A/N: I would love to thank all of you who wrote words of encouragement last chapter. It keeps me going. As always, I appreciate feedback so push the button and make it happen! I would love you all forever. Also, short chapter. School and writer's block have been plaguing me.

Chapter 2

Month fifteen, week two was difficult. Mulder was gone and wouldn't return my calls. I tried pulling credit card records but my FBI credentials were null and void. And Mulder was right; we weren't married so no one recognized me as his significant other or anyone who should matter. It was hard to accept him being God only knew where, doing only God knew what. He wasn't one to sit around calmly and let time pass. His limbs were incapable of sitting still it seemed and I had followed them wherever they had taken him, until now.

I cried for days, sobbed salty tears into shirts that had long lost his scent. I wouldn't sleep in our bed. It was cold without his warm body pressed against mine.

Month sixteen-It was raining one Saturday. I sat watching it drip from the eaves of our porch. I had opened a window, the cool air filtering in the empty space that was our home. Inhaling, I sucked in the fresh air and let it coat my lungs with life.

Over two months without him, no call, nothing. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a figure move in the foggy mist. Instantly, I was frightened. No one knew where we lived and we had no company outside of that which we provided to one another. Yanking my gun from a nearby table, I inched slowly toward the door as the doorknob began to turn. Within a few moments, the heavy oak of the door creaked on its hinges and the figured entered.

"Stop right there! Put your hands above your head slowly or I will blow you away," I yelled.

"Scully," he whispered hoarsely.

I lowered my gun and felt tears threaten to run out of their ducts and down my face.

Throwing his hood off, I saw his bearded face which was almost unrecognizable, save for those same brown eyes I had stared into so many times. I threw myself onto him and held him as tightly against myself as I could. Part of me had begun to wonder if he would ever come back or if I were to be alone again, like before. I didn't want him to exit my life, our last words to one another being angry spats-at least on my part and my refusal to say I loved him.

"Have I come back, welcomed with open arms?" he asked between kisses.

"What do you think," I smiled.

"Never hurts to ask."

I let my fingers trace the new growth on his face, his substance feeling like a stranger connecting with me for the first time. This was some other woman's man, leaner and tanner. I felt as if I were caressing someone's ghost, save for the warm radiating from him that was always able to penetrate the darkest parts of me.

"I missed you so Fox."

"Fox? You never use my first name."

"Except…?"

"When we get into an argument or during making love."

"Mmhm," I grinned. Slowly, I let my hand find him and he jumped slightly. I felt him respond to me immediately.

"So maybe you did miss me a little?" he questioned, searching me for some sign.

"Where have you been?"

If it were possible to be dissected and torn apart by a look, it was happening to me. I suddenly felt foreign in my own skin and terribly self conscious about my appearance. I could tell he was going through me, through himself to decide whether he should tell me.

"Finding myself," he replied simply. "Or rediscovering if you will."

I didn't press it. Mulder and I had always shared something silent, something that neither one of us had to let escape from our throats to know. I accepted that he needed space to understand which direction his corners were bending in the ever present whirlwind. So did I, although most times I struggled to find the right paperweights that would hold me in place.

"Did you find a new way to breathe?" he whispered.

"No," I sighed back. "I just remembered how."

Dinner was wonderful. It was nice to have another body occupying the same space as me, to have human companionship again. The two months had seemed to stretch into some sort of infinite time zone, where minutes no longer ticked off clocks and calendars now longer flipped with seasons.

We dined on a nice salad with garlic specked croutons, lasagna as the second course, soft sourdough bread and a sadly shaped tiramisu for desert. Even so, it was my best meal ever.

I'd never cooked before because it was only me in a space. Getting used to someone depending on you for many of their daily activities tends to be difficult to get used to. He never complained and always seemed genuinely grateful for what little I was able to offer.

As I sat rearranging the leave of lettuce on my plate, it hit me. Some cleansing flood of reason washed over the sand dunes in my mind and pushed away the graying rain clouds. I am not sure what made me say it but it just came out, even after my staunch disapproval at the beginning.

"Let's see William."

The words had power to throw two universes out of tandem. Once I felt them slip off of my tongue, I knew a new chapter had begun. I knew that whatever I had tried to keep organized and in order within myself had been destroyed in gone. In three words, my aging promises had been burned out of my mind and heart. The paperweights I had used to keep my edges unturned, shattered.

And the look on Mulder's face melted my soul