Title: Faith I: This Kiss
Author: Nynaeve
Written: January 1999
e-mail: mknight@on-net.net Rating: PG
Category: SR
Spoilers: none
Keywords: Mulder/Scully romance; song Fic
Disclaimer: Yes, I know, they all belong to Chris Carter, 1013, and a bunch of other legal entities. I had my fun, and now I'm returning them, for now... don't sue; it wouldn't be worth it. The song belongs to Faith hill and is used without permission, but with a lot of love and admiration.
Feedback: Welcome, including criticism, but only constructive. My motto is: I e-mail, therefore I am

Summary: A late night drive and a song get Scully thinking.

Dedication: To Lilac and Alyssa, for reading and encouraging

"This Kiss" - Faith Hill

"I don't want another heartbreak
I don't need another turn to cry
I don't want to learn the hard way
Baby hello, oh no goodbye
But you got me like a rocket
Shooting straight across the sky"

Scully groaned and shifted in her sleep, trying to find a comfortable spot in the front seat of the car. Mulder looked over at her and grinned a little, that lopsided puppy dog grin that he just knew she couldn't resist.

"Jeez, Scully, you'd think being so little you could get comfortable over there."

She turned and looked at him, eyes drugged with sleep. "What?"

"I said...."

"Oh shut up, Mulder. Where are we?"

"We're almost there."

"Yeah, but where is *there*, exactly, Mulder? Tell me again."

"The Mojave Desert, Scully. To be more exact, the High Desert, a little Navy town called Ridgecrest."

"And why exactly are we...a Navy town in the middle of the desert?"

"You mean in all of Ahab's wanderings you never heard of China Lake?"

"China Lake? No."

"Set up during World War II, Scully, a so-called *Black Base*. They did some testing for the Manhattan Project out here. It's got some of the largest test ranges the military has, due to the fact that it's in the middle of the desert. The base remained a closely guarded secret until John Kennedy signed it into actual being in the early 60s. Still it has remained somewhat unknown, a secretive not-secret. A lot of weapons that we used in Vietnam, that were used in the stand off known as the Cold War, and even some of what we rained down on Saddam, the first time around, were developed, tested, or perfected here," Mulder's voice droned on, warming to his subject, sharing his knowledge with her. She groaned.

"Mulder."

"What? Hey, Scully, there's more. Like the fact that..."

"Mulder. I don't care."

"Scully?"

"Mulder, I just want to be able to get out of the car, collapse into a bed somewhere and sleep. I'd like to know why we're going to this particular Navy base, but...I really don't want a thesis about it."

"Jeez, Scully. I'm sorry. I thought you'd be interested." Again, his face wore the puppy dog expression. Scully bit her lower lip in consternation.

She hung her head in mock defeat. "All right, Mulder. I'm not going to get back to sleep, so you might as well tell me."

He smiled broadly at her and launched into "China Lake: The Complete History according to Fox Mulder." Scully listened to him with half an ear. She let her thoughts wander. Another damn car. Another damn night. Another routine case. Oh, let's hope it's routine anyway. What am I thinking? I'm with Mulder. Nothing is ever routine. At least this is a case we were assigned to, so we can't get in too much trouble. What am I thinking? I'm with...oh, hell. what is that song? Mulder, country music? oh God. Could it be worse? Don't ask that, Dana! Don't go there.

Mulder continued to reveal fascinating details about this little base in the seeming middle of nowhere. Well, fascinating to someone, I'm sure The song on the radio ended. News break? Please. Oh please. No more twangy men, no more soulful songstresses with that plaintive little wail at the end of very line, no more pick ups, dogs, and tears. Damn. No luck.

"Mulder?" she interrupted.

"Yeah, Scully."

"Can we change the radio station?

"The radio? Scully, are you listening to me?"

"Hmm...oh yeah, of course." Think, Scully. Think fast "It's just that country music irritates me; it's distracting me."

"Oh. This is the only station we can get out here. You want me to turn it off?"

"No!" Oops, that was a little too emphatic. If he turned it off, she'd have to listen to his dissertation about this place. "No, I know you like background noise. I'll just ..uh...focus more on you." groan. What a choice.

A new song was now starting. "I don't want another heartbreak". double groan. plaintive wails, full steam ahead. And could we try originality? "I don't need another turn to cry" honey, you don't know about crying. Try being shot at, kidnapped/abducted, held hostage by more psychos than I can count anymore, injected with viruses of unknown origin, etc., etc. and that's just WORK. groan "I don't want to learn the hard way" Hard way? l=Let it go Dana "Hello baby oh no goodbye" OK, I guess she's got me there. You have to have a life to say hello or goodbye. When was the last time I even went out on a date? hmmm..Does Ed Jerse count? OK, more territory I don't really need to think about. She's not quite as bad as I thought she'd be - no plaintive wailing so far.... "But you got me like a rocket" or would that a UFO? "Shooting straight across the sky" Shooting straight across the sky? I'm not sure I remember that concept. Wanna remind me, Mulder? She sat up suddenly in her seat, like she'd been shocked, with a large jolt of electricity.

"Scully? You OK?"

"I'm fine." Oh sorry, Mulder. You hate that, don't you? "Just need to stretch out a little."

"Look Scully," he pointed out her widow. "Ridgecrest. See the lights."

"We're almost there?"

"Closer. Of course, out here you can see forever, so... where was I?"

"Uhhhh...."

"Oh, yeah..." Mulder got rolling again.

Scully tried to focus on his words, not willing to let her mind slip back to her last thought. She kept those thoughts too well repressed. Well, at least when they were working. OK, when they were together. Yeah, Dana, sure you do. Why can't you just admit it to yourself? You want Mulder. groan. Not a complication I need, she argued mentally with herself. Complication? How much more complicated does it get? You want the guy, but you can't tell him or show him for that matter. You love him, and have for years, but can't tell him THAT either. You spend almost every waking minute with him, which may eventually drive you completely nuts, as crazy as he is. groan groan and groan. Complicated.

She closed her eyes again. The song filtered back into her brain, drowning out Mulder.

"It's the way you love me
It's a feeling like this
It's centrifugal motion
Its perpetual bliss
It's that pivotal motion
It's (ah) impossible
This kiss, this kiss...unstoppable...this kiss, this kiss"

The car was slowing down, drifting onto the shoulder. Scully opened her eyes. "Mulder? Everything OK?"

"Yeah. No...We need to talk, Scully"

"Mulder, I'm exhausted. Whatever it is, can't it wait until tomorrow. Right now I really just want to get to a motel and get some sleep."

"I'm sorry, Scully. This can't wait."

He pulled the car all the way off, onto the wide shoulder. He left the keys turned so that the radio continued to play and the vent blew in night air filled with the heady desert scents.

"Mulder, what is it?"

"Scully, things can't go on like this."

"Like what?"

"It's the way you love me"

He turned to look at her, to stare at her really. "I love you, Scully."

What? Mulder? Say Something, Dana. Say what you want to say. He wants you to say it.

"It's a feeling like this"

"Mulder... I love you."

Oh God. We both said it. He loves me. He loves me. And now he knows I love him? How could he not have known before?

"It's centrifugal motion"

Yeah, I'm spinning, definitely spinning. I'm dizzy, lightheaded from this.

"It's perpetual bliss"

Bliss? Yes, bliss is being loved by Mulder, loving Mulder. Telling him that, hearing him say it. Yes, this is bliss.

"It's that pivotal moment"

We have to decide what comes next. Do we just leave it there? each of us knowing, accepting, reveling in our feelings, but neither of us initiating anything else. Oh please, Mulder. Tell me you want more. I want more, but it scares me.

"It's (ah) impossible"

No, it's possible. It has to be. within the realm of extreme possibilities.

"This kiss, this kiss"

Mulder gazed at her. "I want to finish what we started in my hallway, all those months ago, Scully."

I can only nod and feel my eyes brim with tears. That moment has haunted him as it haunted me. He's wished it back, as I have. We've waited so long, wasted so much time.

Mulder moved closer to her. Her cupped her head in one hand. With his other arm he gathered her to him, as gently as he could. Shifting to as comfortable a position as possible in the front seat of the rented mid size sedan, he lowered his mouth to hers. His touch was light, soft, questioning. She responded gently to him, licking his lips lightly.

"...unstoppable..."

Mulder, please don't stop. Don't ever stop. Kiss me forever.

"This kiss, this kiss"

He broke the kiss and leaned up to kiss her forehead, mirroring her actions that night in his hallway. Then he laid his forehead against hers. His eyes were open, hazel green shot through with flecks of gold. Beautiful, loving eyes. She was gazing into them , lost. Utterly his. She was suddenly unsure where her soul ended and his began. She could feel the rhythm of their hearts, beating as one. He could drown in the deep blue pools of her eyes, looking at him with such fierce love. Could she see his own love for her reflected in his eyes?

"Cinderella said to Snow White
How does love go so off course
All I wanted was a white knight
With a good heart, soft touch, fast horse
Ride me off into the sunset
Baby, I'm forever yours"

"Scully? Scully?"

She opened her eyes. They were moving. what?

Mulder was staring at her. He looked annoyed and hurt. "Did you hear what I was saying?"

"Oh, Mulder, I'm sorry. I must have drifted off for a few seconds." Had this dream, Mulder. And what a dream it was. If I didn't love you so much, I might hurt you for pulling me from it.

"Sure. Fine. Whatever."

"Mulder, I said I was sorry."

"OK"

Great. Now he's mad at me. I apologized. I can't help being tired. Besides its not like I ditched him or anything. I didn't run off and leave him with no word of where I'm going, no transportation.

"Cinderella said to Snow White"

Why can't I ever be your garden variety damsel in distress? Neither of them was ever kidnapped, attacked, held hostage, done autopsies on mutant fluke men. Oh never mind. What I wouldn't give for a plain old wicked stepmother.

"How does love go so off course"

Good question. Then again, its not like Mulder and I even have a course to go off of. Big part of the problem right there.

"All I wanted was a white knight"

Ah the heart of the matter, the crux of the problem. I have my white knight. I'm just not sure what to do with him.

"With a good heart, soft touch, fast horse"

Mulder has a good heart. The only heart I could ever trust with my own . And a soft touch. Does he know what his touches do to me? That gentle, chivalrous way he puts his hand in the small of my back and guides me through a doorway, or a crowd, or... and the way he'll brush my hair from my face, or wipe barbecue sauce off my cheek, or...the way he holds me when I need to be held. You must stop this, Dana. A fast horse? Well, he drives too fast. Close enough.

"Ride me off into the sunset"

How many sunsets have I seen from the passenger seat of a car, with Mulder at my side, driving me off into yet another impossible situation? I cant count them anymore.

"Baby I'm forever yours"

Yeah

She bit her lip in consternation over his irritation with her, then turned her head to stare at the rapidly passing landscape. They were almost there. She laid her forehead against the cool window, trying not to think of the last thing she laid her forehead against. Shouldn't be too hard, since it wasn't real

"It's the way you love me
It's a feeling like this
It's centrifugal motion
It's perpetual bliss
It's that pivotal moment
It's (ah) unthinkable
This kiss, this kiss ...unsinkable...
this kiss, this kiss"

"Damn!" Mulder cursed softly.

Scully opened her eyes. The car was drifting over to the shoulder.

"What's the matter, Mulder?"

"We're out of gas."

"Mulder. C'mon, quit joking around. We are not out of gas."

"I assure you, Special Agent Scully, we are most decidedly out of gas."

"Oh right, Mulder, on a dark, deserted road, pretty much in the middle of nowhere? Try to be a little more original."

"Scully, dark, deserted road, pretty much in the middle of nowhere notwithstanding, we ARE out of gas. I am not kidding around with you. And believe me, I'd be much more original."

She sighed, ignoring the last part of his remark. Isn't that what they did best? Ignore all the signs, all the clues, all the invitations they issued to one another. "Well, the rental company has some road side assistance service don't they?"

"Yeah," he muttered. "I'll call em."

She got out of the car while he called, slamming her door behind her. She leaned against the side of the car. The breeze blew the scent of mesquite and sage across the desert. She sniffed lightly. It smelled wonderful. The breeze that blew across the desert was soft, cool, but not cold. She had left her suit jacket in the back seat, but didn't feel the need to retrieve it. The white of her shirt gleamed starkly in the dark night. She had forgotten exactly how dark night could be. No streetlights here, no house lights, only the moon and stars above. She half heard Mulder talking with the rental company. He didn't sound thrilled.

"Thanks," he said. He tossed the phone in the car and shut his door. He walked around the car to stare with her at the tableau of the night sky. "About half an hour. Town's right there..."

"Well," she said. "It could be worse. The night is not too hot and not too cold and the sky is gorgeous."

"Less people, less lights, more stars," Mulder said softly. He leaned against the door next to her, staring at the same patch of sky she was.

"I haven't seen this many stars since the last time Ahab and I went for a night sail."

"Scully! Look, a shooting star. Quick, make a wish."

"Sure it's not a UFO," she teased.

"Naw, doesn't move right." He grinned at her, starting her heart fluttering. "Now, make a wish."

She closed her eyes and wished. She felt him move to stand in front of her. Although he wasn't touching her, he effectively imprisoned her against the car. "Whadya wish for, Scully?" His voice was low, rumbling.

"I can't tell you," she protested. You.

"Why not?" he asked.

"It might not come true!"

"If you tell me, it might."

"It's the way you love me"

She looked at him. Standing in front of her, his eyes wide open, green now. She could see it in him. "I love you, Mulder."

Oh God. I told him. I admitted it. Oh Mulder, please say something, please.

"It's a feeling like this"

"I love you, Scully."

Thank you, God. He loves me. He said he loves me. We told each other how we feel.

"It's centrifugal motion"

Mulder swooped her up in his arms, hugging her to him, laughing. He begun to spin her around in the night, the dark filling with her laughter and her mock protests. Mulder is holding me. He is laughing. He is spinning me around and around. Please don't let this stop.

"It's perpetual bliss"

Yes, I am happy at this moment. If I never get another thing from this man, I will still be happy. He told me loves me. He let me know he trusts me with the one thing he keeps from everyone: his heart. Bliss indeed.

"It's that pivotal moment"

Where from here? I cannot go backwards, Mulder. I cannot go back to ignoring how we feel. Please tell me you can't either.

"It's unthinkable"

No, *we* aren't.

"This kiss, this kiss"

He set her down gently, her back against the side of the car. Mulder traced a finger under her chin. He tilted her head up slightly, so he could look at her. Her eyes were a deeper blue than he had ever seen. He wondered, hoped she could see just how much he loved her, reflected in his eyes. Her love for him was pouring out of her, on the waves of her gaze. Slowly, he brought his mouth down to hers. His lips barely touched hers, applying such a light pressure. She licked his lips lightly with her tongue.

"...unsinkable"

With you, Mulder, I am unsinkable. Not Duane Barry, not Donnie Pfaster, not Ed Jerse, not fluke men, not weird mutant liver sucking creatures, not poisons, not gun shot wounds, not finding and losing Emily, not even cancer, can sink me. Not as long as I have you.

"this kiss, this kiss"

Mutually, needing no words, they deepened the kiss. Their lips met with greater pressure, moving delicately against each other. Mulder sighed into her mouth, sighed her name, "Scully..."

"You can kiss me in the moonlight
on the rooftop under the sky (oh)
You can kiss me with the windows open
while the rain comes pouring inside ...(oh)
Kiss me in sweet slow motion
let's let everything slide
you got me floating you got me flying"

"Scully?"

They were moving, lights getting bright around her. Streetlights. Buildings flashed by them. No! Not again. "Hmm...sorry, I must have drifted again. Is this it?"

"We're here, or just about." he sounded less hurt now. Good

Scully scanned the street they were on, obviously the main thoroughfare. There were a number of motels, one even looked as tough it had been recently remodeled. She observed wryly that one motel advertised its hourly rates. They were driving by.

"Well, at least you didn't try to check us into that hotel back there," she waved back with her hand.

"They didn't have any vacancies," Mulder informed her, deadpan.

"What a shame, " she responded, coolly.

"Aw, Scully. Are you disappointed?" His tone was suggestive.

"Naw...I only would have been disappointed if it only took an hour."

Mulder turned to stare at her. Usually she ignored his innuendoes or smirked at them. What had gotten into her. It wasn't like that had alcohol with dinner, before driving up here. Well, if she wanted to play this game, he would. "Agent Scully, an hour is a significant amount of time."

Oh, no Mulder. Not this time. You think I'll back down, let it go. Not this time. This time I want the last word. "Well, not when you analyze how the time is spent. See, first you have to check in, then you have to move the car, usually, and find your room. Once there, there is undressing to be done. Then, of course, foreplay is essential and should take a fair amount of time. Then, there is the um.. main event.. but don't forget that afterwards, clothes have to be put back on, all belongings gathered, and you have to check out. So, when you think about it, really that isn't a lot of time.'

Mulder could not believe his ears. OK, here goes. "Wow, Scully. I didn't know you had so much experience in these matters."

She blushed. Almost Mulder. Almost. But no, I'm gonna get you this time. I started it this time, and I'm going to finish. "You don't know everything, do you Agent Mulder?"

His jaw dropped slightly. She could hear it snap back in place. I won that one!

He turned into the parking lot of the motel that had recently been remodeled. "I'll go in and get our rooms. You can stay here, OK?" he asked.

"Yeah. Thanks, Mulder." He moved to shut the engine off. "Oh, could you leave the radio on?"

"I thought country music irritated you, Scully?"

"Yeah, well, I guess I kind of like this song."

"OK." he walked toward the office. There were lots of reasons she usually let him check them into motels. It was one way in which she could make him behave like a gentleman. She also hated the looks they got. Looks that said, "Yeah, Sure. Separate rooms. Yeah, government. FBI. Whatever you two want to call it." And this way she could watch him walk away from her. Definitely a good view.

"You can kiss me in the moonlight"

Hey, Mulder. There's lots of moonlight right here.

"Up on the rooftop under the sky (oh)

I've never been up on the rooftop of my building. Have you ever been up on the top of yours, Mulder? Maybe I should have kissed you on that roof in Dallas. Or maybe we should just head up to the top of the ole J. Edgar Hoover building. That might do a little something to help me shed that nickname. Yeah, I think I might lose The Ice Queen after that. Of course, I'd probably be pretty much stuck with Mrs. Spooky. Well, it could be worse. I could live with that.

"You can kiss me with the windows open"

"Whose windows? where? car windows? the windows at home? maybe the windows at your parents' summer place. Oh, Mulder, I'll change your memories of that place, forever. Too bad our old basement office didn't have windows.

"While the rain comes pouring inside ... (oh)

Mulder in a rain soaked white T shirt. Jeans sodden as the torrents cascade down on us. My own clothes clinging to me, outlining...OK, Dana, better stop there.

"Kiss me in sweet slow motion"

Like you were going to do in your hallway Mulder, how long ago? Too long, too long. I can still see you, still feel you. The way you held my head in your hands. Your eyes were deep green at that moment, boring down into my soul. Looking to see, hoping to see, your own emotion reflected in my eyes. Oh you saw it, didn't you Mulder? How could you have missed it? The look on your face, as you moved slowly, so slowly towards me. I could feel your breath on my lips. I wanted you to kiss me. I can't tell you how much I wanted you to kiss me.

"let's let everything slide"

Common sense, protocol, professionalism, Bureau regulations. Mulder, I'd sacrifice all of that for you. Can't you see that?. There's nothing I wouldn't let slide for you. I'd slide anywhere with you, as long as your arms were around me, holding me safe from the world, bringing me back from whatever edge we were on.

"You got me floating, you got me flying"

Whenever I look at you, Mulder, my feet, yeah, these tiny little feet that can't reach the pedals (and no, I wasn't really that mad at you for that comment Mulder), float up off the ground. I feel like I have wings when I'm with you, when you look at me, when you touch me, when you talk to me, I have wings.

"It's the way you love me
It's a feeling like this
It's centrifugal motion
It's perpetual bliss
It's that pivotal moment
It's (ah) subliminal
This kiss, this kiss...it's criminal...
this kiss, this kiss

It's the way you love me baby
It's the way you love me darlin

It's the way you love me
It's a feeling like this
It's centrifugal motion
It's perpetual bliss
It's that pivotal moment
It's (ah) subliminal
This kiss, this kiss...it's criminal...
this kiss, this kiss

It's the way you love me baby
It's the way you love me darlin"

Mulder returned with two keys. "That's a good one, isn't it, y'all?" the radio DJ's voice was appropriately low and soothing for this time of night. "That's Faith Hill and "This Kiss" from her new album, "Faith"

Faith, huh. You just have to believe?

Mulder opened his door then climbed in the driver's seat. "Gonna park around back; it'll be closer."

Scully only nodded, still lost in the song. It had lasted three minutes, more or less, yet she felt like she'd lived hours through it. This kiss.

Mulder parked and shut off the engine. They both got out. Mulder actually grabbed her bag, as well as his this time. Will wonders never cease? Scully grabbed her suit coat and laptop from the backseat and followed him. It felt good to be out of the car, to stretch. The night was beautiful, just as beautiful as in her dreams. You could see all the stars in the night sky. They twinkled away up there. They looked down every night. Did they ever know the dramas that went on down here, on Terra Firma? Did they understand them? If they did, then they were one up on the people playing them out, of that Scully was certain.

Mulder unlocked her door. He stepped aside, giving her room to pass him. Then he followed her in and set her bag on the dresser. She laid the laptop and coat down on the table. He walked slowly passed her on his way out. "G'night, Scully."

She looked at him. Do something. "G'night, Mulder."

She shut the door behind him, throwing the security locks. Never hurt to be safe.

"It's the way you love me"

Yeah, in what screwed up way is that? I love him, I'm almost dead certain he loves me and yet, here we are. Damn.

"It's a feeling like this"

I think, my dear Agent Dana, that would be known as loneliness. Of course, I think you can mix in some frustration, general annoyance, let's not forget boredom with our current assignment, and a heavy dose of repression.

"It's centrifugal motion"

I feel like I'm spinning, going in the same direction all the time, never getting anywhere. What am I doing here? another government expense account motel, Murder one room away. It's another week away from home, not that home is really any different, only Mulder's farther away.

"It's perpetual bliss"

snort. Bliss to Cancer Man if he knew the torment we put each other through. Hell, he probably does know; probably revels in it.

"It's that pivotal moment"

How many of those moments have there been? Can we count them? When you woke up, after having been taken and returned, and there he was. Waiting for you, knowing you would return. When you told him about the cancer. When he came and cried at your bedside in the hospital, even though he could've gotten himself killed or arrested coz he was supposed to be dead, he couldn't leave you. Let's not forget how he was there for you with Emily. Nearly killing that doctor to get her records, wanting to sit with you as you held her hand, watching him cradle your own dying daughter, thinking you'll never have this and knowing you'd never wanted it so much as at that moment, knowing you wanted his child, wanted to see him cradle the child you had together. The night they burned the X-Files and he held you. The night you told him you were leaving, quitting, and he told you that you make him a whole person, that he didn't know if he could go on without you, didn't know if he wanted to. Then he nearly kissed you, wanted to, and you wanted to kiss him. He came to Antarctica, for God's sake, to save you. How many Goddamn pivotal moments do you need?

"It's (ah) subliminal"

Yeah, again, part of the problem, not the solution.

"This kiss, this kiss"

It haunts me, Mulder. Does it haunt you? Please tell me it does.

"it's criminal..."

What's criminal is that you're there and I'm here. *We* should be either here or there, but it should be *us*, not you and I. That's the criminal part Mulder, that two people can feel the way we do, know each other the way we do, and ignore it, bury it, deny it.

"This kiss, this kiss"

Oh, Mulder.

"It's the way you love me baby"

Why can't I just let go of my fear? I trust you the way I've trusted no other human being in my entire life. I know you would never hurt me. I know you love me. What keeps me here? with you there?

"It's the way you love me darlin"

Maybe there's something to be said for plaintive little wails, in the right places. OK, Mulder. OK.

The song reverberated in her head. She knew the last chorus was repeated twice. Am I gong to replay all those thoughts again, too? I can't. I can't without screaming. She changed into jeans and a T-shirt. She left her feet bare. She pocketed her room key and padded on quiet feet next door. She knocked and said quietly, "Mulder, it's me."

She heard him cross the room. The sound of the TV stopped abruptly. Soon, he opened the door. "You OK, Scully?"

"Not really, Mulder. Can I come in?" She walked in, walked over to his bed and sat down. She could not have sat on the chair, as he had already piled his bags and clothes on it.

"Sure." He looked at her, saying nothing for a moment. "Hey, I ran down and got some ice, you want some water?"

"Thanks," she said softly. She waited while he filled her a glass, then handed it to her. He sat facing her, close, but not quite invading her personal space. That was fine, she was pretty tired of her personal space at this moment.

"Scully? What's wrong?"

"Mulder, did you listen to that song, the one that was playing as we got here?"

"No, not really. Why?"

"It..Mulder, I ...I think it's about two people who are love each other, but are afraid to let go, to trust completely. The singer, she'd been hurt before. But when she sings about kissing the person she loves, everything's OK." She looked up at him; her blue eyes brimming with unshed tears.

Mulder stared at her. He didn't know what to make of this. In a light tone, he asked, "And your point would be?"

"Mulder, that's us. Two people who have been hurt, who are afraid to trust anyone completely, except maybe each other. Mulder, I want the rest of the song though. I want everything to be OK."

"Scully...I thought. I thought it was just that moment. or just me." She shook her head miserably. "I couldn't dare to dream that you...."

Mulder didn't DARE to dream that she...he thought it took courage, that she might reject him? Never, Mulder, never.

Their eyes locked. Mulder took her hands in his. He rubbed his fingers over hers lightly. She trembled at his touch, at the moment. Pivotal, without a doubt. She felt a tear slip out of her eye; he brushed it away with a loving hand.

"I love you," they said at the same exact moment. Pivotal, oh so very pivotal.

As Mulder's lips caressed hers, the last chorus of the song began to fade from her head. "It's the way you love me..."

The End

Summary: Scully helps Mulder comes to terms with some life-altering news.

Dedication: these stories have to be dedicated to Nadine. Thanks to A for continued support and to J who offered some good advice when I wasn't sure which direction to take this.

Notes: This marks the end of a journey for me. Just over a year ago I began work on the Faith Series, a set of unrelated stories based on the music of Faith Hill's self- titled CD. A few of the stories are actually song fic, but most of them only owe a debt of inspiration to the songs. Over the course of this last year many people have sent me feedback and a pleasingly large number of those people have become close friends. Your kind and supportive words have spurred me on and enriched my life, as a writer and as a person. Though I had every intention of ending the series here, some people have observed to me that Faith Hill's new CD, "Breathe" has a number of songs that seem like they were 'meant' to be MSR fics. So, who knows... g

I stood outside his door with my head bowed. I inhaled deeply, tasting the tears I'd already shed. Not for her; she wasn't someone I'd ever known well. I had cried, quietly, wiping the tears away as I drove, for him, for what this would do to him.

Earlier this morning, A.D. Skinner had called me into his office to inform me of the death of Teena Mulder. All indications had been she had committed suicide. He had requested I do an autopsy immediately and report my findings directly to him. He had further informed me he intended on keeping this news from Agent Mulder until such time as I had completed and delivered my report. His demeanor and terse orders had led me to think he suspected there was more to her death than a 'simple' suicide.

My autopsy had revealed the presence of a rare form of cancer. Consulting her records, I had placed a call to her doctor and convinced him to admit that Teena Mulder had indeed been aware of the diagnosis. He had confirmed for me my own assumption that her prognosis had been poor.

"Her form of cancer was untreatable. She had at most six months, Agent Scully," he had told me. "Much of that time would most likely have been spent in great pain. As a physician who has taken the Hippocratic Oath I cannot outwardly say I support her decision, but as a doctor who has seen suffering such as she would have endured, I understand her decision."

I had thanked him and hung up. I had sat and stared at her lifeless body, open on the autopsy table. This woman whose life had been so complicated was now reduced to nothing more than charts and test results and a forensic pathologist's Notes. Knowing why he'd asked me to do this didn't ease the burden at all and I had mentally cursed Skinner.

He had read my report, hastily written, for his eyes only, as I would file a more finished version later.

"Suicide, plain and simple, Agent Scully?" he had asked.

I had nodded.

"There were no indications otherwise?"

"Sir, in my report you've read that Teena Mulder had recently been diagnosed with a rare and incurable and ultimately excruciating form of cancer." I had looked away, gazed at the flag to my right. "Her decision is not one I can honestly say I understand, not one I would have made, but it is not an uncommon reaction to news of this magnitude."

Skinner had looked at me. His eyes had rested on my face. He made a face, the one he makes when he is at a loss or just generally disapproves of the course of things. "Scully, do you think she told Mulder?"

"No, Sir. I don't." I had paused, searching for the right words. "Agent Mulder, I hope, would have confided in me this sort of news. But even if he hadn't, beyond that ... he would have demanded she fight the disease. I think he would have guessed she would do something like this and he would have stopped her."

Skinner had taken off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. Darkness was replacing the weak twilight outside his window. "Dana, I'm asking you this as someone who has a better insight to that family dynamic than I do --- do you think she had other reasons for not telling him? for ending her life as she did? Do you think the choice was entirely hers?"

I had sighed with exhaustion, running a hand through my hair. "Sir, ..." I had stopped, exhaled in a little grunt of confusion. "It's a family dynamic I hardly understand. I know despite the distance between them that Mulder loves ... loved his mother deeply. How much of that was his searching for her approval, I don't know. I know her actions exacerbated the problems between them. She knew things she wasn't telling and he desperately wanted to, needed to, know." I had stopped again, sighing and shaking my head side to side. "Were there, are there, people who didn't want her to tell those secrets? Yes. We know who that man is. Is it possible he learned of her prognosis, became fearful she would confess everything to her son, then went to her and convinced, cajoled, threatened her into this suicide? Sir, you know as well as I do that with the man I'm talking about, anything is possible. I simply can't say ... From the evidence I found in my examination, Teena Ann Mulder purposefully overdosed on a lethal combination of prescription sleeping tablets and vodka. There were no marks on the body to indicate the ingestion of these substances was in any way forced."

"You're sure?"

"Sir, with all due respect, I've been examining bodies connected with the X-Files long enough that the *first* things I look for are those other pathologists check for only when all other possibilities are exhausted."

He had given me a rueful smile, acknowledging the truth in my words. We had sat in silence for a few moments. It had been clear Skinner was contemplating what he would reveal next. "Scully, what I'm about to tell you ... I don't know if Mulder can handle it. But you need to know, you need to be aware. I'm leaving it to your discretion if or when you decide to tell him."

"Yes, Sir," I had acceded, cursing him mentally again. This was not a burden which I wanted, yet there was no one better suited to shoulder it.

"The police didn't find any prescription medication at Mrs. Mulder's house. Nor did they find a vodka bottle. Before you protest, the trash had been emptied, but trash pick up service for that neighborhood is not due for another two days. They searched the outside bin and were still unable to find these items. They did find next to the bin, this." Predictably, he had held up a cigarette.

I had started chewing on my lower lip and had met his eyes reluctantly. After several minutes which seemed more like hours, I had said, "Is there anything else, Sir?" I had been remembering his words to me in Mulder's hospital room, telling me his position had been compromised. Mulder had later told me by whom, as it was one of the things he had 'overheard' during his 'illness'. I hadn't been able to bring myself to say it to his face, but I had had my doubts about the veracity of the 'facts' Skinner had presented to me. I had no intention of passing them on until I could verify them. Personally.

Sensing my discomfort, he had grown stern. "Just one thing, Agent Scully. I know you've had a long day and if you don't feel you are up to this task..."

"I'll tell him, Sir," I had interrupted.

He had looked down at the papers on his desk. "Thank you, Scully."

I had risen to go. At the door I had turned and looked at him. Walter Skinner had protected us to the best of his ability for a very long time. He deserved better than my suspicion and doubt. He knew the thoughts I harbored; he had to know. He also knew why I was harboring them. What a filthy, horrible trap we were all caught in.

I had stopped for coffee and a very late sandwich before driving to Mulder's. I hadn't eaten since breakfast and knew I couldn't do what I had to on an empty stomach. I had also been stalling for time, trying to determine the best way to tell him what had occurred.

As I had sipped my coffee and nibbled my sandwich I had thought, ridiculously, of Dorothy Sayers' "Busman's Honeymoon". Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane, safely married at last, aim to spend their honeymoon in a quiet, English village, only to discover a dead body, a dead, murdered body, in the cellar of their newly acquired estate. It puts a damper on things, to say the least. That was how I was feeling. Not that Mulder and I were married. Hell, we were still busy ignoring the feelings that ran like electric current between us. But, except for the occasional blip on the radar screen, things had been going well for us and between us.

The strain of a year ago had lifted and while we still didn't agree on everything, and never would, we seemed once again to be able to treat one another with the old respect, the former tenderness. We talked more about things outside the Bureau, away from work. We were once more comfortable and secure with one another professionally and the inklings of something personal got stronger, almost on a daily basis it seemed. A year ago I'd have stalked away angrily from him if he tried to pull a quarter from my nose and there's no way in Heaven or on Earth I'd have gotten down on my hands and knees, ignoring the amused leer on his face, and showed him that little magic trick about turning one's arm around 360 degrees.

Though long ago we ceased to be 'mere' partners, in the last six months we had each become more ourselves with each other. He seemed lighter to me, happier, less prone to attacks of guilt, more willing to let go that over which he has no control. He smiled at me more and I couldn't help smiling back. I felt younger than I had in a long time, too, as if the weight of the world had shifted just a bit. We both still searched for answers, but I think we were coming to accept we might never find exactly what we want, but that maybe, just maybe, we had found what we were meant to find: one another.

After finishing my sandwich and a second coffee, I had driven to Mulder's, crying. This news was going to devastate him. It devastates any child, but for Mulder there were so many unfinished conversations between his mother and him, so many unanswered questions to which she would never provide answers now. And there was the issue of Samantha, always that, always the memory of his little sister, the guilt he had carried for years, certain he could have, should have saved her. Teena would now never be able to exonerate her son of that guilt, even if she had ever been willing to do so, to lay the blame where it truly belonged. I had feared for Mulder and for myself in a small way. Everything was about to come crashing down and I wasn't ready.

I knocked and waited for the sound of Mulder's footsteps approaching the door. Time drew out for me until I felt like I was in a magician's act. The one where the magician pulls an impossibly long scarf from his black top hat as the audience coos and cackles at each newly revealed length and color. I was the scarf, my emotions changing by the moment, feeling pulled and stretched to incredible lengths, certain Mulder would see right through me as the audience can see through the magician's chiffon.

Mulder didn't answer my first knock, nor my second. I was just opening my purse, searching its contents for the keys, when he opened the door to me.

"Scully," he said, surprised to see me. "Sorry, I was uh ..."

"It's all right," I assured him. "You weren't expecting me. Can I come in?"

"Yeah, yeah," he nodded, following me with his eyes as I walked in and set my purse down on his coffee table. "Scully, are you okay?"

I looked down at the floor, creasing my lips. I felt my control dissolving. A tear welled in my eye and I tried to brush it away surreptitiously, but failed. Mulder crossed the room quickly, putting his hands on my shoulders. "Scully?" he whispered, his breathing already accelerated.

I looked up at him, sideways, my hair falling across my face obscuring his view. I reached a hand up and pushed the hair out of the way. I took a very deep breath. "Mulder, can we sit down? I need to talk to you."

He nodded slowly. We sat down.

"Scully? What's wrong?" he demanded, voice low, hoarse.

I took his hands in mine, gazed down at his fingers. Mulder's hands, his fingers are beautiful, in a masculine way. He's been picking at his nails during this kidnapping case, making some of them ragged, but never ruining the graceful look of them the way it might ruin a woman's. When I was at last able to raise my eyes to meet his, I was touched by the concern and obvious, if unspoken, love I saw there. He raised his eyebrows at me, silently pleading for me to respond.

I licked my lips, once, lightly, biting the lower edge before taking a deep breath. "Mulder ... Skinner called me this morning. He needed me to do an autopsy."

"Karen Miller?" he asked, but I sensed he didn't believe it had been her. He knew Skinner would have called him.

I shook my head, tightening my lips into a thin line. "As far as I know there's still no word on the Miller case," I paused. His question had distracted me enough I was able to pull myself back together somewhat. "Fox ..." I tried, grimacing slightly. It didn't work; it never would. We had moved so far beyond the first names most people use. "Mulder ... your mother died last night. Acting on information given in an anonymous tip, the West Tisbury police searched her house and found her early this morning."

I watched a wall come down over his eyes, a curtain denying my view into his heart. He pulled his mouth into a thin, tight line that radiated ache and loss. "How?" he choked out.

"My autopsy revealed she had cancer, Mulder."

"She died ... of cancer?"

I shook my head. "The diagnosis was recent, but the disease was incurable, inoperable." I took a very deep breath. "Mulder, she didn't have much time left and the time she had would have been spent in great pain."

"Scully, are you saying my mother ..." he stopped.

"She took her own life, Mulder."

He pulled away from me, ripping his hands from my grasp, jumping to his feet. "No!" he screamed out. "No! She wouldn't do that, Scully. You're wrong." He glared at me, his breathing intense and labored.

I buried my head in my hands, rubbing my fingers mindlessly across my forehead. He was still standing there, looking at me with fury gleaming in his green eyes. "Mulder, I'm sorry. I performed the autopsy myself."

"I don't care. I don't believe you, Scully. My mother wouldn't kill herself. She wouldn't, do you hear me?" he screamed at me. I met his look, keeping my face as calm as I could.

"Mulder, she would have been in a great deal of pain."

His face turned to stone. His hands clenched and unclenched into fists I knew possessed great power. Before me was I man I barely knew. I had seen Mulder furious before, violent even when the situation made it necessary, but never had his control over his emotions seemed so tenuous. Not even the night he almost killed Alex Krycek, when he'd been poisoned by the hallucinogens in his building's water. I was afraid, for him.

No longer yelling, nonetheless he commanded, "Get out, Scully!"

I shook my head. "I'm not leaving you like this, Mulder."

"I don't want you here!" He flung his words at me. "I want you to leave me alone."

"That's too bad. I'm not going anywhere. I'm not leaving you alone."

He walked toward his window and collapsed into the chair near the desk. His shoulders slumped and in my mind I saw a kite, saw it the way a kite will come down when the wind disappears, plummeting straight to earth, heedless in its inanimity of the imminent danger. His voice was thick. He was choking on the tears held deeply in his chest. "I don't want ... you ... here, Scully." His shoulders began to shake. "Please, go away." His voice was not the voice of the man I knew, but of the little boy I had only heard about.

I stood up and walked to him. I put one hand on his shoulder and the other on his head, feeling the rough texture of his short hair. "I can't leave you, Mulder. Not like this," I said very softly.

"This is isn't your ... it doesn't concern you," he whimpered.

"It concerns you and what concerns you does concern me. I don't think there really is a 'me' and a 'you' anymore, Mulder. There is only 'us'. Let me help you."

He turned suddenly and knocked my hand from his shoulder, shook his head to loosen my other from its place there. His face was savage once more. But I saw in him the look an animal has when it is beaten. Very little has ever cowed Fox William Mulder. This beat its fists against his heart, tore at the fabric of self, ate at his soul. I thought to myself again how tragic was the life he lead wherein the one thing from which I had always derived comfort had been the very thing that ripped him up. Family.

"Why?" he spit at me. "Why stay, Scully? There's nothing you can do for me. You've already brought me the news that my mother is dead. You've cut her up so you could tell me how she died. You've even been so kind as to tell me what was killing her so I won't feel so bad." He paused. "Well, it isn't working. I feel like shit."

I flinched from his words, but stood my ground. His efforts to drive me away were going to fail. If I left him now, I might as well never come back. It would be the end of us. In years to come he would not remember these words, only the fact of my leaving and he would resent me.

He turned sideways in the chair and let his face fall into his hands. Hunched over he reminded me of a small child who has been punished for reasons he doesn't really understand. He sits and waits hopelessly for, if not an explanation, a reprieve. Mulder had lost both of those chances. I kneeled next to him and laid again my hands on his. "I can be here for you, Mulder. I can stay, as you've always stayed for me."

I felt his fingers spasm, then he curled them around my own. I felt the wetness of his tears against my fingertips. Without words, disengaged his hands from mine and wrapped his arms around me, laying his head on my shoulder, sobs racking his body. I held him to me as he shook. I whispered soft, nonsense syllables that ruffled his hair as I stroked it.

He sobbed, deep, choking sobs, that convulsed his body. His arms clutched me to him, tightly, as though panicked I might disappear in a puff of smoke or flare of light, or as that last soft figment of a pleasant dream that you long to hold to as long as possible. The shoulder of my blouse was soon sodden with his grief. He gasped for air, drinking it in with great gulps.

"Mulder?" I said softly. "Mulder?"

He turned his face toward me. His eyes were awash in tears, his face lightly stained in evidence of his sorrow.

"Can we go sit, on the couch?" I gestured with my head.

He seemed to take note of where we were, his sitting still in his chair, my kneeling next to him. "Oh, Scully, I'm sorry. You ... yeah."

I stood up within the circle of his arms, for he had not lessened the strength of his hold on me. His head slid down my torso. I heard him sigh tiredly, felt his breath slide across the fabric of my blouse and tickle its way along my abdomen. He let it rest there for a moment and I did not move, giving him as much time as he needed. After a bit, I felt his grip relax. His hands came down flat on the small of my back, slipping then against my sides until blindly he found my arms. I slipped my fingers into his and he stood up with me. Hands clasped, we made our way back slowly to his couch.

Mulder sunk down heavily, his weight depressing the cushion with an audible sound. My hands he still held tightly as though they were the only thing left to him. As I had stared earlier at his fingers, he now gazed at mine, held so firmly, yet tenderly in his. How long ago had it been? It felt like hours, when a surreptitious glance at my watch showed me it was only the space of thirty minutes. The young, naive scientist who boldly asserted to Mulder that time is a universal constant eight years ago in Oregon had learned the hard way it isn't.

"Mulder," I whispered. "I'm going to go get you a glass of water, OK? I'll be right back. I promise."

He nodded his head, very slowly. I watched him watch as his hands released their hold on mine. It was almost as if they were separate entities, acting of their own will.

I found two clean glasses, something that can be a challenge at Mulder's, and filled them with bottled water from the refrigerator. When I came back, Mulder was lying on the couch, curled into a loose question mark, his bent knees forming the crook, his body straight to the point of his head. I set the glasses down and went into his bedroom. From his bed, I pulled off a blanket.

He was drinking when I returned. Looking at me he set the glass back on the coffee table and resumed his curious position. He left space for me to sit next to his head. I laid the blanket over him. He was shivering and I knew it was due to more than the winter weather outside. I sat down next to him. Even a year ago, I would not have done what I did now. I hesitated, but only a fraction of a second.

"C'mere, Mulder," I told him gently, drawing his head into my lap. He didn't protest, but rested his head against my belly. One arm he reached up, seeking my hand again. I twined my fingers with his. My other hand I ran absently through his hair. A wave of grief and regret hit me as I realized this was how my mother would sit with any of us when we were ill or hurting and in tears.

