In Oculus Mentis (5/5)
Title: In Oculus Mentis
Author(s): Adrenalin211
Pairing(s): Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Word Count: 40,141 (apx 7,400 for this final section)
Rating/Warnings: R. Language, sex, violence. Spoilers for seasons 1-8. Completely contrived conspiracy theory that isn’t friendly to the U.S. Government.
Summary: After conversations that jolted her off her axis of controlled calm, she’d put her hand on her stomach and shut her eyes. She’d allow herself to feel Mulder’s absence, because she knew that feeling would feed her persistent drive to find him, to get answers to the endless list of queries that lived, constantly awake and invasive, inside of her body.
Author's notes: With Section One. Also, titles for chapters 8 and 9 were taken from Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, and lyrics from the song Lay Down Beside Me, written by Don Williams, respectively. Also? For leigh57, because posting this final bit feels so good, and you're the reason that's true. ♥
Chapter 8: Breach man's mind
John Doggett wasn’t even that tall a man, but his knees hit against Agent Scully’s passenger side seat when he sat down in the back of the rental sedan. He brought his right hand up to massage the stiffness in the back of his neck.
This wasn’t something that often happened in New York, flights landing early. No line at the rental car place. The whole area seemed foreign to him.
Dirt roads, meadows, and open space. It wasn’t as though he’d never seen the country before, but this was…different.
Skinner drove, taking a quick glance at Scully every now and then. Since they re-boarded in Dallas, she looked a little less tired and a little more pale. Overall, not good. Doggett was worried, too, and if he thought there was room for his concerns, he’d have offered them.
She stared ahead, looking out the window every now and then. Sometimes, he could hear the inhale and concentrated exhale of her breathing from the back seat. When she did this, he noticed that Skinner clutched the wheel a little tighter and kept his focus on the road.
“How long until we reach those coordinates?” she asked.
“Thirty five minutes from here. That’s what the maps said,” Skinner answered.
“When you can pass that truck in front of us, do it please,” she said.
“Was planning on it.”
Doggett offered her a granola bar early on in the ride, a chocolate chip Chewy with peanut butter chunks of some sort. She accepted, but stared at it for a few minutes before deciding to eat it.
He sat quietly for several minutes, taking in the scattered, budding trees before he took out his phone. In the window of time that hung between now and their arrival, he’d been planning to call Frohike or Langley or the other one, see if they found anything else on that chip, but his phone wasn’t reading any bars.
“I’m not gettin’ any reception,” he said, breaking the silence and looking into the front seat. “Either of you?”
Agent Scully met his eyes in the rear-view mirror, a look on her face like she’d almost forgotten he was there. They were hollow green, maybe hopeful. He didn’t know, exactly, what he was reading in them. She pulled out her phone, looked down, and shook her head.
“No,” Skinner said as he cleared his throat. “Hopeless out here.”
In the deafening silence that settled in the car, he wondered if it was Agent Scully’s heartbeat he could hear over the smooth rotation of the tires, rolling over dirt and pebble.
++++++++++++++++++++
Mulder dashed into the airport, two minutes past five. Various bones and muscles throbbed out in disapproval at his speed, but he didn’t have the concentration to register their protests.
When he checked the arrivals board the enthusiasm that had been keeping his metaphorical batteries charged seemed to drain of its energy reserves.
3:46
There was a scrolling marquee that announced: Ahead of schedule! in cheerful, bold lettering.
He suppressed any show of anger, panic now taking the place of the anticipation he’d been feeling just seconds ago at the thought of seeing her face. Touching her skin.
But there wasn’t time to entertain ‘if onlys’, so he ran back to the car.
Just great, he wanted to yell out loud. JUST GREAT that he’d somehow managed to turn a four hour drive into three only to find out that Scully was still about fifteen minutes ahead of him, and likely moving further towards danger with every second. Time seemed to shrivel, the air sucked right out of it like one of those space-saver vacuum bags.
“Shit,” he said, entering the car, figuring Millie to be as good a recipient as any of his frustration.
She leaned towards the driver’s seat to turn the key in the ignition, starting up the Chevy yet again. “We missed it.” She didn’t say it like a question.
Mulder nodded and buckled his seatbelt, ready to book it the hell out of there. “Guess we’ll be driving a giant circle,” he said. His hands began to sweat. He tried not to think of what could happen if he couldn’t, somehow, catch up to Scully. He was unsuccessful, unable to find the off button in his brain, the one that stopped horrific potentials from entering his awareness.
He’d told Millie the gist of the story on the car ride here, at least what he knew of it. She’d listened and nodded for the duration, like she was playing an important supporting role in The Greatest Story Ever Told. In general, she seemed to treat life like the arc of a piece of fiction: outlining antagonists, protagonists and conflict, every aspect of what he told her fitting into some chapter in the whole of a story. The ease with which she absorbed and accepted all this improbable information likely meant she was a bit whacked in the head, but after not talking to anyone for weeks, being forced in and out of consciousness, and spending most of his coherent time feeling like there was a kid playing Mr. Potato Head with the various components of his cerebrum, it was nice to have someone who just listened.
“You wanna remind me again why it is you haven’t just called the cops?” she asked, disrupting his thoughts. “A siren would be helpful right about now.”
“Part of the deal,” Mulder said. “I told him I wouldn’t out him if he did the things I asked. If the cops showed up he’d know I was bluffing. There’s something in it for me that he’d know I’m not willing to sacrifice by bringing the cops into this.”
“What’s that?”
He clenched his jaw. “Scully’s safety.”
“AHA, so this is a love story,” she said, taking out a water bottle and popping up the cap with her teeth. “I knew it. You’ve got sick puppy written all over your cut-up face.” She crinkled open a bag of Cheetos and shoved one into her mouth, the crunch a stiff background noise to the thoughts in his head.
“I’m the reason she’s in danger.” When the words slipped from his lips and into the atmosphere he felt a chill stinging him from the inside out, migrating from his ankles all the way to his neck, the hair on his arms raising.
“And don’t you think if this bad guy’s got half a brain on him he’s fled by now? And done all them things you wanted?”
Mulder hoped like hell that this was case.
“If he believed my threats held water? Maybe. The man we’re dealing with is not predictable.”
“You’re a decent liar,” she said, shrugging.
“Yeah?”
“I believed you when you said your name was Mike.”
“Really? Thanks, Mill. I’m flattered.” He said it sarcastically, but it was the truth. Though he was too overcome by circumstance to process small talk, he couldn’t begin to understand why he was telling her all this.
She gave him directions leading back to the factory, at which point he realized that it really was a giant, unsophisticated circle they were covering. Mulder sucked in stifling air, feeling one with the road after every bump (and there were plenty) that they drove over.
Millie broke the silence about twenty minutes later. They were getting close. He could feel Scully’s presence, but maybe that was all in his head.
“Earlier you said you don’t trust people,” she stated, pensive. “Why am I here then?”
Mulder paused before answering, not wanting to be honest, but knowing she wouldn’t settle for anything else. “I needed your car.” he said and when she frowned he added, “The company’s not bad either, and this way I can keep my eye on you.”
At that, she grinned, licking bright orange Cheetos cheese off of her wrinkly fingers. “I was pretty damn persistent, too!”
Mulder tried to let the smile permeate so as not to descend into an abyss of despondence. Ten minutes to go, and he was preparing himself for anything. Beyond Scully, he didn’t know what he hoped to find upon his return, only what he didn’t, only the fears that made him feel as though he were rotting.
He was thankful for the road and its distraction, because if he didn’t have to drive, he shivered to think of what he’d see if he succumbed to the temptation to shut his eyes.
Her voice would forever be a record in his head; he’d wear out the vinyl if he never got to hear it in real time again.
We just keep driving. Don't you ever just want to stop? Get out of the damn car? Settle down and live something approaching a normal life?
He finally understood what Scully had grasped long ago.
Yes, he said to himself, hoping that acknowledging his current understanding would give him a shot at a second chance.
Yes.
++++++++++++++++++++
According to the calculations they were not even a quarter of a mile away (anxious, shaking hands) when she spotted a barricade made of police cruisers in the middle of the road. City cars, Scully observed. Not the local sheriff vehicles.
Skinner pulled over, stopping so abruptly that his wheels sent a cloud of dirt into the air, which Scully noticed when she got out of the car, her legs wobbling slightly before they readjusted to movement.
She felt her heart, a loud snare stammering out a complex pattern inside her chest. Frantic, barely predictable beats.
She watched as several officers approached them, aware that she was walking towards them as well, though she hadn’t remembered commanding her body to move.
“What’s going on here?” Skinner asked, flashing his badge. She and Doggett supplied theirs as well. The officer squinted at them for a moment before he looked back at what appeared to be a run-down building in the distance.
The whole area was blocked off. There was a swarm of cops and firemen congregating a few yards further behind, one of whom came forward to join who she assumed was his partner.
