Dark Conversation - Requested by Anonymous - January 30th, 2019
Post Season 9 / Pre IWTB - Suicidal Thoughts
"Y-you thought about it?" The words clung to his lips lightly before coming out all the way. As if they themselves knew he didn't actually want to know the answer to that question. His palms felt sweaty. His knees felt weak. The world seemed a little crueler than it had a moment ago.
"Mulder, I didn't want to start anything. I just don't want you throw this away," Scully stammered, embarrassed by her own impulsive confession.
They'd been packing up their belongings so they could move into their new house. Not that they needed to do much of the work, their apartments had long ago been declared uninhabited. Mulder didn't realize the intense sentimental value he threw into the donation pile until Scully yelled "No!" and grabbed out an old, striped-blue shirt and clutched it to her chest. He wouldn't have thought much of it if it wasn't for the tone in her voice when she said 'no.' And, as always, he couldn't let it go.
Curiosity killed the cat, so what did it do to the Fox?
Gave him answers he wasn't ready to hear. That's what.
He wore that blue shirt to work when he wanted to look business casual.
She wore it as a lifeline when she laid in his bed and wanted to kill herself.
"You-Did you try?" Part of him wanted to sew his mouth shut to stop himself from asking these questions. God, he needed to sit down.
"No, Mulder," she pacified with vulnerable anger, sorting through boxes as if she had a vendetta against him while making sure the fabric that started all of this was securely tucked away. "I just laid in your bed, clung to that shirt like if I held it tight enough, you'd materialize in it, and when you didn't-" she paused, swallowing hard. "I thought you were dead, and I wanted to be too."
He felt frozen to the spot. Bombarded with imagery he never wanted to see.
Scully with her gun to her head. Scully choosing what support beam was strongest. Dana Scully, medical doctor, using her degree to choose a vein on her wrist, a prescription high enough to be painless. Maybe she wanted the pain.Maybe pain wouldn't have been different from what she was already feeling.
Apparently these were private moments she wanted to keep in the past. As if telling him was as intimate as reading from her diary. It was. "I just-I just-I missed you. So, so much it was unbearable," she whispered, her voice breaking on the last word. She stopped moving the boxes, overcome with emotion, and he took it as an opportunity to swoop in and bring her into a hug. He was relieved to feel her arms come up around his back.
"I've thought about it too," he whispered into her hair. He felt her tense under his touch before soothing him with her own. He knew she was uncomfortable and didn't want her to think she was alone or that he thought of her any differently.
They were silent for a moment before he felt as much as heard her ask, "When?"
"A few years after Samantha. I thought about it, I got pretty close too, but," he shrugged.
"But?"
"I hadn't learned it's physically impossible to drown yourself yet," he replied with a morbid laugh.
Her eyes darted up to meet his and he wondered if it was possible to drown in her tears. "You tried?"
"I failed." he emphasized. It didn't give her much solace, her lip just quivered and she clung to him like a life raft.
"Wait, how long after Samantha-"
"I was fourteen."
They both stood there for a moment completely silent, the only sound in the room being her sniffles against his shirt. The weight of the knowledge that they may have never been together because of their own hands hung heavily in the air.
"Then I thought about it when you were abducted. I just thought you were gone forever and it was my fault-"
She cut him off with a gentle shushing sound as she grabbed his face in her palms, forcing him to look down at her. "It wasn't your fault. I'm here and I'm never going to leave you."
"Neither will I," he repeated with sincerity.
She decided she didn't need to hang onto the shirt after all.
She had something better.