From: ephemeral@ephemeralfic.org
Date: 11 Apr 2002 17:00:07 -0000
Subject: To Disclosures or Crescendos by Buckingham (1 of 3) by Buckingham
Source: direct

Reply To: buckingham15@yahoo.com


Title: To Disclosures or Crescendos
Author: Buckingham
E-Mail: buckingham15@yahoo.com
Classification: V/MSR, Post-Ep
Spoilers: Season 9, up through P/P
Timeline: Don't even ask. I am so confused at this
point that I'd need graphs and charts to figure the
damn thing out. Just know that this takes place within
days of the events of P/P.
Summary: How to regroup
Disclaimer: I don't own Mulder, Scully, William, or
anyone else you might recognize by name. They are the
lawful property of CC, 1013, and FOX.


- x -

If I feel the night
move to disclosures or crescendos,
it's only because I'm famished
for meaning; the night
merely dissolves.

And your otherness is perfect as my death.
Your otherness exhausts me,
like looking suddenly up from here
to impossible stars fading.
Everything is punished by your absence.
-- Li-Young Lee, 'The City in Which I Love You'

- x -

Here is their new life.

He has become the wanderer, ricocheting across the map
like one who's sense of gravity has been permanently
suspended. Ohio on Monday, Utah by Thursday, and a
Saturday spent in Nevada. There is a string of no-name
motels behind him, a stretch of empty, twisting road
in front of him, and desperation everywhere else. His
only consolation is that when he tips his head back,
the sky looks the same no matter what the zip code,
black, unforgiving, and horribly endless.

He reads the fine print in newspapers, bangs away on
his laptop, and wills an answer, a solution, to
materialize before his eyes, like an image coming into
focus in one of those three-dimensional puzzles. He's
always been good at that, seeing the unseen, piecing
it all together out of smoke, mist, and half-truths.
If only he could find an answer that he likes, one
that he could live with and not feel like he's broken
apart inside. That is the real trick.

Sometimes, he hears Scully's voice in his head, trying
to keep him on the straight and narrow, but still
urging him to work faster, faster, always faster. He
imagines her with their son, telling stories, coloring
in all the blank, gray spaces in a small life. He
imagines what it would be like to really play daddy.
He wonders what it will take to make things right,
once and for all. Sometimes he wonders if it's the
same particular ache that his father felt years ago,
miles away, with the weight of choice everyday bearing
down.

Over a hundred miles away, a thousand depending on the
day, she sings lullabies and tries to hold her world
together. But the sky is falling, cloud by cloud, and
she feels herself cracking up, faltering in every way.
There are her sudden homicidal tendencies and shaky
moral compass that allows for anything as long as her
son is safe. There is the raging paranoia (Is it
paranoia if they really *are* out to get you? She
thinks Mulder once asked her that very question, and
she probably rolled her eyes, shook her head in
dismay, smirked at his earnestness.), which makes her
doubt everyone from Skinner and Doggett to the skinny
kid dressed by Nautica who delivers her morning paper.
And then there are her ever-ready tears, shaky hands,
the awkward trembling in her voice whenever the going
gets tough. Sometimes she thinks she's holding herself
together by the sheer force of her will, sucking in a
breath and praying that the cracks won't deepen, won't
rupture her whole shell in clean, smooth pieces.

It's bad enough, she thinks, to be suspicious of
everyone else, but when she looks in the mirror and
doubts herself, it's nearly devastating. She doesn't
trust herself with her son's safety. She doesn't trust
herself to keep an objective mind at work. She doesn't
trust herself to find a way to bring Mulder home. When
she crawls out of bed in the morning, already drained,
and still manages to last the day, that is a victory.
Most days, it seems impossible to hope for more.

She wonders if she is becoming someone else, someone
other than who she was with Mulder. It terrifies her,
feeling like a betrayal of the highest order, a knife
through the back. So she stiffens her shoulders,
kisses their son, and tries to remember how to fight.

Months between them, miles apart, and still their
thoughts are in sync, skidding along in the same
connect-the-dots pattern of want and need. He wants to
go home, she wants him home, and both of them refuse
to give in to the hopelessness. Neither of them will
let the sky collapse.

- x -

He is waiting for telepathic messages, the
brain-piercing sting of clairvoyance, starlight
visitations, the voice of God even, so the air-raid
hiss of an alarm clock right beside ear is the worst
kind of disappointment. He's been lying awake for
fifteen minutes, facing the inevitable, but still it
makes him flinch, slap at the ancient clock radio with
a rage usually reserved for double-agent assassins or
cosmic bounty hunters.

The dizzy, world-upside-down ache in his head, his
skin's clammy, thin feel, and the hollow, tight pull
in his stomach that burns both hot and cold make
him wonder if he's coming down with something, the flu
or some twenty-four hour bug. It could even be some
sort of virus, origin unknown, tripping through his
blood stream with zero subtlety, like heroin, only
without the kite-high rush. He hates getting sick,
being reminded of all his weaknesses and limitations.
Unless--

Some long ago weekend, before his abduction, before
Scully's miracle, before his fall and rise, when he
got an early spring cold after they spent a few days
investigating a case at some snobby, germ-infested
preschool on Long Island. He was miserable, with a
stuffed-up head, rubbed-raw nose, and blistering
throat, so he locked himself inside his dusty
apartment, a self-imposed quarantine, and turned off
all his phones. He wanted to be free to wallow in his
suffering, surrounded by dirty tissues and empty
cartons of orange juice, without a certain redheaded
doctor's judgmental eye overseeing his every move.

When he heard the click of her key in the door, he was
in the middle of some fever dream about his fourth
grade teacher and the circus. He sat up, ready to read
her the riot act, tell her to quit mothering him, that
he was a grown man and if wanted to carry on like a
three-year-old at the prospect of cherry cough
medicine, it was his prerogative. But she appeared in
doorway of his bedroom, her hair a stringy mess, skin
pasty white except for the red tip of her nose, eyes
puffy and glassy, like she'd been smoking weed behind
the gym during lunch, and he had to fight off the
laugh that was about to rip through his throat. She
was wearing dark, silky pajama bottoms and a tank top
under her jacket, as if she'd crawled right out of bed
and into her car on autopilot.

"I got it too," she wheezed at him. Her pout was
fetching, even as she wiped her wet nose.

He loved her for many reasons, but her forethought was
number one on the list at that moment, since she
managed to stop at a store on her way to his place.
Her gifts of Nyquil, Vicks Vapor Rub, honey-lemon
throat drops, and a giant bottle of vitamin C weren't
exactly professions of love on her part, but the issue
of Sports Illustrated at the bottom of the bag and
pint of Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream, his absolute
favorite, were terribly romantic to his fevered mind.

"For our throats," she told him, as she climbed into
his warm, messy bed with the carton and two spoons.

They spent the entire weekend, sick and cranky,
feeding each other cough syrup, toast with strawberry
jam, and lukewarm tea. They took each other's
temperature and rubbed each other's backs through
coughing fits. They took a hot, steam-heavy shower
together, slumped against one another in the hopes
that they'd hold each other up.

Not their finest hour, he thinks, but he'd never felt
more loved, had never loved her more than when they
curled around each other under a comforter, with runny
noses and swollen glands, and watched cartoons he
still remembered from Saturday mornings when he was a
kid, fogged out of their minds with cold medicine.

He tries to imagine the feel of her cool, capable hand
on his forehead now, smoothing the hair away from his
eyes, her sexy, no-nonsense voice telling him to stop
being a baby, but he's not quite delirious enough for
that. Instead, he sits up in bed, and tries to coax
the watery, gray light of predawn from beyond the
curtains and into the void of his motel room. He tries
to call the sun out of hiding, so the day can begin,
so he can get the show on the road.

He thinks about the message she sent, just days ago,
and he knows that it's ridiculous to try to blame the
way he's feeling on bacteria or alien-rigged
pathogens, microscopic germs ripping his DNA apart and
making him feel like shit. It's dread, pure and
simple, with anger and guilt thrown in for good
measure. This is what his life has always yielded, he
thinks. These are the consequences for playing games
with the universe and thinking he might actually win,
for testing its boundaries with thoughtless arrogance,
for accepting the challenge of cosmic Truth or Dare
with such gleeful abandon.

He should have known that payback would be one hell of
a bitch. He should have known that he wouldn't be the
only one dealing with the costs. Of course he'd wind
up taking Scully and their son down with him.

It feels like he's tempting fate just by dragging
himself out of bed, but he doesn't have a real choice.
He's been called. In the dark bathroom, he brushes his
teeth, swallows an aspirin, and avoids the mirror.

Outside, the sun splits the sky in two, like broken
pavement, then crawls behind a lattice of drowsy
clouds.

- x -

No matter how hard she tries, the map will not fall
back in line. The paper crumples and tears in her
hands, and finally she drops it on the front passenger
seat, defeated. It's no longer necessary anyway; she's
where she's supposed to be. Finally.

The car's engine hums in her ear and beneath her,
idling in an empty section of the parking field, but
she opens her door anyway. She stands outside and scans 
the lot, looking over her shoulder for shadows in the
shape of men, aliens in the shape of men, men in the
shape of monsters. Early morning, and the air outside
is cool, tinged with the dampness of almost-spring,
but the car's heater, burning low, warms her until her
body is almost as confused as her mind. She checks her
watch, rests her elbow on the edge of the open door,
and lifts her eyes to the sky.

She is early, so her panic is completely irrational,
but still she can't help expecting the wrath of the
gods, divine retribution for every mistake she's ever
made, for every lapse in faith she's allowed to
overtake her heart. She is afraid that Mulder didn't
get her message or that he did but can't find his way
to her. She is afraid that he might really be dead
this time, lying cold and alone in a ditch somewhere,
just another John Doe with a well-placed bullet in his
skull. She is afraid that he might not recognize her,
even in her familiar black suit and skyscraper boots.
She is afraid that he'll see and feel her as someone
else, when all she wants is to be the woman he's known
for so long, the woman who followed him into a
graveyard and howled at the moon, who ran all the way
to Africa because he heard voices in his head and she
believed him. She wants it all back, life
uninterrupted.