I thought of the children I had always been uncertain I wanted, the babies of whom I didn't really have need while I pursued my career. I would never have them now. The choice had been taken from me, stolen like months of my life. I know in some ways Mulder still blames himself for that and I've never found a way to tell him the hardest part. Knowing him, working with him may have cost me that ability, but if I'd never met him, I wouldn't have cared. His head rests still on my belly and I ache for the children I can't have, Mulder's children, the only ones I would ever want.

I look down and oddly, I see my brother, Charlie. He was seven or eight when he got the chicken pox and he got them in an awful way. Dad swore his chicken pox had chicken pox and I think that was about right. The rest of us had all had it the year or two before and Charlie had thought he was so lucky to escape. When we would come home from school, buoyant, full of energy, bursting with news of our days at school, my mother would be sitting like this with Charlie. His head in her lap, his body exposed to the air as much as possible, his skin covered with soothing creams that did little to alleviate the itch. He would glare at us, for our noise, for our enthusiasm, but I think mostly because we didn't itch. I don't think Teena Mulder ever held her son this way, even before Samantha was taken.

Though Mulder loved his mother for all her faults, her weaknesses, continued to defend her actions when they seemed indefensible, Teena Mulder had been a cold woman. That Mulder loved her as deeply, as intensely as he did, was a tribute to him more than to her. I couldn't heal the broken little boy she had left behind, not now anymore than I ever could have, but I was again painfully aware that in some ways, the breaking was now completely irreversible. No matter how belatedly, Teena Mulder would now never have the opportunity to cradle her only son in her arms and tell him pretty lies, assure him, as parents do, that everything will be all right in the end. Never would the words her son so desperately needed to hear come from her lips. "It wasn't your fault, Fox. I never blamed you." Never would she be able to set him free with what she knew of the truth he sought.

When my father died and I asked my mother if he had been proud of me she had told me, "He was your father." It took me days of searching, but at last I understood her. My father loved me. He had from the moment I came screaming into this world until the moment he left it. He raised me to use the brain God put between my ears, to have integrity, to trust my own judgment, to stand up for all I believed in. He may not have understood my choice of career, but he had respected my right to choose it and my willingness to pursue it in the face of parental displeasure. He had been proud of me. He was my father. The two were equal. With that, I learned to put his death behind me, to love all my memories of him, to treasure the gifts he had left behind for me.

Mulder has no such inheritance, neither from his father, nor his mother. He did not know if they had truly loved him, if either of them had ever been proud of him. He had memories of them he could love, provided he didn't look much beyond the year he was twelve. And Mulder had built a life distant from those things. Or he had tried anyway.

"I didn't really like her much, when I was little," he said.

"Your mother?" I asked.

He shook his head. "Samantha. She was a pain in the butt. Typical kid sister. She followed me around, teased me about things, told on me to my parents if I did something I shouldn't have."

"You know, Mulder, you should talk to Bill. You two might have more in common than you think," I teased him gently.

He rewarded me with a bitter laugh. He squeezed my fingers more tightly. "Then, she was taken away and I couldn't stop it from happening. For a long time I thought it was because I had been mean to her, hadn't loved her the way I should have."

"Oh, Mulder.... no. No!"

"I know, Scully. I know that now, but I also know it's one reason I've never stopped looking for her. I just wanted, once, to be able to tell her I loved her. I didn't know how much until she was gone and it was ... too ... late."

He was crying again.

"I don't think normal siblings love one another when they're young, Mulder. I mean, they do, but they don't know it. It takes age and experience. You never had that." I wiped tears from his face. He caught my hand and brought it up, beneath his chin, fisted in his own. I closed my eyes and ignored the feel of the stubble on his face.

"I studied psychology at Oxford," he continued after a while, "so I could understand my parents. I thought if I understood them, could unlock the reasons why they blamed me for her loss, I could make them love me. I never believed it was too late to be a family again. I never dreamed they knew the truth, Scully. It never even crossed my mind."

"Why would it?" I asked him rhetorically.

"I've come to realize, in the last few years, once I'd realized the extent of their involvement, that they let me blame myself, let me think they blamed me because it was easier than blaming themselves. They knew there was nothing I could have done to stop the men who came that night. Hell, my father tried and couldn't even stop them, so he just took my mother, went next door, and pretended like it was a horrible surprise."

He sighed. I was silent. There was nothing I could say. I doubted he'd ever said these things aloud and I knew he needed to. He needed to make sense of all that had happened and this was a starting point.

"What kind of parents do that, Scully? What kind of parents let their twelve year old son feel responsible for *their* actions? for their involvements?" The anger was growing in his voice again. "She knew. She knew everything, or almost everything. She could have told me who took Samantha, why they took her, what the original plan was supposed to be. With her help, I could have found the truth, but she was never willing to help me. Never willing to take any responsibility for her part in it. She was willing to let me carry this burden my whole life. She was dying, Scully, and she couldn't even tell me."

I leaned down and placed a soft kiss in his hair. It was what he needed. Someone to listen, someone to hold, someone to touch and caress.

"She was never like this. Not once that I can remember. I know she used to bring me juice and toast, cover me up with a blanket when I was sick, but she never sat with me like this, Scully. Not before and certainly not after. When I was little, she would ask about school, but I never felt like she actually cared. You know how moms will ask what their kids did at school? What do the kids always say?"

"Nothing," I answered with a ghost of a smile.

My mom used to hate that. She would sit us down and make us tell her three things that happened. Ahab would make us tell him three different things at dinner.

"That's what I always said. I knew she was only asking because she felt she ought to. In High School, she never seemed to notice much about me at all. She came to baseball games and sat, watching with eyes that weren't there, clapped like a puppet on strings. I never brought girls home because she wouldn't have remembered their names. She would have smiled at them blankly, coldly. I always told myself it was because of what happened or because of the way she was brought up or ... because she wished they'd taken me instead of Samantha." He paused and took a deep shuddery breath. "I didn't realize until just a few years ago it was none of that. The answer was much simpler."

"What was it, Mulder?"

He was silent for a while. I heard the ticking of a clock. One of his neighbors was coming in late. I listened to her footsteps, the distnictive clatter of a woman in high heels, advancing, passing by, stopping. I heard her key in her lock. Mulder's voice drew me from my reverie.

"There was someone she loved more than any of us. Someone for whom she was willing to sacrifice everything. Someone for whom she was willing to keep the secrets that tore her family apart. My father had his share of blame in this, but once he was gone, once they'd done all to him they could, she could have told me. Even in the end, Scully, she chose not to tell me, not to set me free of this cage she so masterfully helped to build."

"Spender?" I asked.

He nodded.

I shut my eyes. I suddenly believed what Skinner had told me. I had been almost certain of it before. It made sense. Still, I loathed the idea of telling Mulder without proof, without evidence.

"She helped him, Scully, helped him kidnap me from the hospital. How could she do that? His actions could have killed me."

"Mulder, he probably told her he was the only one that could help you, could save you."

"Why would she believe him? He's done nothing but lie, cheat, and steal from her. He destroyed my father, took my sister, and has tried to ruin me in every way possible."

"You know, not too long ago you said something to me that might explain a lot." He turned his head to look at me. His eyes were red-rimmed from crying. "You told me when someone offers you all the answers it can be very tempting."

"My mother's brand of snake-handling, Scully?" He gave me a wry smile, small and tight, but a smile nonetheless. "I don't know why she couldn't have come to me, told me about this cancer, though. I would have ... taken care of her, been with her."

"Maybe that's what she was afraid of, Mulder."

"That she'd tell me the things I needed to know?"

"Maybe after all this time, it was easier for her that way. She knew how you felt, knew how to handle it. She knew that even after everything you've been through, you still loved her, cared for her. Maybe, just maybe, Mulder, she was afraid if you knew the truth, she'd lose that."

"Why would that have scared her? I ... I did, all those years, love her. She is .. was .. my mother, faults and all."

"I don't know. But maybe she was afraid of being utterly alone, of dying with no one to mourn her."

"And who would she have to blame for that, Scully? Who? She could have had a son who loved her, a daughter by her side?"

"Mulder..."

"I don't buy it anymore; I don't! Maybe when it first happened, she was powerless, but I can't believe that in all these years she was trapped. She didn't care about me. She didn't care about my father. She didn't want to lose *him*."

I closed my eyes and bit my upper lip. There was nothing I could offer to him that would ease the ache. The words that would have soothed his hurt were never mine to speak. I am not the woman who can give him absolution, give him permission to absolve himself of these imagined sins.

"Scully," he spoke softly, tears filling his voice again. "She couldn't even let me say good-bye to her, to tell her one last time I loved her. Just like Samantha ... just like ..."

He turned his eyes away hastily from my face, looking instead at our conjoined hands. I slide down into the couch a bit more, let his head move up. I know he can feel the warm beating of my heart underneath his temple. In complete silence, I mouth against the right side of his forehead, "But I came back."

"I know you did, Scully," he said, voice warm and tender.

I stiffened in shock and apprehension.

"But I didn't have anything to do with that. They gave you back and then *you* refused to give up."

"How can you say that, Mulder? Don't you know they never would have given me back if it weren't for you? They knew you would have searched and searched for me as you do for your sister. They couldn't risk that you might have uncovered their secrets. And Mulder, why do you think *I* refused to give up?" I stopped. I had to take a deep breath before I could continue. "You were there. I saw you, with Melissa, waiting for me. I heard you, Mulder. I felt you, sitting next to me, holding my hand. I know what you gave up for me."

He looked back up at me.

"X, he gave you everything you needed, didn't he? But you had to be here, had to confront the men who later showed up. You walked away from that, Mulder, to be with me, to preside over what should have been my deathbed."

"How do you know that?" he asked.

"Melissa. She told me how oddly you'd been behaving the night she came to you, how you told her at first you couldn't go to the hospital. I know that same night your apartment was ransacked. You did, didn't you? You could have had what you've always wanted, but you sacrificed it, for me..."

"Scully, I ... Melissa was right. If that had been the end, I would have regretted it the rest of my miserable life. Nothing seemed so important compared to being with you, knowing I'd done everything I could." He paused. "That's what my parents stole from me. With Samantha and now, my mother has taken that from me with her. How will I ever know if there was anything else I could have done?"

"There wasn't, Mulder. You've done more than anyone else would have even tried. Sometimes the people we want to help won't let us help them ... and we have to learn to live knowing we did all we could."

He shifted, raising his head and laying it on the arm rest, my arm underneath his neck. His upper torso now laid across my lap. He lifted one hand to stroke my cheek. His eyes still glimmered with tears. "Why do you stay, Scully?"

I shook my head at him, gently, once, side to side. "Mulder, I stay because ... I can't imagine a life any different now. It's a bizarre life, by most standards, absolutely unbelievable, but it's our life. I could say the work in never boring, but that's not it, Mulder. You ... I stay because you make my life what it is. Without saying it, you give me love, Mulder."

"No more than you give me, Scully," he told me, voice calm at last. His eyes met mine. The hand, now still against my jawline, slid around, through my hair, coming to rest against the back of my head. I yielded to the gentle pressure of his palm against my skull and leaned down to him. I watched in rapt fascination as his eyes, wavering between green and golden brown, came closer and closer to mine. I registered the smile that curved his lips just before I closed my eyes and felt the kiss begin.

His lips were gentle, soft, perfect against mine. He cupped my face lightly in his strong hands and kissed me until the world spun. When at last we pulled apart, I looked down into his eyes again. He looked as dazed as I felt. Pleasantly dazed.

"Now the world can end," he whispered.

"I hope not," I told him, smiling.

He chuckled at me softly and brought my lips back down to his.

After a few kisses in what was ultimately an awkward position, we shifted, laying in each other's arms, kissing, cuddling, staring at one another until sleep was certain to overcome both of us. As I drifted along the gentle paths of sleep, I knew that this night was not over. Teena Mulder's death would have repercussions in our lives, of that there could be no doubt. Nor could I doubt any longer Mulder's feelings for me, nor suppress my own for him. Sleepily, he murmured in my ear, "I love you, Scully."

I smiled at him, my eyes closed, but my fingers finding his lips, running along them softly. "I love you, too, Mulder. Go to sleep."

"Scully?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't leave me."

"I'm not going anywhere, Mulder. I promise."

I felt him smile underneath my fingers.

The End

Summary: The hallway scene from "Fight the Future" never happens. Scully doesn't go to see Mulder. She leaves him a note instead, then slips away, out of his life. Mulder tries to let go of her, but he can't.

"Dear Mulder, I debated about coming over to tell you in person, but decided this was the better way. Rather than accept re-assignment to the Salt Lake City field office, I have tendered my resignation. Skinner has accepted it. Mulder, I joined the FBI because I thought I could make a difference. I don't feel that way anymore. And after all I've seen, all I've been through with you, I just don't think another assignment would hold my interest.

By the time you read this, I will have left D.C. I've arranged to have my belongings stored. I've taken all the various items of yours that accumulated at my apartment over the years to my mother's. She said to tell you to come by any time to get them. I'm not exactly certain where I'll be. I'm taking a few weeks for myself. I'm going to try to sort out some things that need sorting out. I'll be in touch when I can.

Mulder, please believe that I am not leaving you. I am leaving a life that isn't working, trying to make one that does. I know asking you to this is difficult, but please try to find a life that works for you, too, possibly outside the FBI. Ask yourself, Mulder, if you want to do this anymore. You have had great significance and meaning in my life. Our partnership and your friendship is something I will always treasure.

Always your Scully"

He screwed the thin paper into a tight ball and threw it across the room. "Damn you!" he swore, to no one in particular. His fists came down against his door. He had hardly moved since finding her missive, opening it, and being astounded by its contents. It felt as if his whole world has rushed away from him, leaving him floating weightlessly in an abyss of light and heat. He saw spots dance before his eyes. He cursed again, pounding on his door a few more times, angry he hadn't broken it yet. He should be able to break it, just as easily as she had broken him. Damn her!

Scully. Scully. her name kept repeating in her brain. If she magically appeared in front of him right now, he didn't know if he would choke her or kiss her. He was furious with her. She left, just walked out of his life, of their life, without a word. Sure, she left a note. A fucking note. She was too damn scared to come talk to him, to look him in the eye, to tell him to his face. She knew he would be able to see through her facade, he would have found a way to convince her to stay.

She would be in touch? What was that? She didn't even have the courtesy to be specific. She would treasure their partnership and friendship. Fuck her! She treasured them both so much she just walked away. Saying she wasn't leaving him, just a life that didn't work. He was part of that life, damn her; she couldn't leave that life without leaving him! She couldn't even be honest with him. She couldn't even tell him the truth at the end. Bitch. He loved her and this is what she does!

His hands fell abruptly to his sides and his shoulders slumped suddenly. He was berating her, cursing her for being a coward. He wasn't any better. He'd been too afraid ever to tell her how he felt. Too afraid she'd leave. Well, there was one of life's little ironies. What am I going to do without her? How did I get here? How will I get any further? He stumbled to the couch and collapsed. For long moments he held the sobs rising from deep within him. His jaw clenched, his lips curled up in a rictus of pain. An anguished cry escaped his lips, "Scully." The sobs broke from within him. He gasped as they tore through him, defeating him, breaking him into more pieces than he ever imagined a human could break.

Some time later, Mulder was not sure how long, Lost time, Agent Mulder? Alien abduction perhaps? his brain sneered, he crawled from the couch to his shower. He stood under the steady spray of hot water until the hot water ran out. Stepping out of the shower and toweling off, he started to regain some sense of self. He would find her. They couldn't do this to him and Scully. This was exactly what the Consortium wanted. He'd find her and convince her. The Gunmen could help him find her if need be.

Determination renewed, anger diminished, Mulder dressed. He grabbed his car keys. Outside, darkness was falling. He headed out to Margaret Scully's. He could pick up his stuff and at the same time, hopefully, get information about Scully's whereabouts.

Margaret Scully opened the door to him with a sad smile. She gave him a hug. "I'm sorry, Fox," she said quietly.

" Mrs. Scully, where..."

She shook her head. "I don't know. She wouldn't tell me." She gave him the sad smile again. "She probably knows I'd tell you if she told me."

"Can you think of anywhere she'd go? Mrs. Scully, I have to find her. There are things I," he choked on his words, "Things I have to tell her."

"I know. But Fox, even if you find her now, she's in a bad state."

"That's exactly why I have to find her!"

"She won't, no, she can't come back to you, right now. She's questioning everything, Fox. She's lost so much and gained so little, in her eyes. She needs time to realize what she's gained; to accept what she had in you. Relationships of any sort have never been easy for Dana, but you know that. And this...I think what exists between the two of you terrifies her beyond all reason."

Mulder hung his head. He sighed deeply. When he raised his head to look at Margaret Scully, she was regarding him with understanding and acceptance. "I can't let her go; I can't."

"I know. I don't want you to let her go. You just have to give her time. Give her time and she'll break out of those walls; she's going to have to. I don't think she can live without you, anymore than you can live without her."

Mulder and Margaret Scully regarded each other. She could see he was not going to give up. He would try to find her. She had an uncomfortable feeling that Mulder was going to find out Dana had learned some of his tricks too well. She dropped her gaze and offered to bring him the things Dana had left for him.

"Thank you. Then I won't have to bother you again."

She was gone only moments. She had known he'd come, known he would want information, and known he wouldn't accept what he told her. She handed him those items Dana had dropped off. Margaret hadn't looked inside the box Dana left, but she was certain that everything was neatly folded, organized, by loving hands. "Fox," she said gently. "Come by anytime, you're never a bother."

He smiled at her. The smile barely curved his lips and resolutely stayed out of his eyes. He gave her a gentle hug before disappearing into the darkness. She knew he was disappearing into his own personal darkness as well. She thought of her daughter, gone somewhere, in the dark herself.

Mulder drove straight to the Gunman's hangout. The guys let him in immediately. He could see from the looks on their faces, the way they wouldn't meet his eyes that they knew; somehow they knew.

"We'll try, man," was all Langly said. "We'll try."

"We'll *find* her," Frohike assured him.

Hours later even the Gunmen had to admit temporary defeat. She had gotten out of D.C. slipping seamlessly under their radar. They had tried the airlines, the trains, the buses. They tried the aliases they had given her and all permutations they and Mulder could think of. Mulder searched his memory for the names of friends she might go to, or whose names she might use. Nothing availed. He slammed his fists down on a table, cursing soundly. Then he started laughing. It was not healthy laughter. There was such an edge of bitterness and vitriol to it that the Gunmen glanced surreptitiously at one another, exchanging concerned looks.

"Mulder?" Byers asked.

He shook his head. "I taught her too well. I taught her too damn well and now she's using it to stop me from finding her!" His voice had risen to a shout, raw pain and need flowed from him.

"Mulder, we'll keep looking. She'll make a mistake," Frohike asserted. "She's not paranoid enough."

Mulder looked at him. "Oh, I think maybe she might be; I think she just might be."

For three months Mulder and the Gunmen searched. They waited for a hit on a credit card; they quietly circulated her description to their network of contacts. Mulder went to work daily, pursued 'scut' work, came home or went directly to the Gunmen's. Three months. Nothing. It was worse than when she had been abducted. He had hoped they would send her back to him. Now, he was forced to wait for her to decide to come back to him. His searching was fruitless, just like everything else in his life.

He worked desultorily on the information he'd received from Kurtzweil and the Well Manicured Man. She had asked in her letter if he wanted to go on with his work. He found out what he'd known for a long time: he couldn't without her.

He visited Margaret Scully about once a week. She made him stay for dinner. He stayed, hoping Scully would choose then to call her mother, but she never did. And if she had contacted her mother, Margaret Scully kept it to herself. They talked, much as they had when Scully had been taken, sharing stories about her. It was torture to Mulder, but he forced himself to endure it, as it brought him a bitter pleasure as well.

Three months after her leaving, Mulder found a letter in his mailbox. The handwriting on the outside was achingly familiar. He resisted the urge to flee upstairs and open it. He knew he had to take it to the Gunmen, preserving as much external evidence as possible.

The envelope yielded few clues to her possible whereabouts. Mulder concurred with the Gunmen's assessment that the letter and enclosed paper were mass produced and could be purchased anywhere. The stamp was a basic U.S. flag stamp. The envelope carried the phrase 'Hand stamp please', which the post office had obligingly done. Unlike the machine stamp, this hand stamp did not list where it had been canceled. She had learned it all too well. Damn, damn, damn. There was, of course, no return address.

"Dear Mulder, I'm sorry I haven't contacted you sooner. I needed time to myself, to sort out where my life was going. I have decided to go into private practice, in research. A former classmate of mine in med. school had offered me a job about six months ago. I never mentioned it to you because I had no intention of taking it, at the time. I was able to reverse that decision and have resumed working.

The journey I have been on has been very enlightening. I have gained a great deal of perspective on many things. I find I have been on a journey that I thought had become mine, but it never really had, Mulder. I never really believed. I believed in your belief, but that simply isn't enough, for either of us. I hold you back when it comes to chasing your 'little green men'.

The five years I spent on the X-Files were years that stretched the boundaries of my beliefs, tested my faith in science, and, maybe somewhat oddly, restored my faith. I know I am a stronger person for my work with you.

I valued our partnership a great deal, Mulder. You taught me a great many skills for which I will always be grateful. Your friendship was one I always knew I could rely upon completely. I trusted you with my life, both literally and figuratively. I will never forget all the times you were there to support me.

Having said this, I need to move on, Mulder. I won't be coming back. At one time, I thought, even hoped, there might be more between us, but I see now that it is an impossibility. You will never be able to give up your quest. It is what feeds and nourishes you, what motivates you, what sustains you. I have no part in that. I need to be with someone who has room for me in his life.

I know you will have the Gunmen (and anyone else necessary) analyze this letter for a clue to my whereabouts. You won't find one. You taught me well. Take care of yourself, Mulder. I won't be in contact again. But I will always be, Only yours,
Scully"

The letter fell from Mulder's limp hand. It fluttered lazily to the floor. Byers leaned over and picked it up. He looked at Mulder. Mulder flicked a hand in Byers' direction and shrugged. Byers read through the letter and examined it. He sighed. "She's right. No likely clues. Want us to try anyway?"

Mulder made no response.

It was over. Well and truly over. Every word on that page was a drop of poison to him. He had thought he felt dead before. Maybe he had been and now he was in Hell. In Hell with no way out. She didn't want to see him. Did she honestly think she had not had a part in the journey? She was denying the truth to herself. He had seen her, listened to her, watched her lie for him, defend him, even offer her good name for him If I can save you, let me.. She had been integral to the journey and now she denied that. Bitch. Goddamn bitch! he thought over and over.

Didn't she understand that it had ceased to matter that she didn't believe in the 'little green men'? It had ceased to matter the first time he saw that she believed in his commitment. She had been the first rational intelligent person who had believed in his commitment and not that he should be committed. And for all that she felt she had no part in his life. That his quest consumed him to the exclusion of all else, including her. She had hoped there might have been something more, once, but it was gone. And she was gone. Gone and not coming back. And it was clear she didn't want him in her life.

"Sure. Fine. Whatever," he muttered darkly under his breath.

The Gunmen looked at each other and shifted uneasily. "Um...Mulder?"

"Yeah, Byers?"

"You want us to try?"

"Don't know. What's the point? I gotta get out of here. Sorry."

They watched him go. They had been watching him stretch to this point for three months. Like fine spun glass, the heat and air molding the material to an unbelievably thin arc, Mulder had been stretched. Scully's letter was the perfect note, the one pitch, that could shatter that. And shatter he had. The carefully guarded, reconstructed self he'd built after her leaving was gone.

Mulder went only one more time to Margaret Scully's home. The look on her face showed she too had received a letter. Mulder didn't even ask. He simply hugged her and left. He wasn't going to her if she didn't want him. Margaret Scully leaned against the porch lintel, watching him drive away. She disagreed with Dana. She knew her daughter well enough to know it wasn't going to take her long to see her mistake. She could only pray it wouldn't take her long to accept it and make it right.

At the Bureau, Skinner began to worry about Mulder. He had been worried before, but he began to fear for Mulder's safety on assignments and wonder at the way he spent his free time. He approached Diana Fowley, now recovered, and asked her if she would object to being assigned to work with Mulder. Skinner knew Diana shared Mulder's interest in the paranormal and, to be honest, he hoped she might distract him a bit from Scully. Diana agreed without hesitation. If Skinner was aware of their past relationship, he gave no indication.

Skinner informed Mulder of the new assignment, not giving him any choice or any chance to object. Mulder simply nodded at him. Skinner hoped the case he was assigning them to would help pull Mulder out of this slump. He'd never been like this, not even when Scully had been missing, taken by Duane Barry, and then taken from Duane Barry. Skinner knew, due to a clandestine call from the Gunmen, about Scully's letter. He understood where she was coming from. The higher-ups had been astonished (and dismayed) she had stayed as long as she did. Yet he knew how much it must have torn Mulder up.

The case Mulder and Diana were assigned to appeared to be pretty straightforward. The agents drove up to Connecticut largely for Mulder's take on it as a profiler. They had to stay the night. Mulder didn't object when Diana checked them into two rooms, but never even opened the door to hers.

It was meaningless to Mulder, sleeping with Diana. It was also familiar. The familiarity gave him some comfort and it was infinitely better than the kind of comfort he routinely sought. He guessed Skinner was hoping Diana would distract him. In a way she did and in another way, she made the ache for Scully worse. She could never be Scully and Scully was the only thing he needed; the only thing he truly wanted in his heart.

The affair continued upon their return to D.C. Skinner gave them tacit permission by ignoring the obvious. With Diana watching over him Mulder's life gained a semblance of normalcy, at least to those who saw him at work. Their cases were routine, but Mulder completed them uncomplainingly. The had just been assigned to a bank fraud case that looked like it might run a few months when Mulder got a call from the Gunmen. Telling Diana he'd meet her at the agreed upon location for meeting the informant, he headed over to the Gunmen's.

"What is it?" he asked once inside.

"We found her," Byers said without preamble.

Mulder stared at them. He looked away, hunched his shoulders. When he looked back, his eyes were shining with moisture. "Where?" he croaked.

"She's in San Diego."

"What's she doing?"

"She's working for a biotech research firm based there. Gene therapy, experimental treatments, you name it."

"Looks like she couldn't leave it all behind, Mulder," Frohike observed.

He smiled, the first smile that had touched his eyes in nearly six months. "How did you guys do it?"

"Well," Langly started. "In her letter she mentioned this old classmate..."

"Right, I remember," Mulder interrupted, "offered her a job, yadda, yadda, yadda."

"OK, OK, easy big fella. Well, we went back seven months from the date of her letter, figuring seven months should cover it, since she said six. We started analyzing her phone calls, incoming."

"Y'know how many FCC rules we violated getting those, man?"

Mulder nodded and smiled again. He felt like his heart had resumed beating.

"Well, we had to wade through all the calls, cross reference them with names we knew and track down names we didn't," Byers explained.

"Mulder, do you know how often you called her?" Frohike asked. "And never at a decent hour!"

"I know. Criminal."

"Why?"

"What can I say, Frohike. Can you think of anything better than falling asleep after hearing that woman's voice?"

"No, man, no, I can't. Nothing at all." The sincerity was evident in Frohike's voice. Everyone in the room knew he worshipped Dana Scully.

"So, we finally found this guy's name. Mike Richardson. We were able to get the data on him. Medical School with Scully, kept in touch with her sporadically over the years, worked for a research firm. It took a few careful phone calls to this biotech place, but we finally confirmed she works there."

"Is she using her own name?"

"Not quite," Langly told him.

Mulder looked at the three of them. They were clearly uncomfortable. `What? what name is she using? What did we miss?"

"She did a major fake on us, Mulder. She picked the one thing she knew we wouldn't think of. But, Mulder, we think it tells us a lot about what she was and still is thinking."

"Guys, come on."

"She's using Dana," Byers paused. "Dana Mulder."

Mulder stared at them. He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again and gazed down at the floor. He started to laugh. "She got us good, guys. She got us good." He laughed loud and long over it. His heart had regained a steady rhythm and the cold core of his soul seemed to be thawing a little. In getting away from him, she had carried him with her. She could never leave him. She had hung on to the one thing that she guessed could protect her. She'd been right. They'd never even considered she'd use his last name. They hadn't looked.

Mulder missed the meeting with Diana and the informant. He left the Gunmen's with Scully's address and phone number in San Diego. He drove to The Mall area and parked. Getting out of the car, he sighed a huge sigh, pent up it seemed for over five months now. He walked along the length of the Reflecting Pool and back. His hands were thrust in his pockets and he stared at the ground. Every few steps he would take out the paper with her address and look, almost blankly, at it. Should he go to her? She had made it clear that she didn't want him in her life. He didn't, *couldn't* believe her though. He was barely living without her; he felt she could hardly be doing better without him. And maybe you're being an egocentric jackass, Mulder. Maybe she meant every single word.

He sunk to a bench overlooking the Pool, staring across it, to the obelisk at the far end, Lincoln at his back. He wanted to let her go. It was over, she'd written him. They had their good-byes, of a sorts. But not a single day, not a single minute passed without the images of her in his mind. He couldn't shake the memories of her face, smiling one of the rare, genuinely happy Scully smiles, the phantom touch of the way she would touch him, casually, tenderly, companionably. She had loved him, as much as he loved her, and those memories never left him.

She had written it was what she wanted, implying it was for the best. Well, damn you, Scully, if it's for the best, why are you still in my heart, still in my soul? He tried to accept that she had escaped everything she wanted to, including him. Her letter told him she needed someone who would put her first. he knew she deserved that. She had not been able to see that she was first. He would have done anything, literally anything, for her. Had she asked, he would have walked away from his quest, to keep her. He was trying to go on, but it wasn't working. Two months with Diana was doing nothing to dull the pain of Scully's loss. I can't let go.

He stood up. He looked at her address again. And I can't let you let me go, Scully.

He turned on his cell phone and booked himself the next available flight to San Diego.

He returned to his apartment, intending to throw a few clothes in a bag. On his way, he called the Gunmen briefly. "I'm going. I just wanted you to know."

Frohike said, "Bring her back, man. Whatever it takes, bring her back to us."

"Frohike, I'm not leaving there without her. I promise you that." He hung up the phone, deliberating a moment. He dialed a second number. He owed her this much.

" Mrs. Scully?"

"Hello, Fox. I haven't seen you in a while."

"I know, I'm sorry. I've been ... well, I just couldn't."

"It's all right. I understood." She paused. "Why are you calling?" Did Mulder detect a hopeful note in her voice?

"I'm going to her, Mrs. Scully. And I'm not coming back without her."

He heard the hiss of her breath, sharply inhaled. "You found her?"

"Some ... uh ... associates found her."

"Should I ask?"

"I'll let her tell you when I've brought her back. This line may not be secure."

"All right, Fox. Call me when you can."

"I will, Mrs. Scully." he was about to hang up, when a thought occurred to him. "Um... Mrs. Scully?"

"Yes, Fox?"

"If I were to ... uh ... want to make certain she doesn't do this again, you know, make it so she has to stick around, would I have to ask your permission first or Bill's?"

Margaret Scully laughed, probably the first true laugh that had escaped her throat and lips since her daughter had fled. "Neither. She's always been her own person." She paused. "But, I give you my permission, Fox."

"Thank you, Mrs. Scully."

"No more than I thank you."

He hung up the cell phone again, knowing the last part of their conversation had been unwise over the cell phone. He could only hope that with his recent lack of interest in the Consortium, they might not be watching him as intently as before. He saw, without registering any concern, that a light was on in his window.

He was out of the car as soon as the engine died and up the front steps in long leaps. He'd been away from her too long. His flight was not for a few hours, but he intended on getting to the airport as quickly as possible. Who knows? Maybe he could charm them into letting the plane take off early. Besides, every step that took him closer to her made his heart that much lighter, made it beat that much more strongly.

His door was ajar, which finally triggered some warning bells in his head. He caught a whiff of Diana's perfume. He hung his head. He had completely forgotten that meeting, hadn't even called her, and had turned off his cell phone. He groaned. He pushed the door open. She was standing at the window. She turned to face him. Her face was more concerned than angry.

"Mulder? Where have you been?"

He looked at her. He had to think quickly. "Something came up." Yeah, that's smart.

"Are you OK?" she asked, coming close to him, slipping an arm around his waist and gazing up at him.

He disengaged her arm, seeing the warning note of irritation in her eyes. "I'm fine. I have to leave town for a few days."

She stared at him, anger flooding her eyes and filling her face. "What is this about, Mulder?"

"My mom's not well. I need to spend a few days with her."

"OK, I've got vacation time. I'll come with you," she offered.

"No!" He nearly shouted. Seeing suspicion bloom into her face, he countered desperately, "Diana, you know my mom and I have a strained relationship. I need to do this on my own."

She looked at him, clearly weighing what he'd said. Finally, she sighed and turned from him. She stared out the window. "You're lying, Mulder."

Damn. "Diana..."

"You found Scully."

He said nothing.

"You found her and you're going to her."

In a soft voice he answered, "Yes."

She rounded on him, fury dancing in her eyes. "Why? why, Mulder? What can she give you that I can't? that I haven't given you? You never touched her the way you touch me, never kissed her, I'll bet, certainly never made love to her. And she doesn't even believe in you. She thinks your work is a joke!"

Mulder crossed the room in long, fast strides. He had Diana by both arms. "Stop it," he shouted. "You have no idea what you're talking about!"

She wrenched her arms free. "Oh, don't I? I saw her, I listened to her. I know what she's about. They sent her to stop you."

Mulder turned from her. "You know nothing about her," he informed Diana through tightly clenched teeth. "You're right. They sent her to stop me. She chose not to. She risked everything for me. You left, remember that, you left! for a European job. Good position for advancement, Diana. Scully never left me. She sacrificed her chances of advancement more times than I care to count. Even when they closed the X-Files the first time and broke us up, she repeatedly risked her career to help me when she could. She risked her life for me, something I doubt you understand, Diana. Do you know she nearly died of cancer? A cancer *they* gave her to get to me! She's lost more because of me than you can even imagine, but she stayed. She stayed until I drove her away."

"You drove her away? What did you do? She's got you so fucked up, Mulder!"

"No, she's got me straighter than I've ever been. I drove her away because I could never tell her what she means to me. You're right Diana. I've never touched her the way I touched you, never kissed her, never made love to her. But the innumerable small things I've shared with her, a friendly touch on the arm, my hand in the small of her back, a kiss on her hand as she lay dying in the hospital, the arguments, the smiles, more things than I can ever tell you, those moments mean more to me than a thousand years with you ever would!"

"Mulder, I love you."

"No, you don't. I doubt you even know what that is. You want something from me; I haven't figured out yet what it is, Diana, but whatever it is, you're not going to get it. Scully is my soul. She is my heart. Every minute I'm with you only reminds me further how much I need her, how I can't live without her."

"Oh? You seem to do just fine," Diana sneered.

Mulder snorted at her. "You just proved it, Diana. You don't get it. I'm not fine. I've pretended about as much as I can."

"She left you, Mulder."

"Yeah," he agreed softly. "I would have left me too. And Maybe she won't come back to me, but I'd rather die trying than live this life one more day."

One last desperate tactic. "You can't just leave. Skinner'll have your hide. He'll cut you loose, Mulder."

Mulder laughed at her. "That tactic wasn't even worthy of you. First of all, Skinner knows me well enough to know I'm nothing without her." He held a hand up as she started to interrupt. "He only partnered us in an attempt to distract me. He knew it was never going to work permanently. He had to know I'd eventually find her or leave to search for her. And, Diana, if he should want to cut me loose, he can go ahead. If it comes down to the Bureau or Scully, the contest ... well, there is no contest. Without her, anything I might accomplish means nothing. Without her, I'm not even sure I can accomplish anything."

Diana stared at him, a dangerous look in her eyes. "Mulder..."

He gripped her wrists as they faced each other. "Diana, I don't know who you're working for and right now, I don't care. I'll deal with that later. At this moment, it's over, whatever this was, between us, it meant nothing to me and now it's done. I suggest you figure that out." They stared at each other for a few long moments. "I'm packing a few things. When I come out, you're gone." Thank God, I never let her leave anything here or left anything at her place.

She watched him disappear into his bedroom and heard him opening and closing drawers, packing hastily. Her lips were set in a tight line. Her eyes sparked with consuming anger. "You'll regret this, Mulder..," she muttered under her breath as she snatched up her purse and strode out of his apartment.

Mulder's flight left on time (Thank you., landed early, Thank you, again., and his luggage was nearly first off the carousel. Hallelujah, I did something right! He rented a car and drove to a hotel. No government expense account room now. The hotel he chose was tall, white, gleaming, and new. The room was light and airy, decorated about as well as any hotel room can be. The view was of one of San Diego's many white sand beaches. In Washington, the weather had been cold and fitful. Here, it was a glorious 75 degrees, bright sun shining everywhere, illuminating every dark corner.

In the hotel gift shop he was able to get a map. From the front desk, he got directions to GenTech, the firm Scully was working at. He used one of the lobby phones to call the firm. A polite, correct secretary asked his name and his business before admitting to him that 'Ms. Mulder' was indeed in today and likely to be in all afternoon. Could she make an appointment, Mr. Hawthorne? Mulder cheerfully agreed to appear at Ms. Mulder's office at 2:30 p.m., to discuss potential bio tech uses for a process of cloning Mr. Hawthorne had discovered.

He didn't think Scully would catch the alias. Nathaniel Hawthorne had been Herman Melville's best friend. All the other names that had run through his head he had rejected as too silly Mr. Bill, too obvious Mr. Frohike, or subtle enough that a second glance at the new entry in her day planner might cause a double take Mr. Ahab, Mr. Melville, or even, God help him, Mr. Scully. Hawthorne was common enough it shouldn't set the bells going off in her head. If she recalled the connection between Melville and Hawthorne, she should dismiss this as coincidence.

His 2:30 p.m. appointment gave him some time to prepare himself. He decided to grab an early lunch at the hotel's 'garden cafe'. He bantered good naturedly with the waitress, ignoring her suggestion of the 'garden lasagna', opting instead for a big, juicy cheeseburger, double fries, and as much ice tea as she could bring him. He ate with relish for the first time since Scully's self imposed exile began. he watched the other patrons with detached amusement. Vacationers mostly, it appeared. Enjoying themselves by the look and sound of it. He wondered if any of them even knew a person could be as happy as he was right now. 2:30 and he would see her. He would hear her voice. He would smell the mixture of her perfume, shampoo, and essence of Scully.

He decided he needed to look as dazzling as possible. She usually hated the ties he picked out for himself and he wasn't sure the suit he'd packed had actually survived the trip out. He checked at the desk, to see how long it might take to press the suit, and where he could get a new tie. The concierge was charmingly helpful. The twinkle, obvious twinkle of love, in her opinion, in Mulder's eye, guaranteed his suit would get pressed right away. And she pointed out, they had a dress shop right here in the hotel. She sent a bellhop up with Mulder to collect the suit from his room. She promised she would contact him, in the dress shop or his room, as *soon* as the suit was done.

In the dress shop, Mulder explained to the sales clerk, an impeccably dressed woman in her late forties, his dilemma. His taste in ties differed drastically from that of a friend he was going to meet. He told her it had been a while since he'd seen this friends and he was eager to make a good impression. He added that he *desperately* needed her help because, as if the rest weren't enough, he was color blind. He gave her his most charming grin.

She obligingly helped him select a tie. Did he need socks to go with that? Mulder decided socks were an astoundingly good idea. Could she show him any other accessories? Did he need cuff links, for example. No, Mulder declined. The socks and tie would be perfect. He was certain his friend would notice the improvement.

"Mr. Mulder?" the bellhop called out to him.

"Over here," he waved absently from the counter.

"I have your suit."

Mulder turned to Millie, the sales clerk, and raised an eyebrow.

She laughed. His enthusiasm was unstoppable. She indicated the dressing room. Mulder changed into his crisply pressed suit, freshly laundered dress shirt, and new, suitable tie (and socks). When he stepped out of the dressing room, Millie whistled at him.

"You clean up nice, Mr. Mulder. You looked good before, in your jeans and shirt, but now... Now, if she can keep her hands off of you, I'll eat that tie."

Mulder looked at her. "Who said?"

"You didn't have to; she's in your eyes."

Mulder smiled at Millie and gave her a peck on the cheek. "Millie, could you have these," he indicated his other clothes, "sent up to my room."

"I'd be happy to, Mr. Mulder." She began folding them neatly, placing them in a paper bag for him. "Oh, Mr. Mulder?"

"Yeah, Millie."

"Bring her by. I want to make sure she knows what she's got."

Mulder winked at her and left the shop. He had asked the desk to have his car waiting and, not to his surprise, there was his car. The valet gave him his keys. Mulder tipped him, without even really registering what denomination he gave him. It must ha been a good one, judging from the appreciative note in the valet's voice. He verified how long it should take him to reach GenTech and the route he should take. Getting into the car, all he could think was how many minutes, how many seconds until he saw Scully again. He completely forgot that for the past nearly 6 months, he'd been calculating how long she'd bee gone in months, then in weeks, then in days, the hours, then minutes, even down to seconds. He might have been torturing himself now, but it was sweet, unbelievably sweet.

GenTech was located in a high rise in downtown San Diego. Mulder entered the underground parking garage, where his name, business, and car's license number were noted by the security guard. The guard told him approximately where he was likely to find parking spaces and how to get to the elevator that would take him to the building lobby. Mulder thanked him for the information and drove on. Mulder parked, checked his appearance in the tiny rearview mirror, and stepped out of the car. He saw the elevator and hurried toward it. It was 2:15 p.m. For once, he was going to be right on time for Scully.

In the lobby a pleasant voiced secretary who reminded Mulder startlingly of Skinner's assistant, directed him to the high speed elevator that would take him to GenTech's offices high up in the building. Mulder thanked her with a sly smile and headed in the direction she indicated. By some twist of lucky fate, he had the elevator to himself. He tapped his foot and hummed "Scully, Scully, Scully" under his breath to an Elvis tune. He found he could hardly keep from grinning.

At the GenTech reception desk, he gave his name. The secretary buzzed the intercom. "Jenna? Dr. Mulder's 2:30 is here."

The intercom squawked. Mulder didn't notice it. He was entranced by the sound of his name from this woman's lips, knowing she was actually talking about Scully. It fell off her lips with ease and grace.

"Mr. Hawthorne? Mr. Hawthorne?"

"Oh, I'm sorry. I must have gotten lost in my thoughts. Yes?"

" Dr. Mulder's secretary will be coming along to show you to her office."

"Thank you." Mulder moved a few steps away from the desk and waited. he worked diligently on keeping his fame calm, impassive, trying to hold back the raging emotions he felt. He was euphoric and terrified, all at once. What if she had meant it, after all? You've got to believe she didn't.

A tall, woman in a dark, suit was approaching him from the main corridor. She smiled at him, in greeting, her hand extended. "Mr. Hawthorne? Right this way, please."

Mulder followed her. As they walked down the main corridor, making a turn at its end, walking another distance before turning down several shorter hallways. The secretary made polite conversation which Mulder tried to keep up with. He heard Scully's name in every step he took, felt it in the suddenly rapid beating of his heart. Finally, the secretary indicated an open door. "Please have a seat, Mr. Hawthorne. You are a few minutes early and Dr. Mulder should be about finished with her previous meeting."

"Thank you."

The woman leaned over her intercom, " Dr. Mulder? Mr. Hawthorne is here." Mulder strained, but his ears could not catch her response. "Yes, Doctor."

