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Fox, it's your mother. I'd hoped you'd call upon your return but I haven't heard from you…
Scully stands in his apartment and listens to the ghost of Teena Mulder.
The entire drive over, she sat with the radio switched off and ran through what she was going to say again and again in her head. At every red light, she drummed her fingers against the steering wheel and tried to calculate the best way to tell someone that, not only did his mother kill herself, but she did so because she had a terminal disease. Nothing she could muster seemed right.
She was sick, Mulder.
She loved you, Mulder.
It’s not your fault, Mulder.
As she contemplated running the light that seemed like it was stuck on red, the scar where her implant had been removed itched. Scully rotated her neck until it let out a satisfying crack. Taken like his sister and–at one time–terminally ill. She feels like a projection of Mulder’s worst fears. One that he has to look at every single day.
Statistically speaking, Scully has cried in front of Mulder more times than he’s cried in front of her. They’ve gone through enough traumatic events together to fill a hundred lifetimes, but the scale still tips in her favor. It’s not a competition, but if it were, Scully would be winning.
If she believed in reincarnation, she likes to think that it’s only fair that she be reborn as a flower on a hillside or a pebble in a stream. Something that doesn’t have to worry about being kidnapped or held at gunpoint or used as a puppet by shadowy unseen forces. Someone would pluck her from the ground, admire her petals, and maybe–if she was lucky–take her home and place her in a glass of water on a windowsill to live out her days. This would be fine.
People see her as Mulder’s sidekick, rather than his equal. A pawn on a chessboard that can be taken and traded and used to fuel his pain. Cast in the role of damsel in distress. She doesn’t blame him for that. People see her as an easy target. Because she’s a woman. Because she’s physically small. Which is how she ends up having to be rescued time and time again, ending too many days crying on his shoulder. Spilling hot tears all over his t-shirt. Waking up with a mild embarrassment that hangs over her head like a cloud.
Maybe it’s because of her gender. Her mother would probably sigh and say something like, “Women are just more emotional, Dana.”
Men at work never tell Mulder to smile when he’s just walking around thinking—or brooding—doing that thing where he chews on the inside of his mouth. But it’s something that Scully hears on a near daily basis when she’s just minding her own business.
She’ll be mashing buttons on the copier, trying to figure out why it isn’t doing its one and only purpose—to copy—and some agent who she’s never even spoken to before will stroll up—too close. See her with her brow furrowed, lips pressed together and have the nerve to hover over her, breathing stale coffee air into her face, and say, “You should smile more, Agent Scully.”
The copier is spitting out blank pages why on earth would I be smiling right now you fucking idiot?
In her twenties, she would comply and force her lips to quirk into what more resembled a grimace, followed by an unnatural high pitched laugh. But complacency never got her anywhere so now she just stares blankly at those men until they get uncomfortable and walk aware muttering something about how “Spooky is rubbing off on her".
Sometimes she wishes that she could control her emotions as well as Mulder. That she didn’t break down in front of him as often as she did. He’s held her through it all. Her father’s death, being kidnapped and attacked by Donnie Pfaster. Twice. Having her heart nearly ripped out of her chest. But what has she done for him?
The fact of the matter is that Mulder is better at tucking his pain against his chest. Like a piece of paper folded neatly and placed into his shirt pocket, which goes through the washing machine and comes out a wet mush of something unidentifiable. She’s seen him angry and impatient and frustrated. He’s more open than Scully with his enthusiasm, but she knows that oftentimes it is a carefully constructed mask that he wears when he doesn’t have it in him to show his true face underneath.
I'm sure you're busy.
Scully likes to think that she’s come a long way in terms of opening herself up to new beliefs. She has Mulder to thank for that. She has Mulder to thank for a lot of things. But her mind doesn’t work like his. The connections aren’t made the same way. Her brain is like an evidence locker. Facts are cataloged and placed into boxes, waiting to be pulled out and pieced together. Mulder’s approach is more like throwing spaghetti at a wall and seeing what sticks. She hates to admit that his method had been effective. Like he has a sixth sensing for sniffing out weird things.
