Scully. I don't think I've ever needed you more."
Tears fell down her soft cheek, this time for a different reason. "I need you, too. My god, Mulder." She sobbed, then, and he kissed away her tears, a taste he would never forget.
Later, they would dance, and he would wrap his arms around her waist and bury his nose in her hair, inhaling the scent, remembering forever. She would float on the scent of his cologne, and he would whisper slowly in her ear, his soft breath tingling on her neck, "Promise me, Scully, that it's just you and me forever, until the sun sets on our lives and even then, it's still just you and me, me and you, past the end of eternity and long after that. Promise me we will meet in every world, and everywhere, every time, it's just you and me, me and you. Us. Always."
"I promise."
She kept it.
And so did he.
Always.
END
