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With a deep sigh that was far
from being as cleansing as she would have liked or needed, Dana
Scully entered the building under the cover of night and then
hurriedly made her way down the dimly lit hallways, refusing to
stop, take another breath or even dare to let the thoughts that
were whizzing around in her head take over her senses until she
was finally inside the safe confines of her apartment.
They'd almost let Reyes die.
Correction...*she* had almost let Reyes die.
It wasn't the friendship she'd built up with Monica over the past
year that made that more difficult to swallow, or even her
professional, scientific side's war with the facts that had been
laid out before her over the truth. No. It was the simple fact
that she had given up hope in the face of Agent Doggett's
desperate pleas, indignation and insistence that there was a
reason to fight, when not long ago she herself had been in a
similar comatose state - trapped somewhere between life and death
whilst everyone she loved had given up on her.
Everyone except Mulder.
Against the behest of her mother and sister, against the logic
the doctors had bombarded him with, and even against her own
documented last wishes, Mulder had vehemently refused to stop
believing in her - breaking through the false facade of
life-preserving tubes and monitors, reaching for her hand across
the breach that spanned beyond any conceivable form of
subconsciousness, and never letting go of his tight grasp until
she finally found her way back.
Seven years later the scene had repeated itself with the next
generation of agents from the X-Files division, yet despite all
of her experiences and shifts in belief, something had stopped
her from not being so cold and detached.
Speaking of cold, something shifted in the chilly air that filled
the apartment, and Scully opened her eyes a fraction to just
barely see the figure standing in the shadowy hallway.
"Hey!" the gentle voice quietly called to her from the
darkness. "You just missed William - I read him a story and
he fell asleep straight away..." A slight huff of laughter.
"I'm still trying to figure if that's a good sign or
not."
She let her eyes slip shut again for a moment. Maybe the stress
of the past eighteen months was slowly catching up with her, or
maybe the strain, alone, of Mulder's forced exile was all it had
finally taken to push her over the edge of sanity, but she knew
she couldn't let this thing with Reyes be the thing to completely
push her family apart when they'd fought so hard to stop the
forces that worked against them from doing the same thing.
"How did--...Scully? What's wrong?"
"T-tell me you..." Dana swallowed hard and opened her
eyes to stare at the shadow-enshrouded figure. "You never
gave up on me, did you?"
Mulder frowned, confused by his partner's question or where she
could be going with it, and gave the open blinds covering the
lounge windows a cursory glance. Since Kersh's 'warning' back in
Spring it had become a daily challenge to avoid detection as he'd
stayed and lived within the confines of her apartment - dodging
uncovered windows, not raising speech above a certain volume,
trying to remember to not instinctively answer knocked doors or
ringing phones etc - but compared to the few other options
available to keep them all safe, it had become the only way of
life possible.
"Wh-what?" he choked out. "I don't
understand--"
Noticing his purposeful gesture toward the window, Scully gave a
slight nod of her head, peeled herself away from the surface of
the white door and moved over to close the blinds before
switching on the lamp that sat on her desk. Her gaze lingered on
the lit bulb for a second, almost losing herself in thought again
until there was the soothing touch of her partner's hand on her
arm.
"Scully, what is it?"
He'd been kept appraised of Reyes's condition by e-mails Scully'd
intermittently sent throughout the night from the internet cafe
next to the hospital - addressed to him as if he were miles away
from home to keep up the illusion for anyone who might be
surveilling them that he'd left town and his family at the deputy
director's command. He didn't know that the other female agent
had regained consciousness or that the responsible doctor had
been apprehended, but something in her eyes when she turned
around told him that they weren't the things troubling her.
"After Duane Barry," Dana sighed, swallowing hard to
clear her throat, "when I was in the hospital and
they...they switched off the life-support..." She remembers
sitting in a boat, completely unable to move or call out but not
feeling a need to fight against it. She remembers seeing the rope
break and feeling some level of peace wash over her as she'd
started to float away. But then she'd seen Mulder's helpless,
lost, vulnerable figure standing alone on the dock, blindly
watching her departure, and the fire to carry on had reignited
itself, breaking the spell that had held her motionless and
giving her the strength to row back to shore.
At the mention of Barry's name, Mulder felt a chill run down his
spine. The sound of movement over the baby monitor sitting on
Scully's desk distracted him momentarily, but when William made
no further noise he turned back to stare at his partner.
"You never..." Exhausted, tired and emotionally
drained, Dana fell against his chest, reveling in the warmth
radiating through the fabric of his t-shirt. "You never
stopped believing that I could hold on...You never stopped
fighting for me..."
He immediately wrapped his arms around her as his eyes slipped
shut. What the hell had happened at that hospital? "I'd
never stop fighting for you," he assured, pressing a kiss to
the crest of her head. Surely she knew that by now? "I
couldn't. What's brought this on?"
There was a moment of silence, and Mulder wasn't sure if she was
going to answer, but then she choked out, "We managed to
save Monica. It turned out that Agent Doggett had been right all
along - that Dr Preijers had been up to no good and, in fact,
killing his patients." She paused and looked up into
Mulder's eyes. "Mom told me how insistent you were to find
answers, the truth that would save me...How forceful you were
towards the doctors... Doggett was just as adamant that Reyes
wasn't lost, but all I kept replying was that no amount of
digging for answers would bring her back....That he was kidding
himself." She sniffed and snatched in a deep breath.
"Right until she opened her eyes I was ready to let the
transplant team that were in place take whatever organs they
wanted for donation. And it wasn't until I was driving home that
I realized--"
"That if I had given up hope then as much as you'd wanted
Doggett to tonight, you might not have been here?"