Before her, Kentucky seems like a foreign land, with
its blue grass and bourbon-heavy air. She tries to
remember if she's ever seen the stretch of I-64 in
front of her. Maybe one sticky summer day with Mulder,
chasing telekinetic kidnappers or tarot-reading
murders. He'd know if she asked. He'd know the date,
what the weather was like, what they were both
wearing. He'd paint the picture for her using nothing
but his mind, every detail carefully shared no matter
how insignificant, and she'd be smitten, charmed by
the beautiful, complete way he'd remember such a
throwaway day.

The sky is dark as slate above the parking lot, and
though there is a hint of sunlight, spread out like a
white wash near the horizon, she wonders if it might
rain. She should have checked the weather report
before she left, so she wouldn't risk winding up
umbrella-less and wilted on the side of the highway.
In the back of the car, William lets out a yelp, just
as thunder rumbles out from behind some trees. He is
only six months old, and already he's been exposed to
the worst of the world, to the dark, hopeless corners
where lives are merely expendable. It is his legacy,
she thinks. The future that she and Mulder will pass
down, no matter how hard they might fight. She ducks
back inside the car, and stretches across the seat to
thumb William's cheek. He turns into her touch, like a
sun-hungry cat.

"It's all right, sweetie," she tells him. "It won't be
too much longer."

He shakes his head, as if he doesn't quite believe
her, but gives into the call of sleep, his eyes
slipping shut, lips pursed, slightly parted, just like
his father's mouth when he dreams. She crawls back out
of the car, all business now, no room for tears of her
own, for ridiculous, selfish fears. She searches the
truck stop again, looking for someone, anyone familiar
in the early morning activity. At the pumps, truckers
fill their tanks with gas, and stretch sore muscles. A
waitress from the diner chain-smokes under its green
awning, like she's anxious or just exhausted from an
all-night shift. Scully commiserates, but isn't about
to bum a cigarette, however tempting the idea of
offering silvery smoke rings up to the sky might be
right now. There is a patch of grass near the front of
the stop where golden blossoms are trying to pushtheir
way through the damp, cold soil, but she doesn't think
they'll make it until April.

Near the exit ramp, a tractor trailer begins to rumble
away, back toward the interstate, and William whimpers
again -- not out of crankiness, she thinks, but with a
neediness that sounds like fear. She's about to climb
into the backseat and rock him back to sleep when she
sees the cloud of dirt and gravel kicked up by the
trailer, pushing wide across the parking lot. It is as
thick as smoke, dense and gray, but there is a figure
making his way through it, indistinguishable in the
haze except for the sway of his walk, the long,
graceful line of his body that she thinks she could
pick out from halfway around the world. She feels her
heartbeat speed up, thinks her palms might be sweating
with the rush of adrenaline through her body.

He's crossing the parking lot casually, like he's been
here before, like he doesn't care who sees him. He
blends in easily, she thinks, with his dark baseball
cap, old jeans, and faded duffel bag. If she wasn't
looking for him, she might never pick him out. That
thought terrifies her; passing Mulder by is
inconceivable. But he doesn't seem to have spotted her
either, halfway toward the car, switching his bag to
the other shoulder. In the backseat, William has gone
quiet, and when she looks in on him, he's almost
smiling, batting at the air in front of him.

When Mulder gets closer still, she can see that it's a
Red Sox cap on his head, that he hasn't shaved in a
couple of days, that despite the ease of his walk,
he's as cautious as she is, eyes sweeping over the
truck stop for all possible threats. She can't call
his name, so she thinks about yelling "Queeque" or
"Spooky," speaking in a code that only he would
understand, but they catch one another's gaze in one
world-melting moment and no words are necessary.

Mulder starts a slow jog toward her just as she feels
the first sharp drop of rain.

- x -

The last time he saw her, she'd given birth only days
before, and all her angles were still rounded and
soft. Before that, she'd been carrying William,
waddling around like her body held the weight of the
world. She was beautiful in both of those
incarnations, but he can't remember the last time he
saw her at her fighting weight, lean and mean and
ready to shoot with perfect aim. As far back as he has
to reach in his collection of memories, he's still
certain that she's thinner now that she's been in
years. Fifteen feet away, and he can trace the
razor-sharp line of her bones, a lesson in skeletal
anatomy brought to life.

If he wasn't worried before, he's sure as hell worried
now.

Under a sheen of misting rain, she looks pale and
tired, faded in a way he doesn't remember since the
days of nosebleeds and radiation treatments. Her hair,
brushing past her shoulders, the ends curling with
dampness, is the one thing that makes him smile. It's
almost as long as when they first met, he thinks, a
half dozen lifetimes ago, and it makes him want to
start all over again.

He feels the earth tilt until he skids to a stop at
her feet.

- x -

"Are you all right?" he asks immediately, running his
hands up and down her arms like he's checking for
bullet holes, mortal wounds of any kind.

She nods, rain tripping down her cheeks like tears,
and lays her hands on his chest. His heartbeat is as
familiar to her as her own, maybe more so since it's
the last sound she hears before she falls asleep at
night, the rhythm she feels when she holds William
close to her and dreams. She would know, she thinks.
She would know if it was ever snuffed out, would feel
the disconnect within herself, like an artery severed.

"What about William?" Mulder demands. He bounces up
and down on his toes, ready to spring into action if
he doesn't get the answer he wants. She nods again,
and starts to cock her head toward the backseat, but
Mulder surges toward her, grabs her face in his hands,
thumbs her cheek bones, the corners of her mouth. The
tip of her tongue laps at his skin for less than a
second, but still she tastes his familiar salt.

"I was afraid," he says. "When I got your message...
Jesus, Scully, I didn't know what to expect."

She looks for his eyes under the shadow of his
baseball cap and finds them frantic, dark with
nightmares. His jacket is the green of army fatigues,
and the clothes underneath are dusty and worn-thin.
How many miles have they seen, she wonders. How many
roads has he wandered down in these rags? But this is
who he is now -- a drifter, with two days worth of
hair along his jaw, jittery hands, and a grim,
sleep-deprived pallor to his skin. She hates the
thought of him running, running, always running, when
they've only just learned to stop turning away from
each other.

"I had to see you," she confesses, overcome. "It's
stupid and selfish, but--"

"Don't," he says, pulling her against him. "It's okay.
It's all right."

She is crushed against his body, a second skin, with
her ear right over his pounding heart, but still she
can hear William grumble from inside the car, like
he's suddenly come awake from some disappointing
dream. Mulder goes stiff, his sixth-sense kicking in.
He looks down at her, asking with his eyes, and she
knows that he's trying not to hope for too much.

"I had to bring him," she says. "I know it's probably
not safe, but I couldn't trust anyone else to protect
him. I didn't even tell my mother. She's going to show
up at my apartment this morning, and find us gone. I
don't know what she'll think."

Mulder isn't listening. He moves closer to the car,
trying to peer through the tinted glass and catch a
glimpse of the backseat. His desperate frown is enough
to mobilize her into action, and she moves around to
the other side to open the door. Mulder stands behind
her, practically shaking, while she frees William from
his car seat. She tries to shield him as much as
possible from the rain, kissing his warm forehead
before turning to Mulder.

His mouth is open in astonishment, and he doesn't seem
to know what to do with his hands, his fingers
twitching madly. He looks down at William, then at
her, then back at the baby.

"Oh God, Scully," he whispers. He cups William's head
in his palm, strokes the fine threads of hair. "Oh my
God."

- x -

It was so neat and uncomplicated, the way the child
psychology books laid out development, with their
easy-reference charts and diagrams, the formulaic
week-by-week timetable, and theories galore -- Freud,
Piaget, Erikson, take your pick. In greasy diners and
rented-by-the-hour motels, on buses and in parked cars
at rest stops, he read them all. He read them and
tried to imagine William at each stage, William
growing in the orderly, incremental way that children
ever supposedly did, but within the sunny walls of
Scully's apartment, with Scully watching over their
miracle and cataloging the memories for him. He read
the books and tried to believe that he was still part
of the process, still part of the family, even if he
wasn't around to snap pictures and brag to the Gunmen,
to strangers, to whoever would listen.

But those books, he realizes now, were utterly
incomplete.

No doubt they'd gotten the basics down: grasping and
rooting reflexes at four weeks, laughing at sixteen,
vowel sounds at seven months, crawling at nine,
standing at eleven, walking by the year mark.
According to that schedule, at just over six months,
William should be sitting upright with assistance and
making spontaneous sounds. Easy enough to imagine.

While Scully navigates the car along the highway,
Mulder sits in the backseat beside his son, and
watches him babble, with complete seriousness, to a
stuffed rabbit. The books got that right, Mulder
thinks. But they didn't bother to mention the fact
that the baby would grow to have the same pale, sober
eyes as his mother and (fuck!) the same nose and mouth
that Mulder has lived with himself for forty years.
They didn't mention that despite the lack of years, an
infant's gaze could hold all the wisdom and
understanding of the ages. They didn't explain that
William's giggle would be an innocent echo of Scully's
laughter, like Scully distilled to the most basic.

The car shoots past an open field, with a herd of
black-and-white cows grazing on damp grass, but before
Mulder can point them out, William looks at up him,
appraising this new face before him with calm
interest, then dumps the toy rabbit on Mulder's knee,
almost like an offering. He mumbles more nonsense,
looking his father straight in the eye. It sounds
giddy but important, and Mulder struggles to
understand, to decipher the meaning.

Behind the wheel, Scully adjusts the rear view mirror,
fiddles with the radio.

- x -

When Mulder said he'd arranged for a room in
Lexington, she expected something standard: four
walls, clean sheets, a shower with decent water
pressure, room service maybe. That is what she is used
to with Mulder, the bare essentials of shelter and
food, because he's never been one to concern himself
with creature comforts. He's a man who could not only
appreciate the dusty, windowless world of the X-Files
basement office, with its perpetually fussy thermostat
and blinking overhead lights, but thrive there, make
it his home.

