Fox Mulder associates hospitals with three things: the all-encompassing, pervasive tang of antiseptic and bleach, death and grief and his mother's tears and his father's implacable stiffness after they'd come home That Night and found Mulder near-catatonic, then rushed him to the ER to see what was wrong only for there to be no discernable answer, how he'd sobbed into his mother's chest like he hadn't done in years and told her that Samantha was gone, and it was all his fault...and Scully. And the last wasn't just because she is a pathologist, wasn't because he's driven her back to their motel from more morgues in more cities than he can count, watching her fall asleep in the passenger seat, face lightly etched from the edges of her surgical mask like laugh lines around her mouth, but because, in the now-almost two years they've been working together, Mulder was either in the hospital visiting her, or knew that when he was the patient, she'd be the one person sat right by his bedside, always, when he woke up, a universal constant he could always rely on when everything else refused to submit to logic or sense or understanding.
And this time is no different.
Because here she is, even though he has done everything humanly possible to keep her out of this, to keep her away from him because the thought of losing her is something he just can't handle, not now, not ever...and yet she's sitting at his bedside, her attention half on the magazine resting in her lap, the rest directed solely at him, like her gaze alone is enough to keep him breathing, to keep him here. It seems they're in this constant dance of finding and losing each other, taking turns but never stopping. It's emotionally draining, physically exhausting, and while Mulder hates himself for the bags under her eyes that even her glasses can't hide and the way she keeps squeezing his hand like she's trying to reassure herself he's real...he will always choose to be here, right now, like this, than go through the unrelenting, unforgiving agony of sitting by her bedside after her return, knowing every time he walked out of that room it could be the last time he ever saw her, or the months in-between, propelled by a dizzying mix of faith and hysteria into believing that there was still hope out there, that she was still out there, somewhere, even if everyone insisted otherwise.
He'd said the same of Samantha, time and time again. Twenty two years later, he was still walking into that room, only this time, she really had been there. Or, more accurately, a version of her. Because that hadn't been the real Samantha Mulder he'd seen sitting with his mother in the living room of his childhood home, incidentally the very last place he'd seen her, who had told him an incredible tale of her abduction, of being raised by parents not from this world. He'd admitted as much to his mother when she'd asked him if it was really her, had not answered her either way, unable to bear the thought of hurting her more than he already had, of her grasping a tiny glimpse of hope only for it to be cruelly snatched away from her. But his efforts had been in vain. One child gone, another in the hospital, just barely escaping death's eager clutches, and only succeeding in doing so because of the woman beside him, his amazing, brilliant partner who saw things he doesn't, in ways he couldn't, and had used that knowledge to save his life yet again.
We're going to have to start keeping track of these things, Mulder thinks idly to himself. Make a list of how many times we save each other's lives. Loser gets a free beer or a potted plant or something.
Not that he's ever been very good at keeping anything alive, himself included. He still sees it as a minor miracle when he comes home and his fish are still alive, still swimming in their lazy, unhurried circles, completely and blissfully oblivious to the toils and troubles of the guy who only ever half-remembers to feed them. Scully's always better at doing it than he is; not because he doesn't care, but because she has a better sense of perspective than he does, doesn't operate with the same myopic, laser-focused intensity that he can never seem to discard, not even when he's not on a case, brain always whirring, a machine ever-running, even if it's only fueled on stale bar peanuts or cold take-out and a half-inched bite of sandwich.
Which makes recuperation time about nine different kinds of hell for him.
His eyes are still stinging like he's had an unfortunate incident with a tub of Vicks VapoRub from exposure to the alien retrovirus, vision sensitive enough that Scully makes sure to turn the overhead light away from him as much as possible when the nurses come in to do their rounds and check his vitals, and the room doesn't even have a TV he could listen to, providing a comforting blanket of white noise to drown out his tumultuous tornado of thoughts. So his only company is himself, the quiet sound of Scully's breathing and the occasional bleep of various medical machinery, alerting him with every beat of his heart that he is a lucky son of a bitch. Far luckier than Agent Weiss, the FBI agent who died, then suffered the indignity of being stuffed in the trunk of a car and divested of his clothes just so the Bounty Hunter could fool him and Scully. The same man -no, not man, he was a thing, just because he looked human didn't mean he was, it's the first thing you learn at Paranormal Boot Camp- who had claimed that his sister, his real sister, was still alive.
What Mulder said to Scully four days ago was right: the last few days had revived his determination, had uncovered a minefield of more questions that he knows will only lead to more danger, more brushes with death, more men in dark suits with even darker pursuits and interests willing to use whatever means necessary to dissuade him from the truth; it doesn't scare him. He doesn't know anything else, how to be any other way, can't imagine having a normal life with the 2.5 kids and the minivan and the golden retriever named Skippy and the pot roast in the oven. Even before Samantha was taken, his childhood had never been the happy picture of idyllic suburbia. Dinners were like chess matches, struggling to push the pieces around, skirting around forbidden topics like his father's work or anything else resemblant of a personal nature. His sister had been too little to understand, to realize that when their parents got quiet was almost as bad as when they were loud, that being married did not mean love and commitment and enduring appreciation and affection for the rest of your days together. He is almost glad for it, that she didn't have to see what the loss of her did to them, how the fissures became cracks, spreading out until the whole thing gave way, swallowing them all up until Mulder had to put a whole oceans worth of distance between them, sure he'd go crazy if he didn't.
But he can't outrun his past, nor can he outrun the truth, the truth that sits in a body bag in some FBI morgue if it hasn't been collected already, or the in remains of a clinic that he knows where there just as much as he knows that he will never see them, see her. Mulder had thought about it a million times, what she might look like if she'd never been taken, if they'd grown up together as they should have, as they were supposed to. He hopes that she wouldn't look so sad, like she'd never known a moment's happiness, like she had not lived at all, only survived in a harsh and brutal world that wanted her dead. He's also thought about why they chose her, rather than him. Why did they find her a better candidate for their diabolical cloning programme? He was her brother, her blood, they carried many of the same genetic markers and genes...so why not take his life instead, rather than ruining hers, and everyone who loved her by extension?