“We got an anonymous tip,” the first officer said. “The man who phoned in said there was a bomb about to go off. That there were people sleeping inside that had to be saved.” He was motioning to the building behind him.
The other one nodded. “We got here a half an hour ago, and turns out it’s the real deal. Found a bomb in there. A bunch of people inside were knocked out. Not restrained, but they certainly wouldn’t have woken up.” The officer placed his hands on his hips.
Scully’s eyes blurred.
“Weirdest call I’ve ever responded to,” the other added. “Just being in there gave me the creeps.”
She tried to absorb the information, but one question broke through with a force so ruthless she couldn’t think beyond it, a query that put all cognitive abilities on hold.
“Who?” Scully said, her voice an eager, foreign sound. “Who was in there? Do you have a list?”
The officer handed her a clipboard containing scribbled down names. She could feel her hope rising to the surface, forming goosebumps on her skin, and causing her fingers to quake.
“We bussed them down to the nearest hospital for treatment,” Scully heard one cop say as she tried to read. “They looked physically okay. But damn if most of them weren’t almost…catatonic.”
Sixteen or so names on the list. Some of them Scully recognized. Teresa Hoese. Billy Miles.
“He’s not on here,” she whispered. Then louder, when she noticed Skinner leaning in to hear her. “He’s not on the list.” The second time she said it she absorbed the full weight of the words. Her throat felt tight.
“Has the bomb been defused?” Skinner asked. Upon seeing the officer’s head shake, shameful, Skinner said, “Well how long until it goes off?”
Every noise around her seemed muffled, her mind spinning. She felt saliva coat the inside of her mouth, the telltale sign of nausea rising. She tried to breathe, feeling as though the eyes of everyone in the world were on here, which she knew couldn’t be true.
“The specialist in our department estimated about a half an hour. That was…” He looked at his watch. “….About twenty five minutes ago. We don’t know for sure though. It’s time-triggered but there’s no fancy countdown or something like on TV.” His voice sounded as though it were under water, murky anxiousness pouring down.
“Bomb squad’s on their way, but they’re coming in from the city, so it’s a safe bet they won’t make it in time. We got the whole building evacuated though,” his partner added.
She heard the words, barely registering their meaning, and began to move forward. Only a thin strip of yellow tape and several hundred yards of earth separated her and that building.
She wasn’t thinking.
She was reacting.
“Scully,” Skinner said. She could feel him reading her, knowing what she wanted (desperately) to do. “Scully,” he repeated, now a yell.
She kept moving forward, now faster, her mind not catching up to her body. She was about to lift the strand of cautionary yellow when she felt Skinner steps closing in on her, her wrist being pulled back.
“You can’t,” he said.
“He’s here,” she said, her voice louder and shakier than she expected. “I can feel it. He’s here.” She sounded hysterical now. Everything she didn’t want to occur was happening and all at once and she could all but stop the tears from breaking through a thinning shell of public concealment.
“He’s not in there. There’s nothing in there but a bomb” His voice was soft. Certain.
“I need to see that that’s true,” she yelled, insistent. She tried to free herself from his hold on her wrist, her body moving towards the building without her hand.
His fingers were a cold reality.
“You need to stay alive for when we find Mulder,” he said, sharp and urgent now, unrelenting.
Alive.
Those words sparked her consciousness like the electric shock of a million truths and suddenly she was hyperconscious, remembering why it mattered to stay alive if he weren’t, remembering why ‘meaningless’ was no longer the first word she thought of when she pondered life without him.
She looked back at the building, the only choice clear in her mind, though it retriggered the nausea to consider it.
“MULDER,” she shouted, his name spinning off her tongue, loud shrill.
(He’d come out. He’d come out if he heard. If she shouted, over and over, he’d come.)
Then, a loud blast of orange and black broke through the evening. She stared for several seconds, heart in her throat, until the tears came freely, her eyes betraying her external walls.
The building was a ball of flame in the distance, a blinding contrast to the dimness that overcame her. She looked down to discover her arms trembling.
Scully’s mouth was watery again, her stomach heaving up its protest as her knees gave way and she sank into the dead grass, vomiting up the contents she’d forced into her stomach earlier.
She tasted salt and air, heard people moving in on her. She felt outside of herself, present in this moment only as some kind of observer.
“Agent Scully, are you all right?” (Agent Doggett.)
“Scully.” (Skinner, urgent. Enthusiastic?)
Then the voice of someone else who was leaning down beside her, whispering her name as he joined her on the ground, the familiarity of which she processed physically before mentally, her body seeming to know its source and slant towards it.
“That happy to see me, Scully?” She turned towards the sound; he was grinning at her while he rubbed her back. The look that overcame his features liberated her from all feeling of disbelief.
A half laugh, wipe of her face, and his name slipping through her lips before she leaned further into his touch.
“Mulder.”
++++++++++++++++++++
He found it difficult to process anything beyond the glisten of her eyes as her fingers traced the cuts on his forehead. The delicate sting of her touch awoke his natural, though locked away, need for human contact. He felt his eyes traveling all over her, making sure she was there, running his hands down her arm as he helped her to stand.
After dreaming of this moment, he hadn’t planned for the hardest part to be absorbing the reality of her presence.
His peripheral surroundings blurred, their colors distorted as though focus and clarity were only necessary when it came to her. She was touching his cheek, so gentle, turning around, her eyes reflecting off a cloud of smoky black and grey. “I thought you were in there. I thought…”
The weight of her voice stung him. He tucked a piece of disheveled hair behind her ear and brought her closer to his chest.
“I know,” he whispered into her hair. He held her head there, secure, strands of red against his fingers. He felt wetness seep through the thin layer of cotton that resided between her eyes and his heart. “I know,” he repeated through the heaviness forming in his throat.
Her grip around him tightened, fingers clutching the material of his and pressing into his back muscles. “It’s okay. I’m okay,” he whispered to her, sensing quiet desperation and fear in the harsh suffocation of her grip and the low hum of her lips breathing, gasping against his chest. He could tell she was trying to pull herself together. He tried to do the same. For her. He tried. “Are you okay?” he asked, stopping all movement until he felt her nod against him.
He bit down on his lip, his heart beating out erratic relief, finding himself breathless.
She calmed down after a few more seconds there, readjusting to her surroundings and clearing her throat. When his hands stopped shaking he settled for holding hers inside of his, releasing the rest of her from his contact, and acknowledging Skinner with a nod of his head.
He could see all the questions written in the lines on her face and the way she held her eyebrows - hows and wheres and whos. For now, she seemed to settle for standing inches from him, her grip on his hand strong as she allowed the others in.
Inhale, exhale. He gave himself of crash course in Breathing 101.
“What about the others?” he asked, looking at the smoking remains of the building when Skinner and another agent (Agent Doggett, he assumed) made their way towards them and joined the conversation.
“They’re okay,” Skinner said. “They were evacuated before the explosion. Taken to the hospital.” He studied the wounds on Mulder’s forehead, squinting. “You look like you need some medical attention, too.”
“Scully’s a doctor. She can fix me up,” he said, looking at her for affirmation. His palm was bone dry in her hand and his words felt foolish in his mouth when he took in the worry on her face.
“Mulder, one of these officers described the others as catatonic before they left for the hospital. You need to go.” Her voice was shaking, but she phrased it as a statement, not an option. He knew he had lost this battle before it had begun, but he needed to assure her it wasn’t… like that.
“That’s how it was at first, Scully. They drug you and you can’t think for yourself. Then you snap back when it wears off. I’m okay.”
“Mulder,” she said. She met his eyes. He just wanted to touch her everywhere, to convince himself she was whole. “You don’t look okay.”
“We have a lot to discuss,” Skinner piped in, his voice quieter than usual. “We’ll talk while you’re getting fixed up. Two birds, one stone, the sooner you’ll be able to can get out of here.”
“Please,” Scully said, and at that, he nodded.
They were moving towards the car, his legs unsteadied by momentous impact, when he spotted another group of policemen. He felt Scully’s hand around his waist, balancing him.
“Were all these cops around before you got here?” he asked Scully in a low voice, timing it all in his head. He must have arrived very shortly after her.
“Someone called in a tip about a bomb,” she said. “That wasn’t you?”
“No,” he said, confused. Then, memories of his escape cascaded through him with a chilling rush, and it became clearer. The man who’d let him go. His dark hair and green eyes were the only features Mulder could remember behind the safety goggles and medical mask. He’d looked like all the others, and it’d reminded him of those brain teasers: one of these things is not like the rest.
Now.
Go.
Mulder glanced around, studying the sight of his imprisonment. The bleak deadness of it seemed appropriate.
Firemen had moved in towards the building, likely when Scully was the only thing he could see. He watched them now, extinguishing the remaining fire before it spread through dry grass.
In high school he’d read Fahrenheit 451. He thought of this, for whatever reason, passages flooding back to him in full form, reminding him of burnt reality and censored knowledge. The fear of truth.
A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon.
Breach man’s mind.