She is confused, then, by the four-star lobby she
finds herself standing in, by the smiling doorman who
stands beside a regal blue rug and tips his hat to
whoever passes by, by the diamond-bright atrium at the
center of the scene, built to sloping angles like some
kind of glass cathedral. Even with the rain dancing
overhead, she feels the openness of the sky above her
as she walks William through the knots of potted
trees. At the front desk, Mulder is taking care of the
details, but she is close enough to hear the pretty
clerk present him with the access cards to his
two-room suite. The only thing she can figure, the
only thing that makes any sense, is that Mulder sees
himself as a family man now, that he feels a need to
provide for her and William, and at present, material
things are all he has to offer.

She is moved and disturbed by the idea all at once.

Upstairs, she closes herself in the bathroom, and uses
a throwaway cell phone to call her mother. It's almost
eight, so her mother is already well on her way to
Georgetown, fighting rush hour traffic and planning
William's day. Scully leaves a message on her own
machine and one on her mother's for good measure.
We're fine, she says. We're safe. I can't tell you
where we are right now, but I'll be in touch. Love
you. Please don't worry. Love you.

Mulder has drawn all the curtains in the bedroom by
the time she's finished. Not for the sake of the mood,
she's certain, but because the windows overlook
the atrium, where guests are gathering on the way to
breakfast and nine a.m. meetings. He's probably
contemplated the possibility of some faceless figure
in a dark corner, training a telephoto lenses on their
room. If someone already knows that they're in the
hotel, she doesn't know what the point is, but she
keeps this to herself.

Curtains drawn, the world they inhabit is full of
shadows, blue and still, and she can barely see
Mulder's face from where he sits in a corner armchair,
with William balanced carefully in his lap. She's been
waiting to see this very thing for months now, and she
wishes for flood lights to fill the entire room so
nothing is missed. William tugs at Mulder's ear,
giving a humming monologue to the ceiling with an
almost smile, that wise, amused look that she's never
seen on a baby before.

Mulder grins too, in that starlight way she remembers
from a misty night in California. "I think he likes
me," he says, delighted. "I thought he might be
nervous since I'm pretty much a stranger, but he seems
to dig me."

He bounces William on his knee, like a ride on a
carousel horse, and the baby laughs, claps his sticky
hands. She realizes, with a pang, that her son isn't
used to this kind of attention, to simple games of
patty-cake and horsy. She is always so serious with
him, so careful, always looking at him with watery
eyes or a sad, nervous smile. He is her miracle, but
she finds it so difficult to rejoice in him. What kind
of mother does that make her, she thinks, so caught up
in fear and disappointment that she's cut herself
off from the simple joy of him?

Mulder is frowning when she looks at him. She wipes
roughly at her eyes, clears her throat.

"What do you think?" he asks, nodding down at William.

He sounds almost desperate, and she realizes he's
misinterpreted her silence. She kneels beside the
hair, one hand on Mulder's shoulder, the other on
William's back. She ignores the sting of tears at the
corners of her eyes, and offers a flimsy smile.

"He knows you, Mulder." They are both watching her
carefully, twin looks of interest trained on her.
"You're his father," she whispers.

Mulder nods, looking at his son again.

"His eyes, Scully," he says. "I can't get over his
eyes."

William blinks, as if he's flattered by the
compliment. He grabs the bill of Mulder's baseball
cap, and tugs on it, tries to latch his mouth onto the
dark fabric.

"Yeah, what do you think of that, buddy?" Mulder
bounces William again, then looks down at her. "I
thought it was a good cover. No self-respecting
Yankees fan would be caught dead in a Red Sox cap."

She smiles, feeling a tear slip free, and takes his
cap, throwing it to the floor. William leans in closer
to inspect Mulder's face. He makes an 'Oh' sound,
almost a giggle, and pats Mulder's nose. Over his
shoulder, he looks at Scully, checking in with her,
seeing if she approves of Mulder too.

"Not bad, huh?" she says to him, her voice rusty with
tears.

He smiles, then jams a couple of his fingers into his
mouth.

Mulder strokes his hand over the back of hair, and she
leans forward, chin resting on the arm of his chair.
His fingertips pulse against her, like he's trying to
tap out Morse Code against her skull.

- x -

When they first met, Scully's size amused him, like
her ugly plaid jackets and prissy, by-the-book ethics.
She was little girl small, five feet and change
without her shoes, and looked more like a coed, young
and pretty and tempting, than an FBI agent. She had to
use a step stool to reach the ink cartridges and boxes
of extra file folders on the top shelf at the back of
the office, and he'd sit back and watch her sometimes.
He found the backs of her knees, as she stretched so
her fingertips could find paper clips, to be
dangerously provocative, like the call of the sirens.
On that step stool, reaching, she made him wanted to
throw himself against a rocky shore and offer up his
eternal devotion. And the rush he got, standing over
her, seeing the red-gold crown of her head while he
talked, talked at her, was more than enough to make
him feel guilty. Intimidating petite little Scully,
bending her to his will -- that's what he honestly
thought was going on back then.

The joke was on him, for sure. From the beginning, she 
carried herself like she could take a man down with nothing
but her cool stare, bring him to his knees with one
properly exhaled breath, and the truth, it seemed, was
that simple. Scully was larger than life, in her
body's ability to contain a world of compassion,
might, and pain in such a streamlined package, in the
way her eyes could expand at will and rip the ground
out from under him, in her insistence on picking
herself up, dusting herself off, and going right back
out to the trenches, like the most dedicated and
principled of soldiers.

He watches her, telling the story of William's
kidnapping, and she reminds him now of the hundreds of
nameless women he's interviewed over the years, women
so undone by the pain of a lost child that he wondered
how they ever managed to get out of bed in the
morning. Beside his chair, she sits in shadows and
stutters out flimsy breaths, and he sees his mother,
who avoided the daylight for years after Samantha was
taken, whose voice was always stilted with guilt and
anger. A completely understandable reaction, he
thinks, but he never expected it from his
tough-as-nails Scully, who'd deny any emotion that
might imply tears in her armor, who'd faced the most
godless of monsters and never flinched.

"I think there really might be something *special*
about him," she whispers, eyes downcast and brimming
with tears, and he knows she doesn't mean 'special' in
the way that all parents feel their children are
special. She has never seemed so small to him before,
as fragile and unstable as everyone else. She is
terrified, he sees, in a way that she's never been
before, and it makes him go cold in the stomach. He
already knew what had happened to William, most of the
major details anyway, but listening to it straight
from Scully, with William squirming in his lap, makes
him want to put his fist through a wall, wrap his
hands around someone's throat and snap, good and
hard.

"What are you thinking?" Scully asks, seated on the
arm of his chair. William smacks her knee with wet
fingers, and leaves a print on her pants, like
finger-painting. Mulder traces it himself, until
Scully touches his cheek, lifts his chin. "What,
Mulder?"

"I'd kill them, Scully," he says, words laced with
ice. "I'd kill anyone who came within two feet of him.
Of either of you."

She doesn't blink, though there are still tears beaded
along her lashes. She must expect this kind of
sentiment from him by now. He isn't prepared for her
slow nod though, the clear, calm look in her eyes that
says she feels the same way.

He hopes like hell that neither of them ever have to
prove it.

-x -



Continued in To Disclosures or Crescendos (2 of 3)


Continued from To Disclosures or Crescendos (1 of 3)
buckingham15@yahoo.com

- x -

"I was in Portland for a while," Mulder says.
"Despite my track record there, I like the Pacific
northwest."

One of his hands spans William's head, barely moving,
while the other swipes at some drool on the baby's
chin.  He looks relaxed, at ease with his son.  She
fights the urge to fidget, fights the urge to tell him
that he's insane for setting foot in Oregon, for
running the risk of being snatched up by that
faithless sky again.  But she doesn't want him to stop
his storytelling, doesn't want to let go of his voice,
working its pied-piper magic over her just as she
remembers.

It wasn't always that way, not back when they were
both stubborn, hardheaded fools.  She remembers
one afternoon, back when they'd only known each
other for a couple of months, when Mulder pulled out
his obnoxious slide projector and delivered his
treatise on psychic transference, as it pertained to
some case in upstate New York.  She'd worked several
cases with him by that point, had had plenty of time
to observe him, and the jury was in with a vengeance:
Fox Mulder was an arrogant lunatic, so in love with
the sound of his own voice that he could fill an
entire afternoon with his own sounds, no input or
suggestions from his partner whatsoever.  It was
expected that she sit in an uncomfortable, rickety
chair, hands clasped in her lap like a good little
girl, and listen to him explain the mysteries of
the universe to her, like he was some sort of genius,
a guru for all things paranormal.  She smirked behind
her hand as he clicked to a new slide, tried not to
laugh out loud.

"But it seems," Mulder went on, in that voice she
always imagined belonged in a bedroom, some dark,
private corner at least.  "That Mr. Rosenthal has
turned up dead.  Letter opener jammed straight through
his skull.  Neat trick, huh Scully?"

She huffed out an impatient sigh, and turned to look
at him over her shoulder.  He was leaning forward,
foot resting on the bottom of the projector cart, arm
resting on his knee.  There was an eagerness in the
way the corners of his mouth twitched, the way his
eyes locked with hers, imploring.  He didn't move,
content to wait on her, and she got it then, the 
obviousness of it suddenly blinding.

He wasn't desperate to hear his own far-fetched,
whimsical insights; he wasn't looking to the fill the
basement with his own flat, familiar echo.  He wanted
to share it all with someone.  With her, specifically.
All that time, he'd only been waiting for someone to
listen, to give him the benefit of the doubt and
honestly argue through to the end with him.  She was
immediately charmed, blushing in the icy glow of his
slide show before she shot down his theory with
all the grace she knew.

His voice is what she's missed most of all, the sound
of him thinking out loud.

