Work Text:
Groaning, Scully sets her glasses on the desk and rubs her eyes with both hands. If her eyes weren’t telling her she should have left the office hours ago, her stomach would be. She has, thankfully, left the first trimester nausea behind; this is merely the queasy unsteadiness born of too little sleep and too many hours passing since her last solid meal.
Mulder’s sunflower seed habit suddenly makes perfect sense to her.
There is a half-empty bag buried in the lower desk drawer, shoved there weeks ago when she kept stumbling across it looking for a pen or a paperclip. The sight of it made her chest ache. Probably still would even now, so instead of getting it out to appease her stomach, she powers down the computer and stands, gently stretching her back. She groans again as her latissimus dorsi and trapezius muscles let her know exactly what they think about how long she spent hunched over her keyboard this evening.
Tonight. This morning. Whatever time it is.
Recognition of the hour makes her yawn involuntarily. It’s not as though she doesn’t know what a terrible idea it is to forego sleep like this; especially given the pregnancy, her body needs far, far more rest than she’s been allowing it, lately. The problem is that she’s become addicted to the numbness that comes with pushing past her limits. Exhaustion deadens the pain, reduces the intensity of her reaction to the million daily reminders that it has been almost four months and he’s still not back. It lessens the white-hot terror that she may never find him. It allows her to miss him in a detached sort of way, like she’s observing her pain instead of experiencing it first-hand.
It is an unhealthy and ultimately unsustainable coping mechanism, but it’s the best she can do for now.
Keys, briefcase, hit the lights, lock the door. She blinks and she’s at the elevator. Blinks again and she’s standing by her car. Getting behind the wheel is undoubtedly an appallingly bad plan, but she does it anyway.
Finds herself turning south on 15th, instead of north toward her apartment.
Travels three more blocks before she identifies why.
Loops past the Washington Monument, west and then east on Independence, where the dark expanse of the Tidal Basin opens up beside the car.
Growing up in San Diego gave her a tendency to seek out water when her mind was troubled. The Basin is no Pacific Ocean, and there is no sand to dig her bare toes into, but the pull is there nonetheless. And even though she’s too tired to feel troubled, her subconscious clearly has some things to work out. At this point, she is effectively only along for the ride.
She parks the car. The late-September humidity envelops her as she gets out, settling onto her shoulders and creeping into her lungs. Four, five, six steps bring her up against the railing at the water’s edge. She rests her forearms against it, closes her eyes, and breathes.
Even with her eyes closed, she can sense the Basin’s presence, dark and brooding in the pre-dawn stillness. There is a weight to it, a solidity and steadiness she finds comforting. Nature and weather might churn its glassy surface into something nearly as volatile as the ocean, but in the absence of those external stressors, it is grounded. Tranquil. Deeper than a first glance might suggest. If she jumped in right now, she wouldn’t stay submerged for long; the water would surround her, mark her, and lift her back up, bearing her stoically until she was ready to stand on her own again.
Unless she fought it.
She could fight for a while by treading water, trying to save herself, but eventually the effort would overwhelm her. She would be consumed.
The metaphor drifts by along with the rest of her thoughts, scrolling past her consciousness like headlines on a news ticker, but she opens her eyes and grasps for it. Tries to mine the truth buried within.
She can’t go on like this.
She has always treated grief as a thing that could be starved into oblivion. Ignore it, insulate yourself from it, and it would eventually burn itself out. It would eventually be safe to feel things again. Only this time, whether because this grief is different or because her body is being taxed in unprecedented ways, her usual approach is not going to work.
Except that’s not entirely true, either. Because her usual approach doesn’t actually involve working herself into the ground like she’s been doing. With her father, with Missy, with Emily, she told herself that she used work as a distraction, as something to put her back up against, but that’s not the whole story.
She also put her back up against him. Until this moment, she never fully realized just how much. But he was the force buoying her up when the weight of grief should have dragged her under. In his absence, water may as well be quicksand.
There is a quiet splash as something breaches the surface in front of her, and she blinks, coming back to herself. The weight of the past fourteen weeks lands on her all at once, and her tears plink softly into the water below.