It doesn't make sense. It has never made sense, and maybe that's something he should just accept, the unpredictability of life, how everything is by chance, and not omniscient design. Thomas Aquinas had it all wrong. If he took a look at Mulder's life, he'd see there was no order to it, no pattern, no great-inner working that explained every event, every choice that led to here and now.
Mulder shakes his head, the thin fabric of the hospital pillowcase scratching against his stubbled cheek. He really must be getting the good painkillers if he's letting his brain go off on such wild and philosophical and self-loathing tangents. He needs something to do, needs something else to occupy his mind, to blanket the chaos like a layer of snow; a temporary cover, for you know that the grass will push its way through soon, but for a time you can simply admire the calm and clean beauty of it, the white wiping everything else away like a clean slate. Gingerly, he moves his foot ever so slightly, enough that the blankets start a downwards shuffle off of his legs and into Scully's lap. His exhausted partner startles, magazine narrowly avoiding a collision with the floor. She raises a brow, clearly unamused by his attention-grabbing techniques.
"Was that really necessary?" She huffs, blue eyes crinkled with that mixture of annoyance and fondness that only she can achieve, constantly twitching between the two like the swinging twitch of a metronome pendulum.
Mulder nods, feeling better already just at the sound of her voice, even hoarse from lack of sleep and dimmed by professional courtesy for the staff and other patients, not to mention the fact that the clock says it's after nine in the evening.
"Absolutely. I'm bed-bound for the foreseeable future, Scully. I have to get my kicks somewhere."
She smiles, a sliver of a thing like the light peeking in through the gaps in the blinds. "Well, maybe next time try not to get your kicks by kicking your blankets into my lap."
He returns her smile and knows it to be genuine. "Noted."
Abandoning her magazine on the rolling tray beside her, Scully inches her chair closer towards him, careful not to scrape the legs over the linoleum because the noise puts Freddy Krueger's knives to shame, or so he'd told her. Her hand reaches out, smoothing away the hair sticking to his forehead. It's a very maternal gesture, one his own mother had enacted a thousand times, and yet this feels different, it feels different when Scully does it, like it's more than just a touch. Maybe it's because she's not a very outwardly affectionate person, encased in her armour of reasoning and her walls of protocol that he knows she finds comfort and reassurance in. Or maybe it's the look in her eyes, equal parts worry and anger and amusement and compassion, swirling and weaving between them all like a spinning top, never settling on one for too long before making its way back to another. She hasn't shouted at him yet, hasn't told him how stupid he was or how worried he made her, no doubt respecting his need to heal and the rawness of everything that's happened. But he knows it's coming, it's as inevitable as the sunrise or being out of clean shirts the one morning you decide to wake up and spill coffee all over yourself. Scully will give him a piece of her mind, he'll yell a little and say he had no other choice, she'll tell him that's not what partners do, he'll eventually apologize, and that will be that. On to the next case, the next theory, the next small town with a strange story or an unusual history.
Moment after moment after moment, piling on top of each other like Jenga cubes, like dominoes, and everyone knows those things tip over eventually. How many times can he go behind her back like this before she decides he's not worth it anymore, that she deserves more than the bureau basement, more than the X-Files that most times remain either unsolved, or their explanations are the fodder of hierarchical amusement, eroding at her good name and the career she's fought so desperately for? He never thought it would come to this, never thought that that buttoned-up, tiny slip of a goody-two-shoes agent would become more precious to him than anything else, even the truth he's spent almost his whole life searching for, hoping for, that he'll protect her before himself, would take any bullet or serial killer or creature or virus or unnatural phenomenon for her without a seconds thought or an ounce of hesitation. That, when it came down to it, he would choose her life over Samantha's, his sister's, even if in his heart he had known it wasn't really her.
And how does he even begin to tell her that? How could he ever explain without feeling like he was putting too much on her, burdening her with the full weight of his admiration and respect and trust and loyalty?
Because while Scully has a mother and two brothers and a sister and co-workers and cousins and friends...she is all he has, really. He has acquaintances, people he talks to, but there is no real relationship he puts any kind of effort into except theirs, except their partnership. People have come and gone, fading in and out like the end credits of a movie, but Scully has always been at the forefront, always taken center stage, and Mulder knows he'd never want her to be anywhere else.
But what about what she wants? Could their interests really be so perfectly aligned, so miraculously in sync like so many other things have been since the day they met? He doesn't think so, doesn't think he could be so lucky, knows there are limits to the leeway of the universe, and the world seems to have always really had it out for him and...
"Mulder? Mulder? Did you get lost in that big head of yours?" She is still stroking his hair, that single point of contact still flowing between them, so much more intimate and by extension fragile under the harsh fluorescent lighting and the sound of beepers going off and carts wheeling down the hall. It's occasions like this that they seem to get a little bolder with each other, after everything almost falls apart, like a part of themselves will only allow them this closeness when promoted by dire external circumstances, rather than admitting to the fact that yes, Scully just wants to stroke his hair because she can and yes, Mulder will bring her back her cross and a VHS he knows she'll complain about just so that he can hear her voice.
Mulder lets out a snort, closing his eyes as a stab of pain shoots through him, buries it under a quick, "My mind is a vast and carefully-crafted repository of knowledge, Scully, therefore naturally it should take up a fair degree of real estate."
"Naturally?" She parrots him in a disbelieving tone, "No 'Smaller on the outside, bigger on the inside' then?"
"I knew there was a nerd under all that hair."
"Please, at this rate, your hair's shaping up to be longer than mine. When's the last time you had it cut?" Scully tuts, running her fingers through the dark strands that studiously flop onto his forehead.
"I'm not sure," Mulder replies in an overly dramatic tone, "I think Reagan might have been President and..."
"I see the retrovirus hasn't diminished your sense of humour."
Mulder chuckles, allowing the warmth of their usual banter to settle over him like a well-worn blanket, loved and well-used and as familiar to him now as the creaking of front porch steps and the buzz of TV static from old Hammer Horror movie marathons of yesteryear.