Skinner’s voice rang through the cloud of his thoughts; he coughed on smoke. “When they put out the fire, we’ll have a team search inside for evidence.”
Mulder swallowed, only to find his mouth dry and aching.
“They won’t find anything,” he whispered, closing his eyes to the gentle squeeze of Scully’s hand in his.
Chapter 9: Worth every mile
The hotel room in the city was nice on the inside, fluffy pillows and comfortable, clean bedding. It wasn’t what she was used to on their allotted budget, but Skinner dove into his own pockets so they could all stay in a nice place. Mulder’s room conjoined with hers, as though Skinner absolutely knew they wouldn’t be staying apart tonight, and absolutely didn’t want to know more than that.
Once they were alone, Mulder excused himself to wash up, asking her to please not go anywhere, kissing her forehead before he disappeared into the bathroom, muttering a joke about being offended by his own body odor.
(Of course she wasn’t going to go anywhere.)
She hadn’t had much time to process things in the last few hours, but having Mulder back felt both natural and foreign, an illogicality that was not lost on her. She was aware, quite acutely, that she no longer felt swallowed by uncontrollable forces; his presence was comfort, relief, swelling care. His persona remained intact - witty repartee as a means to make light of serious situations still a vital component of his repertoire - only today they seemed quiet and forced, a guise that hid a broken spirit.
(Remind me to tell you about the memories, he’d whispered to her in the hospital when Skinner had disappeared to get coffee.
I have to tell you something, too, was all she’d managed to say before a nurse interrupted them. )
There was a lot to talk about.
She was curious, of course, about his memories. He’d revealed what they’d done to him in an informal statement he’d made to Skinner, only the three of them present in the sterile hospital room. He’d told of his escape, and the mysterious man who’d helped. Of his phone call that, from all angels, seemed to have worked to end this project, save the other abductees, and stop whoever it was who was following her. He’d said that would have to be enough.
(“We still have the computer chip you left,” she’d said, trying to give him hope.
“Most that will get us is a warrant to search the Pentagon, which I’m sure is already…” he’d trailed off, never finishing the thought.)
Their stories matched up like sequential pieces to a fragment of a puzzle. There was a lot that still confused her, loose ends around every corner of conversation. Much of what was said had made Mulder wince, his suspicions about his beliefs more or less confirmed by her investigation.
(She’d scooted her chair closer to him when that happened. He’d clutched the material of her jacket under the hospital blankets, his heartbreak written in the strength of his grasp.)
After a few minutes in the bathroom he called her name (urgent desperation in his voice) and, though panic stretched through her, she controlled her breathing and opened the door calmly. He was sitting in the Jacuzzi tub, soaking in really hot water (if the room’s oppressive humidity were any indication), and smiling up at her.
Only then did she exhale.
“What’s wrong?” Her eyes circled around the room, making sure.
“Nothing,” he whispered. She saw the rise and fall of his chest. “You were quiet out there.”
She understood all too well, because she’d been silent for the sole purpose of listening to him. To the sound of the water swooshing around in the tub, shampoo bottles, squeaky faucets, telltale signs that he still in there.
She took in the sight of him in the tub. At the hospital he’d ingested a lot of fluids in an attempt to balance his electrolytes, which were finally working to restore the color in his face.
They’d eaten in the cafeteria, hashing out details with Doggett and Skinner, her legs stretched out to touch Mulder’s under the table.
“You don’t usually take baths, do you?” she said after a moment.
“I don’t like them. Bathing in your own grime?” he said with inflection. She gave him a questioning eyebrow. “It hurts to stand up,” he added, his voice quiet.
“What hurts?” she asked too quickly.
She hated this. The way she took forever to reclaim an appropriate level of concern following situations like this. Rationally, she should wait and see if there was something to be worried about before she generated a list of ten possible diagnoses.
His face turned inward, looking ashamed. “I ran about ten miles with no shoes on when I escaped.”
Scully blew out a sigh, closing her eyes and hoping to convey sympathy. “This is why you didn’t take off those shoes at the hospital?”
“I just wanted to go home,” he admitted.
He lifted one of his feet onto the ledge of the tub so she could see. There were tiny lacerations all over the bottom of his foot. She came closer and sat on the floor. When she touched an uncut area of flesh he winced; she pulled back immediately. The entire underside of his foot looked tender and she bit her lip at the way he held his breath until her hands were a safe distance away from the sensitive zone.
“I’m sorry this hotel isn’t home,” she whispered, moving her hand to his ankle and resting it there instead, needing to touch him somewhere.
“You’re home, Scully.”
She gave a slight smile, pressing her lips together and absorbing his words, her eyes welling up before they traveled back down to his feet. She ran her thumb up the smooth bony flesh of his Achilles tendon.
“When you’re done in here, I’ll clean these cuts up for you.” Her voice cracked. “It looks like there’s still some dirt inside. I have some Bacitracin in my bag.”
“Thanks.”
She took a breath, the steam of the bathroom entering her lungs, the heat making her a little dizzy.
“Agent Doggett picked you up a sweatshirt and some sweatpants at the hospital’s gift shop. He said that underwear would be a little too personal to buy for another man.” Mulder smiled at that, nodded his understanding. “The sweats are on the bed for when you get out.”
“I’ve been known to go commando on occasion,” he stated, catching her attention before she turned to walk out and give him some privacy.
“Really?” Her voice held an air of skepticism.
“You don’t believe me, Scully? Why not? You’re scared of what it might make you think about in the middle of work?” Mulder smirked, a glimmer of mischief back in his eyes.
She cracked a smile, but didn’t honor his comment with a response, instead rolling her eyes and turning around. She was idling in the doorway when he stopped her. “Hey, Scully?”
“Yes?”
“Can you stay here?” His expression was vulnerable, like he was depending on her answering in the affirmative.
“You’re taking a bath!”
“But I can’t see you,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “When you’re out there and I’m in here…” he paused, looking up at her.
“I’ll stay,” she said nodding. She took off her jacket and draped it over the sink, allowing herself to adjust to the warmth of the room. Nearly choking on the steamy mugginess, she left the door open and turned on the bathroom fan, taking a seat on the edge of the tub when she was satisfied with the temperature.
After a moment Mulder broke the silence.
“You know. Here I am completely naked and there you are. Fully clothed. This strikes me as unfair, but I’m looking around and I don’t see a place where I can register my objection.”
She laughed. Just a little bit, if only to stop herself from crying. There was so much that needed to be said, so much that bubbled up on the surface of her tongue, ready to be blurted, but she didn’t know how or when. He looked so…broken, despite all of his light-hearted attempts at convincing her otherwise.
God, what had they done to him?
“Mulder, you’ve been-”
“-I’m joking, Scully. I just wanted to see that face you make. I’ve missed it.” After a moment his eyes met hers and he said, “That’s the face!”
He was grinning at her, and when he held out his hand to get out of the tub, she took it and assisted, reaching for a dry towel to wrap around him.
++++++++++++++++++++
Exhaustion.
He’d spent most of his time unconscious lately, so the feeling was unfamiliar when it’d arrived full-force. The adrenaline of the day had worn off. His body suddenly registered the miles he’d covered, the hours he’d driven, and the fear that ran through his veins that had once served as energy.
He heard the faucet turn off a little while ago and was listening to Scully’s movements in the other room. The sounds of her rustling around and messing with the blow-dryer danced between the layers of asleep and awake. His eyelids drifted, only to startle open a second later.
When she came out of the bathroom, wearing dark green pajamas that contrasted with the paleness of her face, he realized she looked even more exhausted than he, her eyes weighted down and her hair still a little bit damp.
She crawled into bed with him, lifting up the heavy comforter and scooting under, placing her back flush against his chest. When she got closer he could see her eyes squinting and her mouth stretching open into a yawn. He settled in, dragging her body further into the coil of his, his chest warm and content.
“How long has it been since you’ve slept, Scully?” he whispered. She found his hand amidst the blankets and placed her fingers over his. Her feet were ice cold where they touched his, but that was always the case.
“I think I drifted off in the plane, but other than that it’s been a couple of days.” He felt her breath hit his hand, a rush of concern stampeding through.
“You should sleep, Scully. I’m not going anywhere.”
She turned around in his arms until their faces were inches apart and he could smell the mint of her toothpaste. When she closed her eyes and pressed her forehead against his she sniffled a little. Scully pulled back to look at him, her eyes shiny and unreadable. He kissed her, soft and slow, unable to resist the supple pull of her lips, the way she let her breath escape into his mouth. She tasted like peppermint and smelled like the soap he liked, berries and oatmeal. Smooth and exfoliating.
“I’ve been waiting to do that for so long,” he said when she pulled away. She smiled at him. He felt her hands rubbing the collar of his sweatshirt, her fingers cold on his neck. He touched his nose to hers, letting out an exhale.
“There’s something I should tell you, Mulder. Before sleep. Before I put it off any longer. I’m excited, but not sure how to…” she trailed off.