It is William's turned to be charmed, she thinks.  His
head rests against Mulder's shoulder, and he's gazing
up at his father, with a small, secret smile, watching
the lips move and words emerge.  She could never
explain this to him (*This* is how your father sounds,
This is how he thinks...), so she is absurdly grateful
that he can experience it firsthand.  What this child
is missing out on, she reminds herself.  She's certain
that Mulder loses something in her meager translation.

"I was in San Diego for a few weeks too," Mulder says,
watching her carefully.

She can imagine it -- Mulder wandering the beach,
pants rolled to his knees, dark cap and glasses for
disguise, searching for the ghosts of her childhood,
listening to the wind for a whisper of her adolescent
laughter.  Mulder visiting a small, empty grave,
remembering all the ways a life can go wrong, afraid
for her, for their son.

"For a couple of days, I worried that I was gonna run
into your brother, and have to explain a whole hell of
a lot."  He nods toward William, whose eyes are
starting to droop shut.  "But Bill would've been the
least of my problems, huh?"

She nods absently, just to keep the conversation
flowing. The heater seems to be on full-force in the
room, and the air is thick, crushing. She is warm,
feeling wilted and sweaty, so she starts to unbutton
her blouse.  The pearl buttons are so small that her
fingers start to slip, shake around them, but she
finally manages to strip down to her camisole.  Mulder
watches, squints as if he doesn't know what she's
doing.  He looks away, and scratches at a loose thread
in the fabric of the chair.

"First place I went to was Chicago.  Figured a big
city was a pretty safe choice," he says, and it sounds
like he needs to clear his throat.  "Remember the
Weems case from a couple years back?  I thought about
looking him up, seeing if he still had any of that
good luck to pass around."

It's odd to hear how he actually passed the past six
months.  It's odd to hear how he actually spent his
time.  She's wasted entire nights, curled up in bed
with a cup of tea, imagining what Mulder was doing,
where he was at that very moment, struggling,
straining to feel him over the miles between them.
She'd picture a map, one of those brightly colored,
simply drawn charts she remembered from junior high
text books, and tried to fix tiny black x's to mark
all the places she guessed he'd been, a giant bold X
where he might be then, all connected with a dotted
line.  It was like some twisted treasure map, and the
shape of it always seemed to change -- a triangle, a
star, an endless spiraled mess.

She stands, playing with the chain around her neck.

"There was this one night," she says.  She turns her
back to him for courage. "There was this one night
when William had an ear infection.  He was fussy and
couldn't fall asleep, so I was up with him all night.
Flipping through the channels, you know... ESPN was
showing highlights from a hockey game.  The Bruins, I
think.  They had gold and black uniforms."

When she turns, he's watching her, stroking his thumb
over William's cheek.  He is interested, and nods his head
slowly, encouraging her to go on.  She wrings her
hands, trying to find the beat inside her.

"The camera panned across the stands for less than a
second.  Just this blur of faces, but I was certain I
saw you, sitting there with a hot dog in your hand,
screaming about some overtime goal like you didn't
have a care in the world."  She feels tears, but
closes her eyes, breathes deeply and pushes the hair
away from her face.  "I wanted to believe it was you
so badly," she whispers.  "So badly."

From his dark corner, Mulder smiles, and William
latches onto the side of his neck, making fretting
noises like a kitten.

"I never made it up to Boston," Mulder says,
wistfully, like he's apologizing.  "And I'm not really
much of a hockey fan."  He shrugs, and she feels a
thread of sweat slide down the back of her neck,
dampen her hair.

There is nothing left to say, she thinks.  Their lives
are not their own.  Have never been.  There is always
someone in the shadows, watching, pulling the strings,
calling the shots.  They can only react.  Duck and
cover.  He can't apologize for any of that, nor does
she want him to.  She folds her discarded blouse as
neatly as possible, lays it on the dresser, just below a
glaring mirror.

"Scully, I have to tell you something," Mulder says,
out of the darkness, sounding grave but unsure.  He
shifts William to his other shoulder, and rubs his
back.

She sits on the edge of the bed, just across from him.
The bedspread is some slick, manmade fiber, and she
feels like she might slip off the mattress,
crumple at his feet.

"If staying alive means I have to keep living like
this, keep running like some criminal, missing you,
missing William -- if that's what staying alive
means, I'm not convinced it's worth it."

She isn't surprised, but that's not any consolation.
She remembers what it took to convince him in the
first place, the lengths she had to go to in order to
get him out the door.  She played dirty, she thinks.
Sent him on a guilt trip that would have made her
mother proud.  There wasn't any satisfaction in it,
though.  It wasn't as if being a single mother was
what she wanted.  But she would have done anything to
protect him, to know he was safe.  The idea of a world
without Mulder, that didn't contain his spirit at all,
made living without him seem like something she could
handle.  If she'd only known.  If she'd only thought
it through.

"William's not any safer with me gone either," he
adds, quietly.  She knows he's trying to be careful,
gentle with her, but she feels pushed to the edge. She
nods, numb, and clings to the blanket beneath her.

"What's the point of staying alive, Scully, if I'm not
really living?" Mulder asks, and she knows it's not a
rhetorical question.  He wants her to honestly argue
it out with him, play her usual devil's advocate role
and defend the position.  It's his life, she thinks.
Their life.  She doesn't know how to make him
understand that if he doesn't already.  But there's also
the nauseous feeling that she's been wrong all along,
that she's the one responsible for six months of
misery.  No, she thinks.  Please no.

She watches William play tug-a-war with Mulder's
thumb, tiny fingers gripping hard.  He starts to
whine, though, and pushes Mulder's hand away, his chin
crumpling like paper.  He starts crying in earnest,
tears and gunshot loud gasps, and Mulder is caught
off-guard.  He tries holding the baby more gently,
bouncing him again.  On autopilot, she manages to find
the cooler from the car, just inside the bedroom's
doorway where Mulder must have left it on the way in.

"He just wants his bottle," she says to Mulder over
her shoulder.  "We're off schedule this morning."

When she hands him a bottle, he looks confused,
holding it like he doesn't know what to do with it.
William knows the routine, though, and latches on
without any prompting.  Mulder smiles, looking
decidedly amused.

"He's going to want to nap soon too," Scully says
absently.  She yawns herself, covering her mouth in
embarrassment.

"You too?"  Mulder asks gently.

She nods, but with reluctance.  "I drove all night.  I
didn't want to miss you."

He closes his eyes, and nods too.  The bottle slips
free from William's mouth, bumps against Mulder's
thigh.  A small bead of milk drips to his knee,
leaving a dark, uneven stain.  She wipes at it with
her fingers, but it's already soaked through.  Mulder
just shrugs, reaches to kiss William's nose.

- x -

Without the slightest hint of paranoia, he asked for a
nonsmoking room, but somewhere in the chain of
command, his request must have been overlooked.  When
he shifts his shoulders against the fabric of the arm
chair, a wave of ancient cigarette smoke hits him,
right behind the eyes.  He winces, repulsed at the
nails-on-chalkboard effect, and tries to recall the
way William smelled when he held him in his arms,
sweet like smashed fruit, clean like Ivory soap.
Empty-handed, it's hard to conjure up.

Near the shaded window, Scully soothes the baby into
sleep against her shoulder, and the image is intensely
familiar, though he's only witnessed it once or twice,
months ago.  He's imagined it a hundred times, tumbling
into some lumpy motel bed, imagined Scully back at her
apartment, pacing the hall with William, humming some
sweet, mellow lullaby.  He refuses to imagine her
thinking about him as she rocks their son to sleep.
He refuses to imagine her missing him.  He can't bear
the thought of her as anything less than joyful.

Across the room, she is singing now.  It sounds like
it might be 'Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,' but her
back is to him and she's purposely keeping her voice
low, so he can't be certain.

- x -

Mulder sweet-talks her into taking a nap while William
dozes in his car seat, propped up on the dresser.  It
seems like a sin to waste time with Mulder sleeping,
but she's too tired to really argue.  He has a way of
making the little things -- whether or not she'll eat
or sleep when he thinks she should -- seem so
important, like she's letting him down if she doesn't
follow his advice.  She wonders what that means about
them.

"Just for a little while," he whispers, and pulls back
the stiff sheets so she can climb underneath.

She lies on her back, staring at the dark ceiling,
while Mulder puts her shoes away, hangs up her blouse,
checks to make that the 'Do Not Disturb' sign is on
the outer door. She feels like she did when he was
resurrected last year, that everything would be fine
if she could only keep him under lock and key, know
where he is at every minute, monitor his every move.
She feels anxious when he's just across the room from
her, terrified when he steps as far away as the
hallway.  She wants to hold him in the palm of her
hand, tuck him away under her pillow, press him
between the pages of a thick book and never let
anything touch him.

He slides into bed beside her, with some awkwardness,
hesitance, and she curls up on her side in response.
His body, warm against her back, jogs her memory
better than any regression hypnosis session.  She
tries to count the times they've laid together like
this, how many times she's dreamed alongside him, but
her tally seems too low, a mistake, so she gives up.
Mulder is quiet behind her, but not asleep, and she
tries to channel his thoughts, like she has for the
last six months.  There are questions she wants to ask
him, answers she wants to beg him for, but they never
seem to make it as far as her mouth.  For years, they
were always throwing messages in a bottle at one
another, a hit or miss proposition, and she doesn't
think the direct approach will ever suit her.

When she turns in his arms, facing him, his eyes are
open, but his mouth is a tight, grim line.  She
reaches out with her fingertips, tracing his forehead
and delicate eyelids, the bump of his nose and smooth,
full stretch of his lips.  He is barely breathing as
her hands work, but when she finishes, stroking her
thumbs along his jaw, he takes up the cause, rubbing
his knuckles across her chin, tilting her head at the
right angle, swooping in for a kiss, dry and
undemanding at first, holding himself back, but then
trying to reach the heart of her when he realizes that
she's moving her mouth back against his.  She wonders,
panting hot and desperate against him, if he
wishes he could crawl inside her, like she does with
him.  She breaks the connection only when the need for
air makes it absolutely necessary.