The secretary smiled at him. "She'll be just a few minutes. I know she's looking forward to meeting with you."

Mulder picked up a magazine. He doubted any of it would make sense to him, but it would keep him busy. He didn't know if he could sit still otherwise.

For Scully Dana, think Dana! it had not been a good day. She'd woken up before dawn, as she always did, to go jogging. She jogged out of guilt: everyone here did (or it seemed like everyone did), Mike was constantly reminding her how *we* all need to keep in shape, and, she hated admitting this one, it reminded her of Mulder. Do you need any other reminders, Dana? What were you thinking, Dr. *Mulder*? She could have sworn she saw Mulder, even followed the jogger surreptitiously for a few blocks, until he stopped to tie a shoe. As she jogged slowly past, she could see he was nothing like Mulder. She was unaccountably depressed. She had come in, looking forward to a hot shower to clear her mind, to find Mike had used up the hot water. They had argued. Mike offered to cook her breakfast to make up for it. She agreed, mostly to humor him. She wasn't hungry. She rarely was anymore. She took an extremely quick, fairly cold shower while Mike cooked.

She had stepped out of the shower to the smell of burning toast. She groaned. She dressed hurriedly, running one pair of stockings in the process. She swore at herself as her hand automatically reached for the gun she no longer possessed. She had been working for nearly 6 months at removing that habitual impulse from her routine, but her brain seemed to refuse to accept that that life was over. By the time she made it to the kitchen, Mike had cleaned up the mess and, except for a slight residual aroma of burnt wheat bread, the kitchen looked spotless. She noted the table was laid with cereal. She smiled a little, in spite of her annoyance with him.

She had insisted on driving in separately, as she knew Mike had a late meeting and she didn't want to be stuck at the office later than necessary. That was one of the perks of this job. You could count on its hours. She had time for a life. She sighed as she reflected she not only had time for a life, she had one. Mike focused on her. He was already talking marriage, kids, house, pets, even the PTA and Scouting. She had told him she couldn't have children. he had asked why and she had simply explained she'd had an illness that left her sterile. He accepted that and told her they could adopt. It was all the things Dana Scully had always dreamed of having. She didn't want to look at her reasons why it no longer seemed enough. he had gone on with his life. Mulder had done exactly what she said to do. She had to accept that. She would accept that.

She had arrived at GenTech at 9:00, as usual. Her secretary, Jenna, had her appointments arranged for her, all the papers and files she would need for the day were arranged neatly, in order, on her desk. Coffee was freshly brewed in the coffee pot and Jenna had tastefully arranged GenTech's daily supply of pastries on a silver tray, complete with doilies and napkins. Jenna was a dream, efficient, cheerful, organized. Everything you could ask for, Dana.

She looked around her office, after Jenna had delivered her daily summation of Dana's daily activities. "The Davis couple will be here at 10:00 a.m., Dr. Mulder," she had said as she shut the door. Scully slumped in her chair. You wanted to get away, Scully, and you did. I don't think, however, you quite got away from *Mulder*! Why do you think you picked that alias? She pounded the heel of her hand on her desk. My desk, the one I got because it came with the office! My office, big, light, airy. The office I always wanted. Papers organized, files filed, no one violates my personal space. I miss Mulder!

Pulling herself together mentally and went over the file on the Davis couple. After her meeting with them, she had a company meeting, lunch with Mike and a client, a follow-up meeting with Mike, and then some research time in the lab.

The meeting with the Davis couple had been horrendous. She had to tell them that gene therapy would not help the husband. He suffered from a rare genetic condition that would most likely cause his death within five painful years. GenTech had initially felt perhaps a gene therapy they had experimented with might help him. The tests Dana had run led her to believe otherwise. It was not an easy job to tell these people. Admittedly, at least in this job, she could give people solid scientific reasons. She found herself sometimes wishing she couldn't. She found science sometimes left out hope. Imagine missing Mulder's decidedly unscientific theories.

The GenTech meeting was routine. Discussions, breakthroughs noted, ideas exchanged. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

As she came back to her office to grab her purse before leaving for the client lunch, Jenna smile brightly. " Dr. Mulder? I've scheduled a 2:30 meeting with a Mr. Hawthorne. He has some information he wants to share with you. I've left the details on your desk." "Thank you, Jenna." She sighed a little. So much for research. Maybe she'd leave a little early, go home, read something, do nothing.

Lunch was at one of San Diego's premier restaurants. The restaurant deserved every shred of its fabulous reputation. The client was enthusiastic. Conversation had begun with the perfect balance of small talk about nothing, then moved into business. Scully had gone with Mike (hence their meeting after lunch). Neither had committed, reminding the client that decisions had to go through GenTech committee for approval.

Now she was listening to Mike. They discussed the client's needs at length, what GenTech could and could not do for them. Mike took Notes so they could present this to GenTech's project committee. "Dana?"

She looked up. "Yeah?"

"You OK?"

"I'm f- Yeah, good, just tired."

"Well, why I don't bring dinner when I'm done here. I could get a video and we'll go from there."

She shook her head. "Mike, I think I need a night to myself. Just read, think, sleep. Is that OK?"

He looked hurt, but said, "That's fine, if that's what you need." He looked at her tenderly. "Just call me if you change your mind, OK?"

She nodded at him.

The intercom buzzed, announcing her 2:30 appointment. She grimaced slightly. Mike stood up. "Jenna, give me a minute. I'll buzz you." Jenna indicated she understood. She stood up, walking to the door with Mike. He opened her door slightly, turning and kissing her primly as he left.

She walked back and sat down at her desk. She picked up the Notes Jenna had left her regarding Mr. Hawthorne's proposal. She knew Jenna always made sense, and this didn't really make sense. A whisper of suspicion tickled at the back of her brain. Oh, well, how many cranks do we deal with each year?

She buzzed out to Jenna that she was ready. She picked up the Notes again, wanting to be reading them as Hawthorne entered. She had a feeling the guy was a crank and she wanted to discomfit him a little. She heard the snick of the door opening. A few soft steps on the deep carpet, then the door shutting again. From behind her shield of Notes, she said, "Please have a seat, Mr. Hawthorne."

She heard him walk over to her desk and pull out the right chair. He must have long legs she thought; it didn't take him long to cross the distance between the door and her desk. She heard him sit down, heard the whisper of what sounded like fine wool rubbing against itself as he crossed his legs, OK, a well dressed crank., heard him shift a little as he settled. She was puzzled that he had not said a word.

"Mr. Hawthorne," she began, lowering Jenna's nonsensical Notes. Her mouth dropped. Her eyes rounded. Her face paled. "Mulder?" Her voice was a whisper.

He learned forward and captured her hands in his. "Scully."

"Oh my God, Mulder." Her mouth worked, but no sound issued from it. Finally, she found her voice. "What are you doing here?"

"Finding you," he said softly.

"How? I was so careful."

He smiled. "You made one mistake, Dr. *Mulder*. You mentioned how you got this job. The Gunmen tracked you down."

She groaned. "Mulder, you have to leave."

"I'm not going anywhere, Scully. I've gone on long enough without you. You've gone on long enough without me."

His eyes were a deep green. They were lit with love. His mouth was soft and tender. The hands that held hers prisoner were gentle; his fingers caressed hers.

With a desperate sound, she pulled them out of his grasp. "Mulder, I've gone on with my life."

"I don't believe that, Scully."

She choked on a bitter laugh. "Finally, I find something you *don't* believe."

He smiled at her. "You want to know what I believe?"

She shook her head, slowly. "No, Mulder. I want you to leave. I don't know why you came here, but if it was curiosity, now you know. You know I'm fine. You can see that I've gone on with my life." She stared at him, hoping fervently her eyes were as cold as she wanted the to be and not burning with the fire she denied. "I don't need you, Mulder."

He stood up slowly. "What do you need, Scully? That guy who kissed you as he left your office? Did you finally decide it was OK to have a relationship with a colleague?"

"So what if I did, Mulder? What's it to you? You never wanted me."

"You're wrong, Scully. I've wanted you since I can remember!"

She stared at him. He could make her unbelievably angry. How dare he have the Gunmen search for her, find her, come here, and ruin all the carefully built walls she'd built? Why couldn't he let her move on? "No, Mulder, you're just saying that now because I got away. I made my own life, without you, and you can't accept that!"

"Fine, Scully! You want to believe that. Go right ahead. You're right, I should just get on with my life. And that's just what I'm going to do." He turned on his heel. He was across her office in a few long strides. He yanked her door open, stormed through it, and slammed it behind him. Scully jumped at the sound.

Her intercom buzzed. "It's OK, Jenna. Don't worry. Mr......uh...Hawthorne didn't like what I had to say about his ideas."

Her intercom responded, "Do you want anything, Dr. Mulder?"

"No, just hold all my calls. Thanks."

Dana's head fell forward on her desk. She sobbed uncontrollably into her hands. Damn him, damn him, damn him! Everything had bee fine, well, it had been OK until he walked through that door. She'd been hanging on, telling herself she could do it. Now her heart was screaming at her that she needed him. Her brain was arguing, reminding her stubborn heart that she had made it this far. Her heart, traitor that it was, stopped screaming and started whispering, "Yeah, but were you alive?"

She put her head up. She couldn't hide from that question. Time to face it. She stood up and walked over to the huge picture window which looked out over the city. This high up it was quite a view. she stared out at the gleaming city under an azure sky and thought.

He had made it clear that he didn't want her in his life. He had been stung by her words, she wanted to tell herself. She was barely living without her. The fact he'd come here, used subterfuge to see her n(he'd known she wouldn't have agreed to see her knowing it was him) said he wasn't doing any better without him.

She wanted to let him go. It was over, he'd agreed with her before he stormed out. They had their good-byes, of a sorts. But not a single day, not a single minute would ever pass without the images of him in her mind. She would never be able to shake the memories of his face, smiling one of the lop sided puppy dog Mulder smiles, the phantom touch of the way he would touch her, casually, tenderly, companionably. He had loved her, as much as she loved him, and those memories would never leave her. One of life's little ironies that she finally could believe he truly loved her, exactly as she drove him away, pushed him from her more effectively than anything the Consortium could have ever done to separate him.

She had written it was what she wanted, implying it was for the best. He had finally gotten the message. He said he was going to go on. So she should let go. Then why are you still in my heart, still in my soul? She had written that she needed someone who would put her first. She had that, but she had finally seen that she'd had that all along, in Mulder. He had searched for nearly 6 months for her, had come to her as soon as? once he'd known where she was, possibly endangering his job. She was trying to go on, but it wasn't working. Two months with Mike was doing nothing to dull the pain of Mulder's loss. I can't let go.

She pushed back from the window. I can't let go.

She grabbed her purse, She fairly flew out her office door, calling to Jenna on her way, "I'm leaving. I have business to take care of." She stopped at the entrance to the anteroom. "Oh, and cancel everything for tomorrow. I won't be in."

She didn't wait for Jenna's questions. She just left. She made vague conversation in the elevator, muttering farewells as she stepped out of the elevator. She hurried to the garage. Getting into her car, she realized, "I'm not coming back. Damn, it was a nice office." She knew she'd trade it any day for a crowded space in the basement with only one desk, Mulder's stuff taking up most of the office, and his constant intrusions into her personal space.

Damn, Scully, you don't even know where he's staying. She racked her brain for ways of tracking him down. She was never aware of how long she sat in her car, until an idea dawned on her. He didn't know San Diego well. There were few places he would probably go. She took a chance.

As she drove out of the garage, she felt a weight lift from her chest. For the first time, in her adult life probably, she wasn't afraid of what she was feeling. She loved him. She had seen in his eyes that he loved her. She couldn't mistake it, couldn't deny it. She found suddenly she didn't want to. She thought she'd lost so much. It was only now she began to see what she'd gained far outweighed the losses. If her mother could have read her thoughts, Margaret would have been pleased. The only fear that she carried with her was that he wouldn't forgive her.

Her brain asked what she'd do if it turned out he simply went back to D.C. Her heart replied, "Go find him."

She knew where she was going, but she had one small stop to make. She smiled as she saw a drive through coming up. Her stop took about 5 minutes. She was smiling and humming happily as she pulled up to her destination.

A mid size white rental sedan was outside. Tears sprung to her eyes.

Mulder sat on the hard wooden bench, alternating between thinking, not thinking, crying, and cursing. Everything had gone so wrong. He had said things he never wanted to say to her. How was it she could infuriate him so?

He didn't know how long he'd sat there. He couldn't explain why he'd come there either, except it was the only place in San Diego he could associate with Scully, other than Bill's house. It was here that she had once again, unknowingly demonstrated the depth of her feeling for him, when, after Emily's funeral, she had told her mother she'd drive back with him. It was here he had seen her at her most vulnerable and she had let him comfort her. The church where they'd held Emily's funeral.

He heard a sound behind him. Heels tapping against the stone flags. He stood and turned. In the dim candle light of the church, she looked ghostly. He couldn't be certain at first she was really there. He cocked his head slightly. He was unwilling to blink, lest she disappear. If she was a vision, he wanted to experience it as long as possible. He finally noticed his vision was carrying a medium sized waxed paper drink cup, emblazoned with 'Taco Bell'. "Scully" he barely dared to whisper it, fearful she would disappear, blown away by his breathing.

The vision nodded and moved closer to him. He could see tears glistening on her cheeks. He could see she was trembling. His feet felt rooted to the stones beneath them. He willed them to move. Once they got going, they worked pretty well. He was across the flags in a heartbeat, it seemed (and it was still too long) and she was in his arms. He held her as tightly as he could, mute, unable to utter a word. His mind replayed only her name over and over.

After long, long moments, he drew away from her, gazing down at her. He let loose a long shuddering sigh. Still unable to speak, rapt in his disbelief that she was here, he placed a hand in the small of her back, guiding her to a pew. His hand cried out its gratefulness when it felt the familiar dip in her back.

They sat. Mulder put one arm around her shoulder, with the other, he held her hand, the one not holding the Taco Bell cup. He finally was granted the ability to speak again. "How did you know?" "I didn't, Mulder." She laughed lightly, breathily. "I played a hunch." He smiled at her and laughed, out loud. "Are you sure? No scientific data to support your conclusions?" "Not a one, Mulder. Sometimes, science doesn't have all the answers." "So, why are you here?" he asked tentatively. She could be here out of pity, after all. "I thought you might be thirsty, so I brought you something." "Oh, Scully, if it's ice tea, it's love." She handed him the cup, straw stuck obligingly out of the top. He took a careful sip. Ice tea. He looked up at her. Tears coursed down her face, but she wasn't sobbing. He felt tears well in his eyes. Tears of joy. "I love you too," he told her.

Scully stirred in her sleep, puzzled momentarily at her surroundings. She realized there were arms around her. Strong, warm, familiar arms. She opened her eyes. Mulder. She sighed, her breath ruffling the hair on his chest, where she realized her head was pillowed. She tried to remember exactly how they'd gotten here, after she'd found him in the church. She recalled the fierceness of his embrace, the way he had buried his face in her hair, the sound of her name whispered in her ear. They must have come back to his hotel. They had fallen into each other's arms. Exhaustion, oddly enough, won out over desire and they had fallen asleep in each others' arms.

Mulder sighed in his sleep and clutched her more tightly. She ran a finger in light circles over the skin of his chest. He stirred and gazed down at her. He smiled at her, a little dazedly, unable to believe she was here.

He knew he had to tell her about Diana; it might change her mind. Although that thought terrified him, it was a gap they would have to bridge and he wanted to bridge it as soon as possible. He wanted nothing between them. "Scully. There's something I have to tell you..." his voice trailed off as he realized she was crying softly. "Hey," he said. "Scully, why?"

"Oh Mulder," she sobbed. "I'm so sorry."

"No," he soothed, "No, no, no. You don't have anything to be sorry for."

"I left you. I walked out on all we have."

His heart leapt to hear her say 'all *we* have'. "I understand. It's OK."

She continued to cry. He held her and rocked her gently. She finally pulled away from him slightly and shifted onto her back. He kept her within the circle of his arms though, unwilling to loose her from the loving confines of his body. She looked at him. She raised a finger and drew it softly along the curve of his cheekbone. He shivered at her touch. His eyes closed involuntarily. When he opened them, she was focused on him with her bright blue gaze. "What you do to me, Scully..."

"Mulder, I have to explain."

"No, you don't, Scully. It's OK now."

"I have to explain for me. When they burnt our office and you held me, I knew I couldn't keep hiding from you how I felt, about you. I wasn't having much luck hiding it from myself anymore. I was terrified, Mulder, terrified. I spent so many years learning how to shut people out, perfecting my technique. I learned it was the only way to protect myself. Then suddenly, it seemed, there you were. You were inside the walls and I didn't know what to do."

"I never want to hurt you, Scully."

"I know that. Mulder, I trusted you with everything, my life itself, but I thought I'd kept my heart safe. Then, in Dallas, when you were locked in with that bomb, I thought I was going to lose you. All I kept thinking was 'I never told him. He never knew.' Over and over. I vowed to tell you, and then...I couldn't. I didn't know if I hated myself more for feeling this way or for being such a coward."

"I knew, Scully. I always knew. I feel the same way, had the same thoughts."

She stifled a sob. "I was afraid you wouldn't..."

"Didn't you see it in my eyes?"

"I thought I did, but, then..."

"Then what?"

"Let me tell the story in my way, OK Mulder?"

He nodded.

"I had seen you with Diana, the night I called to tell you what I had learned. I had come to the hospital to tell you. But you were with her, holding her hands, smiling. I went back to my car and called you. That was why I wouldn't meet you there; I couldn't bear it. And I thought if I saw you, you would know something was wrong. That all came back to me after the hearing.

"After the hearing and the reassignment, I reflected on my career. I couldn't bear to admit that I'd followed you all those years out of any deep feeling for you, so I made it your fault. I wrote to you how you didn't need me, I held you back. I knew it wasn't true. Deep down, I knew I'd stayed because I loved the work and I loved you. But when I thought about seeing you with her, I was uncertain. I couldn't face that I'd ruined my career out of my own choice, and quite possibly a poor choice at that, and so I fled. I was terrified by the jealousy I felt toward her, terrified what it meant, just plain terrified."

"And came here?"

"Not at first, I traveled a little bit. But I found being alone was not helping. I kept thinking about Mike's offer, so I finally called him, came out here, and...it's a good job. I enjoyed the work at first. They do great research on genetic tendencies, inherited traits, gene therapy. Some of their discoveries are amazing. I soon found myself thinking about Emily, though. I couldn't talk to anyone about it. They all just thought I'd been an FBI pathologist after med. school. How could I explain Emily? That's when it started in earnest." She was crying softly again.

"What started?" Mulder asked.

"I started to realize that I wasn't go to be able to do it. I thought I could live without you. I tried. I fought it, as hard as I've ever fought anything. That's when I sent you that second letter. I had been hoping someone else could make me forget. Make me forget everything I went through for you. But I couldn't get away from the fact that everything I went through was *with* you, not *for* you. I couldn't escape the fact that no one else was ever going to understand me, the person I've become, because no one else had been on that journey with me. About a month ago, I made a decision."

"A decision?"

"I called the Bureau. I asked to speak to Agent Mulder, but Sandy, I think it was Sandy, relayed that you were in the field. I don't know why, but I asked to speak to your partner."

Mulder sucked in sharply. "Scully..."

"No, I have to do this, Mulder. You have to listen. Sandy told me Agent Fowley was in the field with you. I felt like I'd been gutted. My entire body went numb. I managed to make myself ask her when you were expected back. She chuckled and told me you'd be gone *at least over night*"

Mulder groaned.

"I knew what she'd been to you, but I was furious that you'd gone back to her. I couldn't believe it. I thought you'd gone on. You'd gone back to her. I knew she shared your interests in the paranormal. I knew she supported your theories and conclusions, didn't want to find a scientific explanation for everything. I decided no matter how hard it was, I had to let go. I started dating Mike. I knew I could never have with him what I could have had with you. I thought I could make myself settle down, be happy. I pictured suburbia, adopt a couple kids, get a dog, drive a minivan. I tried to make myself believe it was what I wanted, that *Mike* was what I wanted. I buried everything I felt for you where I'd always buried it, as deep inside as I could. Only this time, I knew it was there. I'd gone all this way, only to find it was a dead end road."

"Scully, now it's my turn to be sorry."

"That's what you wanted to tell me about, isn't it? Her?"

"Yeah. Skinner partnered me with her, didn't give me room to object. He knew about our shared interests, hoped she would pull me out of myself. When she initiated a renewed relationship, it was just easier to..."

"Go along with it." Scully finished for him.

He nodded. "It happened and I didn't stop it. I was furious with you, too. Skinner figured out what was going on, but I think by then he just didn't care. I was probably pretty close to getting kicked out of the Bureau, one way or the other. I think he was hoping she'd clean up the mess I was making of my life. On the outside I guess it worked, but on the inside, I couldn't stop aching for you. To be honest, Diana only made it worse in the end. I was so lonely, because she wasn't you."

"Does she know where you are?"

"I told her I had to leave for a few days. She figured out I was going to you. We had a pretty big argument."

"She didn't want to let go of you?"

"It's not me she wants. I don't know what exactly she wants, but it's not *me*. She doesn't even really know me, know who I am. Only you know that, Scully."

"Mulder, can you ever forgive me? I ran away and kept running, knowing the whole time I could never get away from you."

"I don't have to forgive you, Scully. I did my share of pushing you away. I could have, should have told you long ago. I would have if you'd come in person to tell me..."

"I knew that. why do you think I left you a note?' Her voice was tear- filled and bitter, anger directed inward.

"Scully, can I ask you one thing?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Your alias?"

"You analyze that Mr. Oxford Psychology degree," she giggled a little. "When I chose it, I knew it was the one thing you and the Gunmen wouldn't think of. I knew it would keep me safe from your finding me. I thought it was such a clever way to loose myself. I didn't count on the fact that your name did more than protect me; it comforted me. I found I couldn't give it up. I rationalized that the Gunmen would still be looking for me, so I couldn't go back to "Dana Scully". Then, everyone here knew me as my alias, so I couldn't change it. I had all sort of reasons. I'm sorry, Mulder."

"Don't be sorry," he smiled at her. "Keep it if you'd like." His voice was casual and light, but she felt his arms tighten almost imperceptibly around her.

"Keep... it? Mulder?"

"You heard me, Scully."

She smiled, light flashing in her eyes. "If I kept it, do you think I could maybe have the Scully back with it?"

He finally took a deep breath and asked, 'Special Agent Dana Scully- Mulder?"

"Yeah," she agreed happily. "Oh, well, not the Special Agent part, I guess. I gave that up."

"I think we can convince Skinner."

He kissed her forehead.

"Mulder, they'd never let us get married!"

"Then, we'll get married before they can say anything. Skinner's gonna want you back We'll just make it so he has to accept you back on our terms."

She snuggled into his arms. "Mulder?" She paused and kissed his chest lightly. "What time is it?"

He looked at the bedside clock. "Just after 5:00 a.m. Why?"

"I was wondering how long we slept. I haven't slept well lately."

He calculated in his head. "We slept about 8 hours, believe it or not."

"We fell asleep at 9 p.m.?" She was astonished. "And neither of us was ill, hospitalized, or drugged?"

He shook his head, nuzzling his mouth into the area behind her ear. "Nope. Just tired. Tired, and finally where we were both meant to be.'

His breath whispered over her ear, making her shiver delightfully. "What time do you have to be at work?" Their was a definite leer in his voice.

She rolled onto her side, laced her fingers together around his neck. She licked her lips slightly. "When I left yesterday, I told Jenna I wouldn't be in today."

"Oh, Scully, you thought I was that easy?'

She beamed at him. "Never, Mulder. I knew I was going to be that easy."

He kissed her smiling mouth, deeply, passionately. When they came up for air, both were panting slightly. Mulder groaned happily. "What about the next day?"

She regarded him steadily, a serious expression on her luminous face. "I'll call Mike today and quit. I knew yesterday I wasn't going back."

Mulder leaned over to the night stand, picked up the telephone hand set, and handed it to her, grinning from ear to ear. She laughed. "Tell me his number. I'll dial," he offered.

"Mulder! It's five a.m.!"

"No time like the present," he wheedled.

"I'll call him at the office," she promised.

Mulder's hands began stroking her back. For the first time his brain fully registered that, exhausted as they'd been, both were most definitely unclothed. Her skin felt like he'd imagined it, soft, satiny, warm. He learned his head into her neck, inhaling the scent of her, nibbling at the delicate flesh there. She arched her neck, opening herself to him, trusting him. She exhaled slowly, her breath ruffling his hear. Her hands started to travel up and down the length of his back, feeling the muscles beneath his skin. Her hands made their restless way to his shoulders. Strong shoulders that were willing to take the weight of the world, alone if need be. They wouldn't have to ever again. She wasn't leaving.

"Um....Scully?"

"Yeah," she whispered.

"Um... I hate to ask, but would you like to wait? Until, I can make an honest woman out of you?"

She looked at him, loving, tender, hungry. "Mulder," her voice was soft, husky, tinged with amusement. "I'm always honest, unless I'm lying to save your ass."

"Touch," he told her, running a finger along her jawline. "I just want you to be happy. You are Catholic and all..."

She hit him gently on the chest. "Mulder, I hate to break it to you, but I'm not that Catholic."

He sighed, relaxing his body closer to hers. "So, you're telling me?"

She kissed him, nibbling on his bottom lip, exploring his mouth gently with her tongue. He growled into her mouth. "I'm saying," she said purposefully, "that we've waited long enough. I don't need a piece of paper and a ceremony of any sort to tell me I'm yours and you're mine until, and I hope after, death do us part." "And your mother said you were your own person," he chided her, in mock surprise, kissing her shoulder blade.

"Mulder, don't question what it's taken me this long to accept and to want and to," she gasped as his teeth carefully closed on her ear, "enjoy."

"Enjoy? Are you enjoying this, Scully?" " Mmmmm...." she mumbled.

"And this?" he asked, running his tongue from just behind her ear to the base of her neck.

"Mmmmm.... enjoying."

"And this?" His fingers stroked the swell of her breast. He felt the heat rise in her and watched her shudder.

"Mulder?"

"Yeah?"

"You're cruel."

He pushed himself up on one elbow and withdrew his hands from her body. "You want me to stop?"

"Yeah," she said, leveling her bright blue gaze on him. "When I'm about eighty."

He leaned close to her again and whispered in her ear, "I think we can work on that." His voice was warm; its Notes ran down her spine like mulled wine on a chilly evening. His words were a promise on which she was beginning to feel slightly drunk. He twined one hand in her hair and lifted her face to his. His mouth descended slowly to hers. His eyes drank in the anticipation etched on her face. He stopped barely before his lips touched hers. "Hey, Scully?"

She opened her eyes. Her eyes were the color of a deep mountain lake, high in the mountains, yet they burned with the fire he was slowly stoking within her. She groaned.

"What, Mulder?"

"Are you really mine? Heart? soul?" he paused, letting his eyes travel the length of her body, "and body?"

How can he *do* that, make me even hotter with just his eyes? "Yes, yes, and isn't that what we're working on?"

"Just checking."

He kissed her, lowering her head back to the pillow; his other hand caressed her cheek softly. She wrapped her arms around him and stroked his neck, his back, his sides. He broke the kiss. She opened her eyes again, watching him grin at her. She arched an eyebrow. He could read "Mulder, what *are* you doing?" in that look and he realized again how much he had missed her. He raised his lips to her brow, kissed it lightly, and murmured, "Mine." She sighed. He repeated the motion and word, placing a kiss on her left eyelid, then her right, then the tip of her nose. She was giggling.

He pulled away from her just enough to reach each of her ears, kissing, murmuring, then the patch of skin behind each , the hollow at the base of her neck, where her cross rested. He reached around down to the hand that now lay at her side. Each finger he kissed in turn, assuring her that they were his. Her kissed her palms, wrists, the bend on the inside of her elbow.

She murmured, "Mulder?"

"Scully?"

She smiled lazily. "What exactly are you doing?"

"Well, I got thinking about all those explorers who were here long ago, claiming territory for their queen and country, so I thought I'd better stake my claim. Don't want any future disputes about possession." His eyes twinkled merrily; he grinned wickedly at her.

"I think your claim is pretty secure. Just don't wait too long before you ... um ... plant your flag."

Mulder nearly choked. Had he just heard that innuendo out of Scully? The way she was smiling answered him. He'd heard her exactly right. 'Yes, ma'am. Mind if I explore a bit further? Want to be certain to choose prime territory."

She blushed and bit her lower lip. "I wouldn't expect any less."

As Mulder's lips brushed over her flesh, kissing lightly, feathering his words over her heated skin, his fingers traced lazy circles on her neck, her abdomen, wherever they happened to drift to rest. The sounds that flowed from her lips sounded as though they had been drawn from her soul. Her murmurs, coos, groans, whimpers, growls, and sighs were filled with all they were both feeling, all the love, anguish, need, and ultimately, the knowledge that this was fated.

As his lips brushed over the inside of her thighs, she arched her back, moaning his name. His breath was hot, even against her already superheated skin. She moved her legs further apart, encouraging him. He trailed his hand all the way down her abdomen, through the triangle of thick red curls, to the soft, clinging opening to her body. He slipped a finger inside her, as softly and gently as she could. He could feel her spasm around his finger. She arched her back, pulling his finger into her more deeply. Her breathing was ragged, audible. She panted his name over and over. "Mulder, please," she begged him.

He slipped a second finger inside her. She was slick with passion, dripping. He pumped her slowly, carefully, with both fingers. Her hips moved to his rhythm. He felt her try to increase the tempo of his gentle seduction. He refused to allow her to do so. He chose to distract her by blowing a long, drawn out, gentle breath against her swollen clit. She gasped sharply. Her hips twitched, then struggled to find again and match his unfaltering rhythm. She was moaning almost continuously now, sometimes an incoherent sound, sometimes his name drawn out into a growl.

He gazed at her. Her eyes were shut, her cheeks flushed. Her hair lay on the pillow, spread out like a fan of fire. She was thrashing about, slowly, then faster, then slowly again. He could see her struggling for control of her reactions. He could also see her losing that battle. That he could do this to her, that she trusted him enough to be this way with him, heightened his only barely controllable desire. He had to take this slowly right now because once he slid inside her, it was going to be quick and hard.

He slid a third finger inside her, stetching her tiny body a little. She shifted under him. He increased the pace ever so slightly. At the same time, he placed his mouth on her clit, flicking it with his tongue. Rapid, hard tongue thrusts into the delicate, swollen, sensitive folds. He sucked on her, nipped at her, and tongued her with energy and extreme pleasure. He could feel the moment building within her. Long, deft fingers slid deeply into her, withdrew, slid back. She rocked against him. She started to shudder and Mulder increased the pace then, increased the gentle pressure his mouth was applying to her clit. His tongue flicked against her faster, harder; his fingers probed her relentlessly. She was gasping beneath his ministrations, shaking, uttering his name over and over. He felt his already slicked fingers now drenched in the proof of her orgasm. He slowed down gradually, took his mouth from her body, and laid his head against her belly. As she came down from the place he'd brought her, she let out a tremendous sigh. Her whole body was trembling. Mulder held her in his arms, waiting for her breathing to steady and her trembling to subside. She was kissing his chest, his arms, his neck, with light, feathery kisses. He stroked her hair.

"Scully...." he breathed into her hair. "Thank you."

She stared up at him. "Thank me?"

"For trusting me to do that, to behold that."

"Mulder, I ..." she sighed again. "You ... Oh God, no one has ever made me feel that."

It was Mulder's turn to stare. "Not ever?"

She shook her head slowly. "Mulder, you know how difficult relationships are, *were* for me. You think I could let myself go with anyone else?"

Her words broke through any thoughts Mulder may have had about being able to hold himself back. He covered her luscious mouth with his, nibbling at her lips, licking those same lips, begging permission to explore her mouth. The taste of her was unbelievable, like Heaven on Earth. Her tongue met his, thrust for thrust. He realized she could taste herself on his tongue. The thought was undeniably erotic. He groaned into her mouth. He covered her body with his. With the end of rational thought, he pushed himself into her. They both gasped. Mulder had been exactly right. Years of repressed emotion and desire, coupled with nearly 6 months of devastating anguish swept over him. He was driving himself into her as hard and fast as he could. She was moaning beneath him, her hips thrusting to meet him. she wrapped her legs around his back and he slid, pounded more deeply into her. She gasped and hissed. He managed to gasp out, "Hurting you?"

"No," she returned, equally breathless. "Weird sensation. Good."

Every motion brought them both closer to ecstasy. Almost without warning, he felt her body tighten around him, felt her get hotter and wetter how is that possible?, and felt her begin to spasm. She was clutching him, her nails digging into his back; her voice was ragged and raw as she repeated his name, drawing it into a series of moans.

Glad he wasn't eighteen anymore and therefore had a little more control, Mulder let himself go once he knew she was satisfied. He came into her, on waves of light, blinding him, the roar of the ocean seemed to be in his ears, the mantra of her name fell reverently from his lips.

Sated, they lay against each other. It was long minutes before either could breathe normally. Scully took both their pulses and found they were racing. She realized it was probably one of the most ridiculous things to do in bed, after great sex, no less, but she had been curious. Mulder laughed at her. They were quiet for a while, each lost in a pleasant no-thought zone, reveling in simply being together.

"Scully? What time does the court house open?"

"I don't know...nine I would guess."

"Can we get a license and get married right away?"

"No, I think in California you have to wait a day, maybe three."

Mulder groaned. "What if we went up to Vegas."

"No," she told him firmly. "I'm only doing this once, so it won't be in Las Vegas."

"OK, if you don't want me that much..." he grinned the lopsided grin at her.

She poked him. "I do want you that much, but I'm still not getting married in Vegas. Not even that grin will not make me."

"All right. Well, let's get to the courthouse as soon as its open."

She agreed easily. They showered, dressed (even in exhaustion, Scully had neatly folded her clothes, so they didn't look as bad as they might have, although she did look overdressed compared to Mulder), and went downstairs to get some breakfast.

They arrived at the courthouse as it opened. Navigating their way through the bureaucratic maze, both in terms of the building's physical lay out They figure if you haven't got enough gumption to find the office, you shouldn't get married, growled Mulder and in terms of applying for a license. The application process wasn't arduous, but to Mulder it was still paperwork. Worthy paperwork, but... They were told they could come back the next day, if they wanted a justice of the peace to perform the ceremony. They thanked the clerk and left.

"Is that OK with you, Scully?" Mulder asked. "A justice of the peace?"

"Actually Mulder, do you think you could stand a ceremony in the church, where..." her voice broke.

He tilted her head up and looked at her. "Yeah, I could stand that. In fact, Scully, if you wanted me to walk across hot coals on my way to you, I could probably stand that, too."

She giggled at him. He realized she had never giggled much, ever? and he enjoyed it. It was such a lighthearted sound from her. Was her heart finally light? He looked at her. Her face was smooth, unlined, a smile played at her lips, and her eyes danced in the southern California sun. Safe bet her heart was as light as his. At the moment, who cared what might await them back in D.C.?

They went to Scully's apartment, where she packed. Everything fit in two suitcases and three boxes. She had taken little with her when she fled D.C., and had not acquired much here. "I guess I always knew," she said, a little wistfully, surveying the bare walls, empty shelves. "Even the pots, dishes, utensils, those were extras Mike had."

"I don't think, " Mulder said, hugging her from behind, "that this is the way he wanted to get them back."

"No, it isn't," she agreed. "But it doesn't really matter."

They grabbed a quick lunch at a cafe close to her apartment, then returned to the church to talk to the priest, and to pick up her car, which was still there. "I could just let GenTech come pick it up," she commented.

"Company car?" he asked.

"Yet another aspect of my former life I could not seem to escape. I really want my own car, Mulder."

"OK, a Ferrari."

"I'd settle for ... oh, I don't know. We could be horribly suburban and go shopping for one someday."

He smiled at her.

The priest greeted them as they entered the church. He remembered Dana well. He expressed his condolences again and asked what he could do for them. Scully explained why they were there. She asked if he would marry them. She told him she knew Fox I'm not explaining why he insists on being Mulder to this man wasn't Catholic, but they hoped he would agree. He asked them to come into his office for a brief discussion.

Mulder realized he was nervous. Scully may not be that Catholic, but this meant a lot to her. None of her family was going to be present, so he wanted her to have this. Had the priest asked him to swear he'd become Catholic, he would have done it. After about half and hour, the priest agreed to marry them. He asked if they would bring witnesses with them. They looked at each other.

"No," Dana said.

The priest offered to have members of the altar guild present. They thanked him, set a time, for three days hence, and left. Outside, Scully looked at the car. "Yep," she said. "GenTech can just come get it. I don't want to be away from you for a minute."

They were returning to the hotel, when Mulder slapped his hands on the steering wheel. "Scully!'

She nearly jumped. "What?"

"We forgot something."

She thought about it. "What?"

"Rings! What kind do you want?"

"Oh, Mulder, we don't have to..."

"Yes, we do, Scully, oh yes we do."

Scully directed him to a jewelers she knew of. She insisted however on a plain gold band for herself. Since it was what she wanted he relented from the five carat emerald cut solitaire he'd been teasing her with. They instead bought matching gold bands, which the jeweler, being apprised of the situation, agreed to engrave before the wedding. They chose simply the date.

Back in the car, Scully asked to borrow his cell phone. "Mike?" he asked.

She nodded. He handed her the phone.

She dialed the direct line into his office. His voice was tight with worry as he answered. "Dana? My God, where are you? I was worried."

"I'm fine. Mike. I'm sorry I worried you."

"It was...well, Jenna said your 2:30 yesterday was really weird and you left about two hours later and didn't look great. And then you never came home. I called and called."

"Mike," she began. "Please don't say anything, just listen. When I left D.C. last summer I thought I was done with that life. I realized a while ago, I'll never be done with it, and what's more I don't *want* to be done with it. I tried as hard as I could to deny that, but something happened yesterday, and I had to stop denying the truth. My 2:30 was my former FBI partner."

"You told me you didn't tell him where you were!"

"I didn't. He tracked me down."

"He *tracked* you down? That's creepy. Hell, it might even be illegal."

"No, Mike, it's OK. It's better than OK. What I was running from mostly was the way I felt about him. Seeing him again, I couldn't run anymore. We had an argument, but I realized I can't live without him. So, I found him, and that's where I've been."

"With him? with ... my God, Dana, I don't even know his name?"

"Mulder, Fox Mulder," she said. "Mulder? I assumed you had married; you never said..." "I used his name as an alias, Mike, but then I couldn't let it go. Any two bit pop psychiatrist could tell you what that means." "And you're with him?" "And going to stay that way. I'm sorry, Mike. I tried to believe I could make it work, but I could not have." "So, what will you do?" "And you're with him?"

"And going to stay that way. I'm sorry, Mike. I tried to believe I could make it work, but I could not have."

"So, what will you do?"

"Well, I'm quitting, for one thing..." the rest of the brief conversation was about how the car would get returned to GenTech, where GenTech could send a messenger to pick up the keys to its apartment, and so on. Scully could hear the anger, resentment and bitterness in Mike's voice. She wished she had been able to avoid hurting him, but she hadn't. She couldn't change that. She didn't tell him she was marrying Mulder in little over 48 hours now. He didn't need to know that, for various reasons.

When they'd said goodbye, she hung up Mulder's phone and sunk back against the seat. She'd been unaware of the tension in her body. Mulder reached over and squeezed her hand.

They ordered room service, watched par-per-view something sweet, Mulder, not your usual fare, OK?, and talked. They talked until they were both nearly hoarse. They made love and slept, waking frequently to stare at one another, to verify the other's continued presence in the room. They both smiled a lot in their sleep.

In the morning, Mulder made good on his promise to Millie. He brought Scully down to the hotel dress shop. Millie beamed at Mulder. She nodded appreciatively at the diminutive red head by his side. He introduced them, eyes atwinkle.

"Well, honey," Millie asked, "did that tie do the trick?"

Scully smiled before answering. "Well, the tie was good, but I think, Millie, it was the socks that got me!"

Millie laughed aloud at that. She covered their joined hands with hers. 'Mr. Mulder, she's good enough for you. In fact, she may be too good. You keep that in mind."

Mulder gave her a sincere 'Yes, ma'am' and they left. Mulder insisted Scully find something 'dressy' to wear. She pointed out she had several suits.

"No, no, something that when you look at our wedding picture, you don't mistake it for a day at the office."

Thus persuaded, they went shopping, Mulder steering her away from white business suits. She eventually found a simple, long sleeved flare cut, cream colored velvet gown with a simple, unadorned jewel neckline. "Not white, Scully?"

"Not that I'm superstitious about that, but... Actually, stark white is not my best color. Too cold. Now go away while I try it on."

"But I want to see, " he mock-whined.

"Not until I walk down the aisle," she chided him.

They were on their way to the hotel when Mulder spotted a post office. He made a rather sharp, tire squealing turn into it. "Mulder?"

"Those boxes of yours. We'll send them now."

"To where?"

"Mom's," he said.

"Mom's?" she asked, brow arched.

"I think she'll let me call her Mom, don't you?"

"Well, yes, but....Mulder! You sidetracked me. Why now?"

"I want her to get the good news."

She smiled. "Only you..."

Boxes were duly mailed, express delivery no less, to Margaret Scully's, with a note, from Mulder enclosed. "Dear MOM, We'll be back before you know it. Your 'son', Fox." He could imagine the look of delight on her face.

Over dinner, in the hotel restaurant this time, Mulder asked if she wanted to call Bill.

"That's brave," she told him.

"I thought you might like him here."

"Mulder, does it strike you that I never called him when I was simply working and living here, let alone planing to marry you?"

"Well, I had noticed that."

"He means well, but there's so much he doesn't understand. Doesn't want to understand. And last year... well, the gulf is pretty wide now." Her eyes clouded over a little. She took a sip of wine. "Besides, I just want to be married tomorrow, not married and widowed at the same time."

Mulder smiled at her. "Do you think he would 'speak now' or 'forever hold his peace'?"

"Oh, he'd speak. He'd probably bring Notes!"

The morning was clear and bright. Both Scully and Mulder were up early, unable to sleep. They are breakfast desultorily. She had her hair done in the hotel salon. He waited. They drove to the church. She changed in the vestry. He waited. The priest had secured two members of the altar guild as witnesses, and one who supposedly took decent pictures. Mulder realized there was no one to give Scully away. He decided that was appropriate. Only she could give herself away and she'd already done that.

The ceremony itself was simple and short. He had thought nothing would change, yet he had to admit, he felt even more connected to her than he had before. Whether it was that they now had every legal right to be together or that the God she believed in so fervently had approved their union, he wasn't certain. he only knew that something he had not known was even missing, was now filled in. A lot like his life before she'd knocked on his office door. Their wedding kiss was sweet and chaste. The man with the camera took a few quick pictures, then gave them the film.

After a bridal dinner in their hotel room, they stood on the balcony and watched the waves roll in on the beach below. " Mrs. Mulder?"

She turned to face him. "That's Mrs. Scully-Mulder to you," she teased.

"Dana?"

She made a face.

"What?"

"It doesn't sound right. Dana's not who I am with you. Dana's like a mask my parents made me wear for 29 years, but you stripped that mask off of me, you made me who I really am, Scully. Don't change that now, Mulder."

He gazed into her eyes. He kissed her gently. "All right, Scully. I would have hated to give it up anyway; it's how I always knew I was special to you."