Her lip quivered when she met his gaze. He was trying, for the life of him, to see the excitement she was talking about. He ran a thumb across her damp cheek, then placed his hand on her shoulder. Tension was evident where he touched her and a light mist coated her eyes. “What is it, Scully?”
“I’m pregnant,” she said. It came out as a whisper.
Her expression didn’t match up to his definition of the words she’d just spoken, making him rethink the accuracy of his internal dictionary. When he verified the meaning, he was sure, quite sure, that his eyes were beaming. He felt his lips turning up, his pupils processing. “You’re pregnant?”
That couldn’t have been his voice that just came out, so high and airy.
Then, a second after he’d processed the news (or started to, at least), her face transformed. Her fingers traced over the curve of his lips and a smile stretched all the way to her eyes, finally. That smile. That contagious glow that undid him and made him forget that the world didn’t start and end with her.
“Yes,” she said.
God, he couldn’t…Pregnant.
Pregnant
He failed to find words for all the emotions enveloping him; he just knew that disbelief and awe were somewhere on the surface. He couldn’t stop smiling at the look on her face. That pure kind of happy. “But-”
“-I know,” she said, reading his thoughts. “It doesn’t make sense. There’s only one way…”
“We…?”
He looked at her, hopeful.
She was watching the expression he wore, clearly amused as he let this sink in, her grin so wide she was almost laughing, relieved tears in her eyes when she confirmed it for him. “We did.”
He kissed her. Again and again, sensing in her a need for reassurance. She barely caught up to his lips.
“You’re happy?” she asked when he broke away to let her breathe. His heart was swelling, pounding steady. She pressed her hands against his chest.
“Of course I’m happy.” He wound a piece of shower-clean hair behind her ear. His fingers were shaking.
“I was worried to tell you,” she said, her eyes shy. She felt so little next to the frame of his body, her knees folding between his legs.
“Worried?” He kept his voice soft. “Why?”
“After all that’s happened since we’ve talked about this. I just didn’t know if you’d still… I didn’t know how you’d react.”
“I’m happy, Scully. I just want you to be happy, too.” Her eyebrows lifted slightly. “I’m surprised. And a little scared,” he admitted, though the smile on his face overpowered all else. He couldn’t quite reach beyond the wonder. “I think the parenthood thing will come a little more naturally to you than to me,” he clarified, laughing. “But we’ll figure it out.”
She wove her legs further between his, pressing her lips against his mouth and nodding. “I am happy, Mulder.”
“A baby?” Why the hell was this taking so long to grasp?
“Yes.”
“Is it okay? Should we get it checked out?” he asked, worried and rushed, suddenly thinking of a million things at once. (Baby strollers and cribs and the fact that they didn’t own a car with a good safety rating. He was way ahead of himself.) “You haven’t slept in two days,” he noted, bringing it back to the present.
“It’s fine, Mulder. Everything is normal.”
“Did you get enough to eat at the hospital?” Mulder reached under the covers and touched her stomach through the silky material of her pajamas. She closed her eyes.
“Yes. I got more than enough,” she said, her words cut off by a yawn. She pressed her stomach against his hands, warm and smooth; her eyes glistened sleepiness.
“You need sleep, Scully.” He felt her fatigue in the way she curled into him, her muscles finally relaxed. He wanted to keep talking, get more specifics, but she looked even more tired now that she’d told him this.
She hummed against his skin, her face in the curve of his neck. “I’m not supposed to sleep like this,” she whispered. “But I don’t want to move.”
“How are you supposed to sleep?” He encouraged her to show him by making it less comfortable for her. He watched her rotate, spinning around in his arms until she was on her left side. She pressed her back against his chest. He felt warmth everywhere.
“Can I stay like this?” he asked, settling behind her and running his hand down her arm.
“I won’t fall asleep otherwise,” she mumbled. “Not tonight.” She adjusted her head on the pillow they were sharing. He kissed her hair.
A baby.
“Hey, Scully?” he said a minute later. He knew it wouldn’t be long until she was asleep, but he needed to say this.
“Yes?”
“The only thing that kept me going at the place was memories of you.”
She pulled their intertwined hands up to her chin, kissing him there. Soft. He felt a tear fall onto his knuckles. “I missed you so much.”
He squeezed her against him. When the room fell quiet he listened to her breathing over the hum of the soda machine outside, his forearm lifting with the rise and fall of her chest.
As she drifted to sleep he let the emotions come. Holding her here felt right, a perfect collision of luck and relief. While the thought of being a dad to someone sent a wave of panic up his spine, this was quickly eradicated by the incredible thought of having a little Scully running around.
When he was sure she was asleep he unclasped their hands and reached over to the nightstand to turn off the lamp. In the dark of the room he pulled another pillow next to hers and reclaimed his position, wrapping his body around her, placing his hand flat against her stomach, and resting his chin by her shoulder.
Before he shut his eyes, he observed the layout of the room, noting the luminous glow of the hotel lights through the curtains. His body rested like a shield between hers and the door. As it should be.
++++++++++++++++++++
The afternoon sun shone through the thin openings of her blinds, causing flecks of swaying light to stripe his skin. He sat in the oversized corner chair, the Sports section she’d abandoned in his hands. He was reading baseball scores aloud to her, filling the silence with the sound of his voice.
He hadn’t left her since Nevada. They’d spent these last two days in her apartment, ordering food and watching movies, enjoying the immediate reassurance that came with waking up beside each other. She was confident it would continue. At one point in the distant past, she’d assumed she’d tire of this kind of constancy, of spending day after uninterrupted day listening to him rattling off statistics and paranormal theories and putting too much butter on her toast.
It wasn’t tiresome. She was still overwhelmed by the awe of having him back, still readjusting to the luxury of looking at him and finding her balance.
(Today, whenever she closed her eyes, she saw his hands on her, everywhere, smoothing up her thigh and landing on her ribs, a tickle forming in her throat.)
She walked towards the chair he was occupying, gently extracting the newspaper from his hands. He looked up, about to utter some smart-ass protest, she was sure, but he froze when he met her gaze.
She used the opportunity to sit on his lap, feeling his eyes on her as she did so.
He helped her to position herself there, wrapping his arm around her. She draped her legs across his thighs, one hand on his chest and the other running through his hair. A smile formed on her face when she saw his surprised expression; she leaned forward to touch her lips to his.
He opened his mouth right away, tasting like coffee and the get-well-soon chocolate her mother had sent him.
When his tongue massaged the inside of her mouth she broke the connection to let out a hot breath, already overcome by her need to have more of him. All of him.
She moved her lips to his neck, kissing a path across the line of his jaw and feeling the vibration of his hum as he sounded out his approval.
“Do you feel up to this?” she whispered, pulling away for a second to look at him. His head was tilted back against the chair, the wounds on his skin looking harsh but healing in the midday light. He opened his eyes and grinned.
“Literally or figuratively?” he asked, raising his eyebrow.
She moved in again, laughing against his mouth. “Both,” she clarified.
“Both,” he responded with ease, the meaning rippling through her body with its promise.
As they kissed, a collection of past moments began to layer upon the present, his final letter storming her mind, the words traveling like clouds through the air. She pressed her lips harder against him, responding to the eagerness in his breathing.
My unyielding love for you.
When she managed to extract herself from his lips, they walked to her bedroom. She felt his arms winding around her waist as he followed.
A rush of inner heat encircled her when she lowered his boxers and watched his face respond to her teasing touch.
I’ll demonstrate, in no uncertain terms.
Their clothes fell into a pile on the floor in a tangle of opposite and complimentary colors. He stood naked, looking at her for a moment before his hands found her stomach, his fingers brushing softly across her flesh.
“The baby, Scully,” he said moments later when he was hovering over her, about to enter. Scully arched her back, unfocused urge. She blinked, registering his concern.
“It’s okay. I promise.” Her fingers slid through the hair on the back of his neck.
His head hung above her, his expression tentative. He was so close to being where she wanted him it hurt, her body throbbing out its protest.
“Are you sure?” he whispered. She noticed the way he held his whole body at a cautious, tense distance, his biceps locked with a safe space between them
Scully nodded, biting her lip and locking eyes with him. She skimmed her hand up the length of his arm, feeling the apprehension drain as he absorbed the reassurance of her expression.
“Don’t worry, Scully,” he whispered after a moment. “I’ll go slow.”
When he was finally inside she had to shut her eyes to the sensation, just for a moment. She listened to the coarse sounds escaping him, then watched the way he kept his eyes planted on her, studying her face with every forward glide.
“I’m not worried, Mulder,” she whispered when she remembered to speak.
“Just tell me if I hurt you, okay?” his voice was heavy now, coated by the effects of their movements.
She swallowed the emotion that rose when she saw his face, scarred and scared, love overriding. The circuitous path of these last few months spread through her conscience, a realization that filled the sullen hole dug during the days they’d spent apart.
“You won’t hurt me,” she said, believing it, in no uncertain terms.