His wild, wild eyes afterward.  She'd almost
forgotten.

"I don't think I can sleep," she whispers, from the
curve of his neck.  "I'm too tired."

He laughs.  "Is that all?"

His thumb moves against a mole on her shoulder.

"I can't do it anymore, Mulder.  I can't do it
anymore, either."

"This wasn't my idea," he says.  "You know that."

She nods, miserable.

"I don't know what I was thinking.  I was so afraid of
losing you again that I didn't consider all the
possibilities.  I didn't stop to think how
vulnerable William and I would be."  She wipes at her
eyes with rough fingers.  "I can't protect him on my
own.  And I don't trust anyone else. Not with the way
things are."

She feels him nod, his chin moving against the top of
her head.  Under her face, his sweater is already
damp, but she covers her eyes to minimize the damage.

"I've been so stupid," she whispers into her hands.
"I'm sorry, Mulder.  I'm so sorry."

"Hey, hey," he says, lips pressed to her ear.  "You
think I blame you for any of this?  Never, Scully.
Not for a fucking second."  He jerks his head up for a
second.  "Oops.  Guess I should watch the language
around Junior."

There isn't even the smallest suggestion of humor in
his voice, and his stiff body against her suggests
deadly seriousness.  She smiles in spite of
herself, lifting herself up to see Mulder's face.

"If it happens that when William grows up, our biggest
problem is his use of profanities, I'm going to
consider us extremely lucky."

Mulder does his half-smile thing, one corner of his
mouth quirked up at a maddening angle.

"I guess you've got a point."  His mouth is at her ear
again, damp lips against her skin.  "Fuck, fuck, fuck,
fuck, fuck," he whispers fiercely.  "I've got six
months of frustration stored up, Scully.  I could go
on for hours."

Her hands move up and down against his arms, trying to
soothe him.  She remembers the days when being around
him was enough, when standing across a room from him
and sharing a look was all she asked for.  She hates
that she's become so needy, that she's allowed their
relationship to be tainted with greed.

"Aren't you warm?" she whispers, tugging at the hem of
his sweater.  He lets her pull it over his head, and
she rubs his biceps, her hands tucked under the
sleeves of his t-shirt.

It would be so much easier if they just shared the
same skin.

On the dresser, William sighs in a dream, and Mulder
perks up, checking over his shoulder, watching the
baby kick the air.

"Can he lie down with us?" Mulder asks her, already
throwing the blankets back so he can get up.  She
hates that he feels the need to ask permission to
hold his own son, but she nods and watches as he
carefully lifts William from the car seat and brings
him back to bed.  The baby doesn't even stir, and
Mulder smiles with a touch of triumph when he's
settled in bed with William secure against his chest.
Scully strokes her finger against William's cheek,
and still mostly sleep, he somehow manages to reach
out a grab a fist full of her hair.  Mulder smiles.

"Yeah, I like the hair too, buddy," he whispers,
gently freeing it from tiny, pinching fingers.

He is patting William's bottom, and rocking his
shoulders slightly, like he's done this all before.
It's uncanny.  She wants to ask him again.  She wants
to ask him what they're going to do, how they're going
going to protect this, protect William.  Mulder starts
to hum, something indecipherable and rough, but she
feels her heart contract.

"Mulder?" she asks.

"Hmm?"

She watches Mulder, falling in love with their son,
and falls again herself, for William, for Mulder, for
the way they look through each other's eyes.
She is angry all of sudden, gone from zero to sixty in
less than thirty seconds, and in the face of so many
months of paralyzing depression, it's almost
empowering.  She has to be willing to do what it
takes.  She has to be willing to fight.

"Hey, Scully," Mulder says, and she feels him shift
closer to her in bed.  She lays her head on his
shoulder.  "Get comfortable.  I'll sing you guys a
lullaby."

She closes her eyes, smiling, and listens to Mulder's
toneless voice scratch out a song.

"Scooby Dooby Doo, where are you?" he sings.  "We've
got some work to do now..."

- x -

When he jerks awake, as stunned as if an alarm had
sounded somewhere, he comes face to face with cool,
unblinking eyes, watching him, waiting, it seems, for
him to do something of interest.  Next to him, Scully
is buried beneath a swirl of blankets, but William is
awake, staring up from his chest with strange
patience.  He wonders how long he's been the subject
of his son's quiet surveillance, wonders what the kid
finds so fascinating.

"Was I snoring?" he asks the baby, who bats his
eyelashes like he's trying to curry favor.  "Drooling
maybe?"  Mulder wipes at his mouth, smiling, then
cleans William's damp chin.

Scully rolls to her side, mumbles something under her
breath, but doesn't wake. Her cheeks are flushed with
sleep, her lips parted around an unspoken word.
Mulder is careful not to shake the mattress too much
as he slides to the edge of the bed, keeping a tight
grip on William, and carefully rolls out of bed.  He's
tempted to brush away the bright swatch of hair that's
fallen across her eyes, but he holds back.  It's
always been difficult to walk away from her, he
thinks.  And it certainly hasn't gotten any easier
with practice.

"Come on, buddy," he whispers, kissing his son's
forehead.  He is almost surprised by how soft the skin
there is.  "It's time we had a little man-to-man chat.
 I wanna hear about this mobile trick you've been
doing.  You're driving your mom a little crazy, I
think."

The baby smiles, pats his father's cheek.

Mulder doesn't bother to turn the light on in the
other room, as they sit together on the dark sofa.  He
moves throw pillows out of the way, gets comfortable.

"Maybe we could compare stories about your mom," he
says, amused.  "God knows I've got some good ones."
William laughs, kicking him lightly in the
stomach.  "You know the important stuff, I'm sure.
There isn't a single person on this earth like her.
No one even comes close."  He kisses William again,
right on the ear.  "That makes us pretty lucky,
William.  Lucky as hell actually."

These days, alone on the road, constantly moving,
Mulder finds himself thinking about his own father
often.  He tries to imagine his father's situation
anew, with the experience of fatherhood under his belt
to clarify the issue.  He considers the choices that
his father was faced with, the long dark nights he
spent agonizing over what had to be done.  Still, it's
clear to him that his father was wrong, just as
responsible as that chain-smoking bastard Spender for
the way the Mulder family fell apart, but he
understands him better now.  He understands what
desperation might push a man to do.  He understands
how the fate of a tiny life, resting delicately in his
hands, like a snowflake or drop of rain, might have
been too much for Bill Mulder.  He can feel that
sometimes himself.  That's why he gives thanks every
day for the ace up his sleeve, the trump card that his
poor father never could have hoped for.  Scully.  He's
got Scully, and that seems to make all the difference.

William makes a move for one of the throw pillows,
trying to lift it with minimal success.  His fingers
clutch at empty air, and he whimpers, searching
desperately for the bright gold fringe around the
edges.  Mulder hauls it up for him, holds it so he can
reach it.  William gets his hands on it for less than
a second, and is no longer interested, batting it away
with his tiny hand.

So much to learn, Mulder thinks.  Still so much to
learn.

- x -

She is groggy and fuzzy-headed, fresh from sleep, but
it's still hard to excuse the tears that slip past her
lashes when she finds Mulder and William, together, in
the outer room of the suite.  Mulder is stretched out
across the sofa, a blue ghost in the light from the
television, and William is seated on his chest,
bouncing himself up and down, while Mulder whispers
solemnly to him.  The baby smiles, almost like he's
wondering if Mulder's joking, then breaks into a
full-out laugh when he realizes his father is a total
head-case, in the best possible way of course.  She
remembers that feeling too well herself.

"What's going on out here?" she asks, taking the step
down into the outer room.  Her voice sounds rough but
small, and she feels teenage girl self-conscious,
pushing her hair behind her ears, finger combing it
uselessly.

William reaches out a sticky hand toward her, and
Mulder bends his head backward across the arm of the
sofa so he can look at her, albeit upside-down.  The
arch of his neck drives her wild, colored like pale
sky, looking terribly vulnerable.

"Hey! Look who it is," her upside-down Mulder says,
warmly.  "Sleeping Beauty herself."

She fusses with her hair again, wondering how worn and
tired she looks.  She doesn't want him to worry.

"It's after four, Mulder.  Why didn't you wake me?"

"You needed the sleep."

"But..." she starts to say, managing somehow to hold
herself back.  But we have this one day together,
twenty-four fragile hours, and you left me sleep half
of them away.  How... why... ?

Mulder lowers head, picking up on her mood.  He lifts
William, and sits upright, looking at her with slitted
eyes.

"Besides it gave William and I some time to get better
acquainted.  I even changed a diaper," he says.  He
lifts the hem of his t-shirt, smirking, and she
realizes it's not the same one he was wearing earlier.
"I'm sorry to report that it was not without
incident."

Missing him for all those months last year, she tried
to imagine him as a father, doing the mundane,
everyday things that simply had to be done: changing
diapers, warming bottles, rocking the baby to sleep,
sitting up all night during fevers and ear infections.
She tried to imagine him when the baby was older,
doling out punishments, setting curfews.  It wasn't
impossible to do, really.  She'd seen him do so many
crazy, out-there things over the years that there was
virtually nothing she couldn't imagine him
doing at least; she just didn't know if he'd want to,
if he'd chose to live a life where he had to teach how
to ties shoe laces and how the multiplication tables
worked.  She found herself wishing constantly that
they'd had an actual discussion about this sort of
thing when he had agreed to be her donor for the IVF.
She couldn't believe how little they'd actually spoken
about it.

She watches him now, and sees plainly how much he is
enjoying their son, getting to play dad.  And it makes 
sense, when she considers it.  For over twenty years,
he tried to rebuild his family, chased after his
sister in the hope that he could patch up the
fractures and undo the heartache by bringing her home.
Family, she thinks, has always meant everything to
him.

