Subject: REP: Between Times (SA) 1/1
From: arb22@aol.com (Arb22)
Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative

Title: Between Times
Author: ARB 
Category:SA, Post Christmas Carol
Rating: PG.  One "damn" I think.  :-)
Summary: What happens when things try to return to normal after the events of
the past few weeks?
Keywords: Mulderangst, Scullyangst, just angst in general.  Safe for shippers
and non-shippers alike.


Spoilers: Up through Emily and Christmas Carol.

Disclaimer: Mulder and Scully are not my toys.  They belong to Fox, CC, 1013,
and whoever else is playing bully this week.  I simply want to play with them. 
I promise to put them back when I'm done, and I'll try not to break anything. 
Neither do I own dear Edna, though I wish I had her gift.  I get no money from
any of this.  In fact, I have no money, so suing me would be completely
worthless.  In other words, the aforementioned author of subsequent text
intends to reap no profits from said text and hereinafter acknowledges that all
characters and situations in the text drawn from The X-Files (hereinafter
referred to as The Show) do not belong to said author.  Got it?  Good.

Author's notes: It is short.  But I hate the feeling that we are left with at
the end of emotional episodes.  I am a sucker for closure.  So sue me. 
Although this little vignette provides no definite conclusions, I have left it
open.  Let me know what you think.  If deemed worthy, feel free to post any and
everywhere so long as all this mumbo-jumbo (name, disclaimer, my shoe size,
etc) stays attached.  Feedback.  Pleeeeeeeeeease.    But remember, all flames
will be used to start the fire and warm up this incredibly cold house so my
fingers quit turning blue as I type!
 

Between Times
by ARB <ARB22@aol.com> 
*******************
"So is no warmth for me at any fire
Today, when the world's fire has burned so low;
I kneel, spending my breath in vain desire,
At that cold hearth which one time roared so strong:
And straighten back in weariness, and long
To gather up my little gods and go."
--Edna St. Vincent Millay
*******************

I am not sure if she is asleep.  Her eyes are closed and her head rests in the
cradle between the seat and the window.  The lashes are dark against her cheeks
which are pale in the small amount of light that filters into the car and
ignites little patches of her hair.  The rain beats steadily against the
windshield and the beat of the wipers echoes like my heart in the still car. 
At least she agreed to let me drive her home.  She would have gotten in her
car, alone, and made the pilgrimage but after such a week, I don't think she
had the energy left to fight me.

Home.  For me, home has never been a place.  It is a feeling, a memory, a time
when Samantha was still with me and my mother would smile her tired, worried
smile, as we'd come in from long days playing behind the cabin.  That was home
to me for so long.  It was an unreachable dream of idyllic innocence that never
really existed.  For my part,  I knew fear before she disappeared, even as I
knew it after.  

Home is not so easily conjured up for me now.  Things have changed.  I, against
all odds and all predictions, have changed.  My work has changed me even though
it began as a quest for the scenes that escaped me.  She has changed me.  

That first day I was so sure of myself, so arrogant, so...right.  I knew what I
was doing and there was no way I was going to allow the scientific na‹vet‚ of
some straight-laced, golden girl bureau rat to interfere.  Strange, how quickly
we reconsider first opinions.  Scully is no one's puppet, she never has been;
and yet, that first day, I was so sure that she was what I thought she
was--nothing more than a spy. 

When did she become indispensable to me, not as a partner but as a person? 
Perhaps the first time that I realized that she shared my quest.  She
sacrificed for it, at least as much as I did.  And still, I couldn't bring
myself to trust her completely.  It was not because she hadn't earned my trust,
but because I was too afraid to give it.  Being alone conditions one to
loneliness.  It is a longer journey back to the light than I ever imagined.  As
much as it scared me that she might leave, it frightened me that she might
stay.  Maybe that's why I never got her a desk.  There were places inside of me
that I wasn't willing to open then.  

Even now, I catch myself.  It is not *my* quest.  It has not been for the last
five years.  It is ours.  It became ours the first time she examined a body
unflinchingly that made my stomach do acrobatics to put Barnum & Bailey's to
shame; the first time she challenged one of my hair-brained ideas; the first
time she saved me--from the bad guys and from myself.

She has given up so much and I marvel at it.  I know I am not worth it.  I am,
after all, the guy who brought "Superstars of the Superbowl" as a get well
gift.  Not exactly a Cary Grant move.  I don't know how she does it.  I would
have broken long ago.  I have watched her lose so many things.  Three months
and Melissa were taken from her, and they almost got her life.