Previous Section
Author(s): Adrenalin211
Pairing(s): Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Word Count: 40,141 (apx 7,400 for this final section)
Rating/Warnings: R. Language, sex, violence. Spoilers for seasons 1-8. Completely contrived conspiracy theory that isn’t friendly to the U.S. Government.
Summary: After conversations that jolted her off her axis of controlled calm, she’d put her hand on her stomach and shut her eyes. She’d allow herself to feel Mulder’s absence, because she knew that feeling would feed her persistent drive to find him, to get answers to the endless list of queries that lived, constantly awake and invasive, inside of her body.
Author's notes: With Section One. Also, titles for chapters 8 and 9 were taken from Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, and lyrics from the song Lay Down Beside Me, written by Don Williams, respectively. Also? For leigh57, because posting this final bit feels so good, and you're the reason that's true. ♥
Chapter 8: Breach man's mind
John Doggett wasn’t even that tall a man, but his knees hit against Agent Scully’s passenger side seat when he sat down in the back of the rental sedan. He brought his right hand up to massage the stiffness in the back of his neck.
This wasn’t something that often happened in New York, flights landing early. No line at the rental car place. The whole area seemed foreign to him.
Dirt roads, meadows, and open space. It wasn’t as though he’d never seen the country before, but this was…different.
Skinner drove, taking a quick glance at Scully every now and then. Since they re-boarded in Dallas, she looked a little less tired and a little more pale. Overall, not good. Doggett was worried, too, and if he thought there was room for his concerns, he’d have offered them.
She stared ahead, looking out the window every now and then. Sometimes, he could hear the inhale and concentrated exhale of her breathing from the back seat. When she did this, he noticed that Skinner clutched the wheel a little tighter and kept his focus on the road.
“How long until we reach those coordinates?” she asked.
“Thirty five minutes from here. That’s what the maps said,” Skinner answered.
“When you can pass that truck in front of us, do it please,” she said.
“Was planning on it.”
Doggett offered her a granola bar early on in the ride, a chocolate chip Chewy with peanut butter chunks of some sort. She accepted, but stared at it for a few minutes before deciding to eat it.
He sat quietly for several minutes, taking in the scattered, budding trees before he took out his phone. In the window of time that hung between now and their arrival, he’d been planning to call Frohike or Langley or the other one, see if they found anything else on that chip, but his phone wasn’t reading any bars.
“I’m not gettin’ any reception,” he said, breaking the silence and looking into the front seat. “Either of you?”
Agent Scully met his eyes in the rear-view mirror, a look on her face like she’d almost forgotten he was there. They were hollow green, maybe hopeful. He didn’t know, exactly, what he was reading in them. She pulled out her phone, looked down, and shook her head.
“No,” Skinner said as he cleared his throat. “Hopeless out here.”
In the deafening silence that settled in the car, he wondered if it was Agent Scully’s heartbeat he could hear over the smooth rotation of the tires, rolling over dirt and pebble.
++++++++++++++++++++
Mulder dashed into the airport, two minutes past five. Various bones and muscles throbbed out in disapproval at his speed, but he didn’t have the concentration to register their protests.
When he checked the arrivals board the enthusiasm that had been keeping his metaphorical batteries charged seemed to drain of its energy reserves.
3:46
There was a scrolling marquee that announced: Ahead of schedule! in cheerful, bold lettering.
He suppressed any show of anger, panic now taking the place of the anticipation he’d been feeling just seconds ago at the thought of seeing her face. Touching her skin.
But there wasn’t time to entertain ‘if onlys’, so he ran back to the car.
Just great, he wanted to yell out loud. JUST GREAT that he’d somehow managed to turn a four hour drive into three only to find out that Scully was still about fifteen minutes ahead of him, and likely moving further towards danger with every second. Time seemed to shrivel, the air sucked right out of it like one of those space-saver vacuum bags.
“Shit,” he said, entering the car, figuring Millie to be as good a recipient as any of his frustration.
She leaned towards the driver’s seat to turn the key in the ignition, starting up the Chevy yet again. “We missed it.” She didn’t say it like a question.
Mulder nodded and buckled his seatbelt, ready to book it the hell out of there. “Guess we’ll be driving a giant circle,” he said. His hands began to sweat. He tried not to think of what could happen if he couldn’t, somehow, catch up to Scully. He was unsuccessful, unable to find the off button in his brain, the one that stopped horrific potentials from entering his awareness.
He’d told Millie the gist of the story on the car ride here, at least what he knew of it. She’d listened and nodded for the duration, like she was playing an important supporting role in The Greatest Story Ever Told. In general, she seemed to treat life like the arc of a piece of fiction: outlining antagonists, protagonists and conflict, every aspect of what he told her fitting into some chapter in the whole of a story. The ease with which she absorbed and accepted all this improbable information likely meant she was a bit whacked in the head, but after not talking to anyone for weeks, being forced in and out of consciousness, and spending most of his coherent time feeling like there was a kid playing Mr. Potato Head with the various components of his cerebrum, it was nice to have someone who just listened.
“You wanna remind me again why it is you haven’t just called the cops?” she asked, disrupting his thoughts. “A siren would be helpful right about now.”
“Part of the deal,” Mulder said. “I told him I wouldn’t out him if he did the things I asked. If the cops showed up he’d know I was bluffing. There’s something in it for me that he’d know I’m not willing to sacrifice by bringing the cops into this.”
“What’s that?”
He clenched his jaw. “Scully’s safety.”
“AHA, so this is a love story,” she said, taking out a water bottle and popping up the cap with her teeth. “I knew it. You’ve got sick puppy written all over your cut-up face.” She crinkled open a bag of Cheetos and shoved one into her mouth, the crunch a stiff background noise to the thoughts in his head.
“I’m the reason she’s in danger.” When the words slipped from his lips and into the atmosphere he felt a chill stinging him from the inside out, migrating from his ankles all the way to his neck, the hair on his arms raising.
“And don’t you think if this bad guy’s got half a brain on him he’s fled by now? And done all them things you wanted?”
Mulder hoped like hell that this was case.
“If he believed my threats held water? Maybe. The man we’re dealing with is not predictable.”
“You’re a decent liar,” she said, shrugging.
“Yeah?”
“I believed you when you said your name was Mike.”
“Really? Thanks, Mill. I’m flattered.” He said it sarcastically, but it was the truth. Though he was too overcome by circumstance to process small talk, he couldn’t begin to understand why he was telling her all this.
She gave him directions leading back to the factory, at which point he realized that it really was a giant, unsophisticated circle they were covering. Mulder sucked in stifling air, feeling one with the road after every bump (and there were plenty) that they drove over.
Millie broke the silence about twenty minutes later. They were getting close. He could feel Scully’s presence, but maybe that was all in his head.
“Earlier you said you don’t trust people,” she stated, pensive. “Why am I here then?”
Mulder paused before answering, not wanting to be honest, but knowing she wouldn’t settle for anything else. “I needed your car.” he said and when she frowned he added, “The company’s not bad either, and this way I can keep my eye on you.”
At that, she grinned, licking bright orange Cheetos cheese off of her wrinkly fingers. “I was pretty damn persistent, too!”
Mulder tried to let the smile permeate so as not to descend into an abyss of despondence. Ten minutes to go, and he was preparing himself for anything. Beyond Scully, he didn’t know what he hoped to find upon his return, only what he didn’t, only the fears that made him feel as though he were rotting.
He was thankful for the road and its distraction, because if he didn’t have to drive, he shivered to think of what he’d see if he succumbed to the temptation to shut his eyes.
Her voice would forever be a record in his head; he’d wear out the vinyl if he never got to hear it in real time again.
We just keep driving. Don't you ever just want to stop? Get out of the damn car? Settle down and live something approaching a normal life?
He finally understood what Scully had grasped long ago.
Yes, he said to himself, hoping that acknowledging his current understanding would give him a shot at a second chance.
Yes.
++++++++++++++++++++
According to the calculations they were not even a quarter of a mile away (anxious, shaking hands) when she spotted a barricade made of police cruisers in the middle of the road. City cars, Scully observed. Not the local sheriff vehicles.
Skinner pulled over, stopping so abruptly that his wheels sent a cloud of dirt into the air, which Scully noticed when she got out of the car, her legs wobbling slightly before they readjusted to movement.
She felt her heart, a loud snare stammering out a complex pattern inside her chest. Frantic, barely predictable beats.
She watched as several officers approached them, aware that she was walking towards them as well, though she hadn’t remembered commanding her body to move.
“What’s going on here?” Skinner asked, flashing his badge. She and Doggett supplied theirs as well. The officer squinted at them for a moment before he looked back at what appeared to be a run-down building in the distance.
The whole area was blocked off. There was a swarm of cops and firemen congregating a few yards further behind, one of whom came forward to join who she assumed was his partner.