"We're watching 'Cops,'" Mulder says, nodding toward
the television.  "I was hoping it would be our
stunning television debut so William could see us in
action, but no such luck.  Just some drunk woman who
got locked inside a bank bathroom after closing and a
couple of pot heads speeding."

"I see," she says, smirking.  "In other words,
appropriate viewing for a child?"

Mulder holds William up, dances him through the air.
"Aww, come on, Mom!"

She laughs quietly, and sits beside them on the sofa.
William smiles at her, pats her shoulder, then starts
sucking on a couple of his fingers.  On the
television, there is commercial for life insurance or
allergy medicine or a car, with a little boy
practicing soccer with his father, grass-stained knees
and all.

Mulder clears his throat, jutting his chin toward the
television.

"I guess that's what every kid wants, huh?" he says,
thoughtful.  "A dog and a sandbox, car pooling in the
mini van, Little League with a father who takes his
role as coach way too seriously..."

She looks at him quickly, and seeing a hint of humor
in his eyes, decides to indulge him.

"Somehow, I just don't see you driving a mini van,
Mulder," she says.  "Not in any universe."

He nods vigorously, grinning like a fool.  "Oh,
Scully, don't you see?  By the time we get the mini
van, I'll be firmly entrenched in my mid-life
crisis, so I'll be tooling around town in my hot,
little red sports car."  He taps his fingers against
her knee.  "*You'll* be the one driving the old mini
van, Scully."

One eyebrow raises in amusement, but other than that
she doesn't react.

"We can get you a bumper sticker that says
'Pathologists do it right!'"

She smiles, and rubs her knee against his.  That image
doesn't even come close to being the life she wants,
the life that either of them want, but they should
have the luxury of choice.  They should have something
more to give their son than mere safety.   William,
curled up again in Mulder's arms, looking about ready
to fall asleep, should have everything they've been
denying themselves for years.  Now she feels like he's
been sentenced to a life of fear and isolation, and he
isn't even a year old yet.

"Mulder," she whispers, sounding as unsure as she
feels.

He looks at her and seems to know exactly what she
thinking.  She listens to his frustrated sigh, and
worries that she's making him feel guilty, that
she's putting too many demands on him, asking him to
solve all the world's problems when she's not offering
up any solutions of her own.

"Every minute," Mulder whispers back.  "Every minute
since I've been gone, I've done nothing but work on a
way to get back.  To make sure that all of us are
safe.  And I feel like I could be on the verge of
something.  Maybe."  He reaches out and straightens
the strap of her camisole.  "But in the mean time,
there might be some other options.  Some extreme
measures we could consider if you think--"

"He has to be safe," she says, stroking the sole of
William's foot.  "At any cost."

- x -

He can still surprise himself, which at this stage of
his life seems like nothing short of miraculous.  All
totaled, he probably only has seventy-five hours of
active parenting on record, but still he's able to get
William to sleep with minimal fuss -- some rocking, a
bit of flat, tuneless humming, and the kid is dreaming
away.  Not bad, Mulder thinks.  He wonders if Scully
will be as impressed as he is.

He watches William for a moment in his car seat, head
lolling to one shoulder, eyelids fluttering, and he
has one of those moments of wild disbelief that he
remembers from when Scully was pregnant: this child
cannot possibly be his.  Yet the proof is there right
before his eyes, and the doubts don't last for long.

Scully starts the shower, and listening closely, he
can tell when she steps under the spray.  She hasn't
closed the bathroom door, but he's not sure if it's
the invitation he hopes it is, or just a habit she's
gotten into with William around.  Mulder decides to be
brave, since playing it safe has never gotten him
anywhere with Scully.  He hangs in the bathroom
doorway, arms braced against the jamb while he works
up the courage to actually step inside.  There is a
thin steam already in the air, and he breathes in the
bland scent of motel soap and lemony disinfectant.  He
watches Scully's shadow through the flimsy plastic
curtain, and manages to drag himself to the toilet,
closing the lid and sitting on it, close enough to
Scully that he could reach through the plastic and
help her soap up a couple of spots.

"Mulder?"

He's been absolutely quiet, and subtle too, he
thought, like an careful Peeping Tom watching her from
the bushes, but maybe she has the same uncanny sense
of him that he has of her.  He can just feel her when
she's near, feel the pace and rhythm of her thoughts.

"Yeah?"

She starts washing again, silent.  Just checking in,
he thinks.  The last two years have been brutal for
her, he knows.  It's difficult to be the one left
behind; his life is one long lesson it that. He just
doesn't know what to say to reassure her, what to say
to give her back her faith.  It's not like the past
two years have exactly been a picnic for him either.
He thinks about the frustration and desperation of the
past few months, of the file folder that he'll give
her tomorrow morning, the drastic solution that he has
to offer her, and he hopes she'll understand.


Continued in To Disclosures or Crescendos (3 of 3)


Continued from To Disclosures or Crescendos (2 of 3)
buckingham15@yahoo.com



Right now, she deserves a few hours of normalcy.
Given what his life has held lately, he wouldn't
mind them either.  He wouldn't even turn up his nose
at the damn mini van at this moment.  It's all so
fucking relative.

He coughs, breathing in steam, and feels like he's
choking.

"William is down for the count," he shouts to her,
reaching.  "I don't have a lot of go on here, but I'm
guessing he's inherited your sleeping patterns."

"I don't know," she calls over the roar of the shower.
 She raises her arms over her head to rinse her hair.
"When he's in the right mood, he can be
something of a night owl.  I don't think he gets that
from me."

He smiles, and rubs at his eyes.  The steam is
starting to make him sweat.  He hears the shower turn
off, and Scully's pale hand pushes the shower curtain
back slightly, so her pink face and shoulders are
visible.  He watches the water drip from her hair,
down her face, along her neck, watches the way her
eyes carefully avoid his. Drenched and flat against
her skull, her hair seems even longer where it curves
over her shoulders.  He grabs a towel from the rack,
the largest one but when held open it seems like
nothing more than a scrap to him.  She steps out of
the shower and into the towel so he can cover her with
it.  He dries her carefully, stunned by the raw need
of the moment.

"Thank you," she whispers, and he pulls her back
against him, kissing the sweet, wet crown of her head.

- x -

With the state of things in their world being what
they are, she especially hates disappointing him now,
and that's really the only reason that she manages
to finish half of the creamy onion soup that Mulder
ordered for her. Her turkey sandwich lies virtually
untouched on the hotel china, though, sitting
forlornly in an oily puddle of extra mayonnaise.  He
doesn't comment on her eating habits, just quietly
sets about demolishing the cheeseburger and fries
on his own plate.  Her lack of appetite is hardly a
new development, but she can tell he's contemplating
it when he takes the room service trays into the
hall.

"So what's going on with the X-Files these days?"
Mulder asks, joining her on the sofa again.  "You got
anything interesting to share?"  He does his best
to sound playful, flirty and carefree, but she knows
he's holding back too, that they spent an entire meal
without discussing what really matters.

"I only get involved if Agent Doggett or Reyes ask me
to," she tells him.  "As hard as this might be for you
to imagine, most of it feels like the same old, same
old to me."

He rests his elbow on the back of the sofa, leaning in
towards her.  His eyes look dark and sleepy,
unfathomable, like he's thinking very carefully about
what she's said.

"You're wrong," he says after a moment.  "I can
imagine.  I felt it myself last year.  When I came
back..."  He shakes his head.  "I guess death has a
way of changing your perspective."

She looks down and realizes she's tracing patterns on
his knee, all five fingers swirling against his jeans.
 He nudges her by lifting his leg slightly.

"More important things in life, right?" Mulder muses.
"Still, I have to admit that it will never sit well
with me.  Two people down in that office that aren't
you and I."

He smiles, a bit sadly, and takes her hand, studying
her fingernails.

"I think John and Monica are doing the best they can.
I think they're about as trustworthy as we're going to
get," she says, and it feels like she's been
practicing that line for months.

What else can she tell him, she wonders.  You're damn
right, Mulder.  The X-Files belong to us and no one
but us.  I walk around that office and still look for
you in every corner.  It seems obvious, selfish,
beside the point.

"It's not really the quality of their character that
I'm questioning," he tells her, sounding absolutely
serious.  "It's more a question of temperment. Doggett
walks around like he's had a bad case of constipation
for the last ten years, and Reyes is so out there, she
makes even *me* uncomfortable.  You know that's
something."  He meets her eyes without cracking a
smile.

She grins despite herself, but manages to shake it
off.

"Even if all that is true," she says diplomatically,
"They've both gone beyond the call of duty where
William is concerned.  You--"

He nods, cutting her off.

"Of course, I'm grateful.  That goes without saying."

She shrugs, not knowing where else to take this.  She
and Mulder have been together for so long, have been
the X-Files for so long that it's difficult for her to
objective.  She thinks of a road in Oregon, Mulder and
a can of spray paint, Mulder shouting like a lunatic
at the sky, and her alongside him, shaking her finger
with schoolmarm precision, reciting sections of the
Bureau handbook from memory alone, hands on her hips
to prove she meant business.

"They're us," she says, remembering.  "They're us ten
years back."

He smiles wryly, and she gets the distinct impression
that he knows what she's thinking.

"No," he asserts, with conviction.  "No, I don't think
so, Scully.  Not even close."

She studies the lines of Mulder's face closely, most
of them earned while she was at his side.  She thinks
of every story he ever told her, every mystery he ever
wanted to solve with her.  She thinks of how she
trusted him no matter how far gone he seemed, no
matter how insane he sounded.  She thinks of how many
times she wanted him to be right, how many times she
hoped they'd come back from the ends of the earth with
Mulder's proof on a silver platter, served up pretty
and validating.  She thinks of how they've loved one
another, through every dark, miserable year, through
the frustration and boredom when it was easier to snap
at one another than try and listen, through the crazy,
blissed-out months when it seemed like they were the
only two people on earth.

She smiles over at him, nods.

"You're right, Mulder."  Moving closer to him on the
sofa, she leans into his body.  "Not even close."