In truth, it's not so much the retrovirus that's knocked him for six, but Samantha, finding her and then losing her and then finding four more of her, the Bounty Hunter's voice, devoid of any discerning speck of humanity, saying, 'She's alive. Are you ready to die now?"
Assuming an unaffected air, the agent offers his partner his best playful grin, slapping on the charm extra thick as he drawls jokingly, "Nah, nothing's killin' that, don't you worry. My bad jokes are gonna outlive the cockroaches and the Twinkies."
And, just like he knew she would, Scully takes the bait, determined to eradicate his notions of stale-resistance with a disapproving, "Mulder, you know that's not true, right? All food as an expiration date, not to mention the break down of the organic ingredients like the egg and milk, I'd hardly think it wise to ingest-"
"Okay, Doctor Scully, lecture time over," Mulder gently interrupts her, because although he truly does love the sound of her voice, even he has his limits to how much technical jargon he can stomach -pun intended- in one sitting. "Honestly, do you never stop thinking, even for a minute? It's like working with a computer. A very pretty computer, mind you, and I don't think any lump of wires and plastic could pull off a pantsuit quite like you-"
"And you have obviously had too much morphine and not enough sleep." Suddenly, her hand retracts, settles back in her eyes like it had never been, leaving him feeling inexplicably bereft, like he's lost far more than just her gentle touch. Reaching up for her cross in a gesture of nervousness Mulder now knows all too well, he watches as Scully takes a long breath, in then out, before her gaze latches onto him once more, a little of that FBI Special Agent steel working its way into those summer-sky-blue depths as she proclaims boldly, "I know what you're doing, you know. I'm not stupid, Mulder."
"I have never and will never say that you're stupid, Scully." He hopes she knows that, knows it goes beyond words, without saying. Even when he didn't trust her -which really didn't last all that long, not nearly as long as he would have expected, than what he had originally anticipated, if he ever had foreseen surrendering all of himself to her so completely and without mercy- he trusted her intellect, her rational ams succinct medical opinion
"In the realms of science, maybe," she acquiesces with a shallow dip of her head, "but you're the profiler, the one with all the insight into human behavior; sometimes I think you forget that I can notice things as well. About you. About what you do when you're hurting. So, I'll present the opportunity to you instead...what's on your mind, Fox?"
"You never call me Fox." Fact, concrete as the parking lot beneath them, as the bed behind his back feels. She's only ever done so once, and then never again, respecting his preference on the matter, one he had not indulged himself in divulging the true depth of his reasoning. Maybe now is the time to tell her.
"This isn't going to be a Mulder kind of conversation, I don't believe," Scully remarks diplomatically, rubbing tiredly at her eyes with the pads of her fingers. Carefully, so as not to jostle the plethora of tubes and wires sticking out and leading from him -this is going to be an important conversation, he can feel it, and he doesn't want them to be interrupted by some nurse trying to stick his IV or whatever back in his arm- he pats the tiny crevice of space between him and the bed's railing, a silent invitation; his spinal cord remembers the discomfort of hospital chairs all too well, he was honestly and genuinely surprised he could still maintain an upright posture after all the nights, and days, and more nights he spent sleeping and worrying and occasionally crying in one.
She doesn't say a word, simply takes off her boots and places them at the side of the bed where no one will be likely to trip over them -Dana Scully, ever of conscientious heart and spirit- and gets situated beside him, navigating his tangle of wires far better than he had when their roles were reversed all those months ago. Her head hits the bottom corner of the pillow, is more on him than the flimsy, under-stuffed fabric, and it settles him, grounds him, even with the scent of an unfamiliar shampoo filling his nose- it's not like he gave her much time to pack before he harred off to Alaska for parts and people unknown- and the polyester-static itch of her heavy-duty sweater.
"How accurately deduced, Dana," Mulder says without looking at her once she is settled against his side, hazel-green eyes instead fixed on the ceiling like he can see all the way into space, to wherever Samantha might be. "And you're right, I do have a lot on my mind right now, so much so in fact that I don't even know where to start. Where do I start, Scully? How do I accurately summarize the events preceding my incarceration in this fine establishment?" He doesn't intend to sound bitter, does not mean to come off as jaded and haggard and world-weary like he's seen the earth at the brink of collapse only to be saved at the very last second. But it's all getting just a little bit much. How many more hits can he take, realistically, before he gives up, before he gets down on his knees in front of The Powers That Be and waves a white flag of surrender? How many times can he put himself in the line of fire and watch his partner walk through the flames beside him before there is nothing left of him or them but ashes and dust and memory?
"One day I'm working a case like any other, only to find out about cloning and genetic experimentation sanctioned by the government. Then I get a call from my mom saying that my sister's come back and when I talk to her she tells me this crazy story about being raised by 'visitors' and then I'm worried about you and I'm right to be because you get attacked in your motel room and then kidnapped and I'm forced to trade my sister's life for yours only for her body to go off a bridge and then dissolve right in front of your eyes. Afterwards, when I think she's dead and it's all my fault and I've had a good cry in front of my dad in my apartment, I find four more of her in some clinic and they want me to save them. They want me to save them, Dana, and what do I tell them, these people who look like the sister I thought was gone forever? I tell them no, like the selfish cowards I am, because I just don't know if I'm strong enough to go through all that again, to lose her again, even if it is just a copy or a clone or whatever the hell she was. Only to almost get burned alive.
"After that, I go to Alaska and find a submarine frozen in the ice and get attacked and left for dead by some guy who isn't even human. Yeah, Dana, I think that about sums it all up. I'm hurt and I'm angry and I'm confused but most of all...I feel like I'm losing her, all over again." The words crackle out of him, thought given life, given texture, his deepest, darkest fear made manifest in a puff of carbon dioxide and regret. "That I'm twelve years old, paralyzed by fear, watching as my baby sister gets dragged out the window in a beam of light and some voice in my head tells me they'll bring her back, like that makes it okay, that it was justified. Like them taking Samantha served some greater purpose, when I know all it did was destroy my family, destroy myself and any possibility that I might grow up normal, and happy, and have some kind of a life that doesn't involve chasing down aliens and getting into fistfights with monsters."