…hope one day you'll understand…
Stop. Rewind.
Fox, it's your mother…
The way his mother’s voice floats out of the answering machine as he rewinds the message over and over and the way he’s rambling about how he just knows she was trying to tell him something.
It scares her.
She’s opened herself up to a lot of his beliefs. Played along and humored him. Even had her mind changed. But this isn’t something she can follow him on. She hates herself for thinking it but it scares her to see her best friend like this. He would never hurt her. It’s what he’s doing to himself. What he could do to himself. He has a gun and he knows how to use it. With one squeeze of the trigger he could be ripped away from her side forever. And that fucking terrifies her. He’s Icarus and the sun melts the wax on his wings, threatening to drop him into a wine dark sea. Leaving feathers fluttering in his wake.
The question has lived and died on her tongue more times than she can count because speaking it aloud would make it real in a way.
Mulder, have you ever thought about killing yourself?
“Mulder–” She starts, knowing that he won’t let her get a word out.
“She was trying to tell me something, Scully.” His eyes are a dark forest of green, not like the seaglass green she’s grown to adore. Those eyes meet hers and plead with her to understand him. To believe him.
You’re my one in five billion.
Her mouth is dry and for a split second, she wants to. God, if her brain could let her jump off this cliff with him, she would. But it won’t and she can’t. They’d hit the water and be ripped to shreds by the waves. Dashed against the rocks. She needs to talk him down from this precipice he’s standing on.
“She was trying to tell me something about my sister.”
Scully bites down on the inside of her cheek and fights back tears as he presses play on the machine again. He stares at the machine, in reverence, as if it holds the spirit of his mother. She silently listens to the entire message. There isn’t anything there. There isn’t a coded message. Just a mother who loved her son and wasn’t very good at it sometimes.
And then there was his sister. She knows how much his heart aches when these types of cases pop up. He pushes himself to the brink over and over again. He sees Samantha in all of them. All these women and girls who got handed an unlucky lot in life. She loves his heart and they way it beats for them, but he’s destroying himself in the process. Cutting out pieces of himself until soon there won’t be anything left to give.
“Mulder, your mother killed herself,” she says gently, afraid that if she raises the volume of her voice louder than a whisper, she’ll break down and she needs to be strong tonight. “She was sick. An incurable disease. She didn’t want to live.”
Mulder stares at her and opens his mouth. He tilts his head slightly as if the words that she just said are in a language that he can’t understand. “No, she was–” He stops and stares at the floor. “She was trying–”
He stands. His chair scrapes across the floor and sounds like nails on a chalkboard. Scully flinches as he grips the edge of the desk and shakes it. A cup full of pens tips over and rolls the floor, scattering its contents at their feet. He collapses back into the chair, face in his hands. Choking out sobs that make the back of Scully’s throat burn, as if they share the same esophagus. If someone stuck a pin in his arm, she’d probably feel the prick on her own skin.
She silently and dutifully crouches down next to him and wraps her arms around his broad shoulders. He leans into her, his body shaking. Hands grapple at her, trying to grab on to anything that will keep his head above water.
She pulls him as close as she possibly can. His face fits against her neck. She feels the warmth of his uneven breath rake across her skin. Good. Warmth is good. Crying is good. It means you’re alive. Her mouth presses against his ear and she whispers to him. She isn’t even conscious of the words that tumble from her lips but it’s probably something like it’s okay you’re okay i’m here she loved you it’s okay i’m here your mother loved you fox it’s okay i love you you’re okay.
Is this how he feels every time she cries on his shoulder? Does he also feel the bone crushing ache as her ribcage threatens to collapse on her heart? Whatever Mulder is born as in his next life, Scully hopes he never has to feel like this again.
He could be the pebble in the stream. Solid. Smooth. Almost iridescent under the clear, cool water. A hiker will pick him up and stick him in the pocket of his jacket. Running his fingers on the smooth edge. Maybe he’ll keep the stone in a jar on his desk. Surrounded by other glittering crystals and geodes. Or maybe he’ll run his thumb over the stone and skip it across a still black lake. Listening closely as it skims the surface of the water one two three four times before plinking to the bottom. Not a bad life for a stone.