"The only way?"

"Well..."

"Mulder?"

"Yes?"

"Should I start using Fox?"

"No.' He stared at the dark water, the white foam of breaking waves glowing in the moonlight. 'After Sam was taken, I made everyone call me Mulder because the she kept calling my name and I couldn't help her. My name became hateful to me. I don't think Mulder was much better. Until you. You healed so many of the broken places; you made me forget the awful reasons I didn't want to be Fox anymore, and you made me want to be Mulder. It stopped being an escape, and started being a refuge. You saved me, pure and simple."

"Nothing in our life is pure and simple," she observed.

"This is, what you mean to me, what I mean to you. It's pure and simple and true."

Washington D.C. and surrounding areas
3 days later

After a honeymoon of sorts, the newlywed couple returned to Washington. They went straight from the airport to Margaret Scully's. She opened the door to them before they could even ring the bell. She swept her daughter into a fierce hug. "Don't you ever do that again," she reprimanded.

"She can't, Mrs. Scully," Mulder informed her, grasping Scully's left hand and holding it out for her mother's inspection.

Margaret smiled at them both with tears in her eyes. "I'm so glad I understood your note correctly, *son*," she enthused. "And Fox, it's 'Mom' from now on."

He nodded at her.

They had dinner with Mrs. Scully. Mulder called Skinner and, without telling him where he'd been or why, and without giving a reason, made an appointment to see him the following morning. Not hard to get that appointment, since Skinner was demanding he show his face in his office as soon as possible.

Before returning to his Arlington apartment, I promise we'll find something else, this weekend. Mulder insisted they drive by the Gunmen's. Scully couldn't argue, since this was, essentially, all due to their diligence. Mulder kept her out of sight of their surveillance camera at the entrance and tried to put on his best hang dog expression.

They released the locks and waited for him to come up. Mulder let Scully go first. The looks on all three faces were more than worth the effort of acting so sad to Mulder. All three hugged her like they wouldn't let go. She was made to swear she would not leave them all again and informed they would find her again if she did. When she was able to get a word in, she said, laughing, "I can't leave now, guys; he's stuck with me." She held out her beringed finger for their inspection.

Congratulations were issued all around and drinks and snacks were offered. They both politely declined. Shortly thereafter, Mulder reminded Scully of their 9 am meeting with Skinner and thought they should head home. He looked at the Gunmen, a thought passing through his head, "Disable all and any bugs you have in my apartment. Now."

After brief denials, they promised they would.

Bugs, active or disabled, weren't an issue that night. A cross country flight, an emotional reunion with a much relieved mother, another reunion with three decidedly odd gentlemen, and the prospect of facing Skinner, sent Mulder and Scully off to sleep quickly. She slept in the protective circle of his arms, her breathing steady and quiet, as he drifted on that plane of floating sleep, awake, but not awake. He realized for the first time, that with her, he slept, really slept.

Skinner was running late the next morning. It was a good thing, because it had taken Mulder some smooth talking to get Scully in the building, let alone up to Skinner's office. They had turned enough heads to create a buzz as they hurried through the halls. Mulder decided that they were already causing enough disruption, a little more didn't matter, so he took her hand. She glanced up at him, but he only smiled at her and winked. He leaned down and whispered in her ear, " Mrs. Spooky," she giggled.

Skinner's assistant showed them in and asked them to be seated. She was new since Scully had left, so she was only puzzled that Mulder had brought someone to this interview, not puzzled as to why it was that particular someone. They sat, as they had many times previously, facing Skinner's desk. Scully bit her lower lip. I didn't know how much I wanted back until just now. She fidgeted with her hands. Mulder clasped one of them. He leaned over and kissed her hair, whispering "I love you."

Skinner's door opened. He was crossing his office, the ass chewing already starting. "Agent Mulder, of all the stupid and irresponsible things you have done, this has to take the cake. You leave with no word to anyone, not even your partner, of where you are going or why-" he stopped mid rant. He had reached the front of his desk and was staring at Scully as if she were a ghost. Skinner looked over at Mulder, who smiled broadly at him.

"Agent Scully! I mean, uh, Dr. Scully, I..." he left his thought unfinished.

"Sir," she said tentatively.

"Mulder, how? where? I thought..."

They both smiled at him. It registered in Skinner's brain that they were holding hands and that on Mulder's hand there was something that looked surprisingly like wedding band. Scully's left hand was hidden in her lap. "Byers, Langly, and Frohike, sir," Mulder informed him. "They found out she was in San Diego."

"And you?"

"Realized I couldn't live without her," Mulder said simply.

Skinner laughed. "And ... oh hell...what do I call you?"

She smiled, "Dana? Dr. Scully is fine, as long as you add a 'Mulder' after that."

He shook his head, as if trying to hear her correctly. It matched his suspicions, but was still a shock. 'Scully-Mulder? So, those are wedding rings I detect?"

"Excellent detection, sir," Mulder wisecracked. "Seems she really couldn't live without me either."

"Though God only knows why," Skinner added for him. "So, are you here to beg forgiveness, Mulder?"

Mulder grinned. "Well, sir, I had rather hoped..."

Skinner laughed. "All is forgiven. But, you knew it would be, so why are *really* here? or should I start guessing?"

Scully and Mulder exchanged looks; hers dubious, his optimistic. He didn't see how *anyone* could resist having her around.

"Well, sir," Mulder began, somewhat hesitantly after all, "I know, that is we know, that it would be highly irregular, but ... um ... my *wife* would like to return to her work with the Bureau."

"Is that the case, Dana?" Skinner asked.

She cleared her throat, "Yes, sir, I realize that I made a mistake in resigning. I'd like to come back, if that's possible."

"Mulder, Scu---, Dana, you know I couldn't partner you on regular cases and field work. Could you accept that?"

Mulder pursed his lips, looked down at where his hand was linked with Scully's, and returned his eyes to meet Skinner's gaze. "Sir-" he said.

Skinner interrupted him. "Of course, I haven't yet assigned any agents to the newly re-opened X-Files. I was waiting for the two best possible agents to perhaps volunteer."

"Sir?" Scully asked, clearly incredulous.

"When did you re-open the X-Files?" Mulder asked.

"Sometime, I'm going to want details of the last week or so of your lives because I can't believe that you, Mulder, didn't even hear about the events in Utah. What did you do to him, Dana?" Skinner then held up a hand. "Never mind, not my business."

All three smirked. "Sir?" Mulder asked.

"Yes, well, it seems there was an unexplained occurrence in the mountains near the four corners region of Utah. Eye witnesses claim to have seen a large object spiraling rapidly out of the sky and crash into a mountain side. These witnesses all agree that the object they saw could not be identified and that the way it seemed to move in the sky was unlike what any traditional aircraft is capable of. The government has published reports denying this, of course."

"Sir, this could be a hoax by the witnesses, mass hysteria, any number of explanations are possible," Scully said.

"I concur with that assessment, Dana. What convinced me to re-open the X-Files was this." Skinner pushed a piece of paper toward them.

Both leaned over Skinner's desk to read the item in front of them. Surprise, shock, dismay (Scully), joy (Mulder), and concern flitted over their faces as they read through the information there. "Where did this come from, sir?" Mulder asked at last.

"I don't know. It would seem that, as before, you have a friend in a very prominent place, Agent Mulder." Skinner paused. "Now, please understand this would be a voluntary assignment, Mulder, if you don't want to---"

Scully and Mulder were laughing at him. He joined them, glad they had appreciated his joke. "Sir?"

"Yes, Agent Mulder?'

"What about Scully?"

Skinner signed. "Dana, I'd love to be able to reverse your resignation, but that's just not possible."

"I understand, sir."

"It's not possible because I never filed your resignation. You've been on leave of absence since you left."

She stared at him. Mulder, whose head had fallen forward, eyes into his lap, looked up. "Sir," she said, smiling, shaking her head. "How did you know?"

"The real question is how did you two not know for so damn long?"

"Good call, sir," complimented Mulder.

"Now, I need one more volunteer for this assignment. Any thoughts, agents?"

"Well, sir," Scully said, mock seriously, "I'd be happy to volunteer if you think I'm qualified."

"I think I'm satisfied with your credentials, Agent...Scully-Mulder?"

She bit her lip lightly. "Maybe at work it better just be Scully, sir."

"OK, I can live with that. Mulder?"

"Sir, I can definitely live with that."

"One last question, Agents."

They looked at him.

"I will protect you from the higher-ups; I have enough ammunition to do that, but how long do you think this will remain quiet, here in the Bureau?"

Scully looked down at her lap as a big grin spread across her face. "Well, sir," she finally said, struggling against the giggles, "only until the winner of the office pool is announced."

Once Skinner had stopped laughing, he stood up and came around his desk to his agents. "Welcome back, Scully. Don't leave us again," he told her, as he hugged her. "You're the only one who can keep him in line, you know."

"I won't and I know," she said, returning his hug.

Skinner held out his hand to Mulder. "Congratulations, Mulder. You do *not* deserve her, but try."

Mulder smiled and nodded at him. Placing his hand in the small of her back, Mulder escorted his wife out of Skinner's office. Skinner stood at the window, smiling, lost in thought. He knew he had broken every rule about partnered agents here, but he also knew, based on the information they had all seen, that those above him had broken rules that were more important by far.

As they left Skinner's office, Mulder leaned over and whispered in Scully's ear, "Want to cement that Mrs. Spooky title?"

She arched an eyebrow at him. "What did you have in mind, Mulder?"

"Come back to my cubicle with me and you'll find out."

"Said the spider to the fly," she said, smiling at him. "All right, Spooky."

Eyes that hadn't observed them before popped, ears that hadn't heard or believed the rumors opened, heads that hadn't already been turned turned, as Mulder guided Scully towards his cubicle. Forgot to ask Skinner about an office. Damn. He noticed Diana was at her desk, near his. She was concentrating on something in front of her, oblivious to the commotion they were causing. She could not remain oblivious when Mulder sat his wife on his desk, cupped her lovely face in his hands, and kissed her deeply.

Diana looked up as the room went silent. Her face went scarlet. She opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came out. She turned pale as those around her began cheering. Mulder broke his kiss. He looked around him, as Scully rested her head against his chest. He cradled her head with one arm. He looked down at her, noticing the faint blush creeping up from her collar. he kissed the top of her head.

"Show's over, guys. Show's over. Mrs. Spooky and I just stopped by to pick up some papers we need."

Scully looked up at him. He could see mischief in her eyes. "Go ahead," he mouthed at her. She took a deep breath. "If you had November 21, 1998 in the office pool, you just won," she announced.

With that, Mulder and Scully walked out of the office area, heading toward the elevator, to make their get away. In the elevator, Dana Scully-Mulder looked at her husband. "You know, it's never going to be easy, Mulder."

He took her into his arms and kissed her forehead. "I know, but it's never going to be as difficult as it was."

The End

Nynaeve

Temple of X

http://members.xoom.com/Nynaeve1723/

Summary: I walked past her yesterday.

Dedication: A and J as always. Laura for unwittingly introducing me to the places featured in the story; to Nadine for whom I made a concerted effort to get this finished!

I walked past her yesterday. She was standing on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, Illinois. F.A.O. Schwartz had out their annual Christmas extravaganza and they were looking in the window, eyes alight with laughter, mouths curved in smiles of delight. The weather was cold and they were both wearing winter coats, scarves, and gloves. The years that have passed have done nothing to dim the luster of Dana Scully's hair, nor have they served to dull the ache I keep locked away in a heart now cold and still. I slowed my pace to gaze back at her as I passed. Her face is still smooth, the worry lines that could have been etched into the corners of her eyes and around her lips are laugh lines instead, revealing themselves only in the glory of her smile.

I hesitated a moment, wanting to stop, to talk with her, before I remembered the last time we had met. I didn't think I could handle that again; the moment had been awkward, graceless, painful. She had been mourning the loss of another sibling, and as much as I had wanted to offer her comfort, I realized I had nothing to give her. I had seen her fight with sadness and guilt and memory of what almost was. I knew I had made a mistake in coming, had stirred up in her and in myself all that which was better lying dormant. I had said a quiet word to Maggie, avoided Bill all together, and had simply touched the back of Scully's hand before leaving. I had turned at the doorway, drinking in what I believed would be my last view of her. She had lifted up a little girl into her arms. Scully's eyes had been veiled in grief, but tender with Charlie's little girl. She had been simply stunning, even in the midst of family tragedy.

The same little girl, Charlie's daughter Lizette, now held onto Scully's gloved hand, squealing with delight at the mechanized Christmas display in the store window. Lizette, clearly a Scully the last and only time I had seen her, had grown into the very image of her aunt. I calculated Lizette must be five now. I remembered hearing about Charlie Scully's death, just under three years ago. I hadn't thought much of the story about a commuter plane going into the Potomac in January, other than to shudder at the tragedy. It wasn't until Byers had called and asked me if I'd talked to her that my interest was sparked.

"Who?" I had asked.

"Agent Scully," he had answered.

I had paused, stunned, fearful for reasons I could not then name. "No ... why?"

"Her brother..."

"Bill?"

"No," he had said. "Charlie. His name and his wife's name are on the passenger manifest for that plane that went into the Potomac."

"Thanks," I had said, disconnecting and dialing Skinner's office. Skinner had known what I was going to ask before I asked it.

"Yes, Mulder. It was her brother and his wife. They are both listed among the dead."

I had acknowledged his words. I had sat at my desk, hidden in the basement and thought about her, thought about her mother. I had considered Maggie Scully first actually; then having lost two children. I had imagined her strength rising up through the softness of her voice, into the planes of her face and the hollows of her eyes. Scully had inherited that same strength, a strength that had at some times baffled me, at other times frustrated me, and at times uncountable sustained me. The Scully women would join together, form a united front against pain and grief, as they had done before. Still, it had seemed unjust that Maggie had lost two children and Scully two siblings in a few short years. I had decided to pay my respects at the memorial service held at Maggie's. That had been, up until yesterday, my only glimpse of Charlie's child.

The Gunmen had kept track of Scully over the years, as much out of their own feelings about her as for me. After leaving the X-Files she had returned to teaching at Quantico. Though I had had no contact with her, as we had agreed, I could not help but hear about her. Not surprisingly, her excellent skills as a pathologist and an investigator had enabled her to make a name for herself quickly. The career that had appeared to be derailed by her involvement with the X-Files and 'Spooky' Mulder resumed its appointed course.

Then Charlie had died and the Gunmen had learned that Scully had been Lizette's legal guardian. No court in the world could deny her petition to adopt the child and in due course she had done so. That decision and its eventual outcome had precipitated her leaving the FBI completely. She had taken a teaching job at Northwestern and had moved to Chicago. Looking at her standing in front of that store window, I saw she had rarely been happier. My steps slowed, slowed, slowed. Against better instincts, I was about to greet her, when her daughter spoke to her.

"Mommy? Can we go in? Just to look?" The child's voice was high pitched and lovely. In it there was no trace of whining or begging. I couldn't see Scully tolerating that. It was obvious she was a loving mother, but ruinously indulgent I doubted. "Please?"

Scully smiled down at Lizette. She appeared to be considering her request very seriously. I had a sudden flash of her face as she leaned over my hospital bed, her voice soft, amused, vaguely curious before I told her for the first time that I loved her. "All right," Scully told her after a moment. "But remember, we can't buy anything in case Santa is already going to bring it to you."

The child had nodded solemnly at her, watching Scully with an expression of love and adoration. I saw in her face traces of Emily Sim and wondered if Scully ever saw them there.

"Hold my hand in the revolving door," Scully reminded her.

I watched them as they stepped into the large glass and metal contraption and were whirled away from my scrutiny. I stood for a moment, staring at the display window, wanting to follow her, to tell her I had been wrong, she had been wrong. I caught a glimpse of her through the window. For a moment I could have sworn she was looking right at me, then her eyes shifted and she disappeared from my view. I resumed my walk toward the Hancock Building.

It was Saturday, the second Saturday after Thanksgiving and I had the day off. I had promised Lizzie a trip to the stores she liked. If anyone had asked me seven years ago if I had envisioned myself willingly spending a Saturday caught in the crush of holiday crowds, visiting such locales as F.A.O. Schwartz, the Disney Store, and The American Doll Place, I'm not quite certain if I would have screamed, thrown up, or laughed. Lizzie had changed all of that. Lizzie had changed everything.

So, there we were. We had taken a cab from the loft I'd bought when we moved here to the area known as Magnificent Mile. We had already been to the doll store, as Lizzie called it, and the Disney store. Now we were making our way back down Michigan Avenue amidst thousands of other shoppers and sightseers. We were standing in front of F.A.O. Schwartz, taking in the annual Christmas madness when he walked past us.

I felt him go by before I saw him from the corner of my eye. He stopped. He watched us. I can only guess what he might have been thinking. I didn't turn around. I couldn't. Fox Mulder is part of the past. Still, I couldn't help but observe he still looked as handsome and fit as he ever had. My memory proved faulty, for standing there he was taller than I recalled, his shoulders seemed broader than I remembered, and his face more expressive and mobile. Time and memory too had dulled the wonderful hue of his eyes, had removed from them all traces of sadness or joy. I suppose I had *chosen* to remember Fox Mulder the way I had; reality was too painful.

I was grateful when Lizzie wanted to go inside. Though I pretended to consider her request, it was really only a stall for time, so that when I spoke he would not hear the tears in my voice. I sounded, I hoped, like any middle class mother when I reminded Lizzie we couldn't buy any- thing and to hold my hand.

Inside the store, I wanted to take Lizzie up stairs where the Disney merchandise is and the dolls, her two favorite hobbies. Instead she wanted to see the stuffed animal display. It was right next to the display window. While she cuddled and caressed a stuffed Pomeranian dog, I looked up. He was looking into the window. Our eyes met and I looked away. When I looked up again, he was gone.

Lizzie and I decided that since the Pomeranian hadn't been on her wish list, Santa wouldn't be bringing it, so we bought it. When Lizzie asked me what I thought she should call it, I smiled and bit back the urge to say, "Queequeg." I asked instead what name she liked. She chose to think about it until we got home.

As we walked back down the street, I scanned the crowd, wondering which way he had gone.

It was Byers who had finally asked one time. No one else quite dared I guess. By the time he had asked all the reasons, all the things we'd said no longer made as much sense. He looked at me like I was more than slightly insane. Rather than trying to explain it again, I had just finished with a lame excuse, telling him no one quite understood the way it had been between Scully and me. He didn't seem to buy that either, but he understood I didn't want to talk about her anymore.

The year before she'd left had been momentous. We had found the proof we'd been so long denied, had so often had snatched from our grasp as we got closer. The whole of the Project had been exposed. The men responsible, those left, had been rounded up. Some had gotten away, some always do, but they were broken defeated men, despised the world over. It had been Scully who had come to me with the news one day.

Her face had been impassive, but I saw she was struggling to hold back tears. She had said my name softly. I looked up from the report on my desk.

"Scully? What is it? Are you all right?" I had demanded, rising.

"Mulder, sit down," she said, her voice shaking slightly. If you didn't know her, you might not have noticed. I knew her. I had noticed.

She had walked over and sat on my desk, facing me.

"Scully?"

She looked down at the floor. She looked back at me, her eyes had filled with tears. "Mulder, a few weeks ago, a body was found in the Loma research facility." Loma was one of the Project facilities we had uncovered and exposed.

"Scully, lots of bodies were found there," I had reminded her.

She had nodded. "One of them," she paused, "the body of a girl, caught the attention of an astute investigator. She called me in to take a look. Mulder, I've waited all this time to say anything because I had to be certain." She stopped.

I shut my eyes.

"Having the charts weren't good enough. Charts can be faked. I ran a DNA sample we were able to get from the hair found with the remains... the tests came back yesterday evening. I wanted to be wrong, Mulder. I wanted so much to be wrong, for it to be anyone else..."

"But it wasn't..." I said softly.

She shook her head.

"It was my sister?"

"Yes, Mulder. Without a doubt, I can say that body was Samantha's."

I was silent for a moment. I felt tears start down my face. I blindly reached for her hand, just as she offered it to me. "How old do you think she was?"

"I don't know, Mulder. No more than ten."

"She never grew up?"

"No."

"Those times ... the others ... "

"No, not a chance."

"What killed her Scully?"

She was quiet. She knew. She didn't want to tell me. What could be worse than telling me Samantha was dead? that she had died before she'd ever lived? "What killed her, Scully?" I asked again, raw anger breaking my voice.

"Her neck was broken," she admitted at last.

For the first time a sob escaped me. They had taken my sister, used her, and then discarded her. They couldn't even send her back to the family that loved her, couldn't even let us mourn her. She had died alone.

Scully was next to me, her arms around me.

I'd caught the truth I'd spent my life chasing and it didn't stop the ache inside me. Samantha was still gone; I had been unable to save her. It would be a long time before I could let go of my little sister, before I could finish mourning her. It took me ages to see that my quest for the truth about Samantha had led me to the X-Files and to the conspiracy that had threatened mankind's existence. And through all of that time, it had been Scully who had stood by, who had reminded me of everything I had accomplished, who had given without complaint of her strength and devotion. In the end our success doomed us in ways we never imagined.

That was what I couldn't make Byers understand.

Lizzie has changed me in ways I never dreamed possible. I had never really needed to have a family, the traditional husband, children, and house in the suburbs, until I found I couldn't have that. Then Emily Sim skyrocketed into and, just as meteorically, out of, my life. For a flickering moment my motherhood was intact, regained, rendered unto me by the unlikeliest of events. I grieved for her, for her life destined only to be someone's science project, for a child not born in love but in service to an unholy agenda. I mourned her death and with it, the only hope I had of being a mother myself. Then I moved forward with me life. I put aside vague dreams of children and a family. Being a Navy brat teaches you how to let go.

In my sleep I still see Mulder on that day. For weeks I had been keeping secret from him the discovery of the child's corpse. Found by an astute young investigator who was suspicious as to why that one corpse was found apart from the others, an examination quickly confirmed the child had died not as a result of experimentation. When we had uncovered Loma and the other facilities, Skinner had, at my urging, put out a request that any bodies found in circumstances like the one at Loma be turned over to me for further investigation. We knew by then it was unlikely Samantha Mulder would ever come home, but I couldn't say anything to Mulder without proof.

My initial findings had confirmed the body was most likely that of Samantha Mulder. Dental records matched. The remains showed a healed fracture of the clavicle, which Mulder had told me once Sam had broken. Records, decoded and reconstructed, from Loma itself indicated this was Samantha. I refused to tell Mulder though until I had DNA proof. Hair samples were taken, were run against samples from Mulder himself, from Teena, and from a lock of hair Teena had kept from when Samantha was still a baby. I have never been so unhappy to have proven my beliefs as I was that moment.

Skinner had offered to tell Mulder himself, to spare me that task. I think he had known I would refuse. That year, one of such professional vindication, had taken a heavy toll on the tentative romantic relationship we had started taking baby steps toward, but it had only strengthened the bond between us in every other way. I owed it to Mulder to be the one. I owed it to myself to support him.

He knew from my face, from my eyes, from my voice I had unpleasant news for him. I saw fear leap into his heart and race to his eyes. He was afraid for me, afraid the cancer had returned. That was something we had talked about once, briefly. We were uncertain what would happen in that event. It would take years and top scientists working around the clock to understand everything the Project had been involved in. Thwarting their intentions had presented the risk of denying myself any future aid from them. I had considered it an acceptable risk, in light of everything. Mulder said he did, too, but I saw in him that day fear that his worst nightmare was come to fruition.

I had thought long and hard about how to tell him. In the end, I decided simplicity was best. With almost no preamble and as few details as possible, I told him about the discovery of the child who had proven to be his sister. I watched him intently, as he absorbed the news. The part of him that had always known she was never coming back asserted itself. The spark of hope within him died, as quickly as flicking a light switch will kill the lights in a room. I prayed he wouldn't ask, at least not that day, but he did. He asked how old she'd been and how she'd died.

I had fervently hoped to leave those questions for another time, a different place. I was not so foolish as to think he would never want to know, but I had not wanted to tell him so much at once. But, he asked and he knew from my reaction it was, in its way, worse than what he'd just been told. I was still watching him and I watched him crumple into himself. I thought of paper, used as kindling for a fire, the way it is consumed in jerky, crackling motions, flaking to ash and drifting up the flue. That was Mulder.

I put my arms around him and felt him cling to me. We'd been here before. I'd lost count of how many times. This was different. We had our answers. There was nothing left to fight for. We were free.

Neither of us quite knew how to deal with our freedom.

Though we had brought an end to the machinations of the men of the Syndicate, there were still numerous unexplained phenomena to investigate. I wondered if Scully would request reassignment, but she didn't at first. I asked her once and she had smiled at me, telling me as she had once before that she doubted mainstream cases had the power to hold her interest any longer. I suspect I must have had my heart on my sleeve at that moment, as I was wont to do back then, for she had added lightly, "Besides, you might end up with a partner who had a closed mind." The smile she flashed me was teasing and carefree. In it I saw her desire to stay with me was as strong as mine to keep her at my side.

For much of our partnership, we had been drawn to each other as more than partners. We had both steadfastly ignored this for a very long time. "Being professionals" was what both of us would have called it. Fear was the real reason. Fear of loss, of rejection, of pain. But in the latter years those feelings seemed to become harder and harder to push away. Once the Syndicate fell, it came to seem pointless to resist them. No longer would our feelings for one another constitute an outside threat. That normal life Scully had once asked me if I wanted suddenly had appeal. As long as I could spend it with her.

Pushing aside memories of all the damage we'd done to ourselves and to each other over the years, I focused only on the times we had healed each other, had supported one another, had demonstrated the depth of feeling we shared. Resolving to act at last on these feelings, I had showed up on Scully's doorstep one night in early summer.

She had answered the door wearing a white tank top, cut-off shorts, and flat sandals. Her face was devoid of make-up and her hair was pulled back in a headband. She smiled at me, surprised, a bit confused, but no longer worried. Crises of the sort that used to bring one of to the other's door at unexpected or odd hours were a thing of the past. Music played in her stereo, loud, throbbing music, not the sort I associated with Scully, actually, who I'd always taken for an oldies or classical sort of listener.

"Come on in," she had said. "Let me turn that off."

"Just down," I had nearly shouted at her. "Just so we can hear ourselves think."

She nodded, walking toward her coffee table where the stereo remote lay. One nicely manicured hand reached down to lift it. I watched transfixed. I realized everything this woman did fascinated me. As she lowered the volume, she lightly held the right corner of her bottom lip between her teeth. It was an unconscious action on her part, I am certain, and I found it quite endearing.

She turned toward me. "What's up, Mulder?"

I looked at her. I tried diligently not to stare. I knew Scully owned jeans; I'd seen her wear them on occasion, but I had never imagined she would have anything so utterly casual as cut-offs. And the tank top was almost too much for a man who has come to confess his undying love and deeply felt passion. I had been silent too long. She arched an eyebrow at me and questions lit her eyes.

"I wanted to talk with you," I had said at last.

"Something about work?" she had asked.

I shook my head.

She had been staring at me, now perplexed. "Mulder, do you want to sit down?"

I nodded and made my way to her couch.

"Something to drink?" she asked.

"Thanks," I had croaked out, my throat suddenly a desert, my mouth full of cotton.

She had gone into her kitchen. I heard her open the refrigerator and she called out, "What do you want?"

"Whatever," I had responded.

In a few minutes she came back with two cocktail glasses full of clear liquid, a few ice cubes, and twists of lime. I looked up at her. Neither of us ever drank much. "Part of a normal life, Mulder," she teased me gently. "Sometimes adults have a cocktail in the evening."

She handed me a glass and I took a cautious sip. Gin and Tonic. Caustic, biting, an acquired taste if ever there was one. Not a drink one can guzzle.

"My father's favorite drink," she had said, by way of explanation. "So, come on, Mulder, what's up?"

She was sitting on the other end of the couch, her legs pulled up under her. Hair was coming loose from her headband and fell in curled wisps around her face. The day had been warm, but inside the air conditioning blew quietly, keeping the atmosphere comfortable. The sun was starting to sink into the west, sending its last rays across the city. Outside, cars still whizzed steadily by, bearing people home or out for an evening of entertainment. Inside, Scully's music played more softly now. I wouldn't have to compete with it to be heard.

I took a deep breath. I considered lying to her, making up some excuse for being here, then my courage returned. I looked into her eyes, struck yet again by their depth and their clarity. She knew why I was here. I would have sworn this woman knew absolutely everything there was to know about me, including things I didn't even know about myself. "Do you remember asking me once if I ever wanted to live a normal life? Do you remember that, Scully?"

She had nodded.

"I don't think I knew what you meant at that time. I think I was too frightened of having a normal life, too afraid of losing it, even to consider wanting one. Scully, I've loved you for a ...no, don't. Let me finish. I've loved you for a long time, but I was too tied up in other things to focus on that. I was scared I would lose you. I thought loving you, maybe being loved by you, would distract from my quest to find my sister, to find the truth. I thought I owed Samantha my life." I had swallowed past the lump in my throat. On impulse I took one of Scully's hands. "The truth has come out. We found it, you and I together. I know what happened to my sister. It wasn't the outcome I hoped for, but I know I did everything I could. I don't owe her any more. If I owe her anything at all, it is to be happy, to live the normal life she was denied."

"Mulder..." she had started. I had seen her close up, watched the walls go up around her heart.

I interrupted her. It wasn't fair, I knew that. She had kept quiet as I had my say, but I couldn't help myself. "Scully, can you honestly tell me you don't love me? If you can do that, I'll go away. We can forget this ever happened."

She looked down at her hand, clasped in mine. She seemed to be studying our hands, the way my fingers covered hers. I watched her take a deep, shuddering breath. She looked up at me. In a soft, hesitant voice she said, "You know I can't do that, Mulder, but..."

"No 'buts', Scully. No more." I leaned into her and kissed her, very softly, very gently. I felt her return my tentative kiss. I thought of the first time I had kissed her like this, in the hallway of yet another hospital, on New Year's Eve, just after midnight. Pulling away from her reluctantly, I gazed into her eyes. I brought my hand up to stroke her hair. "World still hasn't ended," I observed.

"No, I guess it hasn't," she agreed. I kissed her again, just as softly as before. I intended on kissing Dana Scully at least once a day for the rest of my life, so there was no point in rushing this. She broke away from me and laid her head on my shoulder. "Mulder, this is a huge risk," she said.

"So we'll face it together, the way we've faced every risk in the last seven years." I sighed into her hair and kissed her temple. "And I think the bigger risk would be never to have this at all."

I had allowed Mulder's words to overwhelm all my natural caution. I had thrust aside fear and what had always seemed like common sense and been swept away in the emotions I had long denied myself.

Though Mulder called what we had embarked upon a 'normal' life, it was only as normal as any life involving Mulder could be. Our conversations centered not around the children we hoped to have, nor the house of our dreams. We didn't plan an exotic honeymoon; we didn't even really discuss marriage. We kept our growing involvement strictly separate from work. It was a relationship that fit us. Or so it seemed for a while.

Maybe we began to work too hard at making our life normal. After seven years I suppose we both had expectations that were never going to be realistic. I think we were both too aware of the past that lay between and all around us. Whatever the reason, after a few months things changed. Too conscious of our ability to hurt one another, we had stopped arguing about cases. Yet Mulder and I were the type of people who thrived on intellectual challenges and sparring with one another. We soon began to argue about other things.

He, it seemed, had expected me to start agreeing with every wild theory he proposed. For my part, I realized later I had expected him to begin agreeing with me. So afraid of hurting one another, so afraid of destroying the still fragile romance between us were we that we destroyed it through our caution. We both wanted each other to fit the image in our minds and neither of us could bring ourselves to talk about that.

In irritation and frustration, we decided to end things. Like a suit of clothes that didn't fit, we thought we could simply take it back and move on as though nothing had ever happened. We said a lot of things to one another in the week it took us to make the decision. Ironically, it was the first time in a long while we had had a deep and honest discussion. We agreed we'd been through too much, that our mutual past prevented us from living out the dreams we both harbored. We said we'd be better off finding others, people who knew nothing of the past, people with whom we could both start anew. Tearfully, with a last, lingering kiss, we confessed we'd always love one another, but that it simply wasn't meant to be.

I left the X-Files, returned to teaching at Quantico, and didn't even look at another man. Within a year I'd realized nothing we said in that week made sense anymore. I could no longer explain what we'd been thinking. Like a car that has proven unreliable, Mulder and I tried to return the love we had, never realizing love isn't like that.

Then Charlie died and I was given custody of Lizette and life changed again. I replaced thoughts of Mulder with the necessities of mothering a small child. I left the F.B.I. all together and took the teaching position I'd been offered at Northwestern. I thought I could submerge my misery and loneliness in a new city and in my niece-now-daughter.

The years had passed, almost three since Charlie's death, since Mulder had arrived, unexpectedly at the memorial service, and I had slowly put him in the past. I had learned to block out all thoughts of him, to forget the X-Files had ever existed for me. Only in my dreams did my heart and mind betray me and I saw him again. In my dreams I loved him as deeply as I ever had. I learned to live with less sleep.

Now I had seen him again. Unwillingly, I continued to scan the crowd for any sign of him as Lizette and I walked toward the river. I wondered how I could contact him, even as I tried to stop that thought from forming within my mind. An ache grew inside me. To hear his voice once again, to feel the trace of his fingers against my hand, if only for a moment, these desires began to burn with a slow consuming fire within me. Lizette had to ask me three times if we could stop for hot chocolate before I heard her. Distractedly I agreed and we stepped into Starbucks for hot chocolate and a latte.

We sat looking out the window, Lizette sipping hot chocolate and munching contentedly on the cookie I'd bought her. She had been surprised by the cookie. Not wanting to spoil her, Starbucks was a very rare treat and I almost never bought a cookie, preferring to bake them at home, a traditional mother daughter activity. I figured the longer we could sit where we were, the greater chance he might walk past. I had no idea what I would do it he did. Probably, I would do nothing, but I longed for one more glimpse of him. Yet wherever he had gone, he did not pass us.

Lizette and I returned from our day of shopping to the ringing of the phone. It proved to be one of Lizette's Kindergarten classmates, inviting her to come for a sleepover that night. Lizette was a fearless little girl, undaunted, unlike many children, by the prospect of sleeping away from home. I gave Lizette permission and she raced off to "pack". An hour later she had been picked up and carried off for an evening of pizza and Disney movies and little-girl talk. The Sullivans had even offered to take her to church with them the next morning and then out to brunch, bringing her back sometime in the early afternoon. I accepted the offer gratefully.

I treated myself to a long, hot bath. I let myself shed the tears I'd kept locked inside for so long, tears I never shed around Lizette, tears I tried to deny even existed. Seeing Mulder had brought it all back, all the pain, all the mistakes and for once I allowed myself to wallow in the misery of the past.

I had just gotten out of the tub, tugged on my most comfortable pajamas and oldest, softest robe, and was drying my hair with a towel when the door bell rang.

My contact was late for our meeting at the Hancock Tower. He was a small man, with dark hair and a rather distracting habit of squinting when he spoke. As I had figured back in D.C., the guy was mostly a crank with a vivid imagination. I listened to his story about what appeared to be some variety of leprechauns as attentively as I could, all the while wondering if there was any way I could catch up to Scully and her little girl, wondering where they would have gone after their visit to the toy store. I thanked Mr. Paul Huggins for his information, muttered some vague sentence about looking into it and left.

I walked back down Michigan Avenue, peering into store windows, scanning the crowds, ducking into the stores I could imagine a woman with a young child might shop in. Several times I thought I caught sight of them, but each time I was mistaken.

I kept telling myself we'd made promises to one another those long years ago. She'd never come back to me, never given me any sign, nor sent any word to tell me she'd changed her mind. I had no reason to believe her life was as empty as mine, her heart as submerged in regret as my own. I stopped in an out-of-the-way restaurant, hoping some dinner, maybe a drink, would change my frame of mind. Hoping it would keep me from showing up, unbidden, lost, aching, on her doorstep, longing only to be taken in and held in arms that I dreamed were as bereft as mine.

My spirits were not lifted, nor did my resolution waver. As I paid the bill I took out a slip of paper I keep in my wallet. The paper on which I wrote down her address more than two years ago. Frohike had given e-mailed it to me with no other comment. Waiting for the waiter to return with the credit slip, I stared at it until I could close my eyes and still see the words written there dancing in front of me. When the waiter returned, I asked if he could arrange for a cab.

Fifteen minutes later I stood in front of her building. I looked around. The neighborhood was nice. If asked, I would have guessed it was the sort of area that had been revitalized in the last decade as young professionals looked for somewhere affordable in the city. The street was quiet, residential where I'd been dropped off. It had not even occurred to me that it would be a secured building, though I realized I should have guessed that.

I paced irresolutely for a few moments when I saw a pizza delivery car drive up and double park. The pizza guy had his hands full, so I offered to get the door for him once he'd buzzed up and gained admittance. I followed him inside, then took the elevator to Scully's floor. I stood outside her door a few moments, catching my breath. I suddenly felt as if I'd run a marathon. I was breathless and my heart pounded. With shaking hands, I extended a finger and rang the bell. After a short delay, she opened the door.

Her hair was damp, her skin flushed, obvious signs of a recent bath. She wore an old robe I remembered from before. Her face paled at the sight of me. She mouthed my name, no sound issuing from her lips though.

Everything I'd wanted to say fled my mind. She took my breath away. She drove logical thought out of my head. I was certain she must be able to hear the beating of my heart. I thought it would explode and I would fall to her feet, aware of nothing any longer. In a harsh whisper, one that sounded as if it had been ripped from my throat, I said her name, "Scully." It felt as though an eternity had passed in the few seconds we had been standing there. I was drowning in the moments and at last did the only thing I could. I stepped close to her and pulled her to me, kissing her deeply and passionately.

Her lips were warm and soft beneath mine. Every time I'd ever kissed her rushed back over me, all the sweetness, all the power she had always had over me. I steeled myself to believe this was going to be an isolated event. I convinced myself she'd push me away and slam the door in my face, so I drank in the feel and taste of her lips. I committed every feeling to memory, knowing it would have to last me the rest of a bleak, dull lifetime. Instead, she responded, kissing me back with as much passion as I kissed her.

I broke away from her, reluctantly, breathlessly, stunned. As I stared down at her, she tugged me inside and shut the door. I captured her face in my hands and searched her eyes. I saw there everything inside myself. The regret glittered in her eyes; ache shone in them; emptiness filled them with a horrid void. "Scully...Scully...Scully..." I muttered. Her name was the only thing I ever wanted to say again. "I love you. I've never stopped. I tried, but..."

She was crying. My hands moved of their own accord, one sliding through her hair, cradling the back of her head, the other wiping the tears from her face. I kissed her again and felt her kiss me back. She pulled away from me and I became instantly afraid. I need not have worried. She was urging me, pulling me toward the couch. We sunk into it gratefully, clinging to one another, survivors of a shipwreck, rescued after years of desolate isolation.

I kept my arms around her, not being able to imagine putting them anywhere else ever again. She put her head on my shoulder, her cheek lying against my collar bone, her hair falling across her face and streaming over my shoulder in a shining disarray. I leaned down and rested my lips against the top of her head, breathing in the smell of her hair, freshly shampooed and conditioned. "We were wrong," I whispered. "Both of us."

I felt her nod. "Very wrong," she told me in a small voice. She shifted, sat up, and looked at me. Her face was tear streaked and she was shaking a bit. Her face looked cold and bleak. "I couldn't stop myself from loving you. It doesn't work that way, Mulder."

"No, it doesn't." I kissed her again, cursing all the lost years, vowing not to miss another single minute I could spend with her again. "Whatever went wrong, we can fix it. We have to. I can't do this anymore, not without you."

"A normal life?" she asked, a very slight, somewhat bitter, smile on her face.

I shook my head. "I don't know what that means, Scully. Not for us, anyway. I just want a life with you, in whatever way works for us. No more unreal expectations, no more trying to be what the other one wants ..."

"My life is different now, Mulder."

"I know. Maybe that's something we both need. I don't have the answers, Scully, but I want to find them ... with you. I don't care if it takes the rest of our lives." I smiled at her. "I rather suspect it will, in fact."

"And if we don't agree?" she teased.

"When did we ever agree, Scully, on anything? Except the fact we love each other."

She smiled up at me and sighed deeply. "I do love you, Mulder. I do."

"Good. I can't love anyone else. I can't even remember the last time I noticed another woman."

She bit her lower lip, the right corner. My heart leapt up into my throat. "I have Lizette," she said. "I can't bring someone into her life that isn't going to stay."

"I know. I wouldn't expect you ever would. You'll be stuck with me, Scully, for good. I promise you."

She widened her eyes at me, a look of uncertainty crossing her face. I could guess what she was about to say and I knew why she didn't want to say it.

"And I know I can't be just someone who dates her mother, Scully."

"I have to give her time to get accustomed to the idea, Mulder, to accept you."

I nodded. I thought of Emily, how Scully wouldn't let me help her through that. I recalled with a pang how the knife twisted in my heart each time she pushed me away, gently but firmly. I had never been angry with her, just hurt. I had known her well enough to know why she kept me out. I contemplated how far we'd come and relished the idea of raising Lizette with her.

"You tell me when, Scully, just tell me when." For the first time I looked around. "Where is she?"

Scully said, "She was invited for a sleepover."

I smiled, "Isn't that a coincidence?"

She gave me a look, gentle, humorous, "Who was it once told me coincidences always felt so contrived?" She leaned up and kiss me once again. "Mulder?"

"Hmm?"

"What about work?"

"What about it?"

"I'm serious."

I shrugged. "Without you it hasn't been the same. Maybe it's time to move on."

She arched her eyebrow at me. "Mulder, I can't imagine you without the X-Files."

"I can, Scully. I think for the first time in a dozen years, I can." I kissed her again, to show her how seriously I meant that. She kissed me back, to show she understood me. She always has... she always will.

The End

Summary: Scully relfects on the events of her life with Mulder.

'How do I feel, well I feel so alone
Like a sad armadillo
across this desert I roam
I've been stripped down
bare, 'til I break
Still the wheel keeps turning/

The sun is shining. Brightly. It shouldn't be. The world should be swathed in gray; the skies should open up, spitting cold, hard droplets of stinging rain. Her sunglasses should be out of place on this day. She should be wrapped in a dark, woolen coat, shivering in the cold. Instead she stands in a summer weight suit. Her hair glows in the abundant light of the clear summer day. She should be wearing heavy gloves to keep her hands warm, so she won't have to see the ring. Instead the sunlight glints off the facets of its brilliant surface, catching her unwilling eye. Her mother's arm is around her shoulders, for comfort, for support. No one can comfort her. Comfort is gone, and she will never be comforted again. Support she will not accept. She only allowed one source to support her. Support is gone, and she will never accept it from another. Her mother is shedding soft tears. Tears. Grief. Emptiness. These things remain. These things will not pass; they will abide with her until she can continue no longer. She will know their form,outline, taste, sound, scent, as she once knew his. And yet, the sun is shining. Brightly.