Silence holds court over the room, takes the reins of the conversation, and for a moment he's glad, because that really wore him out and he doesn't think he's ever been so open and honest in his whole life, to anyone, than he has just been to her. It's not a scary thought, or an unpleasant one, but it still requires some thought and consideration to process. There are lines between them, crafted out of professionalism and personal security, because there are some things Mulder has simply never been able to share, to think of, not even in the privacy of his own mind, and he has suddenly gone and laid them out at her feet like an offering to some ancient goddess, hoping she doesn't smite him, or worse, see him differently, as something lesser. His belief is the backbone of his resolve, but her faith in him is the foundation that everything rests upon, the pillar holding him up when everything else feels like it's crumbling down.
"I've never actually seen you in a fist fight," is what she says, eventually, so very not-her; it's so very him, that casual, almost subconsciously instinctual deflection, refracting the attention somewhere else like light coming in through a telescope, illuminating your bedroom rather than your intended target, the night sky.
Mulder ignores the phantom deflating sensation he feels in his chest, the balloon of his hope -intentionally or not- pin-pricked by her unexpectedly flippant words. "Figure of speech, Scully."
His tone alerts her to more than he is willing to share, he knows because suddenly she's reaching out, the tips of her fingers grazing the curve of his jaw, so careful not to make contact with the bruised and still-healing tissues around his swollen eyes. "Fox...you know you can't blame yourself," Scully beseeches him, pleads with him, sweet and soft and sympathetic. She has no idea what he's been through, the pain he has been subjected to, all of which he feels he deserves, and yet she is just as genuine as if she has, as if she has lost a sister and has felt this exact same shade of blame, this corrosive hue of guilt that has seemed to stain his very soul since the age of twelve. "You were only a child, it wasn't your job to protect her; it was your job to love her, and you did. Anyone can see it, even people who don't know you, only your work, they can see how much it means to you, that it's about more than just unveiling conspiracies or hypothesizing on the paranormal. Your whole career..." Dana sighs, tilts her head, her breath whispering over his cheek in a feather-light caress as she murmurs, "It's like a love letter to her, telling her you didn't give up, that you still think about her all the time. Even now, with decades having gone by, your conviction still glows just as brightly. It's why those women came to you in the first place, because they could see it, and trust it, and know that you would do whatever it took to keep her safe."
"Yeah, and look where it got them. They're dead, Scully, they're all dead. And I could have done something, I should have done something. I'm an FBI agent, an officer of the law: even if I didn't believe them, I was duty-bound to offer them my protection when they needed it the most."
"But you would have died. You would have died if you'd stayed in the building," she insists, and he swears he can feel her tears on his neck, soaking into his hair. His hand clasps her forearm and doesn't let go. "You would have," Mulder admits quietly, barely audible over the sound of machines doing their thing. "You would have stayed and tried to save them." He knows it, without a doubt. Scully could never turn back on anyone in need, hippocratic oath or not; she's too good and moral not to. It's one of the things he loves most about her, how she'll bandage up cut hands and check on flu-woozy agents, offer them a cup of tea and a lozenge even if just the other day they'd called her names when they thought she couldn't hear.
"Maybe," Scully agreed, a small victory in and of itself. "Maybe I'd be the one in a hospital bed too, or worse." Worse. Indeed, there is so much worse, things out there, situations he never wishes to repeat, not for anything in the world, not even Samantha and he hopes that, if his sister is still out there, she could understand and not be hurt by it. "All that matters is that you're here, and you're alive, and that we both know we did all we could, for Samantha and for the clones of Dr Prince. We might not have succeeded, but at least they didn't die thinking they were alone."
"That's a nice thought." He tilts his head down so he can look at her more fully. "Do you really believe that?"
Scully shrugs, her chin bumping into his collarbone like an awkward teen meet-cute. "Not really. But if I don't, I think I'll go crazy. Two can play the Blame Game, after all." Her hand begins trailing up his arm, resting on the chest of his blue hospital gown, right over his heart. "I should have known it wasn't you."
It seems his bout of over-sharing is contagious.
"I should have known, Mulder," she insists, pulling on his hospital gown slightly, weaving it between her fingers like she needs something to hold on to, like if she tugs hard enough she'll get the answer she wants from him -she wants him to condone her guilt, he can see it in her face, the grim line of her mouth and the furrow of her brow, would rather have hik blame her than himself, and he can't bear to, this is the one time he will not give her what she wants. She has never been the author of his misfortune, only the historian to doodle hearts in the margins and smiling faces in the footnotes, breaking up the heartbreak monotony of pain until the story of his life reads a little less like a tragedy, and more like an actual life.
"You have never looked at me like that, not ever. Like you don't see me, like I'm not even there, like I'm made of glass you just want to break through to get to whatever it is you want, not caring if you trample right on over me. There's always such a light on you, even when you're sad or you're angry or you're desperate, you never don't look at me like I'm not the most important person in the room."
'Two paths diverged in a yellow wood, and I- I took the one less traveled by.'
It's like a gameshow, and he's the contestant, trying to figure out which door leads to the thousand dollar prize and the supposed 'lifetime's supply' of something inane like fruit cups or protein shakes. Does he tell the truth, the truth in his heart, does he tell her everything he's just thought about and see where it goes, where it could lead, if it ever even could lead anywhere, or does he maintain the status quo, sit in the middle of the boat rather than rock it trying to catch a glimpse of the horizon? Does he bring her closer, can he be content with the knowledge that doing so will put her life in even more jeopardy than their association has already caused, has cost her?
"Well, excluding a circumstance where we were in a room with say, Elvis or Carl Sagan or Captain James T. Kirk... I'd say your theory holds up pretty well."
There's your answer. A little truth, but also a whole lot of nothing, filler in a pastry, seeping out onto the plate to hide his gooey center, his Achilles heel in three inch platforms.
"It does?"
Mulder nods, suddenly so very hyper aware of how little space is between them now that he's ordered himself not to do anything about it, about them. "It does. Especially when we're in budget meetings; you're the only thing that keeps me awake."