It’s unclear how long they sit like this. Awkwardly draped around each other. Scully would have sat here with him forever, if he needed her to.
But the real world exists and they are unfortunately a part of it.
Mulder pulls back away from Scully’s shoulder. She’s reluctant to let him. His hands find either side of her face in his dim apartment. Streetlights that reflect in from the window make his tear tracked face look ghastly.
His eyes search her face and she wishes she knew what he was looking for. She wishes that she could be what he’s looking for.
“Scully–” His voice is raspy. He swallows thickly. “Is this it?”
Scully’s eyebrows draw together, trying to parse what he means by that.
He reaches his thumb to her forehead and smooths out the lines that appear. “Have I finally lost it?”
Scully pulls in a breath through her nose, not taking her eyes off his. “No, Mulder, I don’t think so.” It would have been easy for her to draw that conclusion when she walked into his apartment to him rambling about a cryptic message that his mother was trying to send him from beyond the grave about how they killed her and how this all connected with his sister.
But no. He’s a man who’s grieving his mother and has never been able to properly grieve his sister. Samantha exists in limbo. Neither dead nor alive.
He nods absently. Tears form in his eyes again and he squeezes them shut as if that will be enough to stop them from spilling over. He presses his face against Scully’s collarbone. Her fingers ball up the fabric of his gray t-shirt, desperately feeling for the warmth that radiates off his back.
“You don’t think I’m crazy?” His voice vibrates her shoulder.
She shakes her head so that he can feel the answer that she can’t yet form into words.
“Mulder, you’ve been through so much,” she says. It’s not a real response. Her doctor brain almost launches her into the definition of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, running through the symptoms like a grocery store list. “You’re not crazy,” she says decisively.
He doesn’t say anything. Just allows Scully to hold him together.
“You should try to get some sleep.” It’s a lame thing to say. She’s already well acquainted with Mulder’s insomnia, from the amount of phone calls she receives from him at the ungodly hours of the morning. And after the hit he just took, sleep is going to be difficult to find.
He leans back but doesn’t untangle his arms from around her waist. His eyes are dry. Distant. “I have some pills I can take.”
Scully gently lifts his hands off of her so she can search through his medicine cabinet. He stands up like he’s going to follow her but he just stands in the living room and looks around like he’s uncomfortable in his own house. Listless. Like an uninvited guest that doesn’t know if he should stay or go.
The bathroom is cluttered but not dirty. She swings open the medicine cabinet above the sink and scans its contents, not lingering too long on anything. Not wanting to snoop.
Acetaminophen sits next to a half squeezed out tube of toothpaste. Three different containers of floss, as if he keeps buying them with the intent to floss someday. Her eyes scan the labels on the assortment of transparent orange pill bottles. An expired antibiotic. Mulder, you have to take the full course. This is why antibiotics are losing their effectiveness. She’s probably told him that a million times.
She finds what she’s looking for. Zolpidem. The label boasts a laundry list of side effects. Dizziness, depression, memory loss, suicidal thoughts, hallucinations, agitation. Risks taken to outweigh the cost of chronic sleep deprivation. TAKE ONE TABLET ONCE A DAY BEFORE BEDTIME.
The bottle sounds like a rattlesnake's tail as she picks it up. Drugs like this are useful and important, but Mulder having a full bottle of pills like this within arms reach makes her stomach drop. One handful and he’d be gone. She shakes out one tablet and sets the bottle back on the shelf.
In the kitchen she grabs a mug out of the cabinet and fills it up at the sink. She glances into Mulder’s bedroom and finds him sitting on the edge of his bed. His hands are folded in front of him and he’s looking out the window. He looks like he’s sitting in a waiting room at a doctor’s office. Face impassive.
Scully sits down in the bed next to him. He registers her presence by setting his hand on her thigh. She holds a fist out to him and uncurls it to reveal the single white round pill. He takes it silently and swallows it dutifully with a swig of water.