“We got an anonymous tip,” the first officer said. “The man who phoned in said there was a bomb about to go off. That there were people sleeping inside that had to be saved.” He was motioning to the building behind him.
The other one nodded. “We got here a half an hour ago, and turns out it’s the real deal. Found a bomb in there. A bunch of people inside were knocked out. Not restrained, but they certainly wouldn’t have woken up.” The officer placed his hands on his hips.
Scully’s eyes blurred.
“Weirdest call I’ve ever responded to,” the other added. “Just being in there gave me the creeps.”
She tried to absorb the information, but one question broke through with a force so ruthless she couldn’t think beyond it, a query that put all cognitive abilities on hold.
“Who?” Scully said, her voice an eager, foreign sound. “Who was in there? Do you have a list?”
The officer handed her a clipboard containing scribbled down names. She could feel her hope rising to the surface, forming goosebumps on her skin, and causing her fingers to quake.
“We bussed them down to the nearest hospital for treatment,” Scully heard one cop say as she tried to read. “They looked physically okay. But damn if most of them weren’t almost…catatonic.”
Sixteen or so names on the list. Some of them Scully recognized. Teresa Hoese. Billy Miles.
“He’s not on here,” she whispered. Then louder, when she noticed Skinner leaning in to hear her. “He’s not on the list.” The second time she said it she absorbed the full weight of the words. Her throat felt tight.
“Has the bomb been defused?” Skinner asked. Upon seeing the officer’s head shake, shameful, Skinner said, “Well how long until it goes off?”
Every noise around her seemed muffled, her mind spinning. She felt saliva coat the inside of her mouth, the telltale sign of nausea rising. She tried to breathe, feeling as though the eyes of everyone in the world were on here, which she knew couldn’t be true.
“The specialist in our department estimated about a half an hour. That was…” He looked at his watch. “….About twenty five minutes ago. We don’t know for sure though. It’s time-triggered but there’s no fancy countdown or something like on TV.” His voice sounded as though it were under water, murky anxiousness pouring down.
“Bomb squad’s on their way, but they’re coming in from the city, so it’s a safe bet they won’t make it in time. We got the whole building evacuated though,” his partner added.
She heard the words, barely registering their meaning, and began to move forward. Only a thin strip of yellow tape and several hundred yards of earth separated her and that building.
She wasn’t thinking.
She was reacting.
“Scully,” Skinner said. She could feel him reading her, knowing what she wanted (desperately) to do. “Scully,” he repeated, now a yell.
She kept moving forward, now faster, her mind not catching up to her body. She was about to lift the strand of cautionary yellow when she felt Skinner steps closing in on her, her wrist being pulled back.
“You can’t,” he said.
“He’s here,” she said, her voice louder and shakier than she expected. “I can feel it. He’s here.” She sounded hysterical now. Everything she didn’t want to occur was happening and all at once and she could all but stop the tears from breaking through a thinning shell of public concealment.
“He’s not in there. There’s nothing in there but a bomb” His voice was soft. Certain.
“I need to see that that’s true,” she yelled, insistent. She tried to free herself from his hold on her wrist, her body moving towards the building without her hand.
His fingers were a cold reality.
“You need to stay alive for when we find Mulder,” he said, sharp and urgent now, unrelenting.
Alive.
Those words sparked her consciousness like the electric shock of a million truths and suddenly she was hyperconscious, remembering why it mattered to stay alive if he weren’t, remembering why ‘meaningless’ was no longer the first word she thought of when she pondered life without him.
She looked back at the building, the only choice clear in her mind, though it retriggered the nausea to consider it.
“MULDER,” she shouted, his name spinning off her tongue, loud shrill.
(He’d come out. He’d come out if he heard. If she shouted, over and over, he’d come.)
Then, a loud blast of orange and black broke through the evening. She stared for several seconds, heart in her throat, until the tears came freely, her eyes betraying her external walls.
The building was a ball of flame in the distance, a blinding contrast to the dimness that overcame her. She looked down to discover her arms trembling.
Scully’s mouth was watery again, her stomach heaving up its protest as her knees gave way and she sank into the dead grass, vomiting up the contents she’d forced into her stomach earlier.
She tasted salt and air, heard people moving in on her. She felt outside of herself, present in this moment only as some kind of observer.
“Agent Scully, are you all right?” (Agent Doggett.)
“Scully.” (Skinner, urgent. Enthusiastic?)
Then the voice of someone else who was leaning down beside her, whispering her name as he joined her on the ground, the familiarity of which she processed physically before mentally, her body seeming to know its source and slant towards it.
“That happy to see me, Scully?” She turned towards the sound; he was grinning at her while he rubbed her back. The look that overcame his features liberated her from all feeling of disbelief.
A half laugh, wipe of her face, and his name slipping through her lips before she leaned further into his touch.
“Mulder.”
++++++++++++++++++++
He found it difficult to process anything beyond the glisten of her eyes as her fingers traced the cuts on his forehead. The delicate sting of her touch awoke his natural, though locked away, need for human contact. He felt his eyes traveling all over her, making sure she was there, running his hands down her arm as he helped her to stand.
After dreaming of this moment, he hadn’t planned for the hardest part to be absorbing the reality of her presence.
His peripheral surroundings blurred, their colors distorted as though focus and clarity were only necessary when it came to her. She was touching his cheek, so gentle, turning around, her eyes reflecting off a cloud of smoky black and grey. “I thought you were in there. I thought…”
The weight of her voice stung him. He tucked a piece of disheveled hair behind her ear and brought her closer to his chest.
“I know,” he whispered into her hair. He held her head there, secure, strands of red against his fingers. He felt wetness seep through the thin layer of cotton that resided between her eyes and his heart. “I know,” he repeated through the heaviness forming in his throat.
Her grip around him tightened, fingers clutching the material of his and pressing into his back muscles. “It’s okay. I’m okay,” he whispered to her, sensing quiet desperation and fear in the harsh suffocation of her grip and the low hum of her lips breathing, gasping against his chest. He could tell she was trying to pull herself together. He tried to do the same. For her. He tried. “Are you okay?” he asked, stopping all movement until he felt her nod against him.
He bit down on his lip, his heart beating out erratic relief, finding himself breathless.
She calmed down after a few more seconds there, readjusting to her surroundings and clearing her throat. When his hands stopped shaking he settled for holding hers inside of his, releasing the rest of her from his contact, and acknowledging Skinner with a nod of his head.
He could see all the questions written in the lines on her face and the way she held her eyebrows - hows and wheres and whos. For now, she seemed to settle for standing inches from him, her grip on his hand strong as she allowed the others in.
Inhale, exhale. He gave himself of crash course in Breathing 101.
“What about the others?” he asked, looking at the smoking remains of the building when Skinner and another agent (Agent Doggett, he assumed) made their way towards them and joined the conversation.
“They’re okay,” Skinner said. “They were evacuated before the explosion. Taken to the hospital.” He studied the wounds on Mulder’s forehead, squinting. “You look like you need some medical attention, too.”
“Scully’s a doctor. She can fix me up,” he said, looking at her for affirmation. His palm was bone dry in her hand and his words felt foolish in his mouth when he took in the worry on her face.
“Mulder, one of these officers described the others as catatonic before they left for the hospital. You need to go.” Her voice was shaking, but she phrased it as a statement, not an option. He knew he had lost this battle before it had begun, but he needed to assure her it wasn’t… like that.
“That’s how it was at first, Scully. They drug you and you can’t think for yourself. Then you snap back when it wears off. I’m okay.”
“Mulder,” she said. She met his eyes. He just wanted to touch her everywhere, to convince himself she was whole. “You don’t look okay.”
“We have a lot to discuss,” Skinner piped in, his voice quieter than usual. “We’ll talk while you’re getting fixed up. Two birds, one stone, the sooner you’ll be able to can get out of here.”
“Please,” Scully said, and at that, he nodded.
They were moving towards the car, his legs unsteadied by momentous impact, when he spotted another group of policemen. He felt Scully’s hand around his waist, balancing him.
“Were all these cops around before you got here?” he asked Scully in a low voice, timing it all in his head. He must have arrived very shortly after her.
“Someone called in a tip about a bomb,” she said. “That wasn’t you?”
“No,” he said, confused. Then, memories of his escape cascaded through him with a chilling rush, and it became clearer. The man who’d let him go. His dark hair and green eyes were the only features Mulder could remember behind the safety goggles and medical mask. He’d looked like all the others, and it’d reminded him of those brain teasers: one of these things is not like the rest.
Now.
Go.
Mulder glanced around, studying the sight of his imprisonment. The bleak deadness of it seemed appropriate.
Firemen had moved in towards the building, likely when Scully was the only thing he could see. He watched them now, extinguishing the remaining fire before it spread through dry grass.
In high school he’d read Fahrenheit 451. He thought of this, for whatever reason, passages flooding back to him in full form, reminding him of burnt reality and censored knowledge. The fear of truth.
A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon.
Breach man’s mind.