Words roll past her ears, distant thunder, nothing more. Like gunshots heard from afar. No, she will not think about that. She stifles a sob. Her mother holds her more tightly. She can see AD Skinner, can watch his lips move. She knows empirically that he is speaking, he is the source of that distant rumbling, but she can't hear him. She won't hear him. The words he speaks are meaningless anyway. She was the only person who knew him well enough to do this and she is not capable. She is so numb, her lips don't move. She can't remember the last time she spoke. She only remembers the last word to fall from her lips, "Mulder". Her mother has not left her since everything happened. She knows her mother is there, is concerned for her. She wants to thank her, but she is paralyzed. At last Skinner seems to be finished. She watches impassively as he returns to the group of mourners at the graveside. In fact, he is standing right next to her. He squeezes one of her hands. She withdraws it from his grasp.

There is another man, a priest, her mind identifies, who is reciting words now. Words Dana knows from childhood. Why is there a priest? *He* wasn't religious. Oh yes, her mother had planned this, had felt it was important. Well, it wasn't as though it was important. *He* wasn't going to care now, and if it made Maggie feel better... Dana knows it was supposed to make her feel better, but she felt nothing. "I will fear no evil..." He hadn't feared the evil, not for himself. For her, yes, but never for himself. His only fear had been that the evil would find a way to stop him, that he would leave his work undone. He had spent most of his life in the valley of the shadow of death. He didn't fear it. Is she afraid? No, her fear had run out of her, as she had watched his blood flow from his body. She fears living now. Life stretches before her endlessly gray, bleak, meaningless. "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of life..." she thinks.

The service is finished and he is buried. She will never again behold his gentle hazel eyes, brown one moment, green the next. His lips would never smile again at her, that sad half smile, the shy, please-forgive-me-for-whatever-it-is-I-did-or-didn't-do grin, the broad, rare, happy toothy smile that set her heart dancing in her chest and weakened her knees imperceptibly. She would never feel the silky texture of his dark hair against her fingers again, never lace her fingers in that hair as he kisses her, never ruffle it up or smooth it down before a meeting with AD Skinner. Her fingers were already forgetting the feel of his skin against them. She would not be able to remind them. His beautiful face was frozen forever, the eyes closed, the lips curved into a fake smile such as he'd never worn in life, his hands stilled, all the strong muscles of his back, his arms, his legs, cold and useless now. Why didn't they bury her with him? She is as dead as he is, only no one can see it.

The mourners at the graveside begin to file away. They first pass his mother, who seems to be bearing up stoically. They all remark on her composure. Dana wants to scream that it's because she never loved him; she doesn't care that he is dead. She even let someone else's mother plan his funeral. That would be too easy though. Too easy to blame her for the pain in his life, for being the architect of the walls he built, for forging in him the yoke of guilt he wore so well for so long. Dana turns her thoughts from Teena. Once they pass Teena, they come to Dana. They murmur polite words, to which Maggie responds. Maggie speaks soothingly, mentioning "shock" and "profound grief" and "loss" to which they all nod politely. They all squeeze her fingers quickly and move on. They can't wait to get out of there. Most of them came out of curiosity, anyway. They could hardly believe "Spooky" had really gone and gotten himself killed. They wanted proof. She considered bringing in the blood stained clothing, the clothing she'd been wearing when it happened. She could display it. Maybe then they would believe. Soon , only a few people remain. She could focus enough to identify them. Skinner. Frohike. Langly. Byers. and Diana, reappeared from God only knew where. That should have made Dana angry, but she has no energy for anger now. If Diana wanted to delude herself that she had meant anything to him, that was fine. Sure. Fine. Whatever. Diana is speaking to her, but Dana can't understand her. She nods woodenly and lets Maggie murmur her polite words. Diana leaves. Now, for the worst. Byers. Langly. Frohike. Each hug her and whisper in her ear, offering help, protection, kindness, in short. For him, for what they had meant to him, and consequently to her, she has to respond. She hugs each of them back. Still her lips will not move. They understand.

At last, Skinner. Skinner who had spoken about him. Was it kindly, with affection even? Probably. Skinner who had helped them , protected them, infuriated them, even nearly sacrificed himself for them. She can say nothing. He holds her tightly, telling her to take all the time she needed, he would arrange it. Telling her he knew all they had meant to each other, yet never saying the words. She can read the fear in his eyes, fear that she would never be all right. He has every right to that fear. She won't. She doesn't want to be.

Her mother drives her home, to her apartment. Maggie insists on staying, cooking food that her daughter won't eat, tidying up her daughter's already spotless home. Maggie sits on the couch and watches television for a while. Dana lays in her bedroom, on her bed, stiff as a board. Her hands, at her sides, are clenched into fists of rage, yet she has nothing to strike out at. The tears never seems to stop leaking out of her eyes, rolling down her face in a burning trail of memory. She thinks of a song she'd heard a few weeks ago. About being sad, being alone. Being forced to wander across a desert alone. That was her life before and what her life would become again. She feels just like the song, as though she'd been stripped down until she should break, but the wheel kept turning. She had broken, broken into a million pieces on that street. She had shattered as surely as the bullet that ripped through him had shattered his internal organs, had ripped open his arteries, she had shattered and been ripped open. For her, the wheel kept turning. Crushing her. She sobs, the first sound to pass her lips, since his name, nearly three days ago. The sob is a long, keening sound, torn from the very depths of her tattered soul. Maggie rushes in. She gathers her daughter in her arms and lets her cry.

Scully cries in her mother's arms. She cries for him, for all they would never have. She cries for herself, just wanting to join him, but being kept here. She lets the grief consume her, wrack her body. Her mind wanders briefly through the times he had been injured or nearly died, the time he had convinced everyone he was dead; all near misses or hoaxes, but this is real. She had held him as he died, unable to stop it, able only to cradle him, to whisper words of comfort and love to him, to pray to God for a miracle. A simple case of "wrong place, wrong time". A man, depressed at losing his job, had opened fire on a crowded street in the middle of the afternoon. Mulder had thrown her to the ground. In the split second it took him to do that, a bullet found him. Nothing to do with their jobs, no X File, just bad timing. The scene plays constantly in her head, with the voice over "bad timing, that's all, just bad timing". She hopes it might drive her crazy soon. Then maybe she will be insensible to this world.

She becomes aware that her mother is crooning her name softly. "Danadanadana". She realizes that was who she has to be now. She realizes why she feels so dead; she is right to say she is dead. She hadn't been Dana for a long time; she had become Scully. Scully is who she wants to be. But Scully had died on that street, because it was he who had made her Scully. Mulder.

Her mind begin whirling back, tracing the path that had brought her here. Reliving how she had become Scully; when it had become the most important thing to her. How it had come to pass that Scully could not exist without Mulder...

Into that basement office she had walked, a lifetime ago. She had known of his reputation, but she had been young, naive, ambitious. She had thought she could debunk his work, his theories, make a name for herself. Instead she had been drawn in by his ideas and by him. Spooky Mulder. From that first case in Oregon, in spite of herself, she had begun to believe in him. Not his theories, but in his belief in them. She had found those marks on her back and like a foolish child, scared by the campfire stories, she had gone running to him. His eyes had been concerned, his fingers trailing over her back tender and reverent, his voice soft, amused, but only at the situation, not at her. Then, he had confided in her, about Samantha and what her disappearance had done to his family. She had seen what it still did to him as an adult. The beginning of trust. The beginning of knowing she would not be the pawn *they* had hoped for. Her ambitions had begun, even then, to change, especially when she had to deliver her report to Blevins. She had read the look on his face, had sensed what Mulder claimed to be true might have some merit. One step on a path. The first leg of the long, circuitous journey. Could she ever have foreseen? Would she have taken the next step? She could have done nothing else.

So many steps along this path. Forward, backward, off the path, sometimes apart, sometimes fighting each other about the next step, but always, always, eventually together again. Face to face, as time slid by, hand in hand. Now she must find a way to finish the journey without him. A journey she had never intended on making, a journey she does not now want to complete. Never has she felt so intensely the desire, the sheer need to give up. Even when she had been stricken with cancer, lying at the edge of death, she could not give up. There had been Mulder to return to. Now there is Mulder to follow. These thoughts residing in her brain, Scully falls into an exhausted slumber in her mother's arms.

Maggie was understandably concerned, deeply concerned about her daughter. Her work for the FBI, with Fox Mulder, had given Maggie plenty to worry about over the years. That work had been the cause of Melissa's death and had driven a wedge firmly between Dana and her brother, Bill. Her association with Fox had cost Dana months of her life, hermemories of that time, and ultimately her ability to conceive children. Yet, Maggie knew for everything her choices had cost her, Dana would not have changed a single one. Maggie amended that; Dana would have chosen to be somewhere else with Fox than that particular street three days ago.

For years Maggie had watched her daughter grow and change. She had seen the deepening role Fox Mulder played in her daughter's life, until he had become the most important person to her. At first, Maggie believed, it was not because Dana had romantic feelings for him, but because Fox was the only person who could help her find the answers to what had been done to her. The feelings she had for him had come more slowly, almostimperceptibly. She once told Maggie it wasn't until she had a conversation with a womaninvolved in a case that she had begun to *realize* her emotions towards Fox Mulder. She said she had laughed out loud when she realized how applicable the words she had spoken to this woman were to herself as well. "I told her, Mom," Scully had confided, "that I thought the best relationships often develop out of good friendships." Maggie had smiled at her. And agreed. Scully had never confided to her mother how events following that realization had caused her to question herself.

In her dreams, Mulder visits Scully. She is back in their office, sitting at his desk, reading a case file, his Notes on that case in the "perfect" gated community. He walks through the door soundlessly. He has a new file in his hand. He is smiling, saying something about a rabid dog, which doesn't sound much like an X File to her. She isn't really listening to his words, only to the tone in his voice. Excitement. Fire. He is daring her to argue with him, to tell him how this couldn't be an X File, give him some rational explanation. She sighs and smiles at him. How could she argue? She wants to tell him about the dream she'd had. She'd leave out some parts, though. She has opened her mouth to speak when she notices. He casts no shadow. He is smiling at her still as she begins to shriek. He breaks into thousands of tiny pieces at her feet. Maggie holds her daughter as she sobs and thrashes about.

Scully drags herself awake, staring owlishly at her mother. Maggie smoothes Dana's hair and wipes away her tears. "I'm so sorry, darling. So very sorry."

"Mom?" Scully's voice is thick with tears. It cracks, even on the single syllable of her mother's name, having lain unused for so long. "I dreamed ... I dreamed he died."

Maggie struggles to control her face. Of the many times she had feared for her child, this one is the worst. For physical suffering, there was hope of an end, a release. For this emotional torment, Maggie knows no cure. This child had always been the strongest of her four, but even the strongest person would be tested by the tragedies that had befallen Dana in the last seven years. Her belief that she had dreamed Fox Mulder's death concerns Maggie deeply. If Dana is retreating into a world of dreams ... "Dana, honey."

"Mom, please tell me I dreamed it. Please." Hope glitters desperately from the depths of her deep blue eyes, but Maggie sees beneath it the well of fear, the sane knowledge that she had not dreamed it, the excruciating pain of reality.

"I wish, Dana, that I could."

Scully turns from her mother and curls herself into a fetal position. She is silent again. Maggie can hear the sounds of her fists clenching and unclenching against the sheets. "He was so real," Scully whispers at last. "So happy, so alive."

Maggie lays a hand on her back. "Try to remember him that way, honey. Remember the good times you had with him."

Scully laughs harshly, mirthlessly. "A few months, Mom. That's all we got. And we couldn't even show how we felt around other people."

"Dana Katherine Scully, do you really think that's all you had? He was your best friend. The only person in the world you truly trusted with everything about yourself. I know you two had arguments, but in the end, it always came down to that, didn't it? And in that, you had more than most people ever get."

Scully turns over to face her mother. She looks at Maggie levelly, for a very long time. "When I think of the time we wasted ... being apart from each other."

"Of course, it hurts, darling. But I don't think you two were ever much apart from each other. I think you just had trouble seeing how close you were. And in the end, you did see it."

Scully nodds, thinking about the course of her relationship with Mulder.

Maggie is right in that they had been close a lot longer than either of them had realized or admitted. She thinks about the first time she knew she could not live without Fox Mulder in her life. A hospital bed in Alaska. Watching him slowly come back to her. She thinks about the first time she knew she would kill anyone who harmed him. Modell. Watching Mulder with that gun to his temple, listening to the anguished tones of his voice begging her to run. If Mulder hadn't emptied the gun into Modell, she would have. A multitude of events spin through her mind. A litany of my sins? Singing to him in the forest in Florida, emptying her gun into a window out of which she could have sworn she saw a large bug departing, and racing crazily through the Hoover building getting classified information so she could track him in the Bermuda Triangle, for starters. Not the type of good times most would describe, but, for Mulder and her, good times. The times they had worked together, as a team, to accomplish something. Sometimes those accomplishments only recognized as such by the two of them.

There had been bad times, too, horrible ones. She isn't thinking of, surprisingly, injuries. There had been enough of those, God yes, but those had only damaged their bodies. They'd always recovered. She flinches at the memories of those dark moments. The more recent ones had taken the biggest toll on the bond they shared. When he had not trusted her over the matter of Diana Fowley. When he had accused her of letting it all get personal. The rift had been forged swiftly and deeply. It had taken months to heal it. Things had been so different after that. "Playing house" with him, a case a few monthsbefore she might have enjoyed, turned into a hassle. Arthur Dales' Florida assertion that she saved him, and not just from the sea monster, was an embarrassment more than anything, a reminder of the distance between them. That day in the bank, with Bernard and Pam, had been the beginning. They had started making tentative steps back toward each other then. Tentative steps and slow, with the awkward clumsiness of people long unused to discussing their emotions, unused even to admitting they had them.

'And there were highways to get across And places far from here...'

They had eventually crossed those highways, bridged their path across the gaps, and found their way back to each other from those far places. It had been Mulder who had made the overtures. She had ignored him at first, attempting to shut him out. His persistence had mildly annoyed her at first, then irritated her as he refused to take the hints she dropped. His words, his gestures, calculated to soothe her had provoked only irritable responses, rolled eyes, and impatient sighs. Vivid in her memory was the day he had cornered her, as it were.

He had walked into their office, after lunch. She had met her mother for a quick lunch; she had no idea what he had done for lunch. She had been going over the expense report from their latest case. She had heard him come in, but she had not even looked up. She had felt the now familiar burning in the pit of her stomach. There was so much tension in their relationship, both personal and professional, that his very presence evoked these feelings.

She had heard the door shut. Actually, it would be more accurate to say she had heard the door slam. She had looked up.

"Well, at least that got your attention," he had sneered.

"What do you want, Mulder?" She had been in no mood to humor him; she had been in no mood to humor him for months now.

He had stared at her before stating simply, "You."

"Excuse me?" She had arched an eyebrow at him. Hostility had been dripping from her voice.

He had positioned himself in front of her, hands palm down on the desk. He had leaned toward her. "Ever since the events with Cassandra Spender, since we got the X-Files back, you've been acting like you don't even want to be around me."

"Maybe I don't," she had shot back. She had hung her head. "Mulder, I'm sorry. I didn't mean that."

"Yes, you did, Scully. You don't want to be around me." His voice had softened and he had looked genuinely hurt.

"Mulder..." She had started.

"Scully, I know you were upset by everything that happened. I've been trying to make it up to you, but you won't let me."

"Do you honestly think it's that easy, Mulder? You crack a few jokes, murmur a few non specific apologies and think everything's going to be all right." She stood up, leaned forward , and placed her own palms down on the desk, facing his. "I was more than *upset* by those events, Mulder."

"What do you want me to say, Scully? I've apologized as many ways as I can think of."

"I don't want you to say anything; I want you to realize how deeply you hurt me."

"Scully, I don't understand how I hurt you so much. Explain it to me. Because if this is about Diana..."

She interrupted him. "This has *nothing* to do with her. Nothing, Mulder. It has to do with you. You and me."

"What did *I* do?" he had asked earnestly.

"Mulder, you accused me of making it all personal. Of course, it's personal. Look at what I've been through in six years. I was abducted by still unidentified people, who implanted some type of microchip in my

neck. My sister was killed. After I had that chip removed, I developed a form of cancer that almost killed me. The only "cure" we found was another chip, which was replaced in my neck. I found out I can't have children, and on the heels of that, Mulder, I found out I *had* a child, who was dying. You're damn right, it's personal. It's personal as hell."

He had hung his head. "You're right, Scully. What I said to you was unfair. It was cold and callous. I didn't think that's why it was personal. I spoke in anger. "

"Anger? Anger? What right did you have to be angry?"

"You accused Diana..."

"You taught me to 'Trust No One', Mulder! Yet you couldn't see beyond ...beyond...whatever it is you had with her. She's dirty, Mulder, involved up to her eyes with the Syndicate. But *she* was not and never could be the reason it was personal to me."

He had only looked at her. Their faces had been only inches away. She had been able to feel his breath on her face. She had heard the blood pounding in my ears and had felt her breath coming in angry, ragged gasps. At last he had said, "Never, Scully?" The softness in his voice, the long buried question lurking there had nearly disarmed her.

"Jesus, Mulder, did you think I was jealous of her? Did you?" She had glared coldly at him. As he had started to speak, she cut him off. "I guess you could say I was jealous of the fact that you chose to believe her over me. I didn't understand that, Mulder. I know she was with you when you found the X-Files, but she had left. I've stayed. Through everything, I've never willingly left this quest of yours, of *ours*."

"She believed me," he had answered simply, calmly.

"And I've always believed *in* you, Mulder. I believed in the sincerity of this quest; I knew there was a conspiracy. I've seen too much to doubt that. I needed proof that it was more than a group of megalomaniacs, but I never needed proof about you." She had paused. Hung her head. Speaking to the desk, she had said, "Mulder, you really always think it's all about you. This was about me, about my gut instincts, and you pushed me away, shut me out, ignored me. One of the few times I asked you to have the same belief in me that I've placed in you, you refused."

"I know that I was wrong. Your instincts were right about Diana and I should have listened to you. I'm sorry that I've never told you this."

He had been sincere. She had been able to see that. His face had been hopeful. His eyes had pled silently with her to accept this apology, to accept him. "Thank you. That helps," she had said, her voice more gentle that at any time since he'd walked in that afternoon.

"Helps?" he had asked. "What else can I do, Scully?"

"Mulder, it's not a question of what you can do; it's a matter of time. We need to rebuild the trust that existed between us. That can't be done with a few words." She had smiled at him, a small, sad smile. "But I think we've both started to use the tools we have for rebuilding, instead of bludgeoning each other."

They had still been face to face, palms flattened confrontationally on the desk top, but the tension had seeped out of their shoulders, and both of

them had relaxed minutely. Mulder had reached a hand up and brushed a stray lock of hair from her face. She had let him, for the first time in a long while. His hand had trailed its way down her cheek. His fingers had stopped at her chin, lifting it a little so that his eyes could find hers. "Scully, you are the last person I ever want to hurt. I cannot imagine what this life would be like without you in it. I know I'm one lucky son of a bitch. When you walked out on me at the Gunmen's you should have kept going, but you didn't. You came back." She had started to speak, but he stopped her. "I know, you came back to our quest, but I'd like to hope you came back to me, too, at least a little bit." Then, without preamble, he had kissed her, gently, briefly. Chuckling a little, he had looked at her startled face and asked, "Are you going to bludgeon me, now?"

"No, Mulder. Maybe later." She had been smiling, the same small smile, but the sadness had crept out of it, replaced with a confused sort of happiness. "Why did you do that?"

"Because I've wanted to, for a long time." His eyes had seemed to be boring directly into her soul and she had wondered if he was reading her mind. "Besides, isn't it traditional to argue, make up, then kiss?"

She had pondered that, or had appeared to. In reality, the only thing she had been able to think was that Mulder had kissed her. She was vaguely surprised how happy that had made her. Not that she hadn't considered it numerous times before, always with happiness. But in the time since she'd left him standing there at the Gunmen's, those thoughts had been banished from her mind. When they had managed to wheedle their way into her conscience (and howcould they not when she and Mulder had been "playing house"), they had only caused her sadness. "You know, my mother always told me never to go to sleep mad at someone I..." she had stopped herself in time. Her mind had desperately cast about for something less incriminating to say than 'love'. "...care about."

"My mother never had advice like that, for me," he had said, almost mirthfully.

Scully had sat back down in the chair, her legs suddenly refusing to remain standing any longer. Mulder had perched himself on the desk top and leaned close to her. He had been regarding her intently. Scully had guessed he was weighing what he had been about to say, trying to decide if it was likely to be part of the rebuilding process or if she might choose that moment to bludgeon him. He must have reached a decision. She had inferred from the way he had taken a deep breath that he had decided on the dangerous path. She had found herself being amused by that. She had smiled quizzically at him. "Yes, Mulder?"

He had looked startled, perhaps unaware that his dilemma had been so clear to her. "Scully, when you paused, telling me about your mother's invaluable advice, were you about to say that you should never go to sleep mad at someone you love?" There had been no humor in his eyes and his voice had been absolutely serious. For all the times he had jokingly propositioned her or humorously alluded to what might be between them, this had been unexpected.

"Yes," she had said, before she had been aware that she was saying it. Her mind had whirled in panic once it realized what her mouth and tongue had done. She had been in a place completely unfamiliar to her; she had not had the first clue on how to extricate herself.

Mulder had proved to be no help, whatsoever. His response had been to lean closer to her and kiss her again. The feel of his lips against hers had driven coherent thought from her mind. The delicate pressure and silky texture of his lips pressing ever so gently upon hers. The warmth he had been radiating enveloped her. His hand had come up and cradled the back of her head. She had pulled away from him, regretfully, when she needed oxygen. "I love you,Scully," he had told her.

Words he'd spoken in a drug induced haze months before. Words she hadn't really been ready to hear then. In their office that afternoon she had relished them, luxuriated in them. For all the complications they might bring into their lives, they had simplified one thing: he was hers and she was his. "I love you, too," she had answered.

The personal side of their relationship had grown slowly from that moment. They were both cautious people. There had been no headlong rush into a physical relationship. Despite the fact that they had known they loved each other, they both had had to admit they didn't *know* that much about each other. They had spent hours talking, debating the existence of aliens, arguing over the science of proof, determining how to expose the conspiracy against which they fought, but they had rarely just talked like normal people. The sad truth was that Eddie Van Blundt had known more about Scully, in some ways, than Mulder did.

She had shared the joys of growing up in a Navy family, having siblings whom she alternately loved, admired, liked, and despised. She had recounted stories of her childhood. Mulder had discovered she was a rather gifted storyteller, able to find the humor in most situations and punctuate a story with it. He had been treated to images of Maggie getting the four Scully siblings ready for Easter Service when they were all still under the age of eight. He had discovered just how much of tomboy Dana had been when she talked about how her brothers even taught her to fight like a boy, a skill which came

in handy, apparently, in the Fifth grade when a classmate teased her once too often about her red hair. He had come to understand how deeply

Scully had felt Melissa's death. She had acknowledged that they hadn't been close in years, maybe not ever really, not the way some sisters are, but Missy had been the one person who had always been there for her, even times when Dana hadn't wanted her or liked her presence. He had felt he

could almost feel the bond Dana had shared with her father and how she had suffered when that bond had been severed. She had confessed to remembering seeing him when she'd been in the coma after she was returned and wanting so desperately to stay with him.

Mulder had opened up to her in a way he never had, with anyone else. He had told her stories of when Sam was little and his family had been whole. Before that he had told her bits and pieces about the night Sam had been

taken, but at last, he was able to tell her all the things he had felt, all the recriminations with which he had lived. He had shared with her the painful memories of how his family had disintegrated. He had found happiness in regaling her with anecdotes from his days playing high school sports. They had traded Senior Prom stories. She had been able to envision him at Oxford, young, impressionable despite all that had already befallen him, free, for the first time since he was twelve. He had told her about Phoebe, what she had been like, how she had drawn him in and ensnared him. He had even confided in her the details of his relationship with Diana Fowley, painful as it turned out to be to the both of them. He had made it clear Diana was very much the past and Scully very much the future.

He had even started attending Mass with her. Her religion was so centrifugal to her that he had sought to understand it, to understand the faith she placed in it. It had meant a lot to her, too. The first time he had arrived with her, looking uncomfortable and slightly trapped, Maggie had been utterly shocked. She was wise enough to say nothing of that, instead welcoming him warmly. Scully had led him through the service, finding the appropriate pages in the hymnal and missal without any seeming effort. Mulder had thought his knees would never be the same again after the number of times they knelt, stood, knelt again, and then were seated. He had declined the offered blessing during Communion, choosing to remain at the pew and watch Scully. When she had returned, she had knelt (again!) to pray silently. She had done so for some minutes, then had taken her place next to him again. He had not been able to resist the temptation to lean over and whisper in her ear, "Does Christ taste good?" She had turned a shocked gaze on him, until she had seen the twinkle in his eyes. Then, she had tightened her lips and stifled a grin.

"Mulder," she had whispered back, "that's blasphemous."

He had said nothing, only raised his eyes heavenward. He had held his hands out, palms up, as though waiting for lightening to strike him. She had scooted away a tiny bit, still suppressing that grin. Maggie had given her the same look she had when Dana had been a child and she and Missy had been up to shenanigans.

After that Mulder had insisted on taking the Scully women to brunch. Maggie, who had been mostly unaware of the deepening relationship between her daughter and Fox Mulder, had been pleasantly surprised watching them

together. They had come to the church in one car, the doors of which Mulder held open for Scully. He had repeated the procedure as they got out of the car at a lovely restaurant along the Potomac. The weather had been lovely and they had eaten overlooking the water. Mulder had asked what each of them wanted to eat and had then ordered for them. When the waiter had departed, Maggie had taken to staring at the two of them.

Scully had finally said, "Mom? Is everything all right?"

Maggie had smiled at her, a little uncertainly. "I think so."

Mulder had excused himself at that point, promising to return in just a few moments. Scully had smiled her conspiratorial grin at her mother. "You can ask, Mom," she had said.

"Dana, you and Fox? I've been wondering. You seemed to be spending more time together, away from work that is."

"We had a really rough time a while back. It took a while, but we eventually worked through it."

"Do you .... did you tell him how you feel about him?" Maggie had asked tentatively.

Scully had nodded, coloring slightly. "We love each other. I think we have for a long time. It's probably never going to be the sort of relationship you envisioned for me, but it suits me. It suits us."

"Dana, honey, that's all that matters. I realized a long time ago that your dreams aren't what I would have dreamt for you, but they are your dreams. You look happy. Happier, in fact, than I've seen you in a long time. That's what matters the most to me. And Fox looks happier than I've ever seen him."

Mulder had returned on the heels of that remark and had taken his seat. He had laid his hands on the table and looked from one Scully woman to the other. Dana had reached for his hand and clasped it firmly. He had

looked over and questioned her with his eyes. She had nodded. "Do you approve, Mrs. Scully?"

"Fox, it's *Maggie*. And, yes, I approve. You make her happy. That makes me happy."

Their lunch had been a pleasant one. After coffee had been drunk and dessert consumed, Maggie departed. Mulder and Scully had left shortly afterwards, having watched a Senatordock his speedboat at the restaurant's private dock. They had walked along the narrow pathway along the river before returning to Mulder's car. The wind off the river had been fresh and ruffled Scully's hair as it disarranged

Mulder's suit coat. They had held hands and walked slowly, gazing intermittently at each other, but most often out at the rolling blue water beside them.

"Thank you," she had said quietly.

"For what?" he had asked.

"For coming with me this morning. I know you don't understand it, that it has no meaning for you."

"But it means a lot to you. It gives you peace and contentment. Would you bludgeon me if I said that I believe in your belief?"

She laughed. "No, but I might kiss you."

They had stopped and Mulder wrapped her in his arms. She had tilted her head up to meet his gaze. They had both been smiling brightly and laughing softly. He had leaned in and kissed her. She could feel his lips still smiling against her own. Breaking the kiss, she had laid her head against his chest and sighed in contentment. They had turned and began walking back to the restaurant parking lot.

On the way back to Scully's apartment, they had stopped and bought fresh pasta and sauce, as well as greens for a salad, and a bottle of wine. At Scully's, Mulder had flopped down onto the couch while she changed into more comfortable clothing, jeans and an emerald green T-shirt. She had brushed her hair back into two clips and scrubbed the make up from her face. Comfortable and looking considerably younger than she was, she had rummaged through the bottom drawer of her dresser until she found the clothes he always stashed there in case of emergency. Returning to the living room, she had tossed him the white T-shirt and jeans. Mulder had thanked her and gone to affect his own wardrobe change.

Determining that there was nothing on TV, Scully had turned on the stereo and selected a variety of CD's, setting the option to 'random play'. She had laid the Post on the couch next to her and had taken up the latest issue of National Geographic, which she had yet to read. Mulder had come back, dressed comfortably in his 'emergency' clothes, and sunk down next to her. He had rifled the newspaper until he found the sports section. They had sat reading, listening to music for some time. Scully had sighed happily and set her magazine down.

"What?" he had asked.

"This music," she had said softly, not wanting to disrupt the flow of music.

Mulder had listened carefully. He had not recognized the words; was not able to make them out, but the singer's voice was breathtaking. A high, fluted soprano that rang true on the highest Notes, shining like morning light through soft white curtains. "Who is it?" he had asked as softly as she had responded.

"Charlotte Church," Scully had told him when the song had ended. "She's Welsh. She's all of fourteen years old now."

He had looked at her. "Really? What a voice," he said simply.

Scully had nodded. A new song had been playing. Mulder had reached over and tickled Scully's arm. She had slapped him playfully. They had both been giggling. Mulder had continued to tickle her, working his way up her arm, then down to her stomach. She had struggled half-heartedly to get away from him, but only succeeded in wriggling herself so that she had been positioned under his body. He had looked down at her, grinning broadly. "Agent Mulder has the suspect exactly where he wants her," he had proclaimed, in an 'official' sounding voice.

"And how do you know that the suspect isn't exactly where she wants to be, Agent Mulder?" Scully had retorted.

"In that case..." he had told her and began kissing her. His hands had

continued to tickle her, at first, but soon turned to a heated exploration of her skin. He had tugged her shirt from the waistband of her jeans and began to kiss the smooth, supple flesh of her stomach. Her hands had been on his back, under his shirt, caressing, touching lightly. He had left off kissing her and looked at her. Strands of her hair had come loose from the clips she wore in it. Her face had been flushed, lips parted as her breath came in quick, fast gasps. She was gorgeous. She had also been looking at him rather quizzically.

"Scully," he had whispered, voice husky, "it's um ... I mean, we've been ... is this the right time?"

She had caught her lower lip in her teeth and nodded at him, slowly. He had uncoiled his long frame from around her and stood up. She had looked bereft, but only momentarily. He had leaned down, over her, and gathered her into his arms. She had wrapped both arms around his neck, bringing his mouth down to hers once more. How Mulder had managed to carry her to her bedroom without breaking that kiss, she never did figure out, but he had done it.

He had laid her tenderly down on her bed. She had scooted over to make room for him and patted the covers next to her. He had recognized the invitation for what it was and for the way it mirrored his own when they had been undercover at Arcadia Falls. Almost disbelieving that they had progressed this far in a relationship, he had laid down next to her, cradling her in his arms, kissing her face and hair.

Mulder had known that he had never known anyone as well as he knew Scully. She had let him inside all the walls she'd built over the years, walls he had sometimes helped to build. He had found the courage to trust her with everything there was to know about him. She knew more accurately than anyone in the world what his fears were, as well as his hopes and dreams for a life lived outside the influence of the Syndicate. She had accepted him for every flaw he had and loved him , she told him, because of those flaws. He had explored the fissures in her own soul and fallen just as deeply into those as he had scaled the peaks found in that same soul. They had seen each other through crises too numerous to count, too painful to want to remember, yet too critical to be able to forget. They had seen each other in tears, and more recently, in laughter. Mulder had also known there was no one in the world he wanted to know any better, nor anyone whom he wanted to

know him better. She was the other half of his soul; he was already complete. Making love to her was the final transcendence of that.

"I love you," she had whispered, drawing him from his contemplation of her.

"I love you, too," he had told her.

"This was never quite how I pictured it, Mulder," she had said.

He had appeared thunderstruck. "You ... thought about this?"

She hadsmiled at him. "Of course, I'm only human. We've always spent so much time together and...." her voice had trailed off.

"And?" he had prompted.

She had licked her lips a little. "And you're damndably attractive, Mulder."

He had grinned at her. "And you, Scully, are, as a dear friend of ours once stated, *hot*." She had giggled at him, a blush creeping into her face. "By the way, how *did* you picture this?"

"I ... I don't know."

He had propped himself up on one elbow and looked at her. "No, you said this was not how you pictured this. So *how* did you picture it? C'mon, Scully, tell me."

She had pressed her lips into a line, something between a grimace and a smile. Closer to a smile, Mulder had been pleased to note. "How did *you* picture this, Mulder?" She had effectively turned the tables on him.

"Candlelight, rose petals, soft music, you in a pale silk negligee, ..." he had stopped. She had been convulsing with silent laughter. "What?"

"Mulder, you're kidding."

"Why?" he had looked hurt.

"We're ... not ... that ... type of couple," she had gasped out.

He had hung his head. She had been worried that he really was hurt, until he raised his head. His eyes had been twinkling and he had flashed her the toothy grin. "All right, you got me."

"So?" she had demanded

"Well, I imagined you, wearing a lovely leather ensemble, pinning me to the top of my desk, ripping my shirt off ... " he had stopped again. "No?"

She had been shaking with laughter again. "Me? Leather?" Tears were starting to roll down her face as she continued to laugh helplessly. Taking deep breaths, she had begun to get control of herself again. Finally, she had said, "Mulder, be serious."

"Scully, the truth is, I never actually pictured *this*. Anything that ever went through my mind ... it wasn't part of a relationship; it was some isolated incident. I couldn't let myself picture this because I never dared to hope you'd actually love me." He brushed hair from her face and traced the path of moisture down her face. "I have no frame of reference for this, Love."

"Oh, Mulder," she had purred. "That's beautiful. This is like nothing else for me, too." She had pulled him down on top of her. Their lips had found each other. He had plunged his hands into her hair, spreading it out on the pillow, like a glowing red halo. She had slipped her hands underneath his T-shirt and pushed it up. He lifted himself up enough for her to help him shrug out of it. Her hands had been splayed against his chest, fingers curling in the soft hair they found there. He had murmured her name, as he kissed behind her ear, trailing his lips down her neck to her shoulder.

Slowly, gently, clothes had been shed, as new lovers explored each other's flesh. Passion nhad built between them as their bodies met in the eternal rhythm of love. He had melted into her, gathered her to him. She had clung to him, calling out his name, as waves of pleasure caught her, dragged her deep in the undertow of ecstasy. Moments later, he had shuddered against her as his own pleasure peaked. She had wrapped her arms around him, drawing him down against her, despite his attempts to keep all of his weight off her.

"I'll hurt you," he had whispered in her ear.

"No, you won't," she had assured him. "I want to feel your weight on me."

Sated, he had given in to her. Burying his face in her neck, putting light kisses there. The scent of her shampoo had mingled with the scent of her skin and their lovemaking, surrounding him. She had sighed against him as she rubbed his back lightly. She had brought her hands down and joined them with his, stroking his long fingers lightly, absent-mindedly. As the afternoon sun had slanted across her bedroom and crept onto the bed, bathing the lovers in golden beams, they murmured, in hushed whispers, endearments and words of love to each other. After a long while, Mulder had slid off her, rolling onto his back and keeping hold of her slender hand.

They had spent the remainder of the afternoon entwined in each other's arms, talking, kissing, making love again, as twilit shadows claimed the skies outside. It had been full dark before either of them was willing to withdraw from the cocoon they had created. Hunger, however, had driven them forth. Together they had made a simple meal of pasta and salad, which they had eaten sitting on the couch, watching the Sunday news, and drinking the wine they had bought. When they had eaten, they did the dishes together, finishing the wine. Mulder had gazed over at Scully, drying a dish. He had dipped his fingers into the soapy water.

"Don't," shehad said without looking at him, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

"Don't what, Scully?" he had asked innocently, then splashed her. She had squealed and jumped. He had done it again. To get him back, she had slapped him with the towel she was holding. Before long they had been breathless with laughter and soaking wet. Mulder had stood back and looked appreciatively at her.

"Mulder?" she had asked.

"Just thinking how that as nice as that shirt looked on you before, it looks even better now." He had been leering for all he was worth.

"Mulder!" she had exclaimed. She had looked down at her soaked clothing. "You are impossible."

"And yet you love me," he had reminded her.

"And yet I love you with all my heart," she had agreed. "Let's get out of these wet clothes."

"Agent Scully, I think this breaks all the rules about agents of the opposite sex consorting anywhere."

She had responded by arching an eyebrow at him and heading toward her bedroom. Mulder had followed, turning off lights as he went. Later, as they had lain in the dark, Mulder told her he had decided he might go to church with her every Sunday.

"Why?" she had asked.

He had smiled and kissed her hair. "Well, I thought we could make the whole day a habit. Church, brunch with your mom, spending the afternoon in bed, dinner, you know."

"Did I mention you are impossible?" she had asked, smiling.

"Often," he had assured her.

"Were you serious? About going with me every week?"

"I don't know about *every* week, but, yeah, I'll go with you. I'm honored that you want me to be there with you, that you want to share that part of your life with me."

"I love you, Fox William Mulder" she had told him.

"And I love you, Dana Katherine Scully."

A week before Christmas, Scully had come in from collecting a pathology report on a victim in a recent case. She had found a note on her desk asking her to meet Mulder at 'their bench' near the reflecting pool, after work. She had smiled to herself. Only Mulder would have asked her to meet him outside, in D.C., in the winter, after dark. Only Mulder would have known she would be there.

She had been sitting, waiting for him about ten minutes when he sat down next to her. He had wrapped an arm around her and kissed her forehead. "Thanks for meeting me, Scully."

"Mulder, it's freezing. I think it's even going to snow. What are we doing here?"

"Scully, do you remember the times we used to come here? When they had shut down the X-Files the first time and split us up? You risked reprimands, your career to meet me. I didn't know why you did that, but I knew how much it meant to me. I don't think I ever told you that."

She had taken his hand and squeezed it gently. "I told you once that I wouldn't do that for anyone but you, and I meant it, Mulder."

"I just couldn't think of anywhere else that I wanted to do this, Scully. For me this bench symbolizes how we've always stood by each other, despite the odds, despite the threats." He knew she had truly forgiven him the incident with Diana when she had let his 'always'

slide. "You *are* my one in five billion and you do complete me, make me a whole person. I can never give you even a fraction of what you've given me, but I'd love the opportunity to spend the rest of my life trying to be worthy of you."

"Mulder, you give me so much. Don't you..."

"Scully? don't argue with a man who's attempting to propose marriage. OK?" he had told her.

She had gazed at him and her mouth formed a silent O. She had nodded slowly.

Mulder had slid forward on the bench and moved closer to her. He had placed one warm, slightly callused hand on each side of her face. His ever changing hazel green eyes had searched the depths of her clear blue ones. His voice had been soft. "Will you marry me, Scully?"

She had leaned into him, touching her lips lightly to his. She had whispered against them, "I will." He had pulled her into his arms and kissed her hotly. They had broken apart, panting, after what seemed a dizzyingly long time. Mulder had brushed her hair from her face.

"Really?" he had asked, an uncertain look on his face, like a little boy who has been given the one thing he always wanted and is afraid it will taken away.

"Absolutely," she had told him.

He had taken her left hand and slipped onto her finger a ring, a simple, Princess cut solitaire, just about a carat. The fit was perfect. She had gazed down at her newly adorned finger, then back to him. Then she had looked up at the sky. "Mulder, it's starting to snow," she had observed.

Mulder had looked skyward, watching flakes drift lazily down out of the dark winter night. Cold white downy flakes had settled around and on them, melting almost instantly. He had stood up, lifting Scully with him into his warm embrace. "Scully, do you like Robert Frost?"

"The poet?" she had asked. "I haven't read all that much of his work, but what I've read I've enjoyed. Why?"

"I've read most of his work. There's one poem I've always liked. I felt myself in it."

She had looked at him, eyebrow arched quizzically. "Are you going to recite poetry to me now, Mulder?"

He had smiled at her, dipping his head down to kiss her lips briefly. Into her ear, he had whispered, "Yes, I think I am." He had turned her in his embrace, so that they both faced the Reflecting Pool. He had wrapped his arms around her tightly. His voice had been soft and melodic as it flowed over her hair. 'Whose woods are these I think I know/ His house is in the village though/ He will not see me stopping here/ to watch his

woods fill up with snow/ My little horse must think it queer/ to stop without a farmhouse near/Between the woods and frozen lake/ the darkest night of the year/ He gives his harness bells a shake/ To ask if there is some mistake/ The only other sound's the sweep/ Of easy wind and downy flake/ The woods are lovely dark and deep/ But I have promises

to keep/ And miles to go before I sleep/ And miles to go before I sleep.' "

She had tilted her head so that it rested on his shoulder. By craning her neck slightly, she had been able look into his eyes, could see the sad smile on his lips. "You see yourself in that, Mulder?"

He had nodded. "When I first read it, in a high school English class, I felt a connection to it. Not that I said that out loud." She had chuckled at him and shook her head. "Over the years I felt it came to symbolize the life I lead, the man I became."

"How so?"

"The voice in the poem is a man alone, out in the cold, isolated in some way from his fellow men. He's out on the darkest evening of the year. That's me, Scully. Living the darkest evening of the year every day. He says the woods are lovely, dark, and deep. Isn't that this quest we're on? It would be so lovely to reach the end, but in the meantime it makes my life dark. The answers we search for, answers to secrets horrifying and brutal, those answers are buried deeply under so many layers of conspiracy. It's my job to unearth those. That's what my father hoped for me to do; he wanted me to do what he had been unable to accomplish, to stop Colonization, to fight the alien race. Those are the promises I have to keep. And it's always seemed that no matter how close I came, I had that much further to go. I couldn't rest until ..."

"'And miles to go before I sleep'?" Her voice had been low and soft.

He had nodded, hugging her a little more tightly. "The thing is, Scully, I still think it's a beautiful piece of poetry, but with you, I've covered those miles. I can sleep at last. I'm no longer alone or isolated. There's light in my life now. I may still be wandering the woods, but I have you and the promises that matter now are the ones I've made and plan to make to you."

"That's beautiful, Mulder." She had paused and lifted a hand to caress his cheek. "You tell me that I complete you, that because of me your life has light, but, don't you know by now, Mulder, that you do those things, bring that same light into my life?"

"But, Scully, all the things you could have had if it weren't for..."

"For what?" she interrupted. "If it weren't for you? Mulder, you are everything I want. If I had never joined the Bureau, never met you, my life would have been empty. I wouldn't trade one moment I've had with you for a whole life time of so-called 'normal' existence."

"Well, maybe that Flukeman thing," Mulder had teased her.

She had laughed with him. "OK, maybe that Flukeman thing." She had stood on her tiptoes, craned her neck around, and kissed him. "Mulder, let's go. It's cold and it's snowing. And I have an engagement ring I'd like to show to a few people, if that's all right with you."

They had walked back to the Hoover Building, hand in hand. Traffic had been light, most government employees home by then. The Capitol have been dark, Congress having adjourned for the holidays. Snow still fell in a soft swirl, beginning to stick to the pavement and the branches of the dark, leafless trees. Mulder had looked over at the woman who had agreed to become his wife, his partner in all ways, his best friend. A smile had played delicately on her lips, as though something secret amused her. "Tell me," he had said to her.