And now, her daughter.  The guilt would crush me if I didn't know that it must
be so much worse for the woman sleeping beside me with empty arms.  I saw
something in Scully that almost startled me at the hospital: fear.  Not since
her voice on my answering machine as Dwayne Berry hunted her down have I sensed
fear in Scully.  I do not doubt that she has been afraid since then, but being
as self-centered as I am, I haven't seen it.  Or at least I haven't
acknowledged it.  I have needed to believe that Scully had the strength of
which I am incapable.  Mine is an explosion, all light and searing heat and
ear-splitting noise that glows brightly and dies; Scully is the candle in the
darkness that follows, a glow that dances in the drafts but does not surrender
to them.  Her cancer made me realize how much I have come to depend on that
small light as my beacon.

But at the hospital, I wondered if she had reached an invisible breaking point.
 The fear was not for herself, but for the little girl on the hospital bed,
intubated and wired, with her eyes closed against the pain.  I wonder if she
knew, if Scully knew, from the cancer and the chemo and the radiation, what her
daughter was going through.  And if that made it worse.  

I did the unforgivable, then.  I walked away.  As Scully sat holding her
daughter's hand, I saw Emily open her eyes.  In a gesture of infinite
tenderness, Dana's small hand reached out and brushed the brown hair from the
wide eyes.  And as I watched from outside the glass, the little girl in her
last moment of recognition whispered, "Mommy."  

All hell broke lose.  Alarms, alerts, bells, buzzers, whistles, until I thought
the whole hospital must know.  She was slipping away.  And I, Fox Mulder,
truth-seeker, knight errant--albeit in rather tarnished armor,--could not
handle it.  I could not watch that little girl die.  I walked away and left
them in that room to see each other through it, unable to bear my own pain.

*******************

Eight days later

*******************

"Scully?"  Her head comes up from her paper without any snap of surprise.  She
has been expecting this all morning.  

"Mmhmm?"

"Do you...would you...I mean--" why is this so hard?  They are just words. 
"Why don't we go get some lunch?"  There.  I chickened out again.

I can see the shift in her fluid blue eyes.  She was expecting the question I
couldn't bring myself to ask.  I am not the only one who feels some small
twinge of relief that I have postponed the inevitable.  Her lips form a small
crook, a close and careful approximation of a smile.  "Sure, Mulder.  Just let
me finish this quickly."

***

The restaurant is crowded and noisy.  Above the voices of the assorted
multitude music pours, thin and a little tinny, from speakers tucked into the
decor.  It is Saturday, and we should not be here on a lunch break from the
office.  We should be here after a walk in the park, a morning shopping, two
long cups of coffee and a newspaper...  

I give myself a mental shake.  It is only at times like this, when the thoughts
creep up unbidden and so innocuous at first that they go unchecked, that I
allow myself to realize how much a part of my life she has become.  Me,
"Spooky" Mulder, the kid who never won a playground fight, the FBI's "golden
boy" who threw it all away for an office even dust bunnies refuse to share. 
And somehow I ended up with Dana Scully.  God only knows why she stays.

Dana excuses herself.  While she is gone I survey the restaurant--for once out
of simple curiosity and not suspicion.  There are so many children, I realize. 
Kids of all ages scattered at the tables around us.  The bald baby with chubby
cheeks drools a grin at me from his--her?--high chair.  Young kids, two or
four, babble aimlessly to their parents who smile back lovingly or harried but
tolerantly.  I am suddenly terribly uncomfortable.

Does she notice?  Does she wander through the streets now and see children and
parents and ache?  I have never seen Dana Scully cry--not the way I do, with
tears and sobs and wracking--but I wonder if she sometimes wakes up in the
middle of the night to find her eyes filled with tears for a reason she doesn't
understand.

"Mulder?"  She has returned while I have been staring into space, contemplating
her nights, her needs.   I shift my gaze to contemplate her face.  

She shifts slightly under the hard scrutiny of my gaze.  "What?  What is it?"

"Scully, I..."  I cannot bear to see her face as I say this.  My eyes fall to
my clenched hands.  "I want to ask you about--"

"Good afternoon!  Welcome to Vick's!  Can I get you something to drink?"  Our
waitress is an incredibly perky college co-ed whose blue name tag reads "Amy"
on the crisp, and extremely form-fitting white shirt.  I am caught admiring the
parts of her anatomy which are just above the level of my eyes.

"I'll have a glass of tea and he'll have...Mulder?  Mulder, come back to me?" 
Scully's tone draws me out of my stupor.

"An, uh, an iced tea, too.  I'll have a tea."  Amy nods, smiles, plunks down
some menus, and leaves me to face my partner.