She rolls her eyes, mouth curling in a teasing smile as she chides him, "Like it's not your fault we even have to be briefed on proper departmental spending with all your miscellaneous 302s you make the department dispense like dime store candy."
"My head would look good on a PEZ dispenser," he muses, laughing when Scully nudges him playfully in the ribs. A few seconds later, a hand goes to her face like she can physically suppress her yawn, shove it back into her body like a file going back in a drawer.
"You tired?" he asks her, feeling more than seeing her nod against his chest. "A little. There was a wait with your lab results and I didn't want to miss the doctor." She really must be tired if she's actually admitting she's tired; stubbornness comes as naturally to her as finding the most crazy geometric ties comes to him.
It's his turn to scold her now. "Scully, you know you have to make sure you're taking care of yourself. Trust me, you do not want to be joining me here." He can't see her in a hospital bed, it's too soon, he still has nightmares about it sometimes, of finding her like that, in that bed, only it's too late, they've taken her off life support and she's gone and there's nothing he can do for her except hold her hand and wait for the end and hope she somehow takes him with her, because what's the point of doing this, any of this without her...?
"I don't know, the bed is actually pretty comfy. And you certainly provide better lumbar support than that chair," she mumbles tiredly, eyelids already fluttering closed.
"Maybe we should give one to Cancer Man as a present, get him to sit in it. After an hour, he'll tell us whatever we want to know on the promise of letting him out of the thing." It's a bad joke, really, but Scully doesn't seem to mind, actually laughs just a little bit and burrows further against his chest with a, "Christmas is only a couple weeks aways..."
Mulder mentally rewinds the past few days, thinking of the last time he'd looked at the calendar or been consciously aware of the date and realizes that, of course, his partner is right. "It is, isn't it? I'd almost forgotten."
Despite her abject exhaustion, Scully immediately perks up, digging her chin into his solar plexus as she gapes up at him with bloodshot eyes swirling with incredulity and empathy. "You don't have plans?"
"I did, actually," he is quick to assure her. "A very salacious assignation involving myself, my lovely couch, some frozen turkey and It's A Wonderful Life. It's the stuff dreams are made of, Scully."
"It most certainly is not!" She shakes her head vehemently, words tripping over themselves in their desperate bid to escape as she rambles, "I'll come over, cook you a real meal, that is if you've been discharged by that point. I know the doctors are keen to keep you under observation, given the unusual nature of your symptoms and how you acquired them."
Slowly, Mulder raises an eyebrow, remarking with deep and unbridled sarcasm, "What, do people not fall off beached submarines after being beaten up by aliens every day? I'm shocked."
"Ha, ha, ha. I'm serious, Mulder," Scully says, tone taking in a note of seriousness like a leaking boat taking on water. "I don't want you to be alone on Christmas."
"Why? I'm alone every other day of the week, the birth of some Messiah with a beard and a groovy pair of sandals has no bearing or impact on that."
"I'm just gonna bypass the insult to the millions of Christians you just made and say...because I care, that's why. You're my partner, and my best friend, and you've been through more than any person should have to or be expected to, and the thought of you being alone in that tiny apartment with nothing but your fish for company-"
"Hey, what about if the Gunmen came over? Does that quantify as company?"
The redhead continues like he hasn't interrupted her, "While I'm surrounded by family and food and holiday cheer is about the most unbearable thing I can imagine."
"Really? You've been working on the X-Files for nearly two years, and that's what you can't stand? My being alone at Christmas?" Mulder wonders incredulously, honestly flummoxed by her reaction. She hadn't been nearly so insistent last year, but then again, last year he didn't have a key to her apartment and she didn't come over to feed his fish, didn't phone each other and watch TV in tandem from their respective homes when they couldn't sleep. He hadn't worn her cross under his shirt for months on end because it was the safest place he knew to put it and because he hoped some of her essence might guide him back to the light she had so effortlessly breathed back into his life.
"Yes," Scully answers without hesitation. "What's wrong with that?"
"Nothing, absolutely nothing." *I feel the same way about you, Dana, always have and most certainly always will, and I'm just sorry that I can't do more to show that to you, to prove it, because I know you really love your proof. "It's just...you're very sweet sometimes, Dr. Scully, has anyone ever told you that?"
A shake of the head, a no. "Just you."
"Now that is a crying shame...but it doesn't make it any less true. Come on, get some sleep. I'll take first watch," he urges her, feeling too wired and too restless to sleep. He needs to have a plan, moving forward. Not just for them, but his search, the X-Files, everything. This is so much bigger than he realized, than he ever thought possible, so outside even his grandiose realms of possibility and plausibility that he knows he needs to readjust. He'd told Scully last year that change was coming, and if he hoped to live long enough to find the truth, he'd have to think very carefully about where he drew his line, what he thought he was willing to do and what he knew in his heart he was capable of.
Some things just aren't worth losing.
"First watch?" Scully puzzles inquisitively, brow puckered in a sleepy frown. "Over what?"
"Your boots, of course. Gotta keep the sneaky shoe elves away from them," is his immediate response because really, he can and will never resist the opportunity to make a joke, to see her smile.
She pauses, mouth halfway open before she closes it, blinks, blinks again like she's just really seeing him for the first time. And smiles. "Mulder?"
"What?"
"Please don't ever change," she asks of him, before drifting off to sleep.
He doesn't not follow her for a long, long while.
Two weeks. Two weeks in that deplorable navy hospital, and finally he's walking across the threshold of his own apartment, a pair of Scully's Audrey Hepburn-esque sunglasses on his face and pinching behind his ears to save him from the glare off the overly-generous coating of snow dusting all of D.C like a powdered doughnut, painting the silhouette of his partner in tortoiseshell brown as she follows in after him, immediately making a beeline for the thermostat to correct the heat. Dust motes swirl in her wake, trailing her like a mini swarm of fireflies; the air feels stale, giving the apartment an aura of neglect. His poor couch must be getting separation anxiety by now, so unused to not having him flop onto it every night like a boneless jellyfish when he finally allows his body the sleep it so desperately craves.