"What?" she had asked lightly.

"What you're thinking right now," he had explained.

"Oh, that," she had laughed. Her laughter had met the snowflakes and seemed to dance on the air with them. "I was just thinking that of all the Frost poems I would have associated with you, 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening' is not what I would have picked."

"What would you have chosen?" he had wondered aloud.

She had quoted, " 'Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-/ I took the one less traveled by,/ And that has made all the difference.' That's you, Mulder, the road less traveled."

He had smiled and kissed her hand. "And you, too, Scully. It *has* made all the difference, hasn't it?"

She had nodded contemplatively.

Maggie Scully had been thrilled with the news. Bill Scully, visiting with Tara and Matt for the holidays, had been less thrilled, but a warning glance from Maggie had kept his tongue still. Tara had congratulated them graciously. All had asked if they had picked a date. They both demurred that it was too new to have even considered that yet. They both had known that they were not likely to actually pick a date terribly far in advance, as any wedding they would have would have to be, of necessity, very quiet. They had declined Maggie's dinner invitation, preferring to celebrate at a small, elegant French restaurant where Mulder had made late reservations.

After dinner they had graced the Gunmen with their dual presence and their announcement. All three had congratulated Mulder warmly, assured him of his amazing luck, and verified that Scully had not taken complete leave of her senses. All three Gunmen had quickly fallen to bickering good-naturedly about who got to be the best man. Leaving them to settle the dispute, Mulder and Scully had taken their leave and gone home.

Mulder had insisted on carrying her the threshold. For practice, he had claimed, as he had borne her through the doorway. Although she had pleaded with him to set her down, he had refused, kicking the door shut gently behind them and spiriting her all the way to the bedroom.

The months had passed. Washington had shaken off the chill, gray cloak of winter, bursting forth into all her spring glory. Mulder had thought there had rarely been a spring so lovely. He could have sworn the sun shone more brightly, the waters of the Potomac rolled by more peacefully, and the flowers smelled more sweetly. Each morning he had awakened with the woman whose soul was the complement of his own. There had been interesting cases to investigate. Cases during which neither of them had been injured. No blood loss, no broken bones, not even any minor cuts or abrasions. Whatever members of the Syndicate had survived, whatever plots they were hatching, had not been in evidence. Progress was being made on the vaccine by scientists working secretly.

Scully had agreed with Mulder's observation that it was the best spring ever. Her view had been as colored by her emotions as his. There had been little difference in that fact, in and of itself. The real difference had been that this spring those emotions were happy ones, contented ones,loving ones. They had confided in no one at the Bureau about their engagement, guarding its secret as vigilantly as they had guarded that of their relationship. Nor had they

set a date, although Mulder had suggested, in early April that they take

a vacation together, in June.

"A honeymoon," she had stated, more than asked.

He had smiled at her over the sports section, the day being one of their now traditional Sundays. "It could be." He had regarded her for a long time. She had returned his level gaze. "What kind of wedding did you want when you were little, Scully?"

She had laughed softly. "That depends on how old I was. For example, when I was ten, I was such a tomboy, trailing after my brothers, that the thought of that white dress, the flowers, all those frills made me sick. Not to mention I couldn't believe I would actually have to *kiss* a boy. By the time I was sixteen I suppose I wanted the typical wedding. Long white, silk dress, masses of flowers everywhere, Missy as my maid of honor, my father giving me away dressed in his Navy whites, church full of guests, reception with tons of gourmet food, dancing, and a five tiered cake."

"Did you want the little people on top?" he had asked.

"Of course, the little people, hand painted to look like me and the groom, perched inside that little white crystal heart. By the time I was actually old enough to get married, I had realized I didn't much care how the day looked. The most important thing to get right was the man I married."

"And?"

"You know already that I got that right, Mulder. I could not have gotten it more right."

"So what kind of wedding do you want, before our honeymoon?" he had asked her.

"A simple, quiet wedding, with my mother, the Gunmen, maybe Ellen and Trent."

"Bill?"

She had shrugged her shoulders. "Yes and no. I'd like to have my brother there, but I worry that he'd make a scene."

"At your church, with Father McCue presiding?"

"If it's all right with you, yes, I'd like that."

"Do you think we should tell Skinner?" Mulder had said.

She had looked at him. "I'd like to, but, Mulder, do you think it's a good idea"

He had shaken his head. "No. He's ignored a lot over the years, but I don't know if he could ignore this. We shouldn't put him in that position."

The following week Mulder had booked reservations to Jamaica and Scully had talked with her mother and Father McCue. If Maggie had been disappointed that the wedding was to take place on a Friday afternoon, with the absolute minimum of fuss, she had said nothing. She had insisted that Dana buy at least a simple dress in which to be married. She had also insisted that they allow her to host a small, private reception at a local restaurant. And, she had promised to take care of Bill and make certain that he made no objections.

It had been a few weeks later, nearly May, that Scully heard the song whose words would haunt her. She had been shopping for vacation wear as the song played over the store's stereo system. The music itself was melodic, the singer's voice pleasant and soft, and the words tender and bittersweet. At the time, it had been only one pair of lines that really caught her attention. 'Because I was his lonesome prairie and he was my wild frontier...'

She had smirked a little upon hearing that. It was apt for them. She had been lonesome, her life a great expanse of flat earth stretching

endlessly to the horizon. And Mulder ... Mulder was her 'wild frontier'. He had changed her way of thinking, expanded her world views beyond any

scope she had previously imagined. His wild theories had made her question all she knew, had kept her thinking. He had been an adventure she had embarked upon before she knew better. An adventure she would exchange for nothing else life could offer her, for nothing else in life had come to mean more, to have more power over her, thanthis adventure.

The day had been sunny, clear, and a little hotter than usual for D.C. The air had been heavy with moisture. Mulder and Scully had eaten lunch

at a small restaurant near the Hoover building. They had been walking back to their lovely basement office. Mulder had stopped to point out a travel agent's display window. "Just four more weeks, and that's where we'll be," he had whispered in her ear. "Can you see us on that beach, Scully? Mr. and Mrs. Fox Mulder. Sunning themselves, drinking exotic drinks, eating exquisite food, making love all night..." he had spoken low, and close to her ear.

"Mulder..." she had growled as a blush crept up her neck and suffused her face.

"Tell me you can see that," he had said, mouth now nearly covering her ear.

She had shivered at his closeness, at his breath against her skin. "Yes, I can see that." They had continued to stand as if mesmerized by the sights on the poster. Mesmerized, in truth, by the visions in their own minds. Scully had become vaguely aware of music, somehow familiar. She hadn't been able to say why for a moment, then it came back to her. The song she'd heard while shopping. She had noticed more that time, '...as angel slipped past And with one breath said I'm taking him back to his father in Heaven'. She hadn't realized the first time just how sad the song was. Her mind had shied away from imagining the death of the man she loved more than anything. Yet the words had worked their way insidiously into her brain. '...I held him through my tears Because

I was his lonesome prairie and he was my wild frontier'.

Mulder had tugged her hand gently. "We'd better get going. We've got that meeting this afternoon with Skinner."

"Yeah," she had agreed. She had slipped her hand into his. It was a rare action. They had been in public, quite close to their office. The chances of encountering someone they knew were fairly good. He had looked at her, his eyes asking the question. She had shrugged and held his hand a little more tightly.

They had gone another block. Mulder must have seen it first, heard something. All Scully would ever remember hearing was the first sounds of rapid gunfire and Mulder screaming her name, as he pushed her to the ground, covering her body with his own. Seconds passed in eternities as the gunfire continued until the man holding the weapon turned it on himself. Panicked, confused screams and cries rent the air in deafening

cacophony. Scully had murmured to Mulder to let her up. He had not responded. She had asked him to let her up, a little more louder the second time. His lack of response had begun to frighten her.

She had struggled out from under him. He had been motionless. She could hear him groaning. She had rolled him onto his back and gasped at the sight that met her eyes. He had been covered in blood. Although she would never remember doing so, she must have taken out her cell phone and called 911, requesting a medical team immediately, adding that it was an FBI agent who was down. It would be scant minutes before they arrived. Scant minutes too many.

She had held him, cradled him, crooned to him, and pleaded with him to hang on. Her medical training had asserted itself and she did what little she was able to do. She had known, in her head, that there was nothing to be done. There had been too much blood on his clothing and too much raining from his body onto the pavement and onto her, to sustain life. She had been begging God for a miracle, hoping that if, for once in her life, she could just *believe* enough everything would be fine.

"Mulder, Mulder, can you hear me?" she had whispered to him. Chaos had swirled around them. As a doctor she should have been checking for any other injured victims. As a government agent, she should have been trying to take some control of the situation. In those moments, however, she could have been neither. She had been a desperate, heart broken lover, trying to will the embodiment of her soul to live.

"Scully..." his voice had been weak as he spoke her name. Deep in the back of her mind, she had known he shouldn't talk, but her heart could not stop him. She had needed to hear his voice. He had been dying and she wanted to hear whatever he had to tell her. Besides her mind had reasoned feverishly as long as he keeps talking he's alive.

"I'm here, Mulder. I'm right here."

"Scully... I'm sorry ... I wasted ... so much time... loved you ... for so long. Best thing ... ever happened ... to me."

"Mulder, oh please ... "

"I love ... you ... Scully. Always. Always ... my Scully."

"Only yours, my love. Only yours. I love you. MulderMulderMulderMulder ..."

His body had gone slack against hers. She had felt for a pulse and found none. The first sobs had escaped her, wracking her body with their force. She had identified the distant sound she heard as the high keening wail of an ambulance. Too late her mind had shrieked, too late.

It had been too late the moment the bullet had hit him, an autopsy would confirm that. The large caliber bullet had entered his upper chest, torn open his right lung as its trajectory carried it toward his heart. There it had nicked the aorta before lodging next to his spinal column. He had bled out at the scene in bare moments.

She had held his lifeless hands in hers, stained with his blood. His blood had soaked into her clothing. It was on her face where she had brushed her hair away. It had masked the glitter, the now mocking glitter, of the diamond on her finger. She had quieted quickly after those first few sobs. Dana Katherine Scully was not a woman given to loud displays of grief and pain. Tears had flowed freely down her face, falling onto his blood soaked shirt. She had murmured his name, over and over, softly. The words of that song had played through her head, "And sometimes at night I swear I can hear him Calling out so clear He says, you were my lonesome prairie and I'm *still* your wild frontier". She would wait for that moment, listen for his voice telling her he was waiting for her.

She had whispered softly, one last time, until forever came, and she could be with him, "Mulder..."

The End

Author's Notes: I don't know if it would be possible to walk from the Reflecting Pool to the Hoover Building. So if it isn't, sorry. I have *no* medical training, unless you count watching "ER" and "Chicago Hope", so I hope that the path the bullet traveled in Mulder's body is possible. Charlotte Church is a real soprano; I aged her to concur with the timeline. If you were offended by Mulder's comment after Scully took Communion, please know that I took it from something a friend *actually* said to me at a Church service after I had taken Communion.

Summary: Over a casual dinner out, Mulder and Scully reveal a few things to each other. Observers wonder if they do indeed know "the secret of life".

Author's Notes: This is part of a series, based on the music of Faith Hill. This story is not, however, song fiction. It can be read independently of the others in the series. (Actually, it has to be - I'm not going in order!)

I'm working on a series of these. It is completely unnecessary to read them in order. Actually, it is impossible, as I'm writing them as the mood strikes me. The only way in which they will be related is by having been inspired by "The X-Files" and Faith Hill's music.

Dedication: As always, to Lilac and Alyssa, for reading and enthusing.

The place is one of those typical to urban areas, a place for professionals to relax after work, catch the game, drink a little, eat fried food and stale chips. You enter through double doors, into a vestibule which is about the size of a large packing crate, really just there for atmosphere. The kind of place you really don't want to meet anyone going the opposite direction as you. From there another set of double doors opens and ushers you into a pleasant reception area. A smiling hostess in a crisp white shirt and black slacks or short black skirt greets you brightly. You could then choose to sit in the bar, drinking whatever it is you prefer, watching whatever nightly contest of over paid athletic men is on that night, inhaling fried cheese, nachos, and potato skins, watching the air thicken perceptibly with smoke until you think you could actually cut it, or you could choose to be seated in the main restaurant, the non smoking section even, have a few drinks, eat some real food, and crane your neck to see the score on one of the TVs cleverly positioned around the restaurant. There are even the requisite signed pictures of notable figures on the walls. This particular restaurant specialized in all things "spy". Hence, the pictures of notable people ranged from those known to have worked in the "intelligence" field How did they get George Bush to sign that picture?, to those who had portrayed spies in the movies And why did they place it in such close proximity to that photo of Roger Moore?, and, amusingly enough, even an original drawing of that ever popular cartoon pair, Rocky and Bullwinkle.

Scully walks in and sees Mulder beckon to her from one of the tables in the bar. That wouldn't have been my first choice, Scully thinks, but... She acknowledges him with a slight nod of her head. The hostess approaches her, but she indicates she is meeting someone in the bar. She walks toward him, wishing he had chosen to sit anywhere but at one of those raised tables. The chairs were so high she had to practically clamber into them; it is impossible to be graceful, cool, and ladylike while *clambering* anywhere. Nonetheless, that was where he'd chosen. Probably did it on purpose.

"Hey, Scully," he greets her. He raises a hand and the waitress comes over. There is hardly anyone else in the bar. Not too unusual for a Wednesday.

"What can I get you?" the waitress asks Scully.

Scully deliberates. Wine is probably the safest, but she just isn't in the mood tonight. That picture of Roger Moore flashes into her head. "I'll have a martini," she says. The waitress smiles, chirps a cheery "OK", and departs to deliver the drink order to the bartender.

"Scully?"

"Yeah, Mulder."

"A martini?"

"Yeah, well, I'm just not in the mood for anything else," she responds.

"Nothing else?" he smirks at her. She'd given him an opening she knew he couldn't resist.

She shrugs. "Nope, don't think so." She keeps her voice casual, wondering why exactly she has to work so hard at that.

The waitress brings her drink and asks them if they want to order. Mulder promptly orders fried this, fried that, and fried the other thing. Scully grimaces. "Can I get a chicken salad?" she asks hopefully.

"Sure. No problem." The waitress is a *very* cheery person. Scully distrusts people that cheery just on basic principle. The girl looks at Mulder's now empty glass. "Another?' "Sure," he agrees equably.

Scully takes a sip of her drink. Indescribably good. She takes a deeper sip, mentally cautioning herself to slow down some. "So what are you indulging in tonight, Agent Mulder?" Scully's voice is soft and suggestive, two things she had not intended it to be.

Mulder grins at her. "Same thing as you."

uh-oh. Does that mean he is drinking martinis or having unbidden, impure thoughts about his partner?

The waitress comes back with a glass of clear liquid with a twist of lemon floating in it. Good. Martinis. Well, mostly good. It would be nice if he were engaging in impure, unbidden thoughts about his partner.

"Martini?" Scully asks, eyebrow arched, teasingly.

"Yeah, well, they always seem to work for James Bond," he responds.

"Hmmm...James Bond? Treasury?"

Mulder laughs at her joke. "Hardly. You know, British movie superspy. Cool gadgets, great cars, and every woman he meets falls willingly into bed with him."

She nods, a smile pulling at the corners of her lips. "Oh...that Bond, James Bond."

He grins at her, the one that stops her heart and makes her hold her breath. "Yeah, that one. His girlfriends all have great names like...'

She holds up a hand. "Yes, Mulder, I know. I have brothers."

"Well, you know, it's just that there's a lot in a name. It can tell you... um...things about people."

"Great, Mulder. Just Great."

"What?"

She is smiling at him. It is almost the dazzling one, the full tilt Scully smile. Almost, but not quite.

"What, Scully?" he repeats himself.

"Just that. Scully. What exactly does that tell you?" He pauses. The banter has been wonderful. Flirting with Scully always makes him forget everything wrong in his life and focus on the one right thing. He can't banter with her about this though. "Everything I need to know. Scully."

The waitress arrives with Mulder's cheese sticks. She sets them down in the middle of the table. She checks their glasses, asks if she can get them anything else. They answer her together. "No, we're fine." They break into giggles as she walks away. An old, sometimes frustrating joke, sometimes a barrier between them, those words, but tonight nothing more than a shared amusement. Simple, clean, as little else in their life is.

Mulder picks up a cheese stick, lathers it in marinara sauce, and bites it in half. Scully watches him intensely, unaware of exactly how penetrating her eyes are. He notices her looking at him and a jolt of electricity goes through him.

"No double dipping, Mulder," she instructs him.

"Why not?"

"Do you know how many germs that spreads?" she asks in mock disbelief.

"I'm gonna give me my *own* germs, Scully?"

"No, you might give *me* your germs!"

Mulder pretends to gasp in horrified shock, "Dana Katherine Scully is going to eat fried mozzarella?"

"Girl's gotta live sometimes," she tells him. "Besides, I think this might be more healthy than the last time I decided I needed to break loose a little."

She sees the look of pain flash into his eyes. Damn. That really still bugs him.

"Sorry, Mulder," she says quietly.

"It's OK. Like you said it's not all about me."

Oh, yes it is; it always was She smiles at him, trying to coax him back into good humor. Just tell him you never slept with Ed Jerse. Tell him why you *couldn't*.

Her smile works a little of its customary magic. Why do I hate that so much? Mulder berates himself. She has a right to a life. She's an adult; if she wanted to have a ... fling... that's up to her. She's staring at him. He brushes the top of her hand with his fingers, trying to tell her it's OK. It's just that ... well, she's mine.

Scully shivers slightly as his fingers brush her hand. She relaxes. It's nearly all right again. She picks up a mozzarella stick. Since Mulder hasn't quite regained his full sense of humor yet... she dips the fried cheese into the marinara sauce. Mulder is watching. He can't bring himself to believe she will actually eat it. She lifts the cheese stick to her mouth, lowering it between her lips slowly, a look of rapt pleasure on her face. She carefully licks all the marinara sauce off. Her eyes are open and she is watching him watch her. The air between them sparks with heat, light, and electricity. She slides the cheese stick back into her mouth and gently bites it in half, chewing slowly, swallowing with great show. Mulder makes a small, completely involuntary noise at the back of his throat. Scully could swear it was a growl. His eyes light up and he says to her, "No double dipping, Scully." She breaks into a full throated, sultry laugh. The lightness of the mood has returned to them, seized them, is drawing them forward.

In companionable silence they finish off the cheese sticks. Mulder reaches over and wipes her cheek with his napkin, just as he did once years ago at a restaurant in Wisconsin. She smiles. She knows she will hold that memory in her heart as long as she has held the other. Mulder's intimate touches that stir her very soul. The touches he bestows on her with such casualness. 'You know, you could just tell me I had sauce on my face," she reminds him.

"Aw Scully, where's the fun in that?"

He looks at the picture over their table. It is the signed drawing of Rocky and Bullwinkle. "You ever watch them, Scully? Moose and Squirrel?"

She chuckles, "Sure. And you?"

He grins again. "Bullwinkle was my hero."

She cocks her head. "I can see that about you, Mulder. Always off on wild goose chases, always trying to pull a rabbit out of that hat and always finding something completely different, always getting himself in trouble. Poor Rocky."

"Yeah," he is grinning whole heartedly. "So you preferred Squirrel."

"I guess so," she agreed.

"I can see that about you, Scully. Always so sensible, always convinced Bullwinkle isn't gonna get that rabbit, but watching the show anyway, always saving Bullwinkle. Lucky Moose."

"Mulder, is this the result of an Oxford education? Is this what the FBI's best profiler thinks about in his spare time? How he and his partner are like two cartoon characters."

He laughs. "Yup. It goes back to that class: Moose and Squirrel Psychology 101. Great class, Scully."

"Any other fabulous insights, Special Agent Moose?" "Well, let's see," he pauses. She is glowing, with laughter, with comfort, with, dare he hope, contentment. "You hit on something there, Scully. Mulder, Moose. Same initial. Scully, Squirrel. And besides, Rocky did have short little legs and tiny little feet."

She snorts at him and tosses her napkin at him. "Let me remind you, Rocky could FLY."

He nods in agreement. "Do you know, Scully, one time Bullwinkle actually did get a rabbit out of the hat?"

She shakes her head in mock disbelief. "So, there's hope, huh?"

"Yeah, there's hope."

"Um...Mulder?"

"Yes, Scully?"

"Who exactly would Boris and Natasha be?" Her eyes are twinkling, challenging him to come up with something, *someone* good.

"Dare we hope? The CSM and Diana Fowley?"

"Why would we hope that?"

"Coz Boris and Natasha *never* got the best of out intrepid heroes; they *always* won in the end, Scully."

The waitress arrives with their food. She sets it in front of them. Mulder's hamburger and fries suddenly seem very appetizing to Scully, who regrets her chicken salad. Ah, well, it is one of many regrets. She looks at their empty glasses and asks if they'd like refills. "Sure," Scully shrugs, "Why not?"

The waitress looks at Mulder. He is already devouring his hamburger. He indicates "two" with his fingers. She returns quickly with their drinks.

Scully picks at her salad. The smells wafting from Mulder's fried foods are pure heaven, even if she knows they are driving his cholesterol up with every bite. She reaches her hand over and steals a fry. "I saw that," he tells her.

"Want some salad?" she asks innocently.

He shakes his head. "Is it good rabbit food?"

"Sure," she says, "if you're a rabbit."

"I knew I'd get to you at last!" he says gleefully.

"Mulder, you have not *gotten* to me..."

"I gotcha...big time!" he interrupts.

She smiles and slowly shakes her head. "OK, it smells good, but it's just tonight. I think there must be something in the air."

Mulder considers this. He's trying to decide which way he should take this. "Maybe we should open an X File?" he finally asks in a light tone.

"And that would make me the subject of how many X-Files, Mulder? No, thanks," she is smiling at him again.

"I think it would give you the record, Scully. Quite an honor, you know."

"Hard to resist when you put it like that, Mulder. But...alas, no."

Anything else, Scully, that might be hard to resist if I put it *that* way?

Almost as hard to resist as leaning over and kissing you right now, Mulder.

They continue their dinner, bantering in a way that's been missing for some time. Both are grateful for it. The tension of the last few months seems to be draining away, at least for tonight. Mulder offers to share his fries, even insists on feeding some of them to Scully. I never thought I'd find a French fry sexy.

Luckiest French fry in creation!

Mulder occasionally glances at the TV screen over Scully's head. Wizards verses Knicks. Wizards are losing. "What's the score?" Scully finally asks.

"86 to 70," he tells her.

"How much time is left?"

He responds automatically, "Just over four minutes."

"Hmm, just about over for the Wizards, isn't it?" she asks.

"Scully, I didn't know you knew anything about basketball." He is genuinely surprised.

"Six years with you Mulder. You think I learned nothing? I'm hurt."

"You never cease to amaze me, Scully."

She covers his hand with hers briefly, acknowledging the compliment. The sound on the TV is muted and rock music rolls through the bar. Some of it is old, some new. Most of it is ignored by both agents, more engrossed in their own conversation, or the simple joy of being with each other. Scully notices, however, when the Rolling Stones come on. She would have to confess a weakness for their music, if asked. This is "Start me Up". She sings the words softly, *very* softly under her breath. Mulder looks at her, face uncertain. Did I just hear what I thought I did?"

Summary: hmmm...read the title.

Dedication: to Nadine who has always had the nicest things to say about this series (and I mean *the* nicest!) and who asked for this as a Christmas present. Here you go - Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

WARNING: fluff ahead...major fluff. If you're looking for realism and good characterization, don't read any further. NoRomos - flee, flee now. OK, you've been warned...g

Somewhere along the way, Scully, I quit joking and became serious. About us. I'm no longer exactly certain when it happened. I think I used to know, as if that mattered. The more I look back I wonder if it wasn't an accumulation, a compilation of shared experience that brought me to this point. I can still trace the outlines of this tentative, on-again, off-again romance that brewed and simmered between us. Those outlines have become blurred over the years, but I visited them often, running my mind over and around them, as I yearned to run my finger along the outline of your jaw, to trace the curve of chin as I looked into your eyes.

Even a man with a memory less complete than my own would be utterly unable to forget the moment you walked into his life. I saw in you only a spy. An attractive one, but nothing more or less than an agent sent to spy on me, to hinder my work. I did my best to unnerve you, to intimidate you. Honestly, Scully, it looked like it would be an easy task. I doubt I am the first man to have underestimated you, and I know for a fact, I was far from the last. Instead of shaking you loose in Oregon, of freeing myself from you, I fell in love.

I fell for your honesty, your integrity, and your dedication, all things I had found to be in short supply in the storehouses of most people's characters. How could I not love those things in you? Diana had only recently left the X-Files. Her betrayal was fresh, cut like a thousand knife strokes to my battered heart. Years would ease that pain, blur the memory of her departure and I would later inflict upon you all I should have turned on her.

When it started, I was aching, bruised, world-weary and I found in you a reflection of the qualities I most valued in myself. Like any reflection, we were of course opposites. That didn't matter in Oregon. You believed that I believed. You wanted to find the truth as much as I did, even though we couldn't agree on the nature of that truth. And back in D.C., when confronted with hard choices, when asked, tacitly, but I'm certain clearly, to choose between your integrity and your career, you chose that which you will still have long after the F.B.I. fades from our memories. You chose the ideal, the ineffable, the intangible. In your own way, though you may not have known or intended it, your chose me.

When they took you from me, I relived a nightmare I thought could only happen once. I wept, alone, in the dark of my apartment, in the solitude of our basement office. I cursed those who had taken you, not knowing who or what they might be, only knowing my life without you was a hollow reed through which the wind raced and shrieked. I wandered, lost and inconsolable, through a maze of pain, wondering what that feeling was in my chest, the ever-present one that threatened to suffocate me.

It was only when I went with your mother and saw the grave marker she had ordered that I understood I had fallen in love with you, not just your honesty, integrity, or dedication, but with *you*, your heart, your soul, the fire in your eyes and the light that danced off of your hair. Every wound that your abduction had opened in me I had endeavored, in some way, to stitch shut, make-shift, ugly sutures that held me together, but only just. That moment ripped me open anew. I knew if you never came back I would spend the rest of my life searching not only for you, but for those who had taken you, and I would have torn them limb from limb with my own hands.

Then they gave you back, once you had served their agenda, filled their diabolic needs. We watched you. Your mother, your sister, and I watched as doctors scrambled around you, tried to fix what was broken and couldn't. Your mother prayed. Your sister chanted and searched for your 'energy'. I went after the one man I knew was responsible. I came close, Scully, the closest I've ever come, I think. I've faced him since then, faced him with my finger curled around the trigger of my weapon, but I've never been able to finish him off. If Melissa had not called me, not convinced me I needed to be at your side, I would have killed him then. But I already loved you too much not to be with you the moments I could.

If you had died, if you had followed the course laid out for you, I would be dead by now. I had grown accustomed in my life to being disbelieved, mocked, made the punchline of jokes. I had survived the battering rams of jest and incredulity by retreating into myself. I kept the world at bay, had a relationship here or there, but never with a woman who mattered deep inside, never one whose very soul created reflections within me. It was so safe that way, Scully. No one believed me? That was all right because no one mattered to me. Then you came into my life. For the first time, someone believed in me and your faith in me made me complete. That you questioned my theories never mattered, for you never questioned me. If I had lost you, lost the reflection of you I carried within me, I would have become a man unable to see himself any longer. I would have disappeared, not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with the sound of heart slowing until it ceases to beat at all. You refused to do what they expected, Scully. They underestimated you.

To my dying day I will remember looking at you, awake, smiling tiredly at me from that hospital bed. I didn't stay long, though I wanted to. Your family was with you and despite your mother's assertions to the contrary, I wasn't family. There was so much to tell you; everything I was I wanted to lay at your feet that I almost resented the claim your mother and sister had on you. They'd had their whole lives with you; mine had just begun and I was irritated at the delay, afraid I would lose my nerve, terrified I had to confide in you then or you would never have me.

With one sentence you told me not to be afraid. "Mom, I told you - it's 'Mulder'," you insisted. I smiled at you and knew everything would be all right, in its own time. I handed you your cross, the cross I had kept, had worn throughout the long months of your abduction and saw myself in your eyes. The cross I'd worn to keep you close, to feel you against me all the time shone in the overhead light, twinkled, seemed to wink at me. Fear dissolved into nothing more than sullen memory when you professed to have had the faith of *my* beliefs to sustain you.

In the months that followed, Scully, I never thought it would take so long to reach you.

I remember the moment I realized how empty my life would be without you in it, Mulder. It hit me like the proverbial freight train that I was actually in love with you. I was stunned at myself, disbelieving of my own lack of professionalism. In the days that followed this revelation I tried to determine how I'd reached that point.

I remember the day I walked into your office. You hated me, I thought. I knew you would try to drive me away. Naive and young, I resolved not only not to let you, but to reform you, to redeem you in the eyes of the Bureau. Instead I came back from all of those first cases admiring you, your persistence, your dedication, your lack of concern about the opinions of others. That you were a skilled and consummate investigator was never in doubt; what drew me to you was your passion and idealism and intensity. You never could drive me away, Mulder. I stuck. And it wasn't me who redeemed you, but you who saved me, from a life both banal and common.

I fooled myself into believing all the little moments between us were meaningless. That came to an abrupt end one spring afternoon. You handed me your gun, told me you didn't want to use it on anyone but Modell. I saw before me the man I'd dreamed of since I was a child, but I hadn't recognized you until that very minute. Tears sprung to my eyes with the knowledge that in the very second my love was born, it might be doomed to die, and that even if it lived, its existence could not be acknowledged as such. I thought I would be all right, that I could control this. I didn't imagine you could feel the same. You took my hands in yours and looked me in the eyes. I was undone, Mulder, completely, irrevocably undone, never to be put back together. You loved me, too.

For months I struggled, Mulder, to define my place in your life only in terms of our work together. Every time the world threatened to fall apart, I wrapped up the pieces tightly, holding them together to the best of my ability. Then, the cancer struck. You tried to gather me up, to shelter me in your unspoken love. I allowed you to, but only in brief moments. So many times I pushed you away, wanting to stand on my own, wanting you not to love me, trying to mend the hole you silently told me I would leave in your life before I actually left you.

Nights I laid awake, gripped in the terror of leaving this life. My hand reached for the phone so often I fast lost count of the times I exhausted myself in the struggle to break not the silence of your solitary rest. I longed for the feel of your fingers, sliding along the curve of my cheek. With an intensity bordering on obsession, I wanted to press my mouth to yours, to kiss you as I had never kissed any man, as I had never wanted to kiss any other. The feeling became a craving I could not satisfy, to know what your lips would taste like, how you would drink me in. Hidden from view I kept my desire to lie in bed with you, sated, drowsy with lovemaking. I insisted to myself I was protecting you from another loss, doing all in my power to spare you that much more pain.

The truth was, Mulder, fear held me fast. I could handle the thought of death when I looked at it in its clinical terms, the cancer that dark invader that destroys its host. I was angry, bitter, beset by regrets, but I resigned myself to its inevitability. I kept my heart locked away so that it would not argue with me pointlessly this acceptance of mine. I didn't want to know what I was losing. I couldn't.

After you found the means to save me, I told myself it would only be a matter of time until we found our ways to each other. I had no way of knowing how much further we had yet to travel.

When I look back now, Scully, when I study the map of our journey together, I am amazed that the rockiest terrain was in the year that followed Antarctica. At first I was at a loss to explain that. It should have been smoother. The events leading up to and immediately following your abduction to that icy continent had strengthened the bond between us. With the only words I had, I had poured out my heart to you, watched your eyes fill with tears, known that the feeling I'd had all those years before in your hospital room was as true as ever. Without words, you had returned the sentiment when you declared, once it was all over, that your place was with me, with the X-Files.

It took me a long while to understand it, to see what had gone wrong, and how we almost lost each other to the details of a mundane existence, when all the years on the X-Files had only drawn us closer. I ache for the time I lost with you. I let a viper into my life and told you she was no such thing. I made you question my commitment to you, my trust in you, my belief in your integrity, dedication, and motives.

And you, Scully, so true to yourself, told me nothing, just built stronger and thicker the walls around yourself. You told me once, sniped at me really, that I knew how you felt about that woman. In that instant I should have taken you in my arms, held you tightly and whispered out my love for you, begged you to talk to me. Instead I lashed back at you, slicing at you with words that might as well have been daggers, letting you know how well you hid your feelings. Words I regretted as they left my mouth. They hit their mark with deadly accuracy and gave you all the reason you needed to add yet another layer to your defenses.

That year was a trial, Scully, to my soul and yours. We chafed one another, lashed out with words and deeds calculated to damage. It is no minor miracle that neither of us walked away. I sometimes think we both stayed because neither of us can bear to be the loser. This too shall pass, everyone quotes and that year did, at last.

When I faced death, as you had only two short years previously, the hurts, the barbs, the anger melted away. You risked everything to save me. Though I was able to hear your thoughts, the knowledge I gained meant little, compared to cupping your face in my hands and holding you as you shed more tears for all that has fallen to the sword of our quest. Your thoughts I had been able to hear, but thoughts can be treacherous. The morning you came to tell me of Diana's death, you took down the walls around your heart and let me in. And in that there can be no treachery, no deceit, not in the truthful congress of two hearts which love deeply and for all time.

I began to count time, no longer in years, but in days, trusting it would only be a handful of those before I could claim you and offer myself up without reservation. After seven years, a handful of days was a small matter.

You kissed me on New Year's Eve, Mulder, and teased me after- wards. Your words were light, airbrushed with irony, but as important as any you've ever said to me. You cut to the fear we both carried inside. You told me the world didn't end. No, I reassured you, it didn't. No one has ever known me as you do; no one has ever let me know him as well as you have let me. The world kept spinning quite normally, placidly even. The arm you slipped around my shoulders as we left the hospital that night was a different one than ever before. It was the arm of a man taking possession, staking his claim.

We have always been consummate in the art of silence, Mulder. When we do talk we most often say everything and mean nothing. At times that has brought us down, hailed us close to ruin. At others it has served us well, as we let our actions speak the volumes our lips fail to utter.

I suppose life had conditioned me to expect a moment larger than life, a repeat of the scene in your hallway, minus the bee, of course. Even a second drugged "I love you" would not have surprised me too much. What I never expected was better than I ever could have imagined.

Our case wrapped up, you were driving me home from the airport. Uttering dire imprecations against the shortsighted fool who had booked us a return flight that landed during rush hour, we sat in traffic. My lap top lay open on my lap as I used the opportunity to make case Notes, my attempts at conclusion thwarted by falling darkness. The feel of your hand, lifting mine from the keyboard sent a jolt of shock and desire through me. Without hesitation you brought my hand to your lips and kissed the back very softly. Your eyes never left mine.

I'm not certain who was more surprised, Scully, when I took your hand, me or you. I had envisioned a big moment, a romantic dinner out, a moonlit declaration of my love for you, a hot, lusty teenagers-in-love sort of kiss. Watching you as the darkness deepened around us, as your hair caught the last rays of the sun, nothing seemed more right to me. I had never been more certain of anything in my life than I was of that moment. You were surprised, but unresisting. I watched you watch me. I watched your eyes light with love and desire. I don't think you knew about the small, luxurious, contented smile that rested on your lips. All this time, Scully, we were so afraid the world would end. It did, in its way. Everything I'd been without you burned away with the fading sun and the moon rose on a new world, a world in which nothing can separate us.

I held your hand and praised the engineer who designed automatic gearshifts the entire remainder of the drive to your apartment. I played with your fingers, stroking them, twining and untwining them with my own. I ran my thumb over the soft pillows of your palm and felt your hand curl around me. I tasted the tips of each of your fingers, placing small, delicate kisses on each. You watched me the whole time, discovering the world anew as I did.

I wondered what I was going to say to you as I parked the car and turned off the ignition. I thought I had to say something, for we had both kept silent too long. I turned to get a better look at you. Your face was relaxed, your hair a bit disarrayed from a long day. Your eyes shone deep blue in the lamplight. You took my breath away. Trite as that sounds, you did just that. I realized that although I'd wanted you for years, I had not once realized the depth of that desire, a desire so fierce, so undeniable it had woven itself into the very fabric of my being. If I live to be a hundred, Scully, I will never stop wanting you. My mind wandered in useless circles until you leaned over and kissed me.

Your lips were soft, smooth, tasted slightly of the coffee you'd had on the plane. Their touch was light, almost hesitant. And more thrilling than any kiss I'd ever received. Blood sung in my veins, thrummed in my ears, as it coursed through my body, burning away the memory of the years we'd spent denying this, erasing completely every stinging, loaded word we'd ever spoken to one another. I had not lived until that moment, finding only a pale imitation of life in the unspeakable refuge of dangerous women, of anonymous lovers, of visions floating on a screen. Love, given and received, awoke the sleeper.

You drew away from me, breaking contact gently. You searched my eyes, looking for surety that you had not made a mistake. I smiled at you and grasped your hand more tightly in mine. In answer, I pulled you back to me, holding the back of your head in my free hand, kissing you fiercely this time. I wondered how long it would take both of us, such competent, confident professionals, to have the same poise in our relationship, for I more than half expected you to resist me, resist this insistent show of desire. Instead, you returned my passion as intently as I bestowed it, sliding your tongue against my lips. Your mouth opened to mine. Hot, wild minutes passed until we both broke, panting, steaming the windows with our breath. Your face was flushed and your hair more disarrayed than before.

"Mulder," you said, voice ragged, shaky. "Um...not here." You waved a hand around, drawing my attention back to the fact we had been sitting in a car on your street making out like horny teenagers.

"Afraid your Mom might turn on the porch light and catch us, Scully?" I asked you, a big, wicked grin on my face.

You smiled back at me and said, "More like the D.C. cop who lives on the second floor and goes to work about now."

"Think he'd tell your Mom?" I persisted.

You rewarded my pathetic humor with another long, drawn-out kiss. "It's not Mom, I'm worried about. She'd probably be thrilled. It's word getting back to the Bureau I don't like to think about."

I kissed your forehead and agreed, adding, "Besides cars tend to be a bit ...er ... cramped."

"Yeah," you agreed as a sly look crossed your face. "Maybe later we can find the grave of some nice famous person, maybe a writer even, and *really* stretch out."

I stared at you in disbelief, my mouth unhinged, my lower jaw threatening to part company with the rest of my skull.

"Face it, Mulder," you told me, "there is very little I don't know about your past deeds."

Reattaching my jaw and convincing it to function enough so I could speak, I asked, "But can you tell me my future, Scully?"

You leaned up to my ear and sent shivers down my spine with your whisper, "I'll *show* you."

I released your hand at long last, partially amazed our two hands hadn't fused together permanently. We got out and I opened the trunk, getting out your bag. I hesitated, despite your last words to me. Then I grabbed my own bag and followed you inside and upstairs. I thought we might change into casual clothes and go out for dinner. At least that was going to be my excuse for bringing up my overnight bag.

I need not have gone to the scant trouble I did to manufacture an excuse. You shut the door to your apartment behind me and were in my arms as soon as I set everything down. Your lips were hot and furious, attacking my mouth, consuming me, choking off any protest I might have made, however unlikely. The feel of your tongue sliding along my own, along the roof of my mouth elicited from me a desperate, hungry groan. I wrapped my arms around you, lifting you off the floor, and walking with you to your couch. We tumbled down together, somehow ending up seated side by side, lips pressed tightly together. My hands found your hair, tangled in it, caressed it. I felt you run your hands down my back. Even through the wool of my suit jacket you left a trail of fire along my spine. Reluctantly I gave into the need for oxygen and pulled away from you.

Your eyes were dazed, your lips full and wet, gleaming from the long moments of kissing. Your skin burned scarlet along your cheekbones and flushed pink over the rest of your face. Here was the woman I had wondered about, but never dared to believe I would find. Through the long patient years, the inevitable crises, the fleeting joys and triumphs, I had envisioned you like this. The man in me accustomed to defeat, worn out by those same years, crises, and reversals of fortune, hadn't quite allowed himself to hope for this much, though. I marveled that despite the damage we've inflicted on one another over the years, in this end, could not defeat us, could not stop us from reaching this point. I waited for you to say something, anything. Only fools rush in, they say. I'm the one who rushes in, in this partnership and for once, I hesitated, wanting to do nothing to kill this fragile newborn world.

"Mulder..." you purred, gazing up at me as your hands slipped off my suit jacket. "I'll be right back." I should have known you are too anal retentive to let my jacket lie in a crumpled heap on your floor. I watched you as you hung it up and deposited the hanger in your coat closet.

"You hungry?" you asked, walking back to me.

"Uh..."

"Food, Mulder. For food," you cautioned me.

I grinned at you as you slid back into my arms. "In that case, no not really," I whispered in your ear and felt you shiver against me. "You?"

My only answer was the barest shake of your head as our lips met again. I don't think I'll ever get quite enough of kissing those fabulous lips of yours, but my brain, what little of it was functioning, did eventually prod me to branch out. I kissed my away along your jawline to the spot that has fascinated me for years, the just below and behind your ear lobe, where your jaw ends. The flesh there is tender and smooth, as I fantasized it would be. My kiss made you jump and suck in your breath which you held for long moments, releasing it in one hot, whoosh that ruffled my hair as it rushed past. "Scully?" I whispered. "What do you want?"

For the first time I couldn't look at you, afraid of what I might or might not see. I waited for your answer. Your hands framed themselves around my face and you lifted my mouth to yours. You pressed your lips lightly to mine, much as you had that first time in the car. You whispered one word against my mouth. "You."

I met your eyes. In them I saw everything good the world has ever contained for me and everything I've ever wished for it to hold in store. I saw the unconditional love I'd known so long ago as a child, the forgiveness of every woman I've ever failed, the faith no one else has ever put in me, the desire I've dreamed about finding in a woman's eyes, in your eyes. I saw a past I could leave behind me, a present I could revel in, and a future I could look forward to.

I unwrapped myself from you, stood up, and picked you up. Your arms wrapped around my neck and your hands played with my hair. I rested my head against yours briefly, planting a gentle kiss on your nose. "Would you believe me right now if I told you I love you?"

You smiled at me and drew a tender hand across my cheek. "Yes, Mulder, I'd believe you."

"Good, because I do love you, Dana."

You grimaced at me. "Mulder..." you growled.

"You're right. It doesn't work for us, does it?"

You shook your head and giggled softly at me.

"OK. I love you, Scully."

I watched you catch your breath, saw the hitch in your chest, and watched tears fill your eyes. "Scully? What ... ?"

You ducked your head softly, hiding your face in the fall of your hair. "I'm fine, Mulder," you promised me, your voice tiny and weepy.

"Then why are you crying? It's not exactly the reaction a guy hopes for, you know?" I teased you a bit.

You look up, tears trickling down your face, leaving gleaming tracks of moisture along the soft skin of your cheeks. You smiled at me. "Mulder, I love you, too."

"Then why? Scully, tell me. Don't keep things from me anymore. Please," I pled with you.

"It's just that," you started to speak, before your breath caught again on the hook of your crying. You gazed up me, brushed your fingers along my lips. "Do you know how long I've waited just to hear you say you love me?"

I kissed you again, resuming our interrupted sojourn to your bedroom. I laid you down on top of your bed, looking around this room that is so representative of you - tidy, organized, subtle, uniquely you. This journey, begun so long ago, fraught with so much heartache and doubt, had led

Summary: Scully looks back on how Mulder has changed her life and how she has been an active and willing participant in those changes.