They sit side by side in silence for a few moments.
“I’m afraid to go to sleep,” he says quietly.
“Why’s that?”
He shrugs. “I don’t want to see them.”
Scully tucks her bottom lip between her teeth. She doesn’t need to ask who he’s referring to. His mother and Samantha.
“Mulder, what happened to your sister and what happened to your mother–” She takes his hand. “None of it was your fault. You couldn’t have done anything to stop it.”
Mulder looks at her. In agony. “I should have called her back.” His voice breaks. “If I had called her back maybe she would still—”
Scully shakes her head to cut him off, squeezing his hand. “No, Mulder. She made her decision. She was sick. It isn’t your fault.”
He looks down at his lap, where their hands are intertwined. He blinks a few times. The tears come in waves.
Scully would do anything to make sure he never has to cry again. She pulls herself off the bed but he doesn’t release her hand.
“You need to get some sleep,” she says, as she runs her thumb across his knuckles. The metacarpal bones that connect with his phalanges. Counting the second third fourth fifth articulation with the pad of her thumb. All accounted for.
His grip tightens on her hand and for a second there’s panic in his eyes. “Don’t leave.”
She takes his face in her hands and presses her lips to his forehead.
“I’m not going anywhere. I’m just going to shut the lights off in the living room.”
He nods slowly.
Scully navigates his apartment silently in her socks, flipping off the lights in the kitchen, the bathroom, the living room until the only light emits from the bedroom. A shining beacon. Mulder is in the process of climbing under the comforter when Scully returns. He has shed his jeans which lay in a crumbled pile on the floor.
Scully flicks off the light and leans her hip against the door frame. Seeing Mulder folded up under his comforter, she allows herself to imagine what it would be like this was her everyday. Coming home from work. Climbing into bed next to him. Being able to exorcise his demons before they take over.
Her heart aches. It feels like her desire for him is too much to handle sometimes. That her molecular need to be with him has pulled them together and brought the entire world crashing down around them. Of course it isn’t her fault. But she wants to believe for a moment, as selfish as it is, that her love has that much weight on the universe.
Almost tripping over his running shoes that he left in a heap on the floor, she lifts the comforter and climbs into bed beside him.
Recently, they had formed a habit. An occasional thing. Something they both agreed to but never mentioned, as was the case with many aspects of their relationship. With adjoining motel rooms, they are in and out of each other's rooms constantly. She remembers the first time. She had finally drifted off to sleep after tossing and turning for several hours when she had a dream about Emily. The specifics escape her but she remembers waking up, drenched in sweat with Mulder crouched down next to her. Concern etched into his face. She must have been talking in her sleep. Loud enough for him to hear next door. Without a word he had climbed into bed with Scully and held onto her until she fell back asleep. She found that she slept better with the weight of his arms wrapped around her. She suspects that he felt the same. It didn’t happen on every case. Just when they had a particularly strong need that pulled them together like magnets. FBI rules be damned.
Scully curls herself up against Mulder’s back. If he’s a collapsing star, she supposes that she’ll collapse with him. The sound of his uneven breathing tells her that he isn’t asleep. She steadies her own breath as if that could lure him into sleep. She knows it isn’t going to come easily for him. Even with the sleeping pill. Wanting to help in any way that she can, she wraps her arm around his waist and tangles her legs with his. He pulls in a shaky breath and intertwines his hand with hers, which rests against his stomach. She buries her face against the back of his neck, taking in his scent, she presses her lips against his skin.
“I love you.” He says it so quietly that Scully barely hears it. But she’s vigilant tonight.
Scully squeezes his torso with her entire body. “I know.” And then. “I love you, too.”
She doesn’t allow herself to fall asleep until she feels his breathing slow.
He wakes up only twice in the night. Gasping for breath, he twists around and looks into her eyes, his fingers touch her collarbones until he’s convinced that she’s really there. That she’s flesh and bone and that she’s not going away.
Don’t worry, Mulder. They’ll never take me away from you. I won’t let them.