Things seem to be getting better, even if it's only incrementally. While most of the external damage has faded, he knows he can't say the same for the internal, or the invisible, like his relationship with his parents. His mother called Scully a few days after he first regained consciousness, after Skinner had called her and relayed the details of his injuries. He'd only been able to stand a few minutes, to cover the basics, the sound of her holding back tears relinquishing his hold on his own; he's always hated to see his mother cry, especially after arguments with his father, to see the strong woman who had raised him reduced to tears by his father's cold and heartless anger. Couldn't stand to hear her say his sister's name, to ask what happened when he could not give her an answer, not if he wanted to keep her safe.
Scully, in that wordless way of hers, had understood, had taken the phone and said he needed his rest and who can argue with a Doctor like her? Every single day, she's been with him, right at his bedside, despite his billion reassurances of 'I'm fine, Scully, you don't have to stay here and babysit me, you should go back to D.C,' and her billion and five -she'd added a few extra, just because she could- 'Mulder, I'm not going anywhere, I'm not leaving you like this. Besides, the Bureau owes me a few vacation days, don't you think?'
He doesn't think two weeks spent in a navy hospital, handing him cups of jello amd fielding a million curious questions as to the nature of the retrovirus he'd been exposed to constituted as a vacation, but he hadn't argued the matter further with her, to selfish to make her go when all he wanted was her to stay, and it was, in actual fact, what she said she'd wanted.
"Hey, look, my fish are still alive," Mulder exclaims as he slips out of his puffy overcoat, slinging it carelessly over the arm of the couch as he goes to inspect the lurking tank of green water. "How are they still alive? Do you think they've evolved to get their little fins around the tub of fish food?" At this point, he wouldn't be surprised if they had.
"I had the Gunmen come over while we were away," Scully answers him distractedly, abandoning her crusade with the temperature and picking a new terrain of battle: the kitchen. There's more food in her arms and on the counters than his fridge has probably ever seen, and it warms his heart to no end to see her attack this supposed problem of his loneliness with the same voracity and attention she deploys with her field work, how she seems just at home in his home, puttering about with the glassware and dirty coffee mugs left on the coffee table as she does in a morgue or at a lecture podium or putting some small-town sheriff in his place when he defers to Mulder instead of her. "They were more than happy to see the inner sanctum of M.F. Luder."
"I'll be sure to check my toothbrush, make sure Frohike didn't use it to comb his facial hair with."
"Mulder." How one person can fill one word with so much disapproval...
He turns, cocking his head in her general direction, grin a thing of faux-innocence. "What?
"He's actually very sweet, and he was most concerned for your welfare when I informed him of your condition," she counters with primly, dish towel draped over her shoulder while her hands are submerged in the hodgepodge soapy sea of his kitchenware. "They all were."
Waving her words away -he hates pity, hates being at the center of attention, more so now that he ever did before, in his wild days of youth where he hungered for approval to make up for the deficit of his childhood- Mulder fixes his attention back to the tank, to the fish -Elliot and Mindy, respectively, because if you can't beat the cliché you might as well use it for something useful like naming fish, right?- that have come up to peer at him from the glass, little fish mouths seeming to pucker with contempt at his absence. "I'm sure they were; don't want to lose their most loyal subscriber."
He sees her shake her head from the periphery of his vision, a flash of auburn-red and neatly starched collar. "I think it's more than that," Scully says to him in a low voice, barely audible over the gentle swish swish of her hands in the water. "I think they just don't want to lose you. Lord knows they aren't exactly social butterflies themselves; finding someone they can connect with and just be their...eccentric selves with is rare."
"Better to stay in the safety of the caterpillar chrysalis than venture out into the big scary reality that exists beyond cyberspace, that unexplored frontier: the real world." Mulder splays his hands, wiggles his fingers for dramatic, jazzy emphasis.
Scully doesn't bother to smother her laughter, her cheeks turning a cherry shade of pink as she fires back with, "Coming from the man who waited three hours in line to see the first Star Wars movie. At age seventeen."
"Hey! I told you that out of confidence and to demonstrate my keen sense of determination."
A questioningly arched auburn eyebrow. "Don't you mean your keen sense of nerdism?"
"That's not a word."
"No?" His partner shrugs, nonplused, pulling the plug from the sink as she begins to stack the freshly-scrubbed utensils on his notebook-sized draining board. "Then I guess I just invented it then." She motions towards the one line milk pan in the whole house, resting on the highest kitchen cabinet shelf, a cutting board already primed at her side. "Can you pass me that?"
With a smirk, Mulder reaches up behind her for the thing, never one to miss an opportunity to reinforce his extra height. She goes to take it from him, but he holds the pan above her head, peering down at her with inquiring eyes. "What is it exactly that you're doing here, Scully?"
"What does it look like I'm doing?" she asks, bristling like a hedgehog at a balloon party.
"Honestly, my best guess would be either tenth grade science fair experiment or...eleventh grade science fair experiment."
"You really need to update your culinary skills, Mulder."
"Why should I when I have my very own Martha Stewart at my beck and call who seems to love nothing more than to good-naturedly meddle in her partner's life?" he teases her, finally relinquishing the pan in question into her awaiting hands.
An exasperated roll of the eyes for that. "Putting a turkey in the oven and plating up some potatoes and green beans hardly counts as an art form. You should see my mom; she went out for Christmas dinner, made everything from scratch. Of course, having four kids all under the age of thirteen meant that the food wasn't exactly appreciated for its subtle textures and delicate flavors...but the holidays were always important to her. I think, what with my father away so much, the times he was home, she wanted to make sure it was special."
Leaning in the doorway, Mulder considers her for a moment, weighing up what to say before settling on, "It seems she succeeded, if you still have such fond memories of it." He knows her family can be a sore spit, knows that an undercurrent of tension still runs between them all for various reasons. He'll still never forget the fact that her brothers didn't show, that she was dying and had been gone for months without explanation and yet they hadn't even done her the courtesy of being there for her when she needed her family the most. Charlie had supposedly come to visit her once after she'd woken up, but Bill...it was a good thing Mulder had never met him, otherwise he doubts there'd be much left of the man. God, if that had been Samantha, his own sister in that bed...