Shifting away only enough so that she could look into his eyes,
Dana emphatically shook her head. It was and wasn't the answer -
there was something much more important that was eating away at
her. "That if that had been you in the bed and someone had
told me that I was kidding myself, I would have pulled my gun and
shot them without hesitation." The fact she'd buried his
living body almost a year ago was beside the point...
Mulder couldn't hide the smirk lifting the corners of his mouth.
"That if the tables had been turned, I would have done
exactly the same as you and Doggett. So why was I so...so
heartless?"
With a dismissive shake of his head, Mulder reached a hand up to
wipe the tears from her eyes and then gently caress her cheek.
"And you say I'm crazy for the stuff I say sometimes,"
he lightly chuckled. "Scully, how is that 'heartless'?
You're a medical doctor - you're trained to look at the science
presented to you."
"And I'm an X-Files agent, experienced in dealing with the
inconceivable."
"True. But how many times have either of us been in
hospital? How many times has your rationale helped find a cure?
And how many times has it helped us on a case? When I was
infected with the tobacco beetles the doctors had pretty much
written me off as a lost cause, but you kept looking for the
answers, in medicine instead of the fantastic. Likewise when they
dug me out of that grave."
She visibly shook at the memory.
More movement from William rustled over the intercom.
"It's just that in this case the facts were being offered by
the actual perpetrator," Mulder finished.
"A lot changed when you were abducted; I realized that I
needed to start thinking more outside the box, but I didn't this
time. Doggett had the reasonable theories, but I just didn't hear
them." Scully paused for a second, considered her words and
then altered, "I didn't want to hear them."
Combing a soothing hand through her auburn locks, Mulder
remarked, "A stressful year, giving birth to a child who
shouldn't have been possible, late nights tending to said son,
change in work placement and schedule, and a live-in partner
hiding in the shadows...Gee, I wonder why you might be a little
off your game!" Another chuckle before he sobered - the
warmth in his eyes becoming more intense. "It's nice that
you try to look at things from my side of the plate every now and
then...A little odd and unsettling at times, but nice and
more-often-than-not arousing nevertheless... Anyway, what I'm
trying to say is that no matter how much you open your mind,
you're still Doctor Dana Scully: truth-seeker extraordinaire and
uncoverer of the rational explanation at your core, where it
matters the most." Aside from the possibility of stress or
post-pregnancy hormones catching up with her, he couldn't fathom
why this was eating away at her so much. "You made this one,
tiny error of judgment, bu--"
"Like I made an error of judgment when I thought you was
dead and buried you?" Dana choked out, shaking her head. He
was trying, bless him, and she was grateful just for his presence
and warm embrace, but a knot of guilt had been snowballing its
way through her senses over the last year, and the almost-fatal
decisions she'd made regarding Reyes last night had finally
tipped the scales out of her favor. She didn't believe there was
anything he could do or say now to rectify that.
"You're not going to let me win this one, are you?" he
smiled. He reached for one of Scully's hands, entwined their
fingers together, and then lifted it to press against his chest -
the warmth of his palm bathing the back of her extremity, whilst
her own palm was massaged by the beating of his heart. "Feel
that? I'm alive." He lovingly rubbed his thumb back and
forth across her skin. "I'm alive because of you, *for* you.
And Agent Reyes is alive too. I know nothing I say is gonna
suddenly rid you of all guilt you insist on feeling, but I also
know how that guilt can consume you - God knows I've spent so
much of my time thinking how much I've ruined your life and
career... We all have to make decisions, and apart from a few
quirks" - nod of the head toward the closed blinds -
"I'm pretty happy where we are. You've made choices that, to
you, seem earth-shatteringly bad, yet here we are against all
odds, and Doggett and Reyes are still together. 'What's not to
love'?"
Scully blinked as his passionate speech sank in and cleansed her
soul. He was right - of course he was right! Once again Mulder
had tested her beliefs and proven that nothing could stop him
from doing everything within his power to make her feel better.
She bit down on her lip, glanced away briefly and then looked
back as she quietly confessed, "When I was on the life
support, I...I felt like I was in a boat tied to a dock. I could
see you and Missy and a nurse all staring at me from the shore,
but not staring, if you know what I mean."
Mulder nodded and walked with her to the couch, where they both
sat down side-by-side. They'd shared many secrets over the years,
but this was the first time he'd been allowed to hear this one.
"You couldn't see me," she continued. "Then the
rope snapped and I started to float away. I had a choice then and
I chose to fight my way back. When you were... When you weren't
quite dead, were you given a choice?"
It was Mulder's turn to bite down on his lip. "No," he
sighed, letting his eyes slip shut for a minute. "There was
nothing but darkness."
She wasn't sure if she was more dismayed by that admission than
if he'd said yes.
Silence.
"But it doesn't matter now," he reiterated, opening his
eyes and focusing on her. "And we shouldn't let these things
eat away at us anymore."
"Do you think Monica was given that choice?"
"Whether she was or not, she's still alive, right?"
A pause and then, "Yeah."
"And it's none of our business anyway." He stood and
outstretched a hand to help her up. "We have more important
things to worry about, and I don't intend for you to be thinking
what you would have done if the tables were turned for a long,
*long* time."
As if on cue, William finally cried out for his parents'
attention.
Accepting his help, Dana smiled and stood also. But then she
frowned and moodily huffed, "This sucks."
Mulder instantly turned on his heel. "Huh?"
"You're going to win this one after all."
The tall man's face cracked open with a wide grin and he quickly
lunged forward to wrap an arm around her waist and pull her
tightly against the length of body. Let me win this and you have
permission to shoot anyone who gets in the way of your curing
me."
"Deal."
**********
THE END
**********
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