"Mulder," she sighs, "it doesn't take much to impress you, does it?"

I shake my head vigorously.  "Nope."

She is biting her bottom lip to hold back a smile and I am pleased with myself.
 It has been so long since I have seen her smile.  It feels like forever. 
Emily has been gone a little over a week.  Skinner literally forced Scully to
take a week's personal time, but the week ran out on Friday and she came in
today, reasoning that since our boss is rather sane, he wouldn't be at the
Bureau  on a Saturday to harass her.  Which of course doesn't stop her from
teasing me about my lack of a life, though I harbor a secret hope that she
would have been disappointed to find the office empty this morning.  

I did not see much of her this week.  Not as much as I would have liked. 
Instead I ran back and forth from the office on various errands of the sort an
out-of-favor FBI agent gets assigned when few calls for help with Flukemen and
serial killers with ten-inch fingers are coming in.  It was a slow week at
1-800-GO-ALIEN.

She is returning my gaze now, and I am afraid to break the spell of the moment
by saying anything.  I am also afraid that if I don't she might get up and walk
out the door of Vick's without so much as a goodbye.

"Scully?"  There is no easy way.  "Do you miss her?"

She ducks her head quickly in a gesture of retreat, but I am not about to let
her escape so easily.  I reach across the table to take her hands in mine.  She
has clasped them so hard that her knuckles have blanched white and I realize
when I grasp them that they are trembling.  I hold on tight as if I could quell
the heartache.  I watch her jaw clench and release and know because I have
witnessed this action so many times before that she is struggling to regain her
precious control.

With one hand I slowly raise her chin until she must meet my eyes.  I can see
shimmering there the tears that she can swallow but not completely suppress. 
"Do you?"  My voice is so low I'm not sure if she hears it.  I'm not completely
certain I have spoken aloud until she responds.

"Yes."  It is a whisper and a sigh and a nearly inaudible scream through
tightly gritted teeth.  She takes a huge breath and I watch in amazement as all
the pieces fall back into place.  Her hands are still.  "Yes I do, Mulder." 

And there it is, quite simply: the truth.  It hangs between us like a knife
with no hilt, only points and edges.  There is no way I can reach her without
drawing blood.  

For I know what it is to lose: Samantha, my father, my childhood.  All of it
sacrificed to some nebulous and uncertain game that has relegated me to the
role of castle or bishop; I am to sit back and watch the pawns which wear my
colors as they disappear one by one.  And neither is Scully any stranger to
this hollowness.  I remember Melissa standing in the doorway of my apartment,
berating me for letting something other than humanity get the best of me.  And
Scully, who never got to say goodbye.

I am Scully's demon; she mine.  The guilt plagues me like my shadow.  It is
tailor-made to Fox Mulder like the dreams that haunt me in an endless cycle of
nightmare and awakening.  The worst times I will call her, just to hear her
voice.  I cling to the lifeline of the phone, a continually drowning man in the
sea of my own fears.

She, too, is haunted, though it is only recently that I have realized this. 
She is so adept at hiding it that I'm not sure she knows.  That would sound
preposterous and presumptuous, to say I know things about her she doesn't, but
it's not.  I cannot explain it; but, when it comes to Scully, I just know. 
Yes, she has lost before.  But never like this.  Never her child.

Amy returns with our food and the sharp sound of plate on table makes me jump. 
I realize that I have again trailed off into the nether-world of my thoughts,
leaving Scully to fend for herself.  At least she manages a watery attempt at
an approximation of a smile seeing me spooked by a well-endowed, gum chewing
waitress.  "Can I get you anything else?"   Amy smiles and I can see that one
of her front teeth is chipped.

I look over at Scully, who shakes her head.  "Nope, we're fine, thanks."

"Okay, then."  She sashays off.

"Scul--Dana."  Her first name feels strange on my lips and it must sound
equally odd to her for she stops with a forkful of linguine marinara halfway to
her mouth.  "Do you want to talk about it?"

She considers it, at least, before gathering the dripping noodles into her
mouth.  When she has swallowed she looks back at me.  "No, I don't think so. 
Not yet.  I just want to move on."

Brave talk.  Dana-talk.  Ten to one the next words out of her mouth are...

"I'm fine, Mulder.  Really, I am.  Being back at work has really helped." 

Too bad winning bets with yourself pays lousy.  But I'm smart enough to know
when I'm beaten and it's time to back out of the ring.  "All right, but if you
ever want to talk--" 

"I know, Mulder.  And I appreciate it."  She even smiles at me and this time it
covers her whole face, even if it doesn't reach her eyes.  The subject is
closed.  We will not speak of it again at this lunch.

