There Has To Be An End
AN: Things will be slow...life is hectic, with lots of research papers coming up. I fit these in at work when things are slow, and sometimes the muse, she is silent. But never fear, I am working on my beloved Seasons fics. Also...this hurts a lot, so the muse I think likes to shy away.
Not even the heaters blowing full tilt into the damp room could warm up Scully’s bones as she shivered beneath the polyester comforter, her close still fully on. Her clammy skin puckered in gooseflesh as she willed the room to stop spinning sometime soon, for the love of all that was holy. She had been perfectly fine not half-an-hour before, exhausted perhaps as she bid Mulder goodnight and left him to Ray Hoese’s file. While the idea of the pizza he had ordered had left her quietly gagging, she had been well enough to go through the more lurid details of Teresa’s husband’s file without blinking. They had engrossed Mulder enough that he hadn’t even lodged a complaint as she had announced she was going to her separate room to get some sleep, leaving him to work in peace.
Scully had barely made it as far as her bathroom when what little was in her stomach came back up in a violent spew, jerking her insides and leaving her gasping into the white toilet, her hands gripping the side sink as frustration and worry began to set in. She hadn’t been sick in years, at least since her cancer, not like this. That of course set a niggling thought spinning through her brain as she struggled to swish her mouth out from the faucet, cupping cold water in her trembling fingers. It couldn’t be cancer, she assured herself with no confidence, she had her check just months ago and was free.
Shivering violently, she tumbled into her bed, pulling the blankets over her head and willing her lurching stomach to quiescence. It was the flu, like as not, a bug that she had perhaps caught even before she had gone to the baseball game with Mulder. And of course it would hit full force in the middle of a case, what could likely be their last if Chesty Short had his way. In irritation, she pulled her knees to her chest and shivered harder. It wasn’t as if they weren’t under close scrutiny as it was, now she would be pale and puking everywhere.
On the other side of the wall she could hear a soft thump, Mulder shifting on the bed more than likely, and as much as she hated to admit it, she wanted to crawl back over there, hang Chesty Short and his inquisitiveness, and curl up beside him as he worked. She was whining and she knew it, but didn’t care. She was miserable and he would make it better, or at least in her sickly mind at the moment he would, and that was all that mattered. Groaning, Scully pulled herself out of the meager warmth of her lonely bed and stumbled out of the door and back towards Mulder’s room.
Her knock sounded feeble in her ears, but Mulder clearly heard it. He called out from the other side. “Who is it?”
“It’s me,” she replied, hoping she didn’t sound as miserable as she felt.
He opened the door, clearly perplexed, but that shifted to worry in an instant as he took her in, huddled and shivering on his doorstep.
“What’s wrong, Scully? You look sick.”
Score points for the obvious, she wanted to snark, but couldn’t seem to find the energy. She went for pitiful instead. “I don’t know what’s wrong.”
“Come in,” he sighed, pulling her in gently as she stumbled over to his bed, Ray Hoese’s file scattered across it. “I...I was starting to get ready for bed and I started to feel dizzy-vertigo or something-and then I just started to get chills”
She didn’t tell him about puking her guts up in the bathroom. Somehow that felt far scarier to tell him. That didn’t stop him from eyeing her with worry as he pulled down the blankets and sheets.
“You want me to call a doctor?”
She wanted to tease she was a doctor, but instead she shook her head, teeth chattering. “No, I just….just want to get warm.”
She climbed into the bed, still warm from Mulder’s earlier presence, burrowing into the pillows as if they were heat rocks. Pulling the covers up near to her head, she allowed Mulder to tuck her in and was pleased that he crawled up beside her, spooning up close to her as he wrapped an arm to pull her closer to his bodies heat. Almost immediately the shaking in her muscles began to stop, the tightness in her shoulders began to ease, and the swimming in her brain began to lessen. Even the uncomfortable lurching in her already sore stomach began to feel better as she cuddled closer, Mulder’s warm chest heating her, his breath soft against her hair.
“Thank you,” she sighed, already feeling safe, content, and drowsy in his embrace.
The only response he gave was a brief tightening of his arm around her middle.
They lay that way for several long moments, neither speaking, the temptation to simply fall asleep like this so very enticing. It was Mulder who finally broke the silence first. He sighed behind her sadly. “It’s not worth it, Scully.”
She had been drifting and not even thinking, but even then she couldn’t wrap her head around what Mulder could possibly mean by that statement. “What?”
“I want you to go home,” he said softly, sounding as if it cost him to say that. Scully frowned, stopping short of snorting at him outright. Honestly, it was just a case of the flu, nothing more, and while she was sure she’d be whiney and pukey for the next few days, it wasn’t as if she was dying of anything that she knew of.
She ignored that quiet little whisper in the back of her brain.
“Oh, Mulder, I’ll be fine,” she replied, half in exasperation.
“No, I’ve been thinking about it,” he insisted, and it occurred to her finally that perhaps this wasn’t just about one feverish and miserable partner. “Looking at you tonight, holding that baby, knowing everything that’s been taken away from you, a chance for motherhood, your health, and that baby. I think that...I don’t know, maybe they’re right.”
Scully really didn’t want to have this argument now, not feeling like this. “Who’s right?”