An elegant half-shrug, a non-verbal 'I suppose so.' "As an adult, though, I look back on that point of my life and...it all looks like I'm viewing it through rose-tinted glasses, you know? Everything about my childhood and that time of my life seems so far away from me now, who I am now. Things like worrying over my sister stealing my new Barbie or having my brother fight me over the latest David Bowie vinyl seem so trivial and silly now, given everything we've seen, that we've been through."
"I disagree." Pushing off the doorframe, he comes to stand beside her, palms settling on her sweater-clad shoulders so that he can spin her around, get her to face him, so she can see his face, the earnestness that cradles his expression like a tender hand. "I think it's things like that that make everything all the more important, that put our work into perspective. I mean, there has to be a balance somewhere, right? We can't not have any good at all, have things can't be bad all the time, otherwise we wouldn't have a distinction between the two in the first place."
"Does Christmas always make you so philosophical?" Her small fingers wrap around his wrist, thumb smoothing over his pulse point with gentle, likely subconscious strokes, back and forth and back and forth. That is the way with them, one step forward, eight steps back; in their work, and in their personal lives, with each other.
Pull away, pull away, it's the right thing to do.
Mulder pulls away, snagging a piece of carrot out of a bowl, chewing idly. "Nope, it's an all-seasons affliction, cured only by a good cup of cocoa with-"
She beats him to it. "Let me guess, extra marshmallows?"
"It's like you can read my mind, Scully."
"It's like I looked in your cupboards and saw it was the only thing still in date, Mulder."
He laughs, merry and bright like Christmas, and thinks, not for the first time, and definitely not the last, that he is so very lucky to have Dana Scully in his life.
Looking back, he wouldn't be able to pinpoint what exactly it is that leads them to this, the lynchpin of this particular snowballing conversation, gaining more momentum with every word they say. Dinner has come and gone, the snow is falling more heavily outside, so much so that it seems they're in the middle of a snow globe, a nexus of swirling white and nighttime black pressing in around them, limiting their worldview to a monochrome blur.
It seems Scully's thoughts are operating on a similar spectrum. Because half a glass of wine became two became nearly three, and her cheeks are rosy as holly berries and her eyes are just as toxic as she proclaims, "Mulder, you were willing to trade your sister's life for mine. Even if it was only an illusion to draw the Bounty Hunter out, you still let her go onto that bridge."
She's broken the dam, lulled him into a false sense of security with her mashed potatoes and her corny Christmas cracker jokes and his temper seems to be crumbling like a tissue paper crown as she tears holes in his logic and his way of thinking from two weeks ago as she finally gets him to talk about that night on the bridge.
"What, so you're saying that it's my fault? That I'm the one responsible for her death."
His fingers snag in his hair like thorns, but it's nothing compared to the searing pain of her accusation, although in truth it isn't anything he hasn't thought himself in recent days; it just hurts so much coming from her.
"No, Mulder, that is not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is I still can't believe you did it in the first place, that you even entertained the idea, if only for a second, about making that trade at all! Fox, how is that right? How could my life matter more to you than hers?"
These conversations seem to keep happening when either one or both of them is half asleep, when they're not really thinking about the consequences or the repercussions, vocabulary filters dissolving into little more than inconsequential mush. But Mulder feels wide awake now, flush with an adrenaline high and apple stuffing and fancy red wine, fight or flight kicking into overdrive. Only this is not something he can fight, nor can he walk away from it. This is Scully, asking him for the truth, the one thing they've always been able to give each other, that they've searched so hard for; how can he deny it to her now?
"Because I knew, Scully. I knew, somewhere inside in me, in a way I can't explain because I don't even understand it myself...that that was not my sister, that she wasn't the little girl who cried when I had my first sleepover because she said that she would miss me, who I helped make pancakes with for mother's day even if all she ever did was eat all the strawberries. The girl who made me laugh and knew all the words to the National Anthem and screamed like a banshee when our neighbors' cat got hit by a car and insisted we be there for the funeral. I've known her her whole life, Dana, since that day my parents brought her home from the hospital, this tiny pink bundle with a wrinkled face and yet looked at me like she trusted me beyond anyone else. God, I was only four, but I knew...I knew I'd do anything for her. I never hated spending time with her or got annoyed like all the other kids my age...so I know. I knew before I'd gotten halfway across my parent's living room that it wasn't Samantha; it just took the rest of me longer to catch up, to admit it. Because I didn't want to believe it, the one truth I could not allow myself to accept, would rather ignore it and pretend to be whole, just for a little while."
Slumping backwards on the couch, his head almost connects with the bare-plaster wall, yet Mulder hardly notices. Scully's standing in front of him, defensive, argumentative posture melting by the second as she, a living monument to just how much he's changed from that twelve year old boy. He never thought another person could be as important to him as his sister, who he could give so much of himself, let her see so much of who he truly is. It's terrifying, but feels so much like fate that there's little he can or even wants to do to correct it, because who ever wants to be alone, really?
"But I couldn't. Not when your life was in danger, not when I was confronted with the possibility of losing you again. If he'd asked for me instead, I would have given myself over in a nanosecond, without question or pause. I will always choose you over myself, Scully, over my quest for the truth, over my safety and my sanity."
She nods, takes a seat beside him, hands clenching in her lap like she doesn't know what to do with them, with his words and this whole situation in general. Scully hates uncharted territory, needs to know exactly where she's going and how she's going to get there. It's why she's the one responsible for buying the maps again gas stations and he's the one in charge of the snacks -further clarification: junk food.
"And if it had really been her?" Scully persists,
"It was never going to be the real her."
"But if it had been?" Tone higher now, harder, more desperate, like she can't bring herself to know but also doesn't know what she'll do with herself if left unanswered.
Mulder sighs, feels the couch dip further under him, the fabric of his T-shirt pulling at the still-tender flesh of his back. "Then I...I still would have made the same choice, okay? I still would have picked you, even if it had really been Samantha. I will always pick you, over anyone. Even her."
"Why?"
It's simple. "Because you're real."
"That's not an answer."
