This chapter was written by DearPearlie - huge thanks once again to her. I love everything she brings to this universe. Happy Halloween everyone!
Scully had never seen a being look as happy as the unique monster, the Great Mutato, did when the chorus of the Cher song began to play in the hall. That was, until the singer came down to take his hand and began to serenade him, having been told, and it being extremely evident, what a big fan he was. Nobody could keep the smiles from their faces. It had been Mulder's idea to do this, to treat their suspect-turned-victim to the concert not far from his home. Her heart warmed at the thought. It was the type of thing he would do for Ashley. Sometimes Dana Scully was absolutely taken aback by her partner's overwhelming capacity to do good in other peoples' lives.
Maybe it was the second cocktail flowing through her blood, maybe it was the atmosphere, but her hand seemed to glide of its own accord into Mulder's, even as the rest of her hesitated, when he wordlessly asked for her to dance with him. Like magnets, her buzzed body bumped against his own while the music thumped in the background. He'd thought it was a long shot. Mulder hadn't imagined, even for a moment, that when he offered his hand out to his partner, she would take it, and they would be swaying back and forth together to the music that they sensed that night on more than one level. However, it occurred to him that maybe he did. Maybe he knew that the alcohol had made her loose and that she couldn't say no to his gesture. Maybe when he had stood in front of her, head down, almost begging for her proximity, he could already feel her hand in his own. And he knew he was pushing dangerously hard against a door he had been determined to keep locked, but he didn't care. She was alive and he was alive and they were happy and together and for once a case didn't end with a hospital visit. It wasn't unreasonable for them to want to celebrate.
Mulder delicately allowed himself to look deeply at his partner's features while her face was turned toward the stage. She could feel him looking at her, but instead of feeling uncomfortable, like she usually would, she reveled in it. He could look. He had gained the ability to look.
She was there and in his arms and breathing, and that made her the most beautiful woman in the world to Mulder. Her skin was still pale, her cheeks were still gaunt, and her hair was still thin from her bouts with chemo. But across that face was the widest, most genuine smile he had ever seen Scully put forth toward anything beyond the scope of her daughter. And then she looked back at him.
Had she ever been looked at with such love? Had she ever been so admired by a male? Scully supposed so. She'd had a life once upon a time and she'd known how to make a man look at her like that. It was nice to know she hadn't forgotten, and that while she'd spent more nights than not alone since her daughter had come into the world, she could still feel that low tickle in the pit of her belly and that she could make Mulder look at her. No. Really see her.
After they'd been searching each other's eyes for God knows how long, Mulder's nose guided the rest of his face to lean close. So close, she thought he was going to kiss her. She knew what she would do in that event. There was no question there. Instead, she felt his warm breath against her ear, whispering to her. Her ears were buzzing and there was a slight ring added into the mix, but she knew what Mulder wanted when he said, "Let's go outside."
It was cold, but anywhere would have been cold after breaking from the heated exchange they had just shared. He threw his coat around her shoulders before she even had time to get chilly.
"When I was a kid, I used to pretend I was smoking whenever I could see my breath in the air," Mulder laughed, holding a mock cigarette to his lips and blowing a puff of air out into the night.
Scully just smiled and looked at her feet.
"What do you think is going to happen to him, Mulder?" she was referring to the Great Mutato.
"Well, hopefully he can live out his life in the town he was… born and raised in, without any troubles. I mean, I think he got through to the mob that night…"
"But do you think anyone will love him? Do you think anyone will love him as much as his father loved him? Or is he too damaged?"
They weren't talking about the Great Mutato and they both knew it.
"You know, Scully, we never really talked about your cancer," he went out on a pretty thin limb to bring this up.
"There's nothing to talk about."
Mulder laughed out loud, having played that sentence in his mind long before she said it.
"What do you want to talk about, then?" Scully asked, irritated that Mulder was going to ruin their nice night by bringing up the time where she should have died. "I was sick but now I'm better. I don't know how or why or what saved my sorry ass, and you know what? I don't care to."
Her partner looked off into the distance, finding himself agreeing with her. For all of his truth seeking and justice finding, he wanted to leave that chip in Scully's neck alone.
"I wasn't ready for you to die," he admitted as calmly as he could.
Scully's breath froze in her lungs.
"And I was mad at you, so mad at you sometimes, because I felt that you had given up. Especially when you invited the priest into your room and began to pray… I was mad at you for putting your science on the back burner and turning to something I felt was useless at best. But I'm sorry for that. No matter what you did, I wasn't ready. And I have to admit that I wonder more often now whether or not God heard me begging to let you live."
He didn't mean to make her cry. There were few things that could. Her face contorted and tears brimmed on the brink of her eyelids and just as they were about to fall, his arms opened wide and his soft chest was there to soak them up.
"What I would have missed," she mumbled against him, and he tightened his arms around her and rested his head on the top of hers.
"No more of this Scully," now Mulder was fighting back tears, "No more. I want you to go to Skinner and hand him your letter of resignation from the X-files. You have suffered too much and you have too much to lose and I won't let you keep doing this."
"I'm not going anywhere," she told him.
"Listen to me Scully. You have a beautiful daughter who can't afford to be without her mother. You have a family who loves you. You have a promising career ahead of you. You let me chase the monsters, okay?"
"I can't do that."
"Please Scully."
"No!"
She had pulled back from him, in fight position. Didn't he understand that she wasn't ready to lose him either?
"I can't do that, Mulder. I can't let you do this alone. This stopped being your journey a long time ago."
"Don't feed me that crap. This journey is killing you."
"One day I will find out what happened to me. I will find out why I was taken and I will find out why I was given cancer. And I will keep other women from going through what I went through. But I can't do that from behind a desk on the fourth floor, Mulder. I can't do that without the X-files. I can't do that without you. I'm alive right now and there's a good reason for that. Don't ask me to leave."
While he contemplated her words, the path she was choosing, Mulder began to shiver.
"I think we should go back inside." He respected her, but sometimes he couldn't help feeling that he had ruined her life.
"You go on ahead, I'll be right back in," Scully told him, handing him back his jacket.
And when he walked past her, Mulder wondered if Scully knew how her one decision had saved his life… again.