“The FBI,” he replied, and by that she had a feeling he really meant Chesty Short. “Maybe what they say is true, though for all the wrong reasons. It’s the personal costs that are too high.”
The cost to her? But what about him? Tears from deep in the well of grief she carried rose to the surface, fallen unbidden down her cheeks, as something horribly final began to settle in. For so many years it had been she who had called the shots on her involvement. From their first case here in Bellefleur until now, Scully had willingly put herself into this position, despite the threats to her health and the personal losses she suffered. There were times that were less willing than others, yes, but she had always known in the back of her mind that she had the ability to say no, if she chose to step away. She had never exercised it. But now, she wasn’t being given a choice. Mulder was making it for her.
She should be angry. She should be pissed as hell and giving him an earful. He had done this so many times before for more reason, but this...this was different. And she knew why. They had never said the word, not the crucial word “love”, but then again, she supposed, they never had to. She knew and so did he. And this was not Mulder acting out of guilt or fear, but because in a moment today he saw everything she gave and everything she lost, and he loved her for it. And he was calling an end to it, at least for her.
“There’s so much more you need to do with your life,” he whispered into her ear, a hand coming up to stroke the side of her cheek. “There’s so much more than this. There has to be an end, Scully.”
What if she didn’t want it?
His lips brushed across her cheek, and she reached up for his fingers, pressing a soft kiss to them as he leaned his head against her shoulder. She wanted to tell him no, that she had as much invested in this as he did, and it was precisely because of everything she lost that she should stay. But something told her she wouldn’t win that argument. There was a truth there, a truth she had suspected since Chesterton Short had appeared in their office. If she was really honest with herself, it was a truth she had known since Mulder had left an empty field in Victorville, California, claiming to have found out the truth about Samantha. It had taken her this long to admit it to herself. There had to be an end, sometime, and end to the searching, to the loss, to the fear. She would likely never get all of her answers, certainly not the ones regarding why her sister had to die, or Emily, nor would she get any justice. But she had fought the good fight. And Mulder was right, there were so many things left for her to do with her life, things beyond the X-files.
She just didn’t want to do those things alone.
“Come with me,” she murmured against his knuckles, ignoring the hot tears coursing down her face. “Walk away, Mulder. There has to be an end for you as well. You’ve given everything for this. You’ve found Samantha. You’ve done what you’ve set out to do. Come back to Washington with me.”
It was begging, she didn’t care. Scully couldn’t imagine a future without him in it. And she feared if she walked away from him and left him alone, he might never come back to her on his own. There would always be one more quest, one more search, and she would be forgotten.
“Don’t think I haven’t considered it, Scully,” he murmured against her shoulder, curling his body closer. “The idea of just leaving, of doing something else...of giving you what you want. I don’t know if I can.”
His admission hurt more than she was willing even to express, but at least it was honest. “You could try.”
She could feel his soft huff of laughter, dry and ironic, rumble through her back. “Dana, I would give you everything if I could. I’m just...afraid I can’t do anything else. For so many years, all of my life, since before I was born, my destiny has been molded and shaped by those who were playing their own games, ones I wasn’t even a part of. I’ve been used as a chess piece between two powerful men trying to shape the world as they saw fit, each thinking he could stop Armageddon from happening, each trying to appease an invading force that neither understood. I didn’t choose this, they did. They’ve stolen my entire life and my ability to live it.”
Anger flared briefly inside of her as she turned ever so slightly to regard the top of his dark head. “No, you didn’t choose this. But you can choose now, to walk away from their games. Your father’s dead, Fox. The man who has pulled your strings for so long may be dead by now, hopefully, if not soon. They’re all dead, all of those men who did all of this, their conspiracy is ended, there’s nothing left.”
“Not everything they did died with them. And there’s still one thing left,” he sighed quietly, turning just enough so his diamond bright green eyes regarded hers. “There is the truth.”
His elusive truth, still hiding somewhere, out there, just beyond his grasp. “What if you never find it?”
“Then at least I will have tried, right? Isn’t that what they tell us in Little League?” He tried to make light of it, but she couldn’t laugh, not at this.
“The truth has nearly killed you. What if you don’t come back?”
“I suppose that has to happen to all of us, sooner or later.”
“And you would rather it happen at all?”
“I didn’t say that,” he tried to sooth her, but she looked away, pressing her lips hard against the sob that threatened to escape. “I didn’t choose any of this. It is what it is, and I can’t walk away from it. That is a luxury that wasn’t given to me.”
“But it is for me?”
“Yeah,” he whispered, voice hoarse. “I can’t let you go down the same rabbit hole any further. Go home, Alice, and leave Wonderland behind.”
Her shoulders shook again, no longer with feverish shivering, but with silent crying, as Mulder wrapped her even closer, trying to murmur soothing whispers in her ear. She was too tired to fight and too exhausted to argue, and underneath it all she knew it would be useless. Her head ached with the thought of leaving him, but she had no desire to hasten it by fleeing to her own room to cry out her misery.
“You’re sick, Dana, sleep,” Mulder ordered gently, smoothing her hair out of her hot face. “Let the FBI be damned, stay with me tonight. Just rest.”
In all honesty, in this at least, she could agree with him. To hell with the FBI and Chesty Short’s nosiness. She did as her partner ordered, letting swollen eyes slide shut as he stroked her hair gently, and quietly drifted off to sleep
.