He shuts his eyes, like he's listening to music.  His
arm goes around her, while his other hand plays with a
throw pillow.  They have made an art out of talking
around their feelings, in conveying what they feel by
saying every but what really matters.  Easier to talk
about Doggett and Reyes than to actual acknowledge the
truth: they are lost without one another.  They are
utterly dependent on each other, can barely feel
anything without one another.

"Fuck," Mulder groans against her forehead.  "I miss
you so goddamn much, Scully.  You're sitting here,
right next to me, and I already miss you.  Missing you
in anticipation or something."

She runs her hand along the space where his t-shirt
has ridden up from the waist of his jeans, and
stretches up to kiss the corner of his mouth.

"I know," she whispers.  "I know."

She closes her eyes when he pushes her back against
the cushions.  Even in her arms, he seems as elusive
as starlight, moving too quickly for her to really
hang on.  She wraps her body around his, and refuses
to let go.

- x -

Tomorrow night there will be at least three states
between them, and a week from now, there could be as
many as a thousand miles separating them.  All he
wants is something to hold onto, something to prove
that the life he remembers isn't some dream or
delusion.  He wants to ask her to tear up his back
with her nails, so he'll have scars to carry with him,
so every time he steps under the spray of a shower,
he'll feel the sting of reality telling him that it's
all true.

The sofa is narrow, and he feels like they're clinging
to the edge of a cliff, about to free fall into an
abyss.  It would be easier to just roll onto the
floor, but maybe that's not the kind of memory that
Scully wants to take with her, quick and desperate on
a rough hotel carpet.  He's not about to stop and ask
her.  No words, because that's not how things are done
between them.  Why do they need words when they have
this, he thinks.  What could he possibly need to hear
that she isn't telling him right now?  His fingers
grip the fabric of the sofa, trying to keep both of
them from falling.

Scully bites her lip, and throws her head back, like a
spooked horse.  He sinks his teeth into her pale
throat, gifts her with a purple bruise, her own
personal reality check.

- x -

She is piled atop Mulder, feeling broken down to her
essential elements, boneless and rubbed raw, and she
worries that she might fall off, with his chest
heaving as it is.  She is definitely sore, vaguely
uncomfortable, but she loves the feeling.  She loves
that she can still feel the burn in every place Mulder
touched.

She has never been one to dwell on life's small
cruelties or injustices; it has always simply been the
way the world worked.  She remembers her father, in
his naval uniform with its gleaming brass buttons,
bending down to her five year old eye-level, saying
softly, over the thwack, thwack of Bill playing
basketball, of Melissa singing jump-rope rhymes 
and beating nylon against the pavement, "You have to
understand, Starbuck.  Life isn't always fair.  It 
is what it is."  She's never forgotten, never really
took the time to shake her fists at the heavens
and demand answers.  Not until Mulder was taken
from her.  Now she has lost all pride, and rails
against God, the sun, stars and moon, everyone who can
hold their loved ones close and safe at the end of the
day, on a regular basis.  What would Mulder think if
he knew, she wonders.

She sits up carefully, settling in the space between
Mulder's legs, and drags her fingers across his chest.
His eyes are closed, but the corners of his
mouth twitch to an almost smile while he tries to
catch his breath.  Beneath them, the couch is a mess,
but she tells herself that it's someone else's
problem.  The stickiness between her thighs does
remind her of one thing, though.

No birth control.

She feels the panic of a teenage girl, the 'Oh God,
what will I do if...' alarm of girls in tiny
cinderblock dorm rooms.  Six months after his birth,
and she still doesn't know how they were able to
conceive William.  It could happen again, she panics.
Another innocent child used as a pawn in a game so
much bigger than any one of them.  She could kick
herself for being so stupid, so shortsighted, so
careless.  Mulder would too, if she brought it
up.  It'll probably hit him sometime in the next
couple of days, and he'll torture himself endlessly.
She knows him too well.

He shifts, his lashes sticking to the sweaty skin
under his eyes when he blinks in the light.  She tries
to pinpoint what it is that makes him so beautiful to
her, but it's as impossible as when she watches
William sleeping and searches for it in him.  There is
a still a scientist, alive and well, in her head that
wants to analyze everything, to know the reason behind
everything she sees.  She wants answers.  Her heart,
however, has learned to look the other way, to do
nothing but feel.

"You okay?" Mulder croaks.  He lifts himself up so
he's leaning back against the arm of the sofa, and
rubs her neck.

She nods, cupping his knee in her palm.

"Cold?" he asks, with a strange tenderness in his
voice.  Stupid question, she thinks.  The room has
been too warm since the moment they first checked
in, and now they're both sweaty and feverish.  He must
catch on because he doesn't wait for a response.
"Thirsty?"

He is smiling now, aware of how awkward this all
feels, that his solicitousness is only making matters
worse.  He reaches stiffly for the bottle of water on
the table, shakes it in his hand, like he's trying to
tempt her.  Smirking, she takes it from him, twists
off the cap, and takes a long swig.  When she hands it to
him for his own taste, a small bit trickles down his
chin, and he wipes it away, with his usual grace. In
the barely there light of the room, he looks
star-kissed, silvery and luminous, like no one else
she's ever seen.  He has always been that way.

Two years ago, April in full swing, Mulder freshly
returned from England, and Scully had had one of those
rare moments of stunning, gripping clarity that
pushes a life forward.  They left the basement
together one evening, walking away from the Hoover
Building without a thought as to where they were
headed. When she finally came back to herself, pulled
out of some Mulder-induced stupor where the heat from
his body was the only thing she was aware of, they
were on the Mall.  Above, the sky was dark as
eggplant, with indigo swirls near the horizon and
behind the trees.  The wind that blew across smelled
like rain and freshly cut grass.  The cherry blossoms
seemed to have bloomed overnight, and they were pale
and fragile against the plum sky, like sugar flowers
on a cake.  Somewhere, a street performer was playing
the flute, and she could hear some tragic, beautiful
melody just beyond the trees.  Mulder tipped his head
back, closed his eyes and breathed in deeply.  This is
what the world looks like with him, she thought.  This
is how Mulder makes the world look.

Two months later, he was abducted, and the world went
back to its colorless, soundless monotony.

He is rubbing a knuckle into his eye, yawning.  She
reaches over to trace the puckered scar on his
shoulder.

"You amaze me," she tells him, shaking her head.
"From the very beginning really, but you're always
becoming something else, something more to me."  He
smiles, as if he doesn't quite believe her, and plays
with her hair.  "I hate being apart from you, but I
hate it more that William doesn't get to know you,
that he doesn't know what it's like to have you in his
life.  I don't just want him to be safe, Mulder.  I
want him to have everything."

Mulder licks his lips, and his mouth hangs open while
he tries to think of something to say.  She kisses his
cheek, just because she wants to, and he turns into
her, like he's searching for the sun.

"We're going to find a way," he whispers. "We're going
to make sure that kid is safe and happy and healthy.
You have to believe that."

She swipes at her tears with anger, annoyed with
herself.  Mulder takes her chin between his thumb and
forefinger, and kisses her, short and sweet.

"I believe that," she tells him, her eyes still
closed.  "I trust you, Mulder.  You know that."

When she looks up at him, he nods briskly.  She's made
him nervous, she knows, and her guilt rages again.
She strokes her fingers through his hair in apology.

"I should check on William," she says, rooting around
on the floor for basic clothing.

"Yeah," he agrees absently, watching her dress.  He
gestures at the mess they've made.  "I'll try to do
something about this."

She stands in front of him in what amounts to nothing
more than underwear, and they stare at one another for
a long moment.

"Okay," she says, turning.

"Okay," he agrees.

- x -

This is what he is working for, a moment of
astonishing normalcy, of wasted time and evening
routine.  He stands at the foot of the bed, pressing
his fingers against the knot in his neck, and watches.

William's pajamas are bright blue, with small
footballs, baseballs, and basketballs scattered across
them.  Propped up against a couple of pillows, he
looks like a little prince, holding court in their
warm hotel room.  Scully sits beside him on the bed,
in just her tank top and panties, looking through her
travel bag.  The bedside light is harsh, but it only
makes her skin seem paler than bone, thinner than air.
 Her small feet, with their shiny red toes clutching
the dull metal of the bed frame, fascinate Mulder.  He
knows that he could hold one in the palm of his hand,
and it reminds him again how fragile she is.  She
smiles up at him, just as William tries to stuff his
entire hand in his mouth.

"I really wish I had a camera right now," Mulder says,
ruefully.

Scully lowers her head, hair covering her face, but he
can see curved line of her mouth.

"I actually have some pictures for you.  There're a
couple from Christmas when my mother insisted on
putting him in a little Santa suit.  You'll like
those."

Mulder smiles, leaning back against the dresser.

"Any chance I might get a couple of you?"

The hair is carefully pushed back from her face,
though her eyes shift self-consciously.  "I think
there might be a few of the two of us together,"
she says.

He nods, pleased.  Beside him, William's stuffed bunny
lies on the dresser.  He hands it to his son, who has
abandoned the idea of a fist in his mouth and is
looking around for something else to cram in it.
William takes it very gingerly, and starts sucking on
one of the bunny's ears.

"What's this guy's name?" he asks, lying across the
bed beside William.

Scully looks over, and shrugs.  "He doesn't really
have a name.  We call him 'Bunny.'"

William moves his head minutely, almost like he's
nodding, then blinks slowly at Mulder, waiting for him
to react.

"We can do better than that.  Right, buddy?"  Mulder
rubs his finger against the pale terry cloth material
of the rabbit's belly, scrutinizes it carefully.
William laughs, thinking they're playing some kind of
game.  He slaps at the toy trying to mimic his father.
 "He's short and pretty squat.  And let's face it,
this is one funny-looking face."

Scully is at the dresser, unfolding her pajamas, but
he can still hear her restrained laughter.  William
looks up at Mulder, bouncing himself slightly.

"I got it!" Mulder declares.  "How about Melvin?"