       
*******************
*******************

"Hey Scully?"  It is ten o'clock on this Thursday morning and we have been at
it for hours already.  At the sound of my voice, she glances up from the file
she holds too close to her face.  I wish she would put her glasses on.  

"Mmhmm.  What is it, Mulder?"  Her tone is slightly amused.  

"Wanna go to Hawaii?  Surf, sun, coconuts, leis, girls in grass skirts and
skimpy tops..."  

She sighs and runs a hand through her hair which fans back around her face. 
"What's the catch?"

"Scully, I'm hurt.  What makes you think there's a catch."

"With you, Mulder, there's always a catch."

"Ah!  So you finally found me out.  You're on to me!"

"Nah, you're just paranoid."

"Who me?  Never"

She gives me The Look, one eyebrow arched.  I wish I knew how she does that.  I
can wiggle my ears with the best of them, but the only thing I can manage with
my brows is a freakish look of stunned surprise.  I lose the battle and crack a
smile first.

"Weeeeel...you see, there's this volcano monster--"

She groans.  "Mulder, just once I would like to see you chase after something
with an address, a name, a family.  Can't we just round up the entire Russian
mafia?  It would be so much easier."

"But just think of all the fun and exciting trips you'd miss out on."

"No offense, Mulder, but traveling with you is not my idea of a dream vacation.
 Every time we go somewhere, one or the other of us ends up needing my medical
attention."

I make a face, hoping to gain some sympathy.  "Does this mean you won't go with
me?"

"Actually," her tone is soft and I am immediately aware of the atmospheric
shift.  There is no levity in this.  "I was going to take some personal time
and go visit my mother.  "She..." Scully falters and my heart breaks in little
spider fissures lengthwise, "she, um, feels that we need to spend some time
together.  I think she's having a really hard time sorting things out."

Suddenly I am far too aware of the gulf between us, the physical distance that
speaks volumes.  She has not said anything about Emily since she came back to
work.  I know that she needs time to grieve--but this is not grief.  She is
tamping down every hint of emotion until the brittle shell falls safely back
into place over her soul.  

Damn.  Did I do this to her?  Was I that arrogant and insensitive that she
feels like she can't tell me what's going on?  It's not for lack of openness on
my part.  God only knows how many times I have called her, or shown up at her
apartment, in the middle of the night and roused her from sleep to hold me
while my shoulders shake from the nightmares.  I have shared all of myself with
her.  And yet, I remind myself, in all that talking you have done very little
listening.  And even less understanding. 

In two strides I am across the room and seated halfway on her desk.  Our
postures both bespeak an unaccustomed timidity.  Where do we go from here?  A
room too full of unspoken griefs to breathe.  "Take all the time you need,
Scully."  I reach down and tuck a stray lock of hair behind her ear, trying
desperately to read whatever those azure eyes are saying.

"I'll be back Monday.  Have fun in Hawaii, Mulder."  Another door shut on a
heart already too enclosed.  And as much as I would like to give in to the
guilt, it is only my knowledge that her pain must be worse, tenfold, that won't
allow me to wallow in self-indulgent pity.

Eventually, I cross back to desk because I am entirely unsure of where to go
from here.  I know that I cannot let her walk out of here.  Not like this. 
Because I know Scully.  She will go to her mother's house and comfort her
mother and cry, if she cries at all, only in the dark and alone.  It's my turn
to be strong and I have to hope I've learned enough from her to do this right.

"Hey Scully?"

"Yeah?"  She was truly not expecting this request.

"How about if we forget about Hawaii and we both take tomorrow off so I can
show you this great cabin a friend of mine owns about two hours outside of
town?  It's perfect for a picnic."

Her brow crinkles as she looks at me.  There must be something of my
desperation scrawled across my face because she finally relaxes.  "All right,
Mulder.  Yeah, I'd like that."

"I'll bring the food.  You bring the blankets."

"Mulder, if this is an excuse to get me between the sheets, you have to know
that a drafty, dingy shack is not high on my list."

"Nah, Scully, I'd never do anything like that.  I need you back at work Monday
morning.  After all, if you weren't here, how would the paperwork ever get
done?"

**********************
~Fin~ 

More?  Less?  Requests that I please spare everyone the pain of reading what I
have written and just keep my ideas to myself?  I must know.  Feedback makes
the world go 'round; at least, it drives this one.  So write, darn it!  Tell me
what you think, what you hate, what you love, what you ate for
breakfast...Reach out, touch someone.  Those who read without responding will
be hung from the ceiling by a nose-ring.  See, incentive always helps.