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Scully's back still ached from the fall. After church, Mulder had suggested he could drive her to the hospital – just to make sure those bruises were only bruises – but she refused. She'd seen enough hospitals to last a lifetime, yet hospitals would only become more common the older she got. Gout, arthritis... God forbid she would ever develop Alzheimer's. As a doctor, she'd always known it to be a horrible disease. But witnessing her own mother wither away from it two years back had truly forced her to confront the awful reality of forgetting.
People are their memories, and there was too much to remember. Falling ten feet into a laundry chute was only the latest event on an already extensive list. Even though her bones and pride hurt now, this might be a funny story to tell one day.
She had plenty of those embarrassing-turned-amusing stories (according to Mulder, at least one of those involved vampires). For example, not too long ago, a Roomba set her house on fire after they were tracked down by AI because Mulder had refused to tip at a sushi restaurant. All of her clothes, furniture, and valuables had gone up in flames. Who on God's good earth could ever come up with that?
Scully recalled buying the house in Bethesda in late 2013, shortly after she and Mulder separated.
“A time-out”, she called it. He, however, didn't call it anything but kept sulking on the couch and avoiding her gaze instead. It stung, just like everything else that he did or didn't do.
One week turned into months, months turned into years. Neither of them bothered to officially divorce.
Her sister-in-law told her there were plenty of fish in the sea and age should not be an issue. She was still looking fine, even as she approached fifty. But Scully never considered dating again. She never stopped loving Mulder. She never forgot the memories of the time they spent together. But he was trapped in a toxic downward spiral and was dragging her along into the deep. When it became apparent that she could not help him swim back to the shore, she needed to leave before she could drown, too.
“Honey,” Mulder hollered from the kitchen, “dinner will be ready in two minutes.”
The living room smelled of carrots, peas, roasted chicken, and gravy. Five years ago, Scully would never have guessed that her husband would learn to cook something other than scrambled eggs and a can of Campbell's. Yet here he was – Mulder anno 2018 – insisting on learning every recipe The Weeknight Dinner Cookbook had to offer.
She remembered how much she used to swoon over him shortly after they met. So much so that she had hardly paid attention to him living like a college student. Scully had even dared to call him cute to her old friend Ellen, who – of course – teased her endlessly after this remark.
Apart from those earliest months in 1993, she never cared that much about Mulder's looks. Looks are, after all, fleeting. It seemed superficial, and wasn't why she'd fallen in love with him. It was the big and little things instead. His intelligence and determination. His long hugs and stupid jokes. The way he would kiss her gently on her cheek when he thought she was sleeping.
When his hair grew longer, and his beard scruffier, in the years prior to their separation, the big things shrunk and the little ones ebbed away. His pants were ripped, his clothes had holes in them. All the junk food he ate while she was at the hospital had made him plump. And in the meantime, she just worked. She worked and didn't spot it. She worked so she wouldn't have to spot it.
She worked until it was too late to do anything about it. She saved the lives of strangers but couldn't save that of her own husband. So she ran, far away from the vow to have and to hold, for better, for worse.
She always ran.
At “chicken's out of the oven!”, Scully snapped out of her daydream and got up. Her muscles were stiff, those bruises she'd sustained sore. She briefly pondered the odds of Mulder giving her a nice, relaxing massage later this evening – it was one of those many little things she missed.
Daggoo, roused by the movements in the kitchen and the scent of chicken, excitedly followed her lead. She hadn't been able to resist the little white Terrier at the shelter. He reminded her of Queequeg, the little orange scruffball that had comforted her so much after Melissa passed away. Daggoo, however, wasn't a young and impulsive pup anymore. He was older and wiser and knew better than to chase an alligator through the forest in the dead of night.
Hiking for miles on end was lost on Daggoo these days. It was a feeling Scully recognized all too well.
She entered the kitchen and was greeted by the sight of Mulder dancing around with the oven tray.
“Hot, hot, hot, hot.”
“Use the mittens, Mulder”, Scully said, exasperated.
Mulder – now with progressives – was clean-shaven and more ripped than ever (which was something she'd only first noticed not too long ago, during a particularly interesting night in a motel room) but he still used a kitchen towel instead of their mittens. And he still wore that particularly ugly apron with Sasquatch holding a spatula and the caption Squatch ya got cookin'?