Scully laughs outright, turning with her pajama
bottoms fisted in her hand.  "Oh, Mulder, that's not
nice."

"What?  It's a good, honest name.  Right, William?"
He holds up the rabbit, so it's at the baby's
eye-level.  "Say hello to Melvin the Bunny."

William grabs the toy, holds it for a moment, then
dumps it on the bed and goes back to sucking on his
fingers.

"I think you've been vetoed," Scully says sagely,
wandering off to the bathroom.

Mulder huffs out a laugh, smiling despite himself.  He
picks the toy up and plays with the floppy ears.  It
wouldn't be difficult to swipe the rabbit tomorrow
morning, stuff it in his bag and carry it off to parts
unknown, with Scully and William none the wiser.  He
wants so badly to have something to take away with
him, and one fuzzy bunny doesn't seem like too much to
ask for.  But then, it's the one stuffed animal that
Scully brought with them, so it's probably the kid's
favorite.  He rolls over and watches William grab at
the corner of the comforter, try pulling it loose.

He looks down at the bunny.

"Sorry, Melvin," he says, quietly.  "No road trip for
you."

- x -

At home, there are tricks that she employs to fall
asleep.  If William is in the room with her, she tries
to match her breathing to his.   She's counted sheep
on occasion, and silently recited the Declaration of
Independence, Shakespearean sonnets, whatever she can
remember, until she drifts off.  She is almost always
forced to resort to the same last measure, though:
imagining Mulder's heartbeat in the dark and quiet of
her bedroom.  There have been more than enough times
when she's flanked hospital beds, resting her palm or
head on his chest, willing him to come back to her, so
she's well-acquainted with its sound.  She tries to
hear it now, with Mulder lying beside her, but
she can only hear her own, the sheets rustling around
her, a bird warbling out in the parking lot somewhere.

She tries to imagine their lives a year from now,
tries to imagine that they'll have found some
semblance of peace, by their standards anyway.  She
tries to imagine that Mulder and William will have
really gotten to know one another, that she'll be able
to play doting, overjoyed mother without looking
over her shoulder every moment, without waiting for
objects to fly through the air by themselves.  She
tries to imagine that she and Mulder will have had the
chance to get used to the change between them, that
their relationship will not be the same stop-and-start
series of stolen moments that it is now.  She tries to
imagine being able to say it to him, tries to
imagine being able to hear it from him without feeling
her chest constrict -- I love you, said simply,
easily, without death looming, without the fate of
the world on their shoulders.  Just the truth and
nothing but.

"Scully," Mulder says, out of the blue darkness.  He
sounds annoyed.  "I can hear you thinking all the way
over here.  You've got to get some sleep.  There's a
long drive back for you in the morning."

She rolls toward him, but doesn't answer.  There's a
long drive back for her in the morning.  Away from
this room.  Away from Mulder.  She feels a twinge
of homicidal rage.  Mulder presses his lips against
her shoulder, not kissing her but breathing against
her.  Across the room, William makes a groggy,
barely awake sound, then settles down again.  She
can't reach him where she is, so she blindly reaches
out to stroke Mulder's hair.

"He looks like me," Mulder says, quietly.  "He has
your eyes, but otherwise he looks like me."

She remembers what that realization felt like for her,
how it seemed to break her heart and put her back
together all at the same time.

"Yeah," she whispers, but not without her voice
breaking.  "He's beautiful."

Mulder must be shaking his head, because his nose rubs
back and forth against her shoulder, like a tease.
She wonders what he's thinking.  Her mother, she
knows, has avoided pointing out this quirk of
genetics.  She laughs at William's full smile, but only
says, "Oh, he's definitely got those beautiful blue
Scully eyes!"  Maybe she thinks it would be too
painful for her daughter to hear the truth, that as
William's gotten older, his hair has only grown
darker and darker, that his smile is so achingly
familiar, it's no stretch to imagine what Mulder's
baby pictures look like.  Her mother is only trying to
protect her. It hardly matters at this point, Scully
thinks.

Her fingers skip along Mulder's rough cheek.  "I can't
look at him without seeing you," she tells him, but
feeling like she's speaking only to herself.

Mulder lifts his head, but she only sees the shadows
of his face in the dark. She feels him reach out to
play with her cross, the only slash of light in
the room.  "Don't saddle the kid with that baggage,
Scully," he says.  He tries to keep his tone light,
but she understands what he's really saying.  "I mean,
getting stuck with this nose is bad enough."  He
nuzzles against her neck, like a particularly friendly
puppy.

She thinks that William has actually lucked out, that
along with whatever special junk DNA he may have
inherited from Mulder, he's got a face with
character to spare, with a rare kind of expressiveness
that breaks hearts.  She hates herself for despairing
at the sight of his familiar, pretty pout.  She hates
herself for being so ungrateful.

In the dark, she cups the back of Mulder's neck, and
tries to dream.

- x -

He's starting to get sick of these melodramatic scenes
they find themselves forced into again and again, like
they're stuck in some mawkish black-and-white movie
where a fatal illness or shameful secret keeps them
saying good-bye, good-bye, good-bye.

Standing back, balanced carefully on a concrete
parking slab, he watches Scully settle the baby in his
car seat.  The lot holds a few other cars, but it's
barely six a.m., so they're entirely alone.  If there
weren't church bells ringing somewhere behind the
hotel, he might think they were the only ones left in
the world.  There we go again, he thinks.  Buying into
this tragic, overly romantic bullshit.

When William is comfortable, his bunny tucked snugly
under his arm, Scully gracefully backs away, avoiding
Mulder's eyes, so he can say good-bye to his son.  She
is fighting a losing battle with her tears, and he
wants to tell her to pull herself together, get a grip
and accept that this is the way things are, because he
simply can't stand the sight of her weeping openly,
wearing her broken, burning heart on her sleeve for
him to see.  It's just not the Scully he knows.  But
he imagines it's something she heard often as a
child; he can picture her no-nonsense father telling
her to 'Buck up, little sailor,' encouraging her to
smile through the tears, to be stoic in the face of
her pain.  He forces himself to bite his tongue for
that reason alone.

Beside the open car door, he crouches down, knees on
dusty pavement, and looks in on William, who seems
groggy and about to drift off.  Mulder takes
his small hand, strokes it, shakes the curled fist.
When he kisses the baby's forehead, William smiles
through a few impressive spit bubbles, then closes his
eyes.

"See you soon, buddy," Mulder whispers.  "Be good for
your mom."

Scully is standing back by the trees, arms crossed
over her chest.  She tilts her head, looking up at the
dingy sky, and he sees her lips tremble around a
ragged sigh.  He rummages through his bag, and finds
the torn, battered file folder that he's been holding
off on giving to her.  He takes a deep breath, and
offers it to her.

"I want you to take a look at this when you get home,
all right?"  He watches her turn the folder over in
her hands.  "It's a possible answer.  A temporary
solution maybe."

She nods.

"Read it and see what you think."

She nods again, clutching the folder to her chest,
like it's a love letter, a romantic offering from the
heart.  In their fucked up world, he supposes that's
what it is.  It's his way of saying that he wants to
give her everything she's ever wanted.  He hopes she
understands.

"You better get going," he says, checking his watch.
"Me too."

"Mulder--"

"Wait to hear from me, okay?  I'll be in touch."

"How long?" she asks, frowning when she realizes that
he isn't about to answer her.

He lays his hands on her shoulders, feels hard bone
beneath the soft material of her jacket.  She's still
the steely Scully that he knows so well.  Underneath
all of it, she's still there, holding the pieces
together.

"Be careful," she whispers, stepping in close,
wrapping her arms around his waist.  "Take care of
yourself."

"Always."  He smiles against her forehead.  "I know
you'll kick my ass if I don't."

She lifts her head, chin tipped back, and he bends,
presses his mouth to hers, remembering a thousand
moments when he felt like doing this very thing
but held back, savoring the feel of her lips because
it'll have to last him for a while.  When he pulls
away, her eyes are still closed.

"Go on.  Get going.  Before Skinner and Doggett launch
a manhunt," he says, pressing his body against hers,
pushing her toward the car.  She blinks at him,
confused.  "Come on," he teases.  "You know no one can
resist the Scully charm."

She sniffs once, but moves mechanically toward the
car, tugging on the sleeve of his jacket as she turns.
 He waits as she settles herself behind the
wheel, turns on the engine.  He hikes his bag up on
his shoulder, and watches her dark car disappear from
the lot.

He knows how she sees him.  She thinks that he is
driven by some virtuous mission to save the world and
all its inhabitants, and she sees him as noble
and self-sacrificing because of it, if not hotheaded
and reckless at times.  She sees herself as selfish,
as concerned solely with personal tragedies and
dangers.  But he knows the real score: for nine years,
she's saved his world on a daily basis, in ways that
no one else will ever know about.  If this thing is
going to work at all, it's going to be because of the
two of them together.

He looks down at the empty parking space that just
held her car.

Under the lead-colored sky, he starts walking in the
opposite direction.

- x -

Here, then, is their same old life.

Mulder is the answer man, with a pocket full of ready
explanations and a head full of unorthodox ideas.
Scully does the analysis, shoots them down or
helps them float.  It's give and take, point and
counterpoint carried to the extreme, their very own
problem-solving dance.  They've long stopped looking
at their feet.

He is flighty, prone to spilt-second leaps of logic
that would make a lesser man's head spin.  She
requires facts, the simple, basic truths that will do
the job of illuminating their path.  He is driven by
the fundamental idea of family, of holding his
together by whatever means necessary.  She finds her
faith in him, in knowing that wherever he is, he is
moving the black, hopeless heavens and the crumbling
earth to do the right thing, to do what he thinks is
best for her.  Never wavering.  At least once an hour,
he wonders why the hell she's stuck with him this
long, what the hell she sees in him, and she
contemplates all the ways he's blown her life wide
open, every miracle that he's allowed her to see.

At the end of the day, she only prays that he will be
safe, and he only hopes that he won't let her down.
Same as ever.


- x -

The End

- x -



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