dislcaimer: not mine, don't sue
She remembered, but not for the first time since she left, that she still had his key. To his apartment. To his heart.
And as she moved through the airport, she could feel herself getting stronger.
Un-dying.
Like He was a magnet.
"I need a one-way to D.C.," she told the flight arranger at the counter. She said it with such an air of confidence and definity that he looked up from his computer (as arrangers hardly ever do) and into her eyes.
Dana Scully's eyes.
The ones that were un-dying.
They were smiling and so was she.
Because she had made a promise.
To herself.
I promise I won't run away from Mulder.
That I will continue my Life.
I need a one-way. Because I'm never coming Back.
"Alright, then. There's a flight leaving at 6:30 tonight. I'm sorry, all the others are booked."
"All the others?"
"All the others."
"Is there an indirect flight to D.C.? Anything, I just have to get to D.C., and I don't think I can wait until 6:30," she explained.
She couldn't.
She didn't trust herself to keep that promise until 6:30.
"I'm sorry, ma'am, there's nothing," the man said. He couldn't help but feel for Scully, with her un-dying eyes that were still A Live, but in despair. He could tell she was running away from something.
Or toward something.
But what he didn't know was that she was doing both.
Running away from her ghost… the shadow of her life.
And running toward her present and future… the man she shared a history with, the man she shared a forehead with, the man she shared a soul with.
Back to her Life.
Back to Him.
"Okay. Thank you," Scully told him. She felt like being mad, but she didn't know who to be mad at. There was nobody to blame for there not being a flight. She couldn't blame herself (even though this was all her fault to being with) because she had decided it was time to heal.
There
Was
Nobody
To
Blame.
Not like in the movies.
She wanted to cry but Dana Scully, no matter who she was or where she was, didn't cry. That was something she didn't feel like giving up right away. Her ability to cry. Or her inability to cry. There were some things she still needed control over. So she sat down in the terminal and Waited.
In the time since he had left, Fox Mulder had done two things.
1) he cleaned out his apartment and was preparing to move out of it
and
2) he wrote his letter of resignation from the FBI.
He hadn't sent it yet. There was something inside of him that always told him to wait one. more. day.
Like he waited for Her.
And his day had come.
Maybe he would get lucky again.
Then he remembered that the fates and the playful gods were plotting against him.
Still he kept the letter.
He knew that what he had done was wrong. An agent getting into a physical confrontation with another agent is number two on the list of things NOT to do in the FBI.
Right under having a sexual relationship with your partner.
Perhaps the FBI would just fire him.
Then he could live the rest of his days under a viaduct or bridge somewhere in the city… begging for food and muttering about aliens and conspiracies. Mulder inwardly laughed because that was what a lot of people had expected to become of him.
The crazy bum.
Just
Like
In
The
Movies.
But that was absurd.
Because
Real
Life
Is
Not
Like
The
Movies.
There are no happily ever afters. There are no second chances. There are no opportunities. There are no crazy bums muttering about aliens under the viaduct.
No.
Because what Mulder realized is that happily ever after comes at the end of the book, but nobody tells you what happens next.
And that second chances frequently turn into wasted opportunities.
And that those crazy bums are not muttering about aliens.
They are muttering about how hungry they are and other bum things.
For Mulder, that was Proof.
Proof that
Real
Life
Is
Not
Like
The
Movies.
He went about his day, his mind never really leaving Chicago and never really leaving Her.
He existed only enough in the Real World to get by. For now, his history would consume him. The history that no longer contained a present and future. Only past. As far as Mulder was concerned, this was the End of the road.
This isn't about you.
But it was.
Because it was his Body and his Mind and his Wrinkles (that she gave him) that missed her. That wanted her. That needed her.
And he swore up and down that he would never live in the present again. He would stay in the past, with her, with his sister.
The past can't be controlled, but what he remembered of it could be.
The present and the future are unpredictable.
And empty now.
So when he drove to the airport and bought a ticket to Salt Lake City, it was in a fog (Skinner had not gotten involved this time). A sort of last-ditch effort to conserve his present and future. Though he had given up, the part of his brain that put him on auto-pilot that day hadn't.
Auto-pilots never know when to give up. That's for the regular pilots.
Perhaps it was because Lucy had not spoken to him since they got back.
Perhaps because it was his 147th time listening to Her answering machine.
Perhaps because that's just what you do when you Love somebody
That
Much.
You go on auto-pilot for them.
"One-way to Salt Lake City, please," he told the woman at the counter.
I need a one-way. Because I am never coming Back.
He said it with such helplessness and depression that she had to look up.
"Sure, sir. One leaves in about fifteen minutes."
Mulder's wrinkles stared at her. They laughed at her.
We did this to him.
We are what She did to him.
It was true.
"Thank you," he took his ticket and sat down. He traced over the gold writing with his thumb. He was going to Salt Lake City for Her. Even though he didn't expect to get her back.
She was like a magnet.
And the thought that he could perhaps be around her but never see her or touch her and never, ever love Her made him die a little more inside. Not like it wasn't dead enough already.
Maybe next life.
And he smiled because she didn't believe in that kind of thing.