No matter how hard Scully tried – with paintings, plants and warm colors all around – her house in Bethesda never felt like home. She thought it would've been just what she needed: a fresh start, a brand new page.
She thought she could run far away from all that had happened. Begin anew.
But she could never love the house. It was foreign. Bereft of memories. Empty and hollow.
It was hard to forget the one who'd given her so much to remember.
“Dinner looks delicious”, she said with a gentle smile, ignoring the slight scorching of the chicken skin.
“Yeah, it's more of a Sunday roast than a Thursday dinner but... I guess I felt like celebrating.” He smiled back, hesitated for a split second, and then briefly rested his hand on hers.
Scully squeezed his lightly. She caught the age spots, yet her heart skipped a beat as though this were 1993 and she was about to call Ellen just to call him cute all over again.
Life was strange. Their time on the X-Files had steered her into a direction she could never have foreseen, yet things were simpler back then. Captain Ahab searched for his white whale and First Mate Starbuck kept him in check – all while quietly falling in love. It sounded so romantic back then.
Scully had read Moby Dick a million times. She should've anticipated the ending. Yet she never even considered that the white whale would actually end up consuming Ahab.
She was a firm believer in free will. Staying on the X-Files, despite all of the hardships that came along with it, was always her choice. Leaving Mulder had been, too. And when the opportunity arose to go back to the beginning, she seized it. Like a petite Herman Melville Jr., she wanted nothing more than to rekindle the past. To rewrite the book and let Ahab and Starbuck win.
“I bet Kersh will be celebrating too when he hears that we're leaving”, she grinned as she helped herself to some carrots.
“Oh yeah. He's had his very own Firing Us Celebration bottle of champagne lying in his fridge ever since we returned. I guess we won't give him the satisfaction.”
“He'll have to hand it to us instead, since we're firing ourselves.”
Daggoo barked impatiently while Mulder cut the chicken, making them both laugh before Scully told the dog to wait.
Witnessing his big, sad eyes made her stomach twist. A familiar feeling of grief overwhelmed her.
She could hide her feelings well, yet Mulder needed but to glance at her for him to be able to tell something was wrong.
“What is it?” he asked, patiently.
Years of her trying to be “the stable one”, replying I'm Fine, and suppressing how she actually felt had let them to separation just as much as his endless search for The Truth.
But Mulder had changed. He smiled again, and made stupid jokes all over. He never even considered running. He tried. Day in, day out. For her, and for himself. And Scully – in her foreign house, amidst her unfamiliar clothes, furniture and valuables – swore there and then that if they could ever be together again, there'd be no more suppressing.
“I was just thinking.” Resolutions notwithstanding, expressing her emotions would always be hard. She swallowed before continuing. “About him. About whether he's got a place to stay. Food, clothes, and a bed. I just wish that we could've convinced him to come home with us.”
Mulder sighed. During all those years, they'd never talked much about their son. Yet Scully's memories of William laughing and cooing, of him crawling around the house in his galaxy walker, had never faded away. She often wondered if Mulder still remembered when he first held him in his arms. The first diaper he changed. The first bath he gave him. The first time he got up in the middle of the night to soothe him.
Scully had been so caught up in her own unhealthy coping mechanisms that she never even asked how he felt about it.
“I believe that he is safe”, Mulder said after a long moment of silence. “I think we would know if he wasn't. And I believe that... that we will see him again some day.”
Scully wanted to believe in her husband's steadfast faith.
She never stopped believing in him – that he might find himself again. That they would find each other. After all, that's the gift he'd given her: the courage to believe. That's the gift she'd wished upon their son as well.
It's what he had taught her. It's what helped her to find that inner courage to stop running.
William looked up to Malcolm X. He'd told his mother that “people who stand for nothing, will fall for anything.”
She didn't know him as well as she would like, but she wanted to believe that he'd inherited all of Mulder's good qualities. That he wouldn't run away from things.
“He looks like you”, Scully said wistfully, and explained at Mulder's confused glance: “Tall, dark hair, handsome... Idealistic.”