Not song fic, but inspired by Faith Hill's "Me". I didn't even use any of the lyrics in this one!

Dedication: This one is dedicated purely to JC. Your friendship is deeply meaningful to me. Your praise has been the stuff dreams are made of. You have written words to me that no one, aside from my darling mother, ever said and have given me such confidence. Thank you.

Notes: I love the song this is based on, called "Me". It's about a woman who comes into her own, which is what Scully has certainly done. But, more than that, I owe the writing of this story to the greatest living American author, Pat Conroy. I stayed up too late re-reading "Beach Music" and then the rhythms and melodies of this story would not leave me alone until I wrote it down. If you've never read Conroy, I can't even begin to tell you what you are missing. His has a gift rarely matched in any language. I highly recommend going out and immediately reading "Beach Music" or "The Prince of Tides". OK, I've had my say. If you've hung with me this far, then let me quote Mulder and say, "Let's get it on..."

What a world we inhabit, Mulder. You and I. A world populated by shadow-chased men whose fear-haunted eyes are so well hidden beneath their convivial masks of disinterested ruthlessness. Driven by the all-encompassing human desire to sustain themselves at any cost, they surrendered their souls to the darkness within as they struck monstrous bargains with odd faced, smooth skinned, otherworldly terrorists.

I used to think this was a dream, Mulder, from which I would wake, in the safety of your arms. Your fingers would brush away the hair clinging to my cheeks. Your tender lips would kiss away my tears. You would murmur my name, part mantra, part paen, part balm to my wounded soul. Now I know, Mulder, that this nightmare is our life. The only place in which I will ever wake up, safe and comfortably ensconced in your arms, is, ironically enough, in my dreams.

So, Mulder, we traverse the landscape of this lie-studded world, vainly sifting the sands for grains of truth. The Navy Captain's daughter awaits a battle plan that's as yet unformed because we can see not our enemy. She struggles to define the rules of engagement of this world. Rules etched, variably, in pudding, in snow melting in the desert, in the blood of families, in the Black Oil. Alien oil stained black with the indelible ink of fear, destruction, death, *and* answers. Endlessly we march to a fate we but dimly sense, to a rendezvous both required and hideous. This is our life, Mulder. This world we inhabit.

I wish, Mulder, that I could blame you for making me a citizen of this bleak fatherland. I've tried a few times, shifting the guilt to your soul, but I found it was all the same real estate, just a different subdivision. The truth is I chose you. The night I let you tell me about Samantha, I chose to begin my tentative exploration of this territory. I began moving my belongings over the border the first time I reported to Blevins, open faced, heart racing, knowing that for nearly the first time in my adult life I was doing that which no one expected of Dana Scully. I applied for citizenship the day I overheard some describe me as ' Mrs. Spooky', and ignored it. You've spent years instructing me in its mutable laws, treading its quicksand highways, inculcating in me a distrust of nearly everyone who's never visited our little demesne. You taught me to examine the passports of those tourists who wandered our way, turning many back at the frontier. Every lesson I sought to learn and to learn well, studious out of necessity, still a good pupil to the last.

You found in me, Mulder, reserves of strength, depths of emotion, and fires of passion I hardly knew I possessed. You handed me the keys to this vault and ushered me within, but the taking of what was there was all mine. The strength we found I hide under tailored suits, well written reports, and unfailing marksmanship. None of these are strength themselves, only cold manifestations of it. Only in you and with you is this strength allowed its true form. The emotion we unlocked I allow to roam beneath my skin, to race along the courses of my blood, rarely entering my eyes. Afraid to love none but those I was bidden to by the ties of family, I learned from you the great price true love carries and the great rewards it brings, all without uttering a single word. The passion we awakened shocked and terrified me. Before you, all my passions were easily categorized and referenced. You brought to my life a need for a truth greater than the cold details of science. I learned to seek truth in all things. I began to demand truth complete with all its murky implications, its messy exhortations, and its incoherent imprecations. With you I exchanged a life of sterile order for the dual citizenship of madness and chaos. And for that, I thank you.

You've freed me, Mulder, with your unconventional thinking and your disregard of protocol, to be that which I never was before. I was Starbuck, Captain William Scully's favorite child. A heavy burden borne willingly by a loving daughter. In Melissa he found a rebel; in Bill a self-image more naval than himself; in Charlie an image blurred by softness; in me he found himself. With me he shared his passion for the sea in all its forms, taught me to respect it, and to relish it. Always a just man, his favoritism never extended to matters of discipline. He made certain I was as well schooled a sailor as my siblings, but it was the look in his eyes he could not disguise. A look missing from those eyes when Missy, Bill, or Charlie disappointed; a look infinitessimally different from the one that lurked in the halls of his eyes when I disillusioned him, and a look I alone could read. As a child, as an adolescent, as a young woman, it was my father's disapprobation I feared, his pride that in which I luxuriated. A strict man, a loving man, a man who taught me how to love difficult men, men unaccustomed to the softer uses of language.

I loved my father, Mulder. Make no mistake. He prepared me for the woman I became. He prepared me for you. At first I even saw you as I saw my father, a man to please. I changed my hair, chose my clothes by gauging your reactions to me. Then I found that in this world, our world, you weren't seeing any of those things, not really. You were wired to a camera, about to face a madman with an awesome ability to bend the wills of others to his own. You knelt in front of me. You had asked me to smile and I tried. I watched you stare into my soul and read every word written there, etched in the sandstone layers of my heart. In a world where souls are lines on a map dotted with land mines, ours join together to form a powerful realm. As you read my soul, I read yours, delighting in what I found there. I am torn that in that moment there was no room for response. Ache set in later, when we shut the doors, tacit and wordless, on that response, waiting for the day we flee this haunted land. A day that grows dimmer and less possible with every minute we endure here.

In this world, our world, Mulder, I am fully me. All the components of my life, of my character came together in this place we inhabit. I am not separate from the woman I was once; I am her, completely and totally now, as never before. I never would have found all of her anywhere but here, with you. For in this world is my strength, my love, and my passion. They shine in this world, a lamp, a beacon in the shadows and the dark men take aim at that light. They take aim at you, Mulder. And in this dark, dank world where we battle demons unseen by eyes no

Title: Faith 9: I Love You
Author: Nynaeve
Written: April 1999
e-mail: mtknigh@ibm.net
Rating: PG
Category: MSR, implied RST
Spoilers: Milagro, various other well-known episodes throughout
Keywords: Mulder/Scully romance; Mulder POV; No-Romos run and hide now.
Timeline: Day after "Milagro" and therefore before the wonderful events of "The UnNatural" (thank you, Mr. Duchovny)
Disclaimer: Yes, I know, they belong to Chris Carter, 1013, and a bunch of other legal entities. Summary: Mulder decided, in the wake of events with Padgett, to tell Scully how he feels. Dedication: This one is dedicated, like the last, to JC. Your friendship is deeply meaningful to me. Your praise has been the stuff dreams are made of. You have written words to me that no one, aside from my darling mother, ever said and have given me such confidence. This friendship keeps getting better and better. I can hardly wait for the pilgrimage... Thank you. And thanks to my husband, who's slowly becoming my beta-reader, as well as doing goofy things like sitting with me on the floor so I can find just the right words to describe things. Feedback: is saved, replied to, and re-read frequently. mtknigh@ibm.net Notes: This one turned out to be pretty darn fluffy. Sometimes, it's downright silly. I decided that's OK; sometimes silly works. Anyway, if you want to tell me Mulder and Scully get out of character in this one, I already know that. I had a long talk with them about it and couldn't convince them to behave themselves. g I hope you enjoy this for the fluff that it is.

Mulder's Apartment
sometime around dawn
the first morning A.P. (after Padgett)

I dwell, out of time, as thought coalesces in my brain. Teetering on the softly blurred edge of sleep and wakefulness, I will the vision I dream to continue its tenuous hold on me. My mind complies. Almost. The vision remains, its ecstatic colors leeched into a monochrome by ever-encroaching reality. I struggle against disappointment, If I can adjust myself to a chalky-faced phantom of you, I can still hold you in my arms, whisper words of love, desire, and faith into your ear. I can still hear your voice, husky, hushed in the stillness, telling me.... about some case. Damn.

The dream vanishes abruptly, the light switch of my subconscious emphatically switched 'off'. I open my reluctant eyes to a gray world. Pallid morning light feebly creeps into the room, fighting a losing battle against the sudden spring rain. The panes of glass are splashed with droplets of water. In the faint dawn, they cast the barest shadows across my floor. Dim ghosts of the tears you shed in my arms, overwhelmed for once by fear and pain. I hesitate, before sighing and getting out of bed. I walk toward the bathroom for

a shower, feeling with every step that I am treading upon those tears. Aching, wishing to hold you in places other than my dreams, in moments

other than crisis.

I'll be early to work again. As usual...

As I drive to work, I think about us, about nothing but us. Cassandra led us to believe the end of the world we know is imminent. I should be tracking down conspiracies, hunting up vaccines, but I can't. Things have been so wrong between us that I can focus on nothing but how to mend what's broken. In my dreams, I know exactly what to say to you, how to make you understand me, how to apologize for my thoughtlessness. In my dreams I tell you, time and again, that I love you. I tell you that you love me too. In my dreams, you meet me in the middle of this desolate highway, as you've always met me.

In waking, I'm driven to distraction, tormented by the ache I can't heal. In the waking world, I don't have the words. Nothing in my history prepared me for you, prepared me for loving someone so strong and whole and real. So, each today drifts into tomorrow as I vainly promise myself that I will lay my soul bare to you, beg you to read all that you have there writ. Tomorrow evolves silently into yesterday and I have done nothing but long to touch you - your body, your soul, your passion.

I have done nothing but crave your touch against my skin. In waking, I've stolen your willingness to meet me because my attempts at humor are the only pathetic apologies I know how to make. In waking, I am more solitary than I've ever been.

As I make my way to my office, *our* office, in the basement, I promise myself again that today I will loosen my tongue. The words I need to say, the words you need to hear, will cascade from my lips in elegiac melodies of love and fulfillment. Yesterday you clung to me, fingers gripping my

flesh desperately. You broke down and sobbed as I've never known you to

do. I held you as long as you allowed me to, feeling your warmth against me, slowly convincing my reeling brain that you were not dead. That comprised my first thought upon seeing you lying prone on my floor, bloody, pale, disarrayed. Coherent thought fled me as I hastened toward

you, thinking not to check for a pulse, but intending to gather you up, will you to live by the sheer force of my need for you. Your terrorized shriek was a chorus of deliverance to me; I knew you were still alive, thus still mine. I *knew* what Padgett had

known, the moment I saw you there. You are mine, as I am yours, completely, heart, mind, and soul. As you shed wild, hysterical tears, venting your

fear, your rage, I felt you let me in. I know it is my name engraved on

your heart. That same heart 'the stranger' tried to wrest from your chest, even as you fought him, unwilling to surrender it to him. Yesterday was

not the time to tell you. Shock and recovery demanded your attention.

This morning you will walk into this office, sit at your desk and begin calmly filling out paperwork. I know you. In all of our yesterdays, I have let you do that. Countless times you've let me in such a small distance, only to shut me out as soon as was convenient. Not this morning, Scully. Yesterday, you let me all the way in. You allowed me to see you in all your glorious humanity and there's no backing away now. Distances have eviscerated us; serenity continues to evade us. Facades we have maintained. False fronts composed of ever growing silence amid the babble of trivialities. My tongue is a dagger sheathed within my lips, awaiting an opportunity to cut through the towering walls you've raised to guard your soul. I seek not to bloody you, but to unbind you from these fetters, with swift words of delicate import.

This morning you will sit at your desk and I will kneel beside you, quietly. I will take one of your hands in mine and brush it softly. I will search the depths of your eyes. I know what I will see. You will be afraid of my actions, fearful I am going to say the words that will change everything. Fearful, too, that I will insist you say them as well. Terrified that you will be unable to resist saying them to me. You will be right to be terrified because you will be unable to resist. All that took place yesterday, Scully, makes resistance impossible. Truthfully, Padgett knew too much, but knowledge is power. We have been empowered by what he revealed upon leaving that interrogation. *We* are about to benefit from that experience. I am going to hold your hand, brush your cheek, just once. You are going to shiver at my touch, try to look away from me, but my gaze is going to demand yours and you are going to comply, because, this time, compliance will be what is in your heart. I am going to whisper in your ears the words I should have showered on you long ago. I am no longer afraid of those words, spoken time out of memory by countless men and women. I no longer need to speak them under a haze of drugs, so that you will only half believe me, half hope they are true. You are going to learn that I have never spoken them to anyone I wasn't

related to by blood, that they are for you and you alone. No, not alone. We won't be alone anymore, either of us. These words will be for you and you *only*.

Hoover Building
X-Files Basement Office
8:30 a.m., first morning A.P.

You amaze me, Scully. No matter how often calamity stalks us, grasps us in its razor claws, slashes at our very beings, you compose yourself beautifully, almost effortlessly. Or so I used to think. Now I wonder how many times you hid from me, relegated your fear, rage, and despair to an ever-growing lightless corner of your soul. How many tears did you shed in silence, weeping in the solitary darkness of your chosen loneliness for all you've lost? I have little doubt that our colleagues, any who encountered you this morning, must have been impressed with your smooth, calm demeanor. But now, I know better. For a single moment yesterday you threw the gates open and ushered me into the territory you so assiduously patrol. I underestimated you in so many ways. I thought I needed you more than you needed me. I put you on a pedestal, claimed you were my one in five billion, insisted that you make me a whole person. You are and you do, but yesterday I took you off that pedestal. I held you as your body spasmed in the terror of hideous memory. I remembered what I'd forgotten: you are not a woman with the strength of ancient marble, not a woman of ageless carved features, not a woman devoid of feminine needs and wants. You are flesh and blood, warm, tender, needful. I thought this was about me, my needs. It's taken me too long to see past that. I believe that I'm your one in five billion, too, Scully; I believe that I make you a whole person. I want to believe. It's taken me too long to remember you are as human as I am. I'm not going to forget again. And I'm not going to let you forget either.

You walk in, suit immaculately dark, white shirt dazzling against black wool. Crisp lines and angles define you. You can't hide from me anymore the rounded edges I beheld yesterday. Your skin is pale underneath your flawlessly applied makeup. Not a strand of your "titian" hair is out of place. Oh, how very right Padgett was in describing your fatal beauty. Only your eyes give away your secret. They flash at me, a greeting, a question, a warning. You struggle to keep your heart's desire out of those shining blue pools of light, but you fail. This morning you fail and I rejoice.

"Scully, you shouldn't be here..." I begin to say. But, I know you, where else would you be today?

You interrupt me, predictably, "I'm fine, Mulder." You aren't quite emphatic enough to keep the faint tremor from your voice. I say nothing, only gaze at you. Oh, all right, Holman, I do *gaze* at Agent Scully. And I like it. You drop your eyes. They search for something, anything to occupy you, to give you an excuse to hide from me. You see an interoffice memo on the desk and seize upon it, a hungry child grabbing the last chocolate chip cookie couldn't have done it any more keenly. You sit down to read it. I know you are aware that I have not ceased watching you. At last you speak again. "Mulder, really, I'm okay. Yesterday was ... horrendous, but it's over. I want to thank you for being there for me. I don't quite know what came over me...." I listen to you babble. You actually are babbling. It's odd. I never thought you'd babble. Still, I shouldn't be surprised when you

babble in medical terms, with cold precision, using words to distance yourself from me. Only this time you left your map at home. You circle, you meander, but you can't quite break away from me. Your eyes beg me to help you, as I always have before. Those were our yesterdays Scully.

"Scully," I interrupt you. I decide to cut right to the heart (bad choice of words) of the mystery. I say, "You weren't being weak."

"Mulder! I broke down, crying. I was sobbing hysterically in my partner's arms." You are trying to thrust me from you, as always, but this time I'm not going anywhere.

"You had every reason to," I reassure you, though you don't wish for my assurances; you crave my denials.

"I'm a trained FBI agent. I shouldn't have...shouldn't need..." you falter.

"Shouldn't what, Scully? Shouldn't be human?" I ask you. "It's too bad you feel that way, because you are human. I think Padgett reminded us both of that."

You look at me, tears starting in your eyes. "What if I don't want to be?" you ask softly.

I feel tears in my own eyes. Have you denied yourself so long, Scully, that you don't even want to belong to this flawed, imperfect race of beings? A stranger nearly ripped the living, beating, physical heart from your chest yesterday; you're afraid I'm going to do the same, aren't you - take what's yours from you and give you nothing in return, leave you dying by inches as the blood stops pumping through your veins and arteries. I consider you

carefully, kneel next to you, take one hand in mine. I open my eyes to you and tell you, "I want you to be."

You shake your head in response and tears fling themselves from your eyes, a brief, private rain shower. For the second time in less than a day, Scully is crying in my presence. Tears continue to trickle down your face and your shoulders begin to shake slightly. I reach up and lace one hand through your hair, feeling its silken, clean texture slide through my fingers. My palm comes to rest, cupping your skull gently. I lean in to you. Into your ear, I whisper, softly, "I love you, Scully. Let me." For the second time in less than a day, Scully is clinging to me, fingers kneading the flesh of my back convulsively. Today your sobs are nearly silent, only the wracking motions of your body and the air I feel you draw past my cheek as you cling to me to tell me you are yet crying.

Silently I berate myself for not taking this step sooner. I cling to guilt, easily, willingly even, for some events. Easier to be guilty, to live under a cloud of failure than to go on. I told you once as we sat shivering on a rock in the middle of a lake, that I'd often wished for a peg leg. I claimed it would take so much pressure to succeed off a person, in that scenario. I've honed this guilt to a perfect point, become a virtuoso of self-castigation for the same reasons. Better that I've never truly loved a woman because I failed to protect my sister on that long ago night. Better that than I've never loved a woman because I've been too afraid, too self-centered, or too shallow. Better not to involve myself with Scully because our enemies might use that against us. Better that than to discover a woman like Scully would never want me, never stay with me, reject me outright. Better to spend a life guilt-ridden. Better that than to admit my fears. Better never to attempt than to attempt and fail. How long my cowardice has kept me from your heart; how much time I have squandered, not in the pursuit of Truth, but in the flight of fear. Would that I could relive every moment when I should have told you, from the first to the last. You would not have ended up on my floor, shocked, terrified, nearly ripped open by a malevolent presence.

Duane Barry kidnapped you, then let *them* take you and I began to believe that I felt more for you than FBI protocol allowed. You were returned after months, comatose, with little hope of recovery and I knew that I loved you in a way foreign to me. You made your way back to your family, and to me, and I began the long task of denying my heart, telling myself you would never feel the same way. I reasoned that you were the best partner I'd ever had. I feared if you knew my feelings you would leave our partnership. I chose work as a means to keep you in my life, loving you silently all the while. I should have told you then. Would you have fascinated Padgett if he'd seen happiness at home on your face, residing in your eyes, instead of the loneliness he knew inhabited your heart?

I hid from you all I felt, until one inevitable moment when circumstances caught up with us. Modell. You saw in my eyes all the words I would not let myself say. "I love you, Scully." I could have had a neon sign, but I doubt it could have clarified the matter any more for you. I think I expected you, wanted you even, to see it that day; if I died I wanted you to know. What amazed me was what I saw in you. "I love you as well, Mulder." That's how I imagine you saying it, Scully. Not with the word 'too'; that only implies 'also', but with the phrase 'as well'. "As well as your soul loves me, mine loves you," is what lies within, between, and around us. Forever, for better or worse, Scully. And there's been plenty of worse; the better is in the quiet moments. The unspoken words between us carry the better. 'As well', Scully. I should have told you then. Padgett would have seen not only that 'Agent Scully is in love', but that the object of her affection returns the feeling without reservation.

How many moments since that one, since I found in your eyes the synthesis of my own emotions? Slipped through my fingers, like fog on a cold morning, are all the days, hours, and minutes we could have shared. Walls around each of our hearts could have been dismantled, slowly, with great care, not shattered as they were yesterday. Less rubble to clamber over in our tattered landscape of a relationship. In the dark, holding you tightly to me, I would have secreted in your ears all the strange details of my life, not just the few ones I'd chosen, hoping it was enough to give you insight, but not comprehension. You would have whispered your love to me, confided in me the darkness of your heart. Together, we would have rebuilt that wall around our joint hearts, keeping the darkness that stalks us at bay, stronger in one conjoined soul than in two, struggling, parted, seeking each the other. Nothing and no one could have slipped past us; no harm from without could have caused the grievous wounds that led us to yesterday.

I whisper again, as I kneel beside you, cradling your head, stroking one hand, I whisper, "I love you, Scully. Please let me." In response, you cry harder. I feel you clutch at me more tightly and I shift so that I can gather you to me. You slip out of the chair and into my arms. The rational part of my mind, the part that likes my job, especially the paycheck it brings, is really hoping Skinner doesn't walk in about now. The emotional part of me could care less, wanting only to hold you, to tell you I love you, to kiss your tears away, to hear you admit you love me.

You pull away from me, slightly. Your tears are tapering off, the shaking has subsided somewhat, your breathing is beginning to regulate, come more evenly. You looks at me, befuddled. "I'm so sorry," I croon softly. "So sorry I didn't say it before, Scully. I love you."

"Mulder, don't," you say.

I hush you gently. "Not this time, Scully. Not after everything that happened with Padgett. We've come too close to losing each other too many times. So, no more. I love you and this time you are going to believe me."

You are staring at me, giving me a look similar to the one you give me when I expound my wilder theories. The emotions I've learned to read in your eyes are there, laid out for the well trained observer. Today I'm not going to underestimate any part of them. I will walk softly through the minefield that composes your terror. I will prove indubitably my case to the disbelief that inhabits your soul. I will sing joyful arias to the felicity that soars within your heart. I will submit eagerly to the desire that whelms your form. You told me bare moments ago that you don't want to be human. I intend to remind you exactly how remarkable that experience can be.

"Mulder..." your voice is soft, broken; your eyes plead desperately with me. "Everything would change if...." You stop, your voice trailing off. You glance down to where your hand has been idly returning my caresses. You stop, try to pluck your hand from mine. I take hold of your fingers, gingerly but insistently.

I lean my forehead against yours, cradling you as securely as I can. My lips are mere centimeters from yours. The words I whisper flow over them. I tell you, "Everything has already changed, Scully." I close my eyes. I brush a hesitant kiss over your lips. This gentlest of contact sends heatwaves through me. Your lips flutter in response and I resist all temptation to crush my lips against yours, to plunder your mouth. My hands, quite of their own volition, stroke your hair. Hunger and aching desire are sparked into blazing flames within my soul, having lain dormant, ruthlessly tamped down for too long. One slight, trembling kiss, Scully, and I'm lost, hopelessly, wonderfully lost.

I open my eyes. Yours are still closed. Your face is pale, tears have streaked your careful make-up, staining the skin around your eyes and upon your cheeks. Your hair snares all the poor, pathetic light that is allowed into this gloomy office, reflects it back upon us in a burst of luminous color, one of the colors in my dreams. That hair, the stuff of my dreams, falls over my shoulder. You open your eyes slowly. They are the blue of the deep ocean as you stare at me. Almost without warning, your arms snake around my shoulders and you clutch me to you, as you did yesterday. Your fingers are gentle now as they massage my back. I am surprised to find you sobbing again.

"Scully. Scully," I say softly in your ear. "What....Why?"

Through your tears, with stops and starts, you choke out your response. "All of it...Mulder...so much wasted." You pull back to look at me. You begin taking deep, slow breaths, forcing yourself back to tranquillity. Your bring a small, exquisite hand to brush my cheek. "Mulder, I love you, as well."

"I know, Scully. I know," I tell you. You giggle as you thump my chest. You begin to protest, to question, to ... I stop you with a kiss. As tentative and delicate as our first kiss may have been, this one contains all the fire and passion we bring to our quest. Never before have we allowed this fire to build between us, yet we both leap into the flames. Together we will be consumed and together rise from the ashes, stronger, whole for the first time in our lives.

Your fingers find their way into my hair, your nails scratching my scalp lightly. I shiver at your touch. Your lips are pliant under mine, as I taste them, savoring this moment, savoring you. An image comes unbidden to my mind, the image we must present, lips seared together in heat, arms around each other, seated unglamorously on the floor next to the desk. I can't stop myself; laughter bubbles out of me. I begin to shake with mirth. You break our kiss and thump me again.

"Mulder," you growl, a note of mock hurt in your husky voice. You know me well enough to know some errant thought has crossed my mind. "I know it's been a while since I've practiced this, but I don't think it's a laughing matter." You are grinning at me.

I kiss the tip of your nose. "Scully, we are sitting on the floor of our basement office, wrapped tightly in each others arms, kissing each other like there's no tomorrow ... " You begin giggling with me and soon we are both laughing

wholeheartedly.

"Mulder, let's get out of here," you say at last.

We disengage, untangle ourselves from one another. I feel lost without you in my arms. How quickly the physical reality of holding you ingrained itself into my whole being. With little of your habitual grace, you grip the edge of the desk and haul yourself into a standing position. Playfully arching an eyebrow at me, you hold out a hand, offering me help up. I accept your proffered hand, tugging on you, watching you unbalance slightly as I threaten to topple you right back into my arms. You giggle my name and I release your hand, jumping lightly to my feet. I sweep you into an embrace, cherishing the feel of you close. Your smile fades a little. You bow your head until it rests against my chest. "Everything has changed." Your voice is wondering, soft, awed. You grimace as you add, voice tinged with bitterness, "Because of a heartbeat."

I tilt your chin until I can see into your eyes. They are shining with tears. "No, Scully, because of the countless millions of heartbeats that came long before yesterday." I kiss you again, my body responding to the light pressure of your lips against mine, my soul thrilling to the knowledge that I can do this, that you've given me the right. Our lips part slowly. "And in the boundless number that are going to follow today."

You slip your hand into mine and pull me gently from the office. I stop to lock the door behind us. You turn and look back at me. I see in your face the resonance of yesterday's evil. I witness the hesitance of today's romance. I see the desire of tomorrow's magic. I know yesterday's nightmare is not completely over; we are going to be dealing with its after-effects for some time, but we are going to be dealing with them as we never have before, with love between us acknowledged and reveled in. I catch up to you, slip my hand into its familiar niche in the small of your back. As we await the elevator, I nuzzle the delicate flesh behind your ear. You sigh and lean against me. "I love you, Scully," I murmur again.

I watch the smile light your face. I know my every emotion shines through my eyes; that is the light you put there. It is your light shining through my eyes and I will be the light shining through your eyes.

The elevator arrives, ready to carry us up into the light and life of day, together. You smile up at me and tell me again, "I love you, as well, Mulder."

Summary: Years after the X-Files, Mulder reflects on Scully and their life.

Dedication: to Nadine again - you keep picking them and I'll keep writing them. Happy Anniversary!

Feedback: Yup. Love it. Keep it all in little folders, specifically marked for each story. Respond to all of it too.

The night is dark, lit only by the distant moon, a shining platinum disc high up in the faraway sky. The air is mild, a rather typical Fall evening in Virginia, not as cold as it will get with the onset of winter, but cool enough to require a coat of some sort. The man she followed has been coming to this place several times a year for the last few years. She understands the significance of some of the dates, but others he has kept to himself. She has been hesitant to ask him, to let him know she has seen him, has followed him here. He never was easy to know and she fears breaking the fragile-at-best ties between them by revealing this act he would view as deceitful on her part.

She studies him dispassionately. He takes some care with his wardrobe when coming here. Black wool suit, freshly dry cleaned and pressed. Crisp white dress shirt, cuffs clasped shut with cufflinks he's had forever. Tie carefully knotted, hanging straight down. He usually has his hair cut a few days before he comes here and he must shave just before leaving the house, for his face is always smooth and clean. He is hunched down, one hand lightly resting on the ground, steadying him, while the other hand reaches for the stone in front of him. His fingers trail along the top of the marble, then across the words chiseled into its front. They flutter, one of his rare, indecisive moments. It happens every time, and every time he gives in to the need she sees in his eyes. He touches the dates that lie beneath her name, before continuing down to the words below them. As his fingers trace them, she mouths them silently.

'Unexpected Blessing, True Companion, Loving Mother'

He brings his fingers to his lips and places a kiss on them which he transfers to her name on the stone. "I miss you, darling." He pushes himself up and his knees creak audibly, even to her as she stands hidden in the trees. Memories wash over her, bringing with them bitterness and anger, nostalgia and regret. "She is gone, has been for nearly four years, yet he still loves her in a way he'll never love me, no matter what I do," Lily thinks to herself, aware that if spoken aloud her words would be whining, petulant, and cringingly childish. She wipes away tears with the back of her hand. She knows it will never matter how much time passes; she has lived with this ache her entire life, ever since she was old enough to understand her place in their lives. She sighs.

He is passing her now. Active and in good health, he never has put on much weight. It has never been difficult to grasp what women saw in him. His eyes, their forever-changing shade of hazel, could twinkle merrily, empathize honestly, even cry tears of despair, grief, or joy. The years have lined his face and greyed his hair, but, as so often seems to be true with men, those indications of age have failed to detract from his appearance, giving him instead a more distinguished look.

"Come out from there, Lily," he commands gently, the voice of her childhood calling her forth to face the stern, loving, but ultimately distant father.

Shamefaced, caught out, feeling exactly as she did when she was ten and it was discovered she, Lily, had accidentally broken a porcelain doll given to her mother by Ahab during Mother's long-distant childhood, she emerges from the trees. She steps from her not-so-concealed hiding place and glances up at him.

"Lil, what are you doing here?" he asks, concern and vague suspicion in his voice.

She stares down at her hands, wringing them futilely, shifting her feet. God, it's like being twelve again and caught with those cigarettes; or sixteen, when they found out about Rodney Jackson; or eleven, when her teacher had called them because she'd been cheating on a math test; or ... the list went on. And on. "I worry about you. I know how much you two ..." she stops, tears choking her. "I ... you miss her so much. I guess I thought I could be closer to you in some way if I followed you."

He takes a few steps toward her and pulls her into his arms, wrapping her up tightly, his hand stroking through her fiery red hair. "Oh, Lily ... Lily." He kisses the crown of her head.

She continues to sob, verging on hysterics. "I wanted to..." Sob. Gulp. "understand what it was..." Inhale. Shake. "all those years..." Short, panting breaths. "that kept you and her..." She looks up, tears streaming down her pale cheeks. "so close, so together." She dries the tears, takes a deep steadying breath. "I was never part of that."

He stares at her, worry creasing his forehead, shock clear in his eyes. "Lily..." he starts.

She looks at him, eyes still overflowing. Her anger wins the battle as she speaks in a voice thick with pain, raw with traitorous tears, "How long has it been, Dad, since you've hugged me like this? When was the last time you told me you loved me? You *always* loved her more than me. When I got old enough to understand that, I envied her, wanted to find someone just like you when I grew up. As I got older and realized how distant you were from me, I learned to live with it. But, geez, Dad, I thought after she died you might need me. Me, your only daughter, remember?" She shakes her head disgustedly. "You've never needed me, never needed anyone but her. I should leave you to her." She wrenches herself free and begins walking hurriedly away from him.

"Lily!" he calls out. "Wait."

She stops momentarily. Her shoulders hunch. She says nothing, but begins walking again.

"Please." His voice is tight. She can hear the pain in it. She stops again, head hanging down, hands clasped in front of her. She clutches them spasmodically, clenching and unclenching them in frustration. She sighs hugely, giving up her weak effort to put him off.

"All right, Dad," she says, her voice a whispering concession to the ache in his.

He catches up to her in a few long strides. She has a sudden flash of memory. She was ten or eleven. It must have been a holiday of some sort because they were having a picnic in a park near Grandma's. Mom's whole family had been there. Uncle Bill and Aunt Tara with their children had come in from Annapolis, where Uncle Bill had been teaching at the Naval Academy. Uncle Charlie had brought his kids from London where he was posted; Aunt Caroline had been stuck in England for some reason. Lily had been playing with her cousins, running and rough housing on the grass, while Grandma had looked on, a contented smile on her face. Dad had been late and Mom had been sitting with her siblings, drinking beer, laughing, reminiscing.

Lily had seen him just as he had called out to Mom. Mom's head had snapped around and her face had lit up. With a wave of acknowledgment, she had been on her feet, walking toward him. Lily had watched her father intently, watched him take those long, ground eating strides, as he hurried to catch his beloved wife in his arms, swing her feet off the ground, and kiss her firmly, and, Lily would realize years later, with the longing he never lost for her. So focused had she been on her parents, Lily had never seen Matt Scully bearing down on her and she cried out, in shock more than pain, as he tackled her. Grandma and Uncle Bill had reached her first. Matt was already helping her up, dusting her off, and apologizing profusely. Uncle Bill had scolded her cousin gruffly, but Mom had forestalled him as she and Dad had sauntered up, hands joined tightly.

"Bill, she's a tomboy, just like I was. If she's going to rough house with the boys, she's going to get a few bruises and aches. Aren't you, Lily?"

Lily had nodded mutely, enjoying the fact her mother had made a comparison between them, yet still waiting for her father to say something, defend her.

Her father had stuck out a hand and ruffled her hair. He had smiled at her, but Lily didn't remember the smile touching his eyes. "She's a tough little girl, Bill," Dad had said.

Now her father senses ruffling her hair playfully would be unwelcome. He knows he has missed a lot over the years and that this child, so wanted, so loved, feels just the opposite. He wants to reach out to her, to make her understand how deeply he loves her, but he fears it is too late. He hears Scully's voice in his head. "And *when* exactly did Fox William Mulder ever give up on anything?" He takes his daughter's hand. "Had dinner, Lily?"

She shakes her head, tears spilling forth again. Silently she curses herself for being so weak and emotional. She thinks of her mother, always so stoic, so calm, so unflappable.

"Then let's go get something. You and me."

She doesn't look at him. She can't. "Dad," she starts, "I ... "

He puts his hands on her shoulders and turns her into him. He pulls her into another hug and tilts her chin, so she has to meet his gaze. Her lower lip trembles as she struggles to hold back her tears. She sees in his eyes a warmth and spark she thought had died four years ago; a light she never thought he would turn on her.

"There's some things I need to tell you, Lil. OK?"

She nods slowly and, for the first time in years, so long she can't really remember how many its been, she throws her arms around him and hugs him fiercely. "Can I follow you?" she asks.

He grins at her and ruffles her hair. "You seem to have done all right so far, Lilybaeum."

She smiles at his joke, glad he is no longer angry with her for intruding on him. She laughs when she realizes he has called her the old nickname, the one he called her until she was about fourteen and asked him to stop. She had claimed it was getting embarrassing having to explain it to anyone who asked. How did you explain that your dad, for some reason that made sense only to him, called you by the name of an ancient seaport in Western Sicily?

"Patriot Arms?" he asks, almost rhetorically. Not nearly so grand, nor historical, as its name might have suggested the "Arms" had been their favorite family hang-out from the time Lily could remember. They made huge, meaty, juice burgers, crisp fries, and milkshakes that were just this side of heaven.

She nods, slipping her hand into his as they walk back toward the carpark. "So, I guess being able to surveil a suspect successfully isn't an inherited trait?" she jokes.

He smiles at her and laughs.

The reach their cars. He holds her door for her and waits until she starts the engine before even unlocking his. He admonishes her to lock her doors, despite the fact the Arms is a short drive. She nods and makes an exaggerated pantomime of following his order. She sits, thoughts quiet, heart trembling between hope, fear, and the disappointment she believes to be inevitable. She watches as he pulls out of the parking space and heads the nose of his ancient Blazer toward the street. She follows.

On a Tuesday, after 9:00 p.m., the Arms isn't very busy. A few patrons sit at the bar, drinking beer and watching sports. A couple, college students by the way they dress, sit in a booth in the back and take turns feeding one another fries. Lily looks away hastily, not wanting to intrude, not wanting to open that wound. She is nearly twenty-nine years old and she has never had a truly serious or lasting relationship. She thinks bitterly to herself that it wouldn't matter as she doesn't attract that sort of light, fun-loving man anyway.

From an adolescence filled with a parade of boys almost guaranteed to alarm, irritate, and anger her parents, she has progressed to an adulthood sprinkled with men seemingly guaranteed to irritate, smother, and bore *her*. Despite the resentment she harbors for him, she knows the truth is she would still love to find a man like her father, a man intense and serious, yet possessing a wickedly sharp sense of humor and an ability to have fun at least once a decade. She would give almost anything to find that man who would look at her as if she were the only woman in the entire universe worth looking at, worth loving.

They say nothing until Pete, the owner of the Arms, has taken their orders and brought them their sodas. Fox Mulder regards his daughter. She sits with her back against the leather of the booth, her shoulders hunched, staring alternately at her hands or a spot on the ceiling just above his head. He chews contemplatively on a straw, thinking how much Lily looks like her mother. He feels an overwhelming sense of dj vu. Like Scully, Lily Mulder has erected strong defenses around her heart. Like her mother, Lily does not respond well to a battering ram technique, needing to trust, needing to choose to take down those walls herself. Scully could get past those defenses, some of the time, but Mulder has always found his daughter to be as enigmatic as his wife ever was. It was Maggie Scully who had known Lily best, Maggie whom Lily had loved and trusted. That made sense.

"So, what were you going to tell me, Dad?" she asks at last.

He wants to take one of her hands in his, but she keeps them carefully folded in her lap. He realizes he had long ago sacrificed his right to these moments, had never truly been the kind of father he had once wanted to be. He reminds himself silently, not for the first time, he had had no choice in the matter, neither he nor Scully could have done things any differently. He concludes, as he has done over the years, having Lily had been selfish of them, yet he knows it was never a mistake. In his mind his excuses sound weak and foolish.

"Lily, how much did you know about your mother and me, our work, our history?"

"Not much. Gran never said a lot." Her words hit him like Arctic air, cold, ruthless, stealing the breath from one's lungs in a single instant.

"What did your grandmother say?"

She draws a deep breath. "Look, Dad, I thought you were going to tell *me* some things. I don't really want to recount my rather failed childhood, OK?"

She is fussing with her napkin, folding it and unfolding it on the table in front of her. Now he does take one of her hands. "I am going to tell you the stories, Lily, stories we should have told you ages ago. I guess I need to know where to start."

She regards him steadily, coolly. She plucks her hand from his and asks him in a supremely even tone, "Why didn't you tell me the stories 'ages ago', Dad?"

He shrugs. "Your mother and I wanted to put the past behind us, start over."

"That was great, Dad. Did either of us ever stop to think I was part of that past?"

His eyes flash a bit. "You were *not* part of that past, Lily, not part of what we wanted to ... no, needed to forget. We had done our best to separate you from that past."

"How? How did you think that was possible? Did you honestly think you could compartmentalize your lives so effectively?" She bites off her words, flinging them angrily at him.

Softly, in an effort to turn her wrath, he says, "Yes, Lily, we thought exactly that."

"Well," she says, all the bitterness of her childhood rising to the surface, "it didn't work."

"I know, Lil. I know, and I'm sorry."

"So, why? Explain that."

Mulder looks at her. He takes his lip between his thumb and forefinger, a gesture he's made a thousand times, a nervous habit he's never been able to lose. Not that he made much effort after Scully once told him it was a habit she found oddly endearing, not to mention sexy as hell. "Your mother was the best thing that happened to me, Lily. She saved me from myself, gave me a semblance of a normal life. Without her ... I can't even imagine anymore what my life might have been like."

His daughter stares at him, says nothing. She knows he can just about read the thought in her mind. "Your life was normal?" Were she to say it aloud, it would drip bitterness, irony, and sarcasm. It would indict his statement as the grossest of falsehood. Lily had never found anything about their lives to be normal and her parents, in an attempt to spare her the knowledge of their past, had never helped her to understand.

"I had a younger sister," he tells her. "When I was twelve and she was eight, she was taken away from our family. My parents were out at the neighbors the night she was taken. For years I felt guilty, thought I should have, could have done something to protect her. Her screams haunted my nightmares for years."

"Samantha?" Lily asks.

Mulder nods. Pete walks up and sets new sodas in front of them. They both acknowledge him quietly.

"Who took her? did you ever find out?"

He nods. "As I grew older I became convinced she was abducted by aliens."

Lily arches an eyebrow at him. He can't help but smile. Mulder never would have guessed skepticism was an inherited trait. He wonders if she knows how much that makes her look like her mother. "And?"

"She was."

"Dad. Come on."

"In a way, she really was. But I'm rushing ... let me back up, OK, get to the part where your mom came into my little world."

She nods, the look on her face telling him she was prepared to listen, but only to so much. Limited patience for oddball theories must have been inherited from her Uncle Bill.

"I had been working for the F.B.I. for a few years when I discovered something called the X-Files. Unexplained phenomena, all cases that had never been solved, contained unexplained or unexplainable evidence, evidence that usually indicated something paranormal in nature. I became fascinated, convinced the answer to my sister's disappearance was in these cases, as there were other cases so similar to Samantha's. Eventually, I was able to convince the Bureau to let me work on these cases."

"Interesting career move, Dad."

He smiles at her. "Ruinous, actually. Though why that was the case didn't become apparent for years. I had obviously made some people very nervous by 1992, when they assigned your mother to work with me. That was what they called it, "working with me". She was supposed to report back on my activities, invalidate my work, reign me in. She didn't. For all my initial distrust of her, she never once betrayed me, not to further her own career, not to preserve her reputation, never, not for anyone. It cost your mother a great deal to stand by me."

Lily looks at him. "She was taken away from you, too. For months. Gran had given up on her ever coming back alive when she returned."

"In a coma, near death, not expected to live," he pauses, every emotion from those months, from the days and weeks following her return rising to the surface, momentarily obliterating all the years in between. "She was the only person who had ever believed in me, not my theories or my beliefs, but in me. She defended me; she sacrificed a promising career for me; over the years my quest became hers and if she ever stopped to count the cost to herself, she never accused me, never seemed to find that the price she paid had been anything but worthwhile."

Pete brings their food. Lily had inherited at least one thing from her father - a love of junk food that had often concerned Scully. Lily dips a crispy, golden fry into catsup and eats it hungrily. Mulder takes a bite of his hamburger.

"So you felt lost without her?" Lily asks.

"More than lost, Lily. Incapable of going on alone. I had been alone since the time I was twelve. My family had never been especially close, not like your mother's at all. My sister and I had always faced the world together. When she was taken I had no one, no ally. My parents fought constantly, eventually divorcing. They both withdrew from me, something I wouldn't understand for years, something for which it took having you to make me forgive them. My childhood taught me one overwhelming lesson, Lily. Love can hurt and the best way not to get hurt is not to love. Although I would spend years looking for what I thought was love it wasn't until your mother that I understood what it really was. She gave me back my heart; she gave me back a fire that had been damped to ashes for more than twenty years," he stops and takes a deep breath. "But it wasn't until you were almost all grown up that I realized I had retained one lesson from my childhood. I was afraid to love my own child, afraid you would be taken away; so I kept myself distant, loving you from afar, telling myself if anything happened it would hurt less."

Lily looks at him over her soda which she is holding up, about to take a sip. Her voice, when she finds it, is small, lost. She says, "But you loved Mom."