Of course she's not satisfied. When is she ever? "Because you're my best friend."
"Fox..." She pulls the word out like she's stretching out a new sweater, somehow imbuing those three syllables with more compassion than he's ever been on the receiving end of his whole life. He doesn't say these things to elicit any kind of sympathy or abnormal consideration; he says them because they are true.
"Do you wanna know why I made my parents call me Mulder?" he interrupts her, cutting off the no-doubt lengthy ramble Scully was just about to embark on. He has his own journey of explanation to unfold for her instead. "It started when I was twelve. Because That Night, Samantha was calling my name, over and over and over again. And I remember, after we'd gotten back from the hospital, my dad came into the room and he sat down in my desk chair, and it was funny, you know, this big guy in that tiny little chair, and he said, "Fox," and it was like a knife in my brain, Scully, tearing me apart over and over again. How could it not make me think of her? And so I told him not to call me that. Fox was the boy with the model of the solar system in his bedroom and liked watching The Magician and pretended to have the flu so that he could watch the moon landing: Mulder is the loner, the outsider, the venerable recluse skirting the fringes of normality and pushing the boundaries of human knowledge and comprehension but never seems to get anywhere, the awkward figure at the bureau New Year's party who just sticks to the cheese dip and the salmon puffs. Until I met you."
She tilts towards him, he tilts towards her. The space between them is eaten up, swallowed like matter being sucked into a black hole, only this must be an universe, is creating far more than its taking. Her eyes are impossibly blue, impossibly wide, impossibly trusting. He should tell her not to -look what happened to the last person who trusted him to take care of them?- but he just can't find it in himself.
"So, why did I do what I did?" he murmurs to her in the quiet, with snowflakes pressing in on the windowpanes and dancing across the muted screen of the TV. "Because you're my heart and my soul and my conscience, my compass and my guide post and my blazing North Star in this sea of darkness and deception we find ourselves regularly floating in. Because I've gone twenty two years without seeing my sister, without knowing the truth of what happened to her...but I don't think I could have taken another day without you, Scully. I tried so hard, I tried so hard to hold on to you while you were gone," his voice cracks, his courage stumbles, but he keeps going, he owes this to her and himself, "but everyone was telling me to let go. Even your mom, who sat with me after it happened and seemed so hopeful, looked at me with such certainty, who had no doubt that I'd find you...but it was just me. I had nothing, Scully, I have nothing without you. They could take the X-Files, could take my badge and my reputation and everything else...but I could and would survive it all, so long as I still had you. And if you've never believed me before on anything...please believe me on that."
A pause, what sounds like a barely-restrained sob, then..."You know I always believe you."
A smile cracks through the gloom, the dawning of an easier, less-burdened heart. "No, you don't," Mulder remarks to her fondly. "It's why we work so well in the first place. You keep me tethered, Scully, when I get lost in my head or lost in my vendetta for vindication of the paranormal and the unexplainable, you're the one thing that keeps me on solid ground. You are my solid ground."
"And you are mine."
She takes his hand, grins sharply when he startles, because he's the one with the Shakespearean monologues, who clings to the values of old, that lone knight at the Round Table still waiting for the re-emergence of Camelot. "Do you really think I don't feel the same way about you, with the same intensity and devotion? Do you think I'd be doing what we do if I didn't have complete and utter faith in you, if I didn't trust you to always be there for me, in the big moments and the smaller, simpler ones that are no less meaningful? That I didn't hear your voice when I was...when I was dying and could feel a part of myself wanting to let go, but I couldn't, not when I had you, not when the idea of leaving you all alone was more than I could stand, when everything felt so unfinished. The sky could be falling down on our heads, but I know that you'll always be there to hold my hand, Mulder. And I'll be the one holding yours. And if recent events have taught us anything...it's that there is nothing, in this world or any other, that we would not do for each other. And maybe that's wrong, maybe it's unhealthy and co-dependent and definitely not what Blevins had planned when he assigned me, but I couldn't care less. All I care about is you."
It shouldn't make him want to cry. It really shouldn't. It isn't an 'I love you,' or anything remotely in the ballpark of romanticism, but it's Scully, and so it is, in its own way; it means more than that, has greater bearing on his conscious than anything Diana could have ever said to him, and he was going to marry her. He's never needed or cared for big declarations; he's only ever wanted someone to just hold his hand, and be there. "Which is why I'm gonna ask you to make a promise, okay?" Scully's saying to him, pulling on their clasped hands for emphasis. "Never, for the remaining duration of our lives, are you to do something as stupid as going off to Alaska to hunt down a murderous Bounty Hunter without telling me, or bringing me with you. Okay?"
Like he'll ever agree to that. "Dana..."
"I mean it, Fox," she cuts off his protest like he's seen her trim the tiny potted violets on her windowsill. "This is non-negotiable. You can't lose me? Well I can't lose you, either."
"Aren't we a pair?"
She rolls her eyes, lets go of his hand in exchange for resting her head on his shoulder, the cold tip of her nose brushing the column of his throat. "Yes, Mulder; that's the whole point of this conversation."
His eyes are on the TV, on Jimmy Stewart surrounded by his family, so grateful for all that he has, all that he came so close to losing. It's a feeling he can now appreciate more than he could ever put into words. And so Mulder tells her, "I'll try," and it's enough. "We missed the end bit with Clarence."
Scully smiles, tugs the throw-blanket she'd rustled up from somewhere and drapes it over the both of them. "I thought you didn't believe in angels."
On the screen, bells are ringing, people are singing, and yet Fox Mulder doesn't even hear it as he says, "You could have fooled me."
Author's Note: Hi, everyone! Welcome to my first X-Files fic! It's also my first time writing Mulder and Scully, so, as an avid viewer and life-long fan, I truly hope you believe I did them justice. I've been on a rewatch lately, and felt like they moved on from this two-parter and its emotional impact not just on Mulder but on their partnership too quickly given it's significance to the mythology. I know with the timeline Christmas had most likely come and gone, but I couldn't resist the chance for some domestic and heartwarming fluff.
Anyway, thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed it!
All my love, Temperance Cain.