She knew William was in the hospital that night. She could sense his presence. During the first painful hours of dealing with the fact that her son was tantalizingly close to her but chose to run, she was disappointed. Perhaps even angry. Until she recognized the scared child within as though she was looking in a mirror, and realized she had to give him time.
After all, things have a way of working out in the end. Her Mulder came back to her, too.
“And like his old man, he's popular with the ladies...” Mulder added with a smirk, then quickly stared at his plate as though he wished he never mentioned it.
Scully, for her part, wished that he would remember she could take a joke. That they could banter and tease each other, just like old times.
“Hey,” she playfully poked him in his shoulder, “you got a girlfriend I should know about?”
Things worked out, yet they had changed indefinitely. This wasn't 1993 and they were still exploring the waters each of them sailed in these days. She knew it wasn't going to be easy. They were going to have to work on this every single day. It'll take time, patience, and two people who truly want to be together. But more than ever, she was determined to do this.
Mulder looked up. His hazel eyes flickered mischievously as though he was about to announce they needed to travel to Timbuktu because someone spotted a UFO there.
“Shh! My wife can't know about her.”
Scully lit a candle this morning in church. For Mulder's happiness. For William's safety. For the bravery she needed to stop living in the past.
For all those precious memories, and all those things, little and big things, that she lost.
For all of those memories that they made together.
The match extinguished gracefully, as though it drew its final breath.
“That must be a sign”, she said at the dying light, almost afraid that she actually believed in it. “I'm all out of miracles. Turn back. Give up. Accept your place in the numbing embrace of the status quo.”
Mulder, however, took another match and held it above the wick until it ignited. Scully watched him in quiet appreciation.
“I will relight your candle and extend your prayers through mine”, he spoke solemnly. “What prayers? I can't tell you. They won't come true.”
She chuckled as he concentrated on the flames, and wondered why he'd even joined her if he didn't believe in God.
“It's a prayer candle, Mulder. Not a birthday cake. Prayers aren't meant to be sentimental. It's a conversation. You can do it like a meditation. Or if your needs exceed your grasp, you can ask God to act on your behalf. But you don't believe in God, so you would essentially be talking to yourself.”
Mulder turned to face her.
“Well, I may not believe in God. But I believe in you. I speak to Him through you. Through the transitive power of equality. A equals B and B equals C, therefore A equals C. Reason and faith in harmony. Isn't that why we're so good together?”
She watched him, intrigued – a diehard atheist, afraid of fire, lightning candles for her – and realized that only he had the divine power to make her fall in love over and over again.
“Are we together?” she asked him. It was the burning question, spoken under the watchful eye of God. “You know, I believed I could protect our son, and I failed. I believed that we could live together, and I fled. I gave up on that too...”
She was about to finish her sentence, add that she never wanted to give up again, but Mulder interrupted her.
“If only you'd fled earlier.”
There was no bitterness in his voice, yet his heart was heavy. Scully could tell how much this weighed on him.
“Do you know how many times I've envisioned that scenario, where you left that basement office long before I needed progressives. You'd have your health, your dog, your sister. You'd be Kersh's boss at the FBI, and be married to some brain surgeon, and have a bunch of kids that you wouldn't have to give up.”
She remained silent for a short while, and processed what he'd said. One of these days, she would have to assure him that she was a woman of many contradictions: a scientist who believed in God. A catholic who believed in free will. And that everything had been her choice.
“Mulder, I don't begrudge you any of those things. That wasn't what I was talking about.”
“Well, what are you talking about, Scully? Because I don't know if any God is listening but I am standing right here. And I am listening. Right beside you. I'm all ears.”
Scully didn't know if God was listening either but she leaned forward and whispered, just in case. This wasn't for prying ears to hear, not even godly ones. This was meant solely for Mulder.
“I love you, Mulder. I want to stop living in the past. I want to leave the FBI for good and come back home.”
When she retreated, he beamed as though the Truth had just revealed itself to him.
“That's not my four-year-old self looking for a miracle. That's my leap of faith forward. And I'd like to do it together.”
“Oh, you can't hide from your wife, Mulder”, Scully jested. “She'll always be around.”
After all, she tended to go back to those who feel like home.