Skinner’s voice rang through the cloud of his thoughts; he coughed on smoke. “When they put out the fire, we’ll have a team search inside for evidence.”
Mulder swallowed, only to find his mouth dry and aching.
“They won’t find anything,” he whispered, closing his eyes to the gentle squeeze of Scully’s hand in his.
Chapter 9: Worth every mile
The hotel room in the city was nice on the inside, fluffy pillows and comfortable, clean bedding. It wasn’t what she was used to on their allotted budget, but Skinner dove into his own pockets so they could all stay in a nice place. Mulder’s room conjoined with hers, as though Skinner absolutely knew they wouldn’t be staying apart tonight, and absolutely didn’t want to know more than that.
Once they were alone, Mulder excused himself to wash up, asking her to please not go anywhere, kissing her forehead before he disappeared into the bathroom, muttering a joke about being offended by his own body odor.
(Of course she wasn’t going to go anywhere.)
She hadn’t had much time to process things in the last few hours, but having Mulder back felt both natural and foreign, an illogicality that was not lost on her. She was aware, quite acutely, that she no longer felt swallowed by uncontrollable forces; his presence was comfort, relief, swelling care. His persona remained intact - witty repartee as a means to make light of serious situations still a vital component of his repertoire - only today they seemed quiet and forced, a guise that hid a broken spirit.
(Remind me to tell you about the memories, he’d whispered to her in the hospital when Skinner had disappeared to get coffee.
I have to tell you something, too, was all she’d managed to say before a nurse interrupted them. )
There was a lot to talk about.
She was curious, of course, about his memories. He’d revealed what they’d done to him in an informal statement he’d made to Skinner, only the three of them present in the sterile hospital room. He’d told of his escape, and the mysterious man who’d helped. Of his phone call that, from all angels, seemed to have worked to end this project, save the other abductees, and stop whoever it was who was following her. He’d said that would have to be enough.
(“We still have the computer chip you left,” she’d said, trying to give him hope.
“Most that will get us is a warrant to search the Pentagon, which I’m sure is already…” he’d trailed off, never finishing the thought.)
Their stories matched up like sequential pieces to a fragment of a puzzle. There was a lot that still confused her, loose ends around every corner of conversation. Much of what was said had made Mulder wince, his suspicions about his beliefs more or less confirmed by her investigation.
(She’d scooted her chair closer to him when that happened. He’d clutched the material of her jacket under the hospital blankets, his heartbreak written in the strength of his grasp.)
After a few minutes in the bathroom he called her name (urgent desperation in his voice) and, though panic stretched through her, she controlled her breathing and opened the door calmly. He was sitting in the Jacuzzi tub, soaking in really hot water (if the room’s oppressive humidity were any indication), and smiling up at her.
Only then did she exhale.
“What’s wrong?” Her eyes circled around the room, making sure.
“Nothing,” he whispered. She saw the rise and fall of his chest. “You were quiet out there.”
She understood all too well, because she’d been silent for the sole purpose of listening to him. To the sound of the water swooshing around in the tub, shampoo bottles, squeaky faucets, telltale signs that he still in there.
She took in the sight of him in the tub. At the hospital he’d ingested a lot of fluids in an attempt to balance his electrolytes, which were finally working to restore the color in his face.
They’d eaten in the cafeteria, hashing out details with Doggett and Skinner, her legs stretched out to touch Mulder’s under the table.
“You don’t usually take baths, do you?” she said after a moment.
“I don’t like them. Bathing in your own grime?” he said with inflection. She gave him a questioning eyebrow. “It hurts to stand up,” he added, his voice quiet.
“What hurts?” she asked too quickly.
She hated this. The way she took forever to reclaim an appropriate level of concern following situations like this. Rationally, she should wait and see if there was something to be worried about before she generated a list of ten possible diagnoses.
His face turned inward, looking ashamed. “I ran about ten miles with no shoes on when I escaped.”
Scully blew out a sigh, closing her eyes and hoping to convey sympathy. “This is why you didn’t take off those shoes at the hospital?”
“I just wanted to go home,” he admitted.
He lifted one of his feet onto the ledge of the tub so she could see. There were tiny lacerations all over the bottom of his foot. She came closer and sat on the floor. When she touched an uncut area of flesh he winced; she pulled back immediately. The entire underside of his foot looked tender and she bit her lip at the way he held his breath until her hands were a safe distance away from the sensitive zone.
“I’m sorry this hotel isn’t home,” she whispered, moving her hand to his ankle and resting it there instead, needing to touch him somewhere.
“You’re home, Scully.”
She gave a slight smile, pressing her lips together and absorbing his words, her eyes welling up before they traveled back down to his feet. She ran her thumb up the smooth bony flesh of his Achilles tendon.
“When you’re done in here, I’ll clean these cuts up for you.” Her voice cracked. “It looks like there’s still some dirt inside. I have some Bacitracin in my bag.”
“Thanks.”
She took a breath, the steam of the bathroom entering her lungs, the heat making her a little dizzy.
“Agent Doggett picked you up a sweatshirt and some sweatpants at the hospital’s gift shop. He said that underwear would be a little too personal to buy for another man.” Mulder smiled at that, nodded his understanding. “The sweats are on the bed for when you get out.”
“I’ve been known to go commando on occasion,” he stated, catching her attention before she turned to walk out and give him some privacy.
“Really?” Her voice held an air of skepticism.
“You don’t believe me, Scully? Why not? You’re scared of what it might make you think about in the middle of work?” Mulder smirked, a glimmer of mischief back in his eyes.
She cracked a smile, but didn’t honor his comment with a response, instead rolling her eyes and turning around. She was idling in the doorway when he stopped her. “Hey, Scully?”
“Yes?”
“Can you stay here?” His expression was vulnerable, like he was depending on her answering in the affirmative.
“You’re taking a bath!”
“But I can’t see you,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “When you’re out there and I’m in here…” he paused, looking up at her.
“I’ll stay,” she said nodding. She took off her jacket and draped it over the sink, allowing herself to adjust to the warmth of the room. Nearly choking on the steamy mugginess, she left the door open and turned on the bathroom fan, taking a seat on the edge of the tub when she was satisfied with the temperature.
After a moment Mulder broke the silence.
“You know. Here I am completely naked and there you are. Fully clothed. This strikes me as unfair, but I’m looking around and I don’t see a place where I can register my objection.”
She laughed. Just a little bit, if only to stop herself from crying. There was so much that needed to be said, so much that bubbled up on the surface of her tongue, ready to be blurted, but she didn’t know how or when. He looked so…broken, despite all of his light-hearted attempts at convincing her otherwise.
God, what had they done to him?
“Mulder, you’ve been-”
“-I’m joking, Scully. I just wanted to see that face you make. I’ve missed it.” After a moment his eyes met hers and he said, “That’s the face!”
He was grinning at her, and when he held out his hand to get out of the tub, she took it and assisted, reaching for a dry towel to wrap around him.
++++++++++++++++++++
Exhaustion.
He’d spent most of his time unconscious lately, so the feeling was unfamiliar when it’d arrived full-force. The adrenaline of the day had worn off. His body suddenly registered the miles he’d covered, the hours he’d driven, and the fear that ran through his veins that had once served as energy.
He heard the faucet turn off a little while ago and was listening to Scully’s movements in the other room. The sounds of her rustling around and messing with the blow-dryer danced between the layers of asleep and awake. His eyelids drifted, only to startle open a second later.
When she came out of the bathroom, wearing dark green pajamas that contrasted with the paleness of her face, he realized she looked even more exhausted than he, her eyes weighted down and her hair still a little bit damp.
She crawled into bed with him, lifting up the heavy comforter and scooting under, placing her back flush against his chest. When she got closer he could see her eyes squinting and her mouth stretching open into a yawn. He settled in, dragging her body further into the coil of his, his chest warm and content.
“How long has it been since you’ve slept, Scully?” he whispered. She found his hand amidst the blankets and placed her fingers over his. Her feet were ice cold where they touched his, but that was always the case.
“I think I drifted off in the plane, but other than that it’s been a couple of days.” He felt her breath hit his hand, a rush of concern stampeding through.
“You should sleep, Scully. I’m not going anywhere.”
She turned around in his arms until their faces were inches apart and he could smell the mint of her toothpaste. When she closed her eyes and pressed her forehead against his she sniffled a little. Scully pulled back to look at him, her eyes shiny and unreadable. He kissed her, soft and slow, unable to resist the supple pull of her lips, the way she let her breath escape into his mouth. She tasted like peppermint and smelled like the soap he liked, berries and oatmeal. Smooth and exfoliating.
“I’ve been waiting to do that for so long,” he said when she pulled away. She smiled at him. He felt her hands rubbing the collar of his sweatshirt, her fingers cold on his neck. He touched his nose to hers, letting out an exhale.
“There’s something I should tell you, Mulder. Before sleep. Before I put it off any longer. I’m excited, but not sure how to…” she trailed off.