"Your mother was an adult. Not only did she fight her way back to me every time something happened, she then chose me, Lily. Unlike my sister, unlike you, your mother controlled her own fate. You didn't choose me as a father; I was inflicted upon you. I was terrified that had sealed your fate, much as being my father's daughter had sealed Samantha's."

"If you were so frightened of all of this, why did you two even have a child? I know it wasn't easy; you had to go to clinics and doctors."

"We wanted a normal life, Lily. We thought, at the time we conceived you, that life was within our grasp. We planned on having at least one more baby after you. We were going to have a house in the suburbs, a Volvo, a dog or two even. The best laid plans ... we thought we deserved those things, but life had a few other ideas in mind for us."

Softly, she says, "You two didn't belong to each other. You belonged in the world."

He nods contemplatively. "Very apt description."

"Not mine," she concedes. "It's from an old TV show."

They eat in silence for a few minutes. Finally she says, "Go on."

"I have to back up again, to before your mother and I started even," he pauses, seeing Scully again, that first day, looking so much like Clarice Starling from that movie, so young and confident, radiant even. He'd challenged her and she hadn't backed down. Her tone had matched his - sharp, almost biting, convinced of her theories as much as he had been convinced of those he hadn't then revealed to her. "After my sister was taken, I was very much alone. I had friendships, growing up I had girlfriends, but no one to whom I felt close, no one I trusted. I thought there was someone once, before your mother, but she turned out to be deceitful, the spy I'd once accused your mother of being. Lily, they assigned your mother to work with me for one reason. I had gotten too close and it scared them. They were afraid I would uncover their secrets and expose them. Your mother was completely unaware of their motives. She was not at all conscious of what they wanted from her. Nor did she have the slightest clue what they could and would do to her if she failed them, if she didn't follow the agenda they had laid out for her."

He looks at his hands, pressed flat against the table on either side of his plate. "She didn't follow their path. Your mother never did anything she didn't believe was right, didn't believe was true. She had more integrity than anyone I had ever known and more than anyone I've known since she and I first met. These men, the ones I had frightened, they saw what she had become to me and they took her away, trying to break me. They only gave her back when they thought she was as good as dead. I think they did that to get at me, too. They knew if they didn't, I'd search for her, as I had continued to search for Samantha. That would have been too great a risk; I might have uncovered their secrets."

"But Mom survived. She survived the abduction. A few years later she got cancer as a result of what they'd done to her. She survived that. They took her from you again and you went after her that time, to Antarctica. She survived all of those things," Lily sums up for him.

He nods. "And everything in between ... all the weird, unexplained cases we took on; all the psychos and creeps and truly monstrous men and women we faced. Even Emily..."

Lily watches her father. She can *see* him drift back, away from her, away from this table, to the time when he and Dana Scully had been only partners at the Bureau and she had inadvertently discovered the existence of a child, her own child. Lily knows only that Emily Sim was perhaps the most inexplicable mystery of her parents' careers, that all of her family, at least on the Scully side, had carried scars of that incident the rest of their lives. She remembers her grandmother trying to explain it once, but not really able to do so, ending only with the stark fact of Emily's fevered, tortured death. Lily knew that much of her mother's family never really liked Fox Mulder, holding him accountable for many of the circumstances that had befallen Scully while working with him. Gran, Maggie Scully, had always been different, had supported Dad, accepted him, knowing he loved her daughter and making that fact be enough for her. But Lily had also long sensed Emily was the one tragedy for which she did blame Mulder. Not for Emily herself, but for concealing from Scully the potential of her existence.

Mulder is lost in his memories. Memories of Scully with Emily, of Scully holding him at bay, struggling forward on her own. He remembers the heft and weight of that little girl in his arms. His fingers can still feel the nodule on her neck and his mind can play a sick joke on him, bringing back in striking detail his moment of realization, then knowledge what that lump was and what it was going to mean. He can still feel the trigger of his gun caught in the curl of his index finger, the desire to shoot Calderone and be done with it is as strong as when it was new. But what he recalls most of all is her face, Scully's face. He thought they had done all they could to her by then, that there was nothing left to take and then they had proven him wrong. He sees her face, soft in grief, strong in resolute loneliness. He hears her voice when she told him she would rather keep her vigil alone and in his mind he slinks away again, wounded, dismissed, aching to hold her, to let her pour out her sorrow on him. He shrinks from the memory of his cruelty to her months later. He had mocked her faith, refused to do the one thing he had always counted on her to do - believe not necessarily his beliefs, but his belief in them.

He looks at Lily again, marveling she should be here at all, not only in the biological terms, but because of the minefield, sewn by treachery of not only the Syndicate, but by the fear and shortsightedness of the two F.B.I. agents whose self-appointed task it had become to track those men down and expose them. That he and Scully had traversed that ground, had navigated it safely, had found the courage to live a life almost like that lived by millions of other couples still had the power to captivate him. He has never been able to determine if it is more ironic or fitting that in Lily there are no traces of her older half-sister and never have been.

He realizes how long it has been since he has bothered to take in his daughter's appearance. She dresses like her mother, exquisitely tailored suits, usually dark and classic in line and cut. She wears her hair longer than Scully was accustomed to and Lily tends to wear it up. Her hair is the same shade of red as Scully's and Lily has the same blue eyes. Her skin is fine and pale, as well. She inherited from him only, it would seem, her height, for she is a good seven inches taller than her mother ever could have been. The brains she had inherited from both parents, he muses, thinking what it had cost them to put her through first Stanford, then Yale Law. She is a lawyer at the Justice Department and though she probably would not believe him, he has kept up on her career these last four years, knowing she has already made quite a name for herself.

"Your mom would have been so proud of you," he says, out of the blue.

"Hmmm?" she asks.

"Your mother, if she had lived to see how well you've done these past four years ... she would have been very proud of you, of the reputation you've forged."

Lily looks a bit surprised. He had been right; she had not suspected he kept track of these things. She smiles shyly at him and it is the same smile Scully used to give him in the early days of their association, when she still wasn't quite sure of her place with him.

"Thanks, Dad." Lily becomes busy removing the last traces of catsup from her plate with her last fry.

"Emily was ..." he begins.

"I know," Lily states, even though she doesn't really know much. "Gran told me enough about Emily."

Mulder looks at her. She is on the verge of tears. "The fact she loved Emily doesn't mean she didn't love you, Lilybaeum."

Lily looks down at her plate a long time. In the voice of a child she answers at last, "Maybe not, but I used to think maybe if I got some weird disease and died a tragic death it would have been better."

Her father takes her hand again. "Don't ever think that again," he whispers fiercely. "As much as losing Emily broke your mother's heart, losing you would have killed her. Emily was never meant to be, Lil. You *were*."

Her lips trembles and a tear splashes down on to her plate. She wipes away a few more with the back of her other hand while appearing to study her father's fingers intently. "Was I really? Meant to be?"

Mulder sighs deeply. He realizes again, no matter how strongly you vow not to repeat the mistakes your own parents made, you ended up making others that are just as devastating. He and Scully had never argued as his parents had done, had always done their best to express their approval of Lily's achievements and reprove her fairly for transgressions. They had attempted to keep her safe from the men who had harbored such rancor for them, yet they had exposed her to it by denying her the deepest and best parts of themselves. And they had put their quest, their own interests before those of their child. So determined had they been not to hurt her in the obvious ways they had ended by damaging her in far more subtle ones.

"Meant to be ... wanted ... loved," he assures her. He takes a deep breath and continues, "Your mother and I ... for so many years had only each other to trust. And even then, it took both of us a long time to let the other in, to admit the depth of our feelings. I think we assumed once we'd gotten past that hurdle we wouldn't have any trouble with a child." He looks at her, searching for the right words, the words that will convey to her how blameless she is and how culpable her parents were. "Yet, yet the moment you were born," he stops, regards her tenderly. "Lily, you were so beautiful; we'd waited such a long time to have you in our lives and I think we both thought - I know I thought - you were the one thing neither of us could stand to lose. We'd lost so many people, so much time, so many ideals and beliefs. I don't think we ever meant to, but we both put up the walls around our hearts again, fearful of the pain, fearful what happened to Emily would happen to you. We were selfish to have you and stupid, blind as to what it would entail."

"Is that why I lived with Gran for so long?" she asks.

Mulder knows that is the heart of the matter. Lily had lived with Maggie until she was almost nine. When at last the Mulders had been able to establish a home, Lily had been sent back from the only place she'd ever lived, with the only person she had ever really known as a parent of any kind. Her own parents had been nearly strangers to her, and she to them. Unable, because she was still so young, to explain everything to her, they had simply assumed she would come to accept the arrangement in time. Then she had grown older and it just never seemed to be the right time to tell her.

He shakes his head. Pete stops to take their empty plates and to ask if they want anything else. Both order coffee and Mulder orders a sundae for Lily, recalling with fondness her predilection for hot fudge, sprinkles, and extra whipped cream.

She pushes him, "Dad, why did I live with Gran all those years? Why did you and Mom suddenly come back into my life?"

He sighs and closes his eyes. Opening them, he is met by the uncompromising gaze of his daughter. He slides his hands through hair that is still thick and full and remembers what he once said to Scully in a forest in Florida. At least, he thinks wryly, he still has a good head of hair. "Lily, the men I mentioned, the ones who were responsible for many of the things that happened to you mother, and to me, over the years, we thought we had stopped them. It took almost eight years, a lot of patience and frustration, and the help and sacrifice of a great many people along the way, but we believed we'd been successful in our quest. We had brought to justice the men who'd taken my sister, who'd had a hand in murdering my father and your mother's sister. We'd seen exposed men who for fifty years had conspired to bring about the end of the human race as we know it."

Her sundae and their coffees arrive. Mulder takes a sip of his, wincing at the heat of it. "Or we thought we had. We felt secure in what we had done, secure enough to become involved with each other. We were allowed to continue investigating unexplained phenomenon, the contents of the X-Files. Neither of us had any taste left for ordinary field work. Despite the danger inherent to some of our cases, we honestly believed we could be together, have a more or less normal life. We were married quietly on one warm, bright spring day."

She smiles a bit. "You visit her every year on that day. And on her birthday...and yours. What does today mean to you, Dad? Why was it important?"

His eyes glaze over. His voice is hushed. "I can still see her, Lily. Pale, thin, great shadows under her eyes, but smiling, triumphant. She lived no longer under the death sentence of an unexplainable terminal cancer. Her life had been returned to her and to me, as well. Today is the anniversary of the date her cancer was declared in remission."

"And the days in December? Are those for Emily?"

He nods. "You know I take flowers with me every May 17, don't you?"

She stares at him. Again, he has caught her unaware. She shakes her head. She begins to feel ashamed of herself, realizing what she never could have as a child, but what she should have tried to find out as an adult. She begins to accept the depth of love her mother had for her and her father still has, despite their difficulties in demonstrating that love. For the first time, she does not compare them to her grandmother or say to herself, 'If I have children...'. "My birthday?"

He nods and smiles at her. "Of course. That day was truly spectacular to us." He pauses. "After the abduction, the experiments they'd done to her, your mother couldn't have children. The Syndicate "doctors" had stolen all her ova. As the Syndicate fell, I had been approached by a figure I knew to be helpful, a clone I'd encountered before ... this clone gave me the means to get into a facility where the ova were being kept and he provided me the wherewithal to remove the ova to a facility I trusted. Though we were not certain what they had done, if anything, to the ova, your mother and I decided to try to have a baby."

Lily's face pales. She had known only that her parents had used in vitro technology to have her; she had not known of any deeper concerns. "What do you mean 'what they had done, if anything'?"

"Lily," he says, "these men, these so-called doctors were attempting to create alien-human hybrids through genetic engineering. We had no way of knowing if they had changed the genetic make-up of all the ova, or if they made their alterations one experiment at a time, so to speak."

"You didn't know ..." she stops, horrified.

His eyes are steady as he gazes at her. "For nine months we wondered, we feared, but most of all, we hoped. Your mother, who as I'm sure you recall quite vividly, never took orders from anyone, did everything the doctor told her; she even gave up field work before he told her to because I asked her to. Then you were born; you were perfect. We loved you so much, Lily, but we ... never far from our hearts and minds was the idea that you might be like Emily, that problems might arise. We had genetic tests run and it seemed you were fine. We should have been able to accept that; I think other parents would have. But we had seen so much, knew so much, had suffered so many reversals that it would be years before we honestly believed we weren't going to lose you. In those years we lost you in other ways, didn't we?"

She nods slowly.

"Dad," she starts, "this still doesn't really explain ... Gran?"

"I'm getting there, Lily. I think you got my level of patience," he grins at her. "You were about eight months old when the world we thought we'd put behind us, the problems we counted as solved came flooding back and washed away the stability and security your mother and I had built."

Pete brings the bill and refills their coffee. Without even looking at the total, Mulder tosses his credit card on the bill, which Pete takes away. The Arms has emptied, but for the two of them, and Mulder considers there is still more of this story to tell his daughter. "Finish your coffee, Lil, then we need to get out of Pete's hair; not everyone wants to work twenty-four hours a day," he smiles broadly at her, "or so your mother used to tell me."

She smiles back.

They finish their coffees quietly, contemplatively. Lily Mulder thinks of what she has learned so far this night. So many of her perceptions about her parents have shattered tonight. It still hurts that they never told her these things, but she begins to see why they didn't. A child would never have understood these things her father has told her and the teenager and young woman she'd been would not even have tried to comprehend, unable to imagine that anyone had suffered more in the family equation than she had, unwilling to let go of the fury that was her defense. She had long preferred the martyrdom of an unsettled childhood to explanations that might have exonerated her parents.

Pete returns with the check and the credit card slip. Mulder signs it and they rise to leave. His hand slides to the small of Lily's back, guiding her past chairs and tables and the shadows of customers long since gone home. "Come back to the house, Lily? I have more to tell you." His voice is low and sincere, hopeful.

She looks at him and nods silently. A door has opened, one for which she has longed to hold the key her entire life; she has no intention of allowing her father to slam shut that door now. "Let me go home and change, OK?" she asks.

"Your mom always kept some of your clothes at the house, you know," he reminds her.

She considers this. She isn't going in to work tomorrow; that is already a foregone conclusion. She'll call in early, citing family concerns. They won't be happy, but they'll get over it. It's not like she's ever even taken vacation, after all. "All right," she acquiesces. "I'll be right behind you."

A short drive leads them to the Mulder house in Falls Church. She can never erase from her mind the first time she saw this house. It was snowing, the big, heavy kind of flakes that lay on your coat and hair like wings of angels fallen from their lofty perches. The house had been decorated for Christmas, which had reassured an eight-year-old girl, but only a bit. Gran had explained to her it was time she went to live with her parents. Gran had dried the tears that had followed, had gently hushed the sobs of a child too often disappointed, too aware of life's uncertainties to trust that this time it was for real, forever, as everyone kept telling her. Patiently, quietly, Gran had explained, in terms of the greatest generality, that the work Lily's parents had been doing had finally come to an end and it had been right for her to go live with them. Lily recalls her overwhelming feeling of being lost, abandoned, betrayed as she walked up that walk, holding tightly to her grandmother's hand. She had had no memories of the days when they had been a happy family, Fox Mulder, Dana Mulder, and Lily Mulder. To her they were little more than strangers who had some inscrutable claim on her. Convinced Gran would never have let her go of her own will, Lily had for a long time believed Mulder and Scully (he had called her that name always) must have forced Gran into giving her back to them.

She parks the car and walks up the front path. The house is a rather small four bedroom Colonial. The brick exterior has been lovingly maintained and the white shutters are immaculate. The coach lamps gleam in the mellow way of brass fixtures that have stood the test of time. She looks at the name plate on the door and grins. She remembers Gran's unspoken disapproval and Uncle Bill's very vocal disapproval of that name plate. She hadn't learned the origin of that inside joke until she was about fifteen and overheard her Uncle Bill in mid-harangue, trying yet again to convince Mom to take it down, get something respectable.

"Gee, Bill," Mom had said to him, her voice possessed of that tone which sounded sweet at first, but when you listened more closely was actually coated in acid, "what would you consider respectable? I've certainly never gotten the impression it was the name 'Mulder'."

"Dana, that's not fair," he had argued.

"Oh?" she had asked, investing that one word with more meaning than a hundred words could have had.

Uncle Bill had grimaced; his voice had sounded tired and defeated. "Well, even 'Mulder' would be better than 'Spooky'. What the hell is that supposed to mean, anyway?"

Mom had laughed at him, a laughter not altogether unkind, but with a sharp edge to it. "You don't really want to know, Bill."

"Maybe not, but tell me. If nothing else, I'll stop wondering."

"'Spooky' was the nickname Mulder had at the Bureau; once it became clear I was his partner, that he hadn't run me off, that I actually enjoyed our work, I became ' Mrs. Spooky'."

"Jesus, Dana, you sound proud of that!" Uncle Bill had exclaimed.

Mom had laughed again. "I was, in a way, Bill. Mulder is a good agent, if unorthodox, and being associated with him has never made me anything but proud."

"Proud? of that nutcase?"

"That nutcase," her mother had growled, "has more integrity, more dedication, more intelligence, and more empathy than anyone I've ever met, Bill. Ever... We may have had our differences, on more than one occasion, gone through rough periods, but I've always admired and respected him."

The conversation had continued, but Lily had slipped away. Her parents had been a mystery to her; a puzzle to which she eagerly gathered up pieces. Part of her had loved what she had learned - her parents had been regarded as mavericks, rebels; part was bitterly resentful - they had excluded her from that. Had she even been 'Baby Spooky'? She had snorted in disgust, doubting they would have ever shared that dubious honor with her.

She traces the letters on the nameplate now, understanding them better. For their only child, her parents had not wanted that label of outcast. They had tried to shelter her from all the ugliness of their lives, even when it meant sheltering her from the beauty to be found deep within the darkness. Almost a whole lifetime later, she feels she finally understands the image found on that puzzle piece she acquired so long ago. 'She was the first person ever to stand by me.' Wasn't that about what Dad has said at dinner?

The door opens and Mulder gives her a quizzical look. "Waiting to be invited in?"

She smiles at him a bit. "Yes, actually. I suppose there's some- thing I should tell you - I was bitten by a vampire last week and now can't cross the thresholds of houses unless invited in," she jokes with him.

"One of the bloodsuckers at work?" he returns the joke.

She laughs. "Dad, remember I work *for* the government!"

"And *that's* supposed to prove what exactly?"

"You worked for the government!"

He groans. "I try so hard to ignore that fact, Lily darling. Can't you let your old father pretend?"

"Dad, you're not old... but OK, since you are my father, we'll pretend. You worked only for yourself, your great cause. The government just issued those paychecks - sad coincidence." Her eyes are twinkling. Has she ever felt so at ease with her father as she does now?

"I think that must have been it. Thank you." He ushers her in, offering her coffee or, if she would like to sleep, something with less caffeine. She chooses hot cocoa. She had that lovely ice cream sundae earlier so she figures she might as well retreat as far into childhood as he'll let her.

He returns in a few minutes with a tray, two cups and a teapot that contains hot cocoa. Aware that she is protective, almost prickly even, about her personal space, he takes the seat opposite her as she is curled up on the couch.

"Where were we?" she asks.

"Pretending I never worked for the government," he quips.

"Before that," she insists, smiling.

His face grows serious. "You were eight months old. Eight beautiful, wonderful months old and the foundations on which your mother and I had built our life, the belief we had prevailed, came crashing down. We sent you to Maggie for your own safety, confident we could clean up what we presumed were remnants of the old order in a few months' time and resume our lives. We had always known, given the bizarre nature of X File cases, Maggie was going to look after you a lot, but we thought it would be a week here or there, not the years it turned in to."

"Tell me, Dad. Please. Tell me about the quest, the men you destroyed. Tell me how you and Mom were wrong," she implores him.

He refills her mug of cocoa and warms up his own. "I spent most of my adult life chasing those men, Lil. Along the way, I learned my own father was one of the men I was chasing. I learned he had been complicit in the abduction of my sister. To his eventual credit my father opposed this. I also discovered my mother was not the woman I had thought her to be. I chased shadows, ran after demons that disappeared around every corner just a bit sooner than I could get to them. I tilted at windmills. Heroically, with dedication, but ultimately ineffectively until the advent of your mother. Her science, her logic perfectly balanced my intuition, my credulity. Painstakingly, we unraveled the secrets of the Syndicate. We learned of the existence of a race of aliens whose origins were actually on this planet, who planned to return, killing all but a chosen few. Those few conspired over the course of fifty years to safeguard themselves and their families. That sin might have been forgivable, understandable even. I nearly fell prey to it once myself. The sin of greater magnitude was their cooperation in a project to create human-alien hybrids which would serve as a slave race to the needs of the aliens themselves. My father encouraged the development of an additional project, shrouded even from the aliens, a project which would perfect a vaccine against the alien invaders."

He stands up and searches a cabinet briefly. Finding the object of his brief search, he takes out a photo album. She makes room for him on the couch. He sits next to her, showing her the faces of people, mostly long dead, and explaining, if he hasn't already, the significance of each person. She runs her fingers lightly over the images of her father as a child. Her eyes grow sad at the sight of his long-lost sister and his voice still roughens with emotion. She knows he has made peace with the loss, but it is a fragile, tenuous peace at best. She picks out her uncles and her aunt Melissa from an old Scully family photo. She looks at a picture, black and white, of her mother and father. She decides it must be from their early days together; her mother looks so very young as she gazes back at the tall, handsome man walking around a car toward her. Pictures of the two of them are few and far between. A subsequent one shows a little girl, blond, blowing out candles on a birthday cake. Emily. Lily feels the ancient jealousy slide from her, bound no longer by a mystery, by a conundrum. Emily was only a little girl after all; one who touched her parents' hearts, but stayed such a short while. A few weeks only was she a part of their lives, while Lily's whole existence has been interwoven with these complex people. She finds she is grateful. She realizes her life could so easily have been the mirror of Emily's and yet her mother and father, our of love and desire, had taken that risk. She feels the truth in his father's words. She was indeed meant to be.

He continues with his story, recounting in detail the period and aftermath of her mother's abduction. He tells her how what had been his quest and Scully's job became *their* quest after the murder of Melissa Scully. With pain and bitterness he recalls the diagnosis and course of her mother's cancer, how it lead her to the brink of death and how her trust in the "science fiction" he brought her had saved her. He confides the details of his headlong rush to Antarctica to rescue her from the men of the Syndicate and what he saw there. Shamefacedly he tells her of the year that nearly tore them apart, a year marked by distrust and silence.

"That year was one of the worst of my life. Except for brief moments your mother and I found little enjoyment in each other's presence. When we were given back the X-Files, after the disaster at El Rico, I was honestly surprised she didn't request reassignment. If I ever had illusions it had anything to do with me, she set me straight on that count almost immediately. We both knew that despite the deaths at El Rico there were still dangerous men loose, enemies of the people, to borrow a title. She wanted to see those men brought to justice, she wanted to look in the eyes of her sister's killer. Had that happened right away I think she would have walked away from me, Lily. I had tried her patience, not with theories and wild goose chases, but by demonstrating an execrable lack of trust in her just when I should have trusted her most."

"What happened next?" Lily asks.

Mulder turns the page of the photo album. There are pictures of the archeological site in Africa, a news clipping about the death of Albert Hosteen, and another regarding the attempted murder-by-arson of Michael Kritschgau. There is a picture as well of Mulder and Scully, standing on a high plateau. The scenery is very Southwestern.

"Mesa Verde," her father says. "Where it ended. An anonymous tip helped us begin to decode the book Diana Fowley had sent your mother. From the information we found in the ancient Navajo myths we were able to determine at last the Syndicate's exact plans. The man we knew as CBG Spender, the man claiming to be my true father, had had extracted from me the genetic material that had allowed me to hear others' thoughts and had it transplanted into him. I survived that operation due only to your mother. The Smoking Man also barely survived. It was months before he and what was left of his association could carry out their plans. Your mother and I were lucky to have that time in which to determine what he would do next. As it was we reached Mesa Verde at nearly the same time he did.

"The genetic material he had taken from me allowed him not only to hear thoughts, but also to think with long unused portions of our brains. He planned to use this information to his ultimate advantage. He would summon the alien race, promising that at last hybrid technology had been perfected. He planned to allow them to destroy much of the population before turning on them. He had discovered the secrets to defeating them buried in the Anasazi ruins at Mesa Verde."

"So, he wanted ... world domination?"

Mulder smiles bitterly at her. He nods. "Petty revenge against those who had opposed him, the adoration of those left ... nothing lofty or mighty, nothing worth the pain and sacrifice of so many over such a long time period. Only in sentimental fiction are criminals ever noble, Lily ... in real life they never are."

"So, you and mom got to Mesa Verde..."

"And using some tricks of our own, information gleaned from the translations we had had made of that book and with the help of the rebel alien forces, we were able to stop not only the invaders, but their human collaborators as well. Only Spender himself escaped. He didn't get very far. Thoughts he could read, maps apparently were a different story ... that cliff we're standing next to? He plunged over that just a few minutes before that picture was taken."

Lily is silent. She ponders what her father has said, closes her eyes and tries to picture them. She has spent her whole life misjudging them. A thought occurs to her. "Dad, earlier you said as all this was happening, as the Syndicate was falling, a clone approached you?"

He nods. "Kurt Crawford. Spender was liquidating all the clone projects, having the clones killed as quickly as possible, in case they took up with the humans and rebels against him and his allies. One of the Kurts came to me, gave me the information about where the ova were stored and how to safely transport them. I was able to arrange for friends to remove them and get them to safety while Scully and I went to Mesa Verde."

Lily nods. She knows the friends had to be none other than the Lone Gunmen. Her Scully relatives had always been a bit perplexed by the Gunmen, but Lily had always adored them. They were funny and always knew so much about so many things.

"So, they were all gone, the aliens defeated. You and mom settled down to live a normal life. What went wrong?"

As an answer, he turns another page of the album. A man's face, dead, meets Lily's eyes. The eyes are respectfully closed. The face, in death, is thin and pale, the hair, dark and short. A thin trickle of blood is visible from his scalp line across his forehead. She peers more closely - a small, neat bullet hole is almost, but not completely, covered by locks of the dead man's hair. She gasps, taken aback. She is appalled at this man's image, cannot comprehend why her parents should have kept this photo, should have placed in an album chronicling their lives and mutual achievements. She turns her face to her father's.

He stares down at the same picture, eyes burning green, hate, yes, Lily decides silently, pure hate transfiguring his face. For her father this picture is yet another time machine. A time machine and an ugly reminder of how much damage can be done by one man, carelessly let go, thoughtlessly dismissed in a single victorious moment.

He thinks of the men of the Syndicate, wonders, as he always does, how they had managed to keep their secrets so long. The truth was they weren't really that smart, nor nearly so clever as they saw themselves. Their Machiavellian tactics had been well suited to a world that faded away before they could destroy it. In the long-ago and far-away courts of Italian princes and German emperors and cut-throat French aristocrats their scheming would have succeeded admirably, but that world, decrepit, clinging to its last tattered shreds of memory had fallen victim to the technological age that dawned about the time Fox Mulder was born.

For all the adaptations they made - carrying cell phones, using computers, incorporating the latest medical breakthroughs - they failed to change their basic thinking. For the technological age put to the great test the time honored theory that might makes right. And the time honored theory failed. No longer were numbers and superior weapons enough to guarantee victory, for one man, (or two, or three such), with brains, with persistence, with a willingness to sacrifice himself could at last harness the power of the masses to resist. One man, one brilliant, foolhardy, idealistic man with an equally intelligent, rational, pragmatic science-minded woman could winnow out the secrets these men had struggled to bury. Those secrets could be taken back, could be hidden once again, but not forever, not in the face of perseverance and dedication, not in the face of what was right. And the technological age made it impossible to kill two such as these for fear of turning them into martyrs and thus exposing all their searching to an ever more inquisitive and skeptical public.

What they also failed to realize, these hollow men, was that while loyalty to a cause, the promise of an ideal had always failed to motivate certain men, that number grew steadily following the Second World War. In increasing numbers, men and women sold their souls to the highest bidder and then broke that contract with no remorse when another came along offering a greater prize. The Syndicate, so convinced that theirs was the only hope, never noticed they had let a cuckoo into the nest. The same cuckoo that Mulder and Scully had later missed when cleaning out the nest.

Mulder glares down at the picture. Until the day he dies he will harbor hatred for Alex Krycek.

"Dad?" Lily prods him gently.

He looks up from the picture. "We discounted Alex Krycek." He stops, his lips pull into a tight, angry line. "We shouldn't have, but we did. We saw only that the threat presented by the Syndicate was gone. We never stopped to consider the alien rebels, a race we assumed to be on our side, had a human ally. *I* should have known; Krycek as much as told me once. We all seemed to think that allies will always remain so. We failed to learn the lessons taught to us by our own history, failed to prepare for the possibility. Instead, we went about our lives."

He stands and stretches out his legs. He goes to stand in front of the empty fireplace. With a sad smile he turns to face her. "We didn't find my sister, not a single trace of her anywhere. I felt, in some ways, like I'd lost her all over again, but in time I learned to accept I'd done everything to find her, that I could do no more. I'd fallen in love with your mother long before that, of course, but it had never seemed exactly the right time to make a start at anything." He shrugs a bit. "There were steps forward and back a few times - some ill-thought out declarations of love, a tentative millennium kiss, uncountable innuendoes, hints, and suggestions. Then, all at once, the constraints were gone and all the pieces tumbled right into place. I don't know how to explain it any better, Lily, than ... one day I looked over at her; she was reading a report on some unexplained attacks up in the mountains of Washington. And that was it. I knew I couldn't go backward, couldn't hide my feelings any longer, and I couldn't go forward without her."

Lily is smiling at him. This is one family story she has actually heard, minus the years of pain and suffering that preceded it. "So, you clasped your hands in front of your face, making that steeple-thing with your index fingers, looked at her and said, very seriously, 'Scully, I love you.' And she looked up at you and smiled. Then she said, just as seriously, 'I know, Mulder. You plan on doing anything about those feelings or are we just going to grow old together doing paperwork?'"

"So, you've heard that particular story, eh?" he asks.

"Once ... I was in college." She stops, takes her lower lip between her teeth, the very image of her mother in doing it. "I was dating ... let's see ... Bob Franklin. I thought maybe he was the one, so I asked Mom had she'd known you were her one and only." She pauses again, a grin flits across her face. "Come to think of it, she never really did answer me *how* she knew, just told me that story. I guess after all you two had survived, she really couldn't have doubts, could she?"

His voice is low again, soft, memories of love, of passion, of fulfillment overwhelming him. "I know I never did, have any doubts. She knew me, inside and out, bad and good, and she'd stayed. Through the worst of it, she was always there, even when I didn't deserve her. More even than that, she let me in to her heart, in her own mysterious way; she'd shown me all there was within her. I've never known another human being like I knew her, Lilybaeum; and I never will. Connection like that happens once in a lifetime, if you're lucky."

They fall silent. Mulder recalls in vivid, full color detail the aftermath of Scully's oh-so-cool comment that afternoon. Once he'd managed to lift his jaw off his desk where it had fallen with a painful thump, he'd closed his mouth. She had been staring at him, challenging him. He had been uncertain at first if she had been serious, or if that tone had been deadpan and she was just playing the moment off, chalking it up to one of his frequent innuendoes. Then she'd taken words, his words, words with which he had beckoned her more than a year before. She had lowered her voice, speaking in a husky tone he'd never heard her use. "Get over here, Mulder," she had said. It was the first time she had crooked her little finger at him, relationship-wise, and it had worked like a charm.

He had been in front of her, pulling her out of the chair in which she sat, pulling her into his arms in what was probably record time. The answering machine message the Gunmen had left had told him that. (And he'd had the office swept for bugs the next day ... damned techno geeks).

Well over eight years had passed since she'd walked into that office and eight years of attraction, mixed with a fair number of years of unspoken love, had gone into that kiss. If anything was ever worth such a wait, that moment was it. He would later thank the powers that be they were both adults and there had been no hurried locking of the door, removing of clothes, or hurried departure for a really long lunch. Kissing her was like floating, high above the world he flew. She broke away from him by whispering into his open mouth, past his rather-ungentlemanly questing tongue by saying, "By the way, I love you too."

It had been eight months before they had gotten married, taking time to get to know all the details about each other they had not had the opportunity to learn. They had found they knew so much and yet so little. They had delighted in telling stories and in listening, in sharing the best and the worst. During that eight months, Mulder had even managed to tell her about the ova. And, after much discussion and soul-searching, had decided to have a baby after they were married.

Lily had been their third and, they had decided, last try at in vitro fertilization. Though the words went unspoken they had both begun to believe Scully's ova were simply not viable, for whatever reasons. But she had caught pregnant with Lily, and only Lily. She had carried her to term through nine long, frightening, yet joyous months. She had given birth with relative ease and they had slipped into their roles as mother and father, trying but not completely able to banish from their hearts and minds the possibility they might lose her.

Then, it happened ... the loose thread they'd left hanging, the one they had declared useless and unimportant in the greater scheme of things, that thread had snagged itself on a sharp idea, the idea to take up the work left undone by the Syndicate and the whole fabric of their world, the ornamented tapestry in which they took such delight, unraveled in the blink of an eye.

Krycek and the alien rebels had decided to fill the void left by the destruction of the aliens and their would-be Vichy governors. Allies have turned on one another with an alarming frequency throughout history. War, declared or undeclared, hot or cold, makes for strange bedfellows they say. 'They' are right. Those same strange bedfellows often realize the bizarre nature of the situation once the crisis has passed. Then they dissolve their bonds, end the alliances which brought them victory. Unfortunately, these allies often have a nasty habit of not telling the others of their new plans.

"What did he do, this Alex Krycek?" she asks after almost a quarter of an hour.

"He convinced our one-time allies, the alien rebels, that the place left vacant by the colonizing aliens could become theirs. Alex Krycek spent almost three years, watching, analyzing, waiting, making certain his plans could succeed. He knew we'd been lulled into a false sense of security. He banked on our lack of attention and counted on our inability to wage war on his terms. But Alex Krycek made one crucial mistake. He got arrogant... His plans were well laid, the foundations strong. He was exactly right about us - we might never have guessed what was going on if he hadn't chosen to taunt us."

Mulder turns one more page in the album - a note is encased in the vinyl. Lily reads it aloud. " 'She looked so damn surprised, Agent Scully, when that bullet hit her.' " She gives her father a quizzical look. "What did it mean?"

"It meant," he starts, then pauses for a deep breath before continuing, "it meant whoever sent that note had been present at the murder of your aunt Melissa. The case had been closed for years; one of the men believed to be responsible was dead, but your mother and I always knew there had been more than one assassin."

"Poor Mom..." Lily sighs. "Is this when you sent me to Gran?"

He nods. "We had the paper analyzed, found fingerprints all over it. Krycek never attempted to mislead us about who had sent it. He wanted us to chase him; he had it all planned. He had planned to let us get close, disappearing each time we did, but leaving enough trace so we would keep up the hunt. When we finally caught up to him, it was going to be too late. By then, the way he had it worked out, the rebel aliens would have quietly taken control. He planned to kill us once we had seen what happened to our world after that."

"But he failed, in the end," she says, her voice dismal.

"In the end a more convincing person made the rebels see they were wrong, that if they carried out Krycek's plans they would be as despicable as those very aliens they had valiantly fought, at such a great price to themselves. That end didn't come for seven years, though, Lily. For seven years we hunted that son of a bitch, always half a step behind. We would come back to DC when he had gone to ground, let the trail go cold. We would have to wait for the next cryptic message. We couldn't have you with us because we never knew where Krycek was and we never knew when we'd have to light out after him next. Always, just as we began to feel maybe it was over, maybe somewhere out there a really big truck had done us all a favor and killed Alex Krycek, another of these would arrive." He indicates a collection of Notes, gathered on the page facing the one about Melissa Scully.

Lily looks at them more closely. "You kept them?" she asks.

"Your mother did. She never wanted to forget what he'd put us through."

Lily studies them. 'Ever wonder who recruited me, Mulder?' 'How did the Syndicate find out you two had continued your partnership after that first time they closed the X-Files?' 'Do you want to know what her last words were, Scully?' 'I could show you *exactly* where they held you, Dana; tell you *exactly* what they did to you.' 'Lily certainly is a lovely little girl. Not a bit like Emily, or the other ones.' 'She remembers her big brother fondly, *Fox*. She still hopes to see you again one of these days.'

Lily goes white. Her eyes are round and her mouth pulled into the same tight line as her father's.

"He knew every soft place, Lil. He could stick the knife in and twist it better than anyone else. We didn't want to believe him, but we had learned the hard way not to dismiss Alex Krycek. So, with every fresh note, off we went, the hounds to the hare. In the end, it brought us back, full circle really, to Skyland Mountain. We faced Krycek at the top of the mountain. He told us everything he'd been planning. He 'invited' us to wait with him for the coming end, our end which was his triumph."

Mulder stops. He gets up again. From the mantlepiece he takes down a picture, then returns to Lily's side. It is the only visual reminder of his childhood. It still carries traces of blood smears, barely visible under the glass. The frame is simple, unembellished cherry wood. It glows with mellow age in the dim light of the living room. Lily knows the girl in the picture was his sister. This is the only way she can picture Samantha. Her father carries a different image in his mind.

"This was ..." he starts.

"Samantha," Lily finishes for him. "When she was a little girl."

He nods. "She was a pretty little girl. I think you have her nose; it may be the only physical feature you got from us Mulders."

"I got your height, Dad. And Mom I always said I got your smile."

He looks at her. "You got her smile," he tells her. He looks at her. "Maybe we each saw the other in you because of how much we loved each other and how much we loved you."

She smiles at him. "She *was* a pretty little girl, Dad."

"She was a beautiful woman," he says quietly.

Lily looks at him. Family canon has always said Samantha never came back.

"We were standing on top of Skyland Mountain, waiting for the world to end, waiting for Krycek to have his triumph. There was the bright light of the rebel ship. Out of the light walked a figure, one lone figure. Krycek hadn't been expecting that - he'd clearly been awaiting a larger delegation. He realized who it was well before we did. 'What the hell are you doing here?' he yelled at her. Somehow, your mother knew before I did, putting her hand on my arm and whispering my name. This emissary replied, 'Plans have changed, Alex.' Then, I knew. I couldn't say a thing and she continued, 'Your allies have reconsidered their alliance with you. They have realized that to take this planet would make them no better than the colonists they fought for years. They will have no further contact with you.' Krycek was furious, accused her of turning the rebels against him, which was just what she had done. Krycek advanced toward her, slapped her to the ground. I felt your mother let go of my arm and I sprung, a spring too long and too tightly coiled. I wasn't fast enough. Krycek pulled out a gun and shot her.

"Your mother says I screamed his name, though I really don't remember that. She tells me we struggled, while she made her way to Samantha. Krycek's aim had been perfect, right through the head. Sam was dead before she knew what was happening. I managed to kick his gun away, right to your mother actually. She picked it up and yelled for Krycek to stand up. He never was a man who knew when he was beaten. He stood up defiantly, still arrogant, unable to comprehend the depth of his failure. Your mother made him confess everything with his own gun pointed at his forehead."

He stops, hands Lily his handkerchief to dry the tears she has started crying. "He told us everything, concluding with the fact that my sister, held in token by the colonists, had been stolen by the rebels. Krycek had persuaded them to keep her, to use her against me if ever necessary. He had planned on killing her just before he killed your mother and myself. He said it had to have been her that turned them against him." He pauses. In an evening filled with deep breaths, Mulder took his deepest breath yet. "He finished speaking and your mother pulled the trigger."

His daughter gasps and throws her arms around him. "Daddy," she says, calling him by a name she likely never has used, "Daddy, I'm so sorry. I was so unfair to you all those years."

He holds her and hushes her. "Lily, love, we should have told you years ago ... we just wanted to forget so badly, to leave it behind. We wanted a perfect world for you."

"I know why you didn't," she wails. "I was too little and when I got older I never wanted to listen to you. I was so angry and never knew why."

He rocks her gently, as he might have once, years ago, during the childhood they had never had together, a childhood stolen from them by a scheming madman, a psychotic bent on tearing them to pieces. He sheds his own tears into her hair, as she lets hers fall on his shirt. In his mind, Scully is with them, her arms a part of the unending circle of love and blood that binds them. This moment, a reconciliation twenty years in the making, is bittersweet without this child's mother, without the only woman he ever loved here to share in it. He muses on life's inevitable irony. Cancer did not strike her down, nor was she taken by an assassin's bullet. She had survived every madman, every monster, every horror the X-Files sent their way. No, her life ended almost four years ago in a snowstorm. He felt his daughter in his arms, but saw before him his beautiful wife, still lovely in her sixties, lying in the snow, a victim of a drunk driver and icy roads during that year's first, early snow.

He had never believed in Scully's faith, never believed in her Heaven. He clung to those beliefs after her death, longing to be with her once more, hoping she was yet witness to this evening, this healing between father and daughter.

"Lily," he whispers softly, "it's late. You should go to bed."

Eyes swollen red, cheeks tear stained, she raises her head from his shoulder. She glances at the clock, can scarcely believe the time, nearly two in the morning. She is suddenly exhausted, worn by this evening's revelations. She disengages herself from her father's embrace and stands up. He stands with her and hugs her again. His hand strokes her hair and she sighs, a long, shuddery sound. "I love you, Lilybaeum."

She nods against his chest, as she listens to his heartbeat. She realizes this man gave her life, protected her, at a cost so high most men could not have borne it. This man is her father, imperfect, a bit lost, but still and always, her father. "I love you, too." She turns from him and walks to the stairs that lead to her old room on the second floor. Before starting up the stairs, she pauses for a look over her shoulder at her father.

He looks up and smiles at her from his place in front of the fireplace. The picture of Samantha and himself dangles from his hand. She turns and disappears up the stairs, into the darkness.

He watches her go, mesmerized by her uncanny resemblance to Scully at that age. It would seem he was never a man destined to have easy relationships with the women in his life, yet it has come out all right, in the end. For the first time there truly is peace in the Mulder house. He turns back, gazes at the picture of his wedding day. Scully in a cream suit, hair held back loosely by an antique sliver barrette smiles at the man in the picture. The man standing at the mantelpiece smiles at them both.

As he does so often these nights when he doesn't sleep, he thinks of her, thinks of the past, mind glossing over the thousand painful moments, resting in the happier times. Sometimes he swears he can see her standing next to him, smell her perfume, hear her laugh, watch her smile. He thinks how it came so close to ending before it had ever begun, how he took a chance one April night, how she met him at the halfway point, metaphorically speaking that is.

The interior monologue begins, the one he recites every night in honor of her. "I was alone, Scully. I lived in the dark. I didn't know it until later, but you came into my life like a light, a lamp shining out into the blackness that surrounded me. At first, I didn't know what to make of you; I'd been alone too long, unable to trust anyone for so long. I didn't even know how much I needed someone to stand by me. I didn't understand what you meant to me until they took you, until you almost slipped away from me. Somehow, for some reason, you came back and you stayed. You always stayed, even when I didn't deserve it. Even in the worst moments of our lives together, you stood by me. You were my one last hope."

Every night, his mind whispers back to him her words. "You were my one last hope, too, Mulder. Always."

The End

Nynaeve

Temple of X http://members.xoom.com/Nynaeve1723/

"My contrition completely overwhelms the coming apocalypse." ---Giles, 'Doomed' "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"

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