Her lip quivered when she met his gaze. He was trying, for the life of him, to see the excitement she was talking about. He ran a thumb across her damp cheek, then placed his hand on her shoulder. Tension was evident where he touched her and a light mist coated her eyes. “What is it, Scully?”
“I’m pregnant,” she said. It came out as a whisper.
Her expression didn’t match up to his definition of the words she’d just spoken, making him rethink the accuracy of his internal dictionary. When he verified the meaning, he was sure, quite sure, that his eyes were beaming. He felt his lips turning up, his pupils processing. “You’re pregnant?”
That couldn’t have been his voice that just came out, so high and airy.
Then, a second after he’d processed the news (or started to, at least), her face transformed. Her fingers traced over the curve of his lips and a smile stretched all the way to her eyes, finally. That smile. That contagious glow that undid him and made him forget that the world didn’t start and end with her.
“Yes,” she said.
God, he couldn’t…Pregnant.
Pregnant
He failed to find words for all the emotions enveloping him; he just knew that disbelief and awe were somewhere on the surface. He couldn’t stop smiling at the look on her face. That pure kind of happy. “But-”
“-I know,” she said, reading his thoughts. “It doesn’t make sense. There’s only one way…”
“We…?”
He looked at her, hopeful.
She was watching the expression he wore, clearly amused as he let this sink in, her grin so wide she was almost laughing, relieved tears in her eyes when she confirmed it for him. “We did.”
He kissed her. Again and again, sensing in her a need for reassurance. She barely caught up to his lips.
“You’re happy?” she asked when he broke away to let her breathe. His heart was swelling, pounding steady. She pressed her hands against his chest.
“Of course I’m happy.” He wound a piece of shower-clean hair behind her ear. His fingers were shaking.
“I was worried to tell you,” she said, her eyes shy. She felt so little next to the frame of his body, her knees folding between his legs.
“Worried?” He kept his voice soft. “Why?”
“After all that’s happened since we’ve talked about this. I just didn’t know if you’d still… I didn’t know how you’d react.”
“I’m happy, Scully. I just want you to be happy, too.” Her eyebrows lifted slightly. “I’m surprised. And a little scared,” he admitted, though the smile on his face overpowered all else. He couldn’t quite reach beyond the wonder. “I think the parenthood thing will come a little more naturally to you than to me,” he clarified, laughing. “But we’ll figure it out.”
She wove her legs further between his, pressing her lips against his mouth and nodding. “I am happy, Mulder.”
“A baby?” Why the hell was this taking so long to grasp?
“Yes.”
“Is it okay? Should we get it checked out?” he asked, worried and rushed, suddenly thinking of a million things at once. (Baby strollers and cribs and the fact that they didn’t own a car with a good safety rating. He was way ahead of himself.) “You haven’t slept in two days,” he noted, bringing it back to the present.
“It’s fine, Mulder. Everything is normal.”
“Did you get enough to eat at the hospital?” Mulder reached under the covers and touched her stomach through the silky material of her pajamas. She closed her eyes.
“Yes. I got more than enough,” she said, her words cut off by a yawn. She pressed her stomach against his hands, warm and smooth; her eyes glistened sleepiness.
“You need sleep, Scully.” He felt her fatigue in the way she curled into him, her muscles finally relaxed. He wanted to keep talking, get more specifics, but she looked even more tired now that she’d told him this.
She hummed against his skin, her face in the curve of his neck. “I’m not supposed to sleep like this,” she whispered. “But I don’t want to move.”
“How are you supposed to sleep?” He encouraged her to show him by making it less comfortable for her. He watched her rotate, spinning around in his arms until she was on her left side. She pressed her back against his chest. He felt warmth everywhere.
“Can I stay like this?” he asked, settling behind her and running his hand down her arm.
“I won’t fall asleep otherwise,” she mumbled. “Not tonight.” She adjusted her head on the pillow they were sharing. He kissed her hair.
A baby.
“Hey, Scully?” he said a minute later. He knew it wouldn’t be long until she was asleep, but he needed to say this.
“Yes?”
“The only thing that kept me going at the place was memories of you.”
She pulled their intertwined hands up to her chin, kissing him there. Soft. He felt a tear fall onto his knuckles. “I missed you so much.”
He squeezed her against him. When the room fell quiet he listened to her breathing over the hum of the soda machine outside, his forearm lifting with the rise and fall of her chest.
As she drifted to sleep he let the emotions come. Holding her here felt right, a perfect collision of luck and relief. While the thought of being a dad to someone sent a wave of panic up his spine, this was quickly eradicated by the incredible thought of having a little Scully running around.
When he was sure she was asleep he unclasped their hands and reached over to the nightstand to turn off the lamp. In the dark of the room he pulled another pillow next to hers and reclaimed his position, wrapping his body around her, placing his hand flat against her stomach, and resting his chin by her shoulder.
Before he shut his eyes, he observed the layout of the room, noting the luminous glow of the hotel lights through the curtains. His body rested like a shield between hers and the door. As it should be.
++++++++++++++++++++
The afternoon sun shone through the thin openings of her blinds, causing flecks of swaying light to stripe his skin. He sat in the oversized corner chair, the Sports section she’d abandoned in his hands. He was reading baseball scores aloud to her, filling the silence with the sound of his voice.
He hadn’t left her since Nevada. They’d spent these last two days in her apartment, ordering food and watching movies, enjoying the immediate reassurance that came with waking up beside each other. She was confident it would continue. At one point in the distant past, she’d assumed she’d tire of this kind of constancy, of spending day after uninterrupted day listening to him rattling off statistics and paranormal theories and putting too much butter on her toast.
It wasn’t tiresome. She was still overwhelmed by the awe of having him back, still readjusting to the luxury of looking at him and finding her balance.
(Today, whenever she closed her eyes, she saw his hands on her, everywhere, smoothing up her thigh and landing on her ribs, a tickle forming in her throat.)
She walked towards the chair he was occupying, gently extracting the newspaper from his hands. He looked up, about to utter some smart-ass protest, she was sure, but he froze when he met her gaze.
She used the opportunity to sit on his lap, feeling his eyes on her as she did so.
He helped her to position herself there, wrapping his arm around her. She draped her legs across his thighs, one hand on his chest and the other running through his hair. A smile formed on her face when she saw his surprised expression; she leaned forward to touch her lips to his.
He opened his mouth right away, tasting like coffee and the get-well-soon chocolate her mother had sent him.
When his tongue massaged the inside of her mouth she broke the connection to let out a hot breath, already overcome by her need to have more of him. All of him.
She moved her lips to his neck, kissing a path across the line of his jaw and feeling the vibration of his hum as he sounded out his approval.
“Do you feel up to this?” she whispered, pulling away for a second to look at him. His head was tilted back against the chair, the wounds on his skin looking harsh but healing in the midday light. He opened his eyes and grinned.
“Literally or figuratively?” he asked, raising his eyebrow.
She moved in again, laughing against his mouth. “Both,” she clarified.
“Both,” he responded with ease, the meaning rippling through her body with its promise.
As they kissed, a collection of past moments began to layer upon the present, his final letter storming her mind, the words traveling like clouds through the air. She pressed her lips harder against him, responding to the eagerness in his breathing.
My unyielding love for you.
When she managed to extract herself from his lips, they walked to her bedroom. She felt his arms winding around her waist as he followed.
A rush of inner heat encircled her when she lowered his boxers and watched his face respond to her teasing touch.
I’ll demonstrate, in no uncertain terms.
Their clothes fell into a pile on the floor in a tangle of opposite and complimentary colors. He stood naked, looking at her for a moment before his hands found her stomach, his fingers brushing softly across her flesh.
“The baby, Scully,” he said moments later when he was hovering over her, about to enter. Scully arched her back, unfocused urge. She blinked, registering his concern.
“It’s okay. I promise.” Her fingers slid through the hair on the back of his neck.
His head hung above her, his expression tentative. He was so close to being where she wanted him it hurt, her body throbbing out its protest.
“Are you sure?” he whispered. She noticed the way he held his whole body at a cautious, tense distance, his biceps locked with a safe space between them
Scully nodded, biting her lip and locking eyes with him. She skimmed her hand up the length of his arm, feeling the apprehension drain as he absorbed the reassurance of her expression.
“Don’t worry, Scully,” he whispered after a moment. “I’ll go slow.”
When he was finally inside she had to shut her eyes to the sensation, just for a moment. She listened to the coarse sounds escaping him, then watched the way he kept his eyes planted on her, studying her face with every forward glide.
“I’m not worried, Mulder,” she whispered when she remembered to speak.
“Just tell me if I hurt you, okay?” his voice was heavy now, coated by the effects of their movements.
She swallowed the emotion that rose when she saw his face, scarred and scared, love overriding. The circuitous path of these last few months spread through her conscience, a realization that filled the sullen hole dug during the days they’d spent apart.
“You won’t hurt me,” she said, believing it, in no uncertain terms.
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