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It had started to snow again, a rare occurrence for Washington, D.C., but he was in Massachusetts now. He would have loved to settle her here, too. He would have bought her this house, with all the natural light that must shine in the windows on this suburban cul-de-sac. He would have shoveled the sidewalk for her while her car warmed up on cold, New England mornings.
The evening street was quiet and the glow from the Christmas lights cast a warm effervescence over the Currier and Ives scene in front of him, but he felt numb.
There she was, his Scully, with a baby in her arms, and she was smiling the wide smile she used to reserve only for very special occasions. But this was a special occasion, wasn’t it? She had everything she had ever wanted. The man next to her was older than her, a bit balder than Mulder remembered, but still handsome in middle age. Walter Skinner had grown a beard in the four years since Mulder had last seen him, and he was currently trying to teach a little girl with curly red hair how to catch snowflakes on her tongue. The toddler was getting frustrated at the inability to do so, but then her smile transformed into a mirror of her mother’s once she finally succeeded. Her smile might have belonged to her mother, however her eyes were sea change green. They were his eyes.
Mulder had no right to interrupt this domesticity. This was not his world and he could never belong. He needed to leave, because if she did look through the snow into the car window where he sat and locked eyes with him, he knew the horrified look he would see. She thought he was long dead and cold in the ground, after all. He knew because she drove last week to visit his grave. She brought the little girl with her.
“Say Merry Christmas to Daddy, okay?” She had said bending down to pull a scarf tighter around the little girl. Mulder, who was a few yards behind them, but still within earshot, tasted bile. He fought the urge to vomit.
“Do you think Daddy knows me, Mommy?” The girl asked, all wide eyed innocence.
Scully paused then and looked down to hide tears. “I know he does, honeybee. I am absolutely sure of it.”
Scully laid a final hand on the gravestone that bore his name, and she and the little girl walked back to a sturdy Volvo. Mulder had to hand it to Skinner; he kept Scully safe in a way Mulder never could. Mulder couldn’t have afforded a car like that for her. Mulder never gave Scully anything that could have kept her safe. Their entire partnership instead was a series of incidents that further endangered her life.
A knock on the window violently shook Mulder out of the memory of the previous day. The passenger door opened, and Skinner sat down and handed Mulder a mug of what looked to be hot chocolate. The mug was chipped and worn from years of late night coffee in basement offices.
“I don’t have much time tonight to talk, and you really can’t keep doing this, Agent Mulder. I’ve seen your car out here twice this week, and I overlooked it, but It’s not safe or healthy for you, and you know that. And whether or not she realizes it, it's not good for Dana either.”
“Don’t call her that, Skinner, not in front of me. Not with me.” Mulder growled.
“Agent Mulder, that woman in there is my wife.” Skinner shot back tensely, “She is not yours and hasn’t been for a long time. You never face the choices you’ve made unless they’re staring you in the face.”
“Don’t you DARE say that to me, Skinner! You fucking bastard, my DAUGHTER is in that house and she thinks I’m six feet under! How do you think that feels?” Mulder looked him straight in the eye and it took every ounce of restraint not to punch his former boss in the face and keep punching. His voice reflected the pleading his eyes must have shown, but Skinner didn’t back down.
“My son is in that house too, Agent Mulder, or did you forget? He is six months old, did you know that? Did you remember that during your little outburst? She moved on, Mulder…” Skinner sighed deeply and took a flask out of his pocket and poured some of the amber liquid into each mug.
“Dana is safe now, she has a family. She gets to live a real life with people who love her. People who won’t endanger her. She almost gave up everything for you. Don’t make her give up anymore time Mulder. It’s time to drive away. Please don’t come back.” Skinner went to open the car door, but Mulder stopped him.
“Is she happy? Don’t bullshit me, I have to know, Skinner. Is she… does she still have nightmares?” Mulder’s face was so pained that Skinner relented and offered the honesty the other man so desperately desired.
“She hasn’t had a nightmare since Will was born, no.” Mulder blinked incredulously.
“William?”
“After her father, yes.” Though both men knew this was likely a lie.
“You know, it took her a really long time to accept any sort of normalcy without waiting for a catch.” Skinner continued as both men sipped slowly on the spiked hot chocolate. “It took her years to feel safe without having a pistol under her pillow. When Missy was a baby she would hold her for hours even though the baby had been asleep the entire time. She would stare at the window, waiting for you. She would,” He paused and let out a ragged breath. “She would cry herself to sleep, Mulder, and you weren’t there. You were out exposing the truth or some shit like that and you have the nerve to finally show up like the ghost of traumas past or something and honestly I can’t do this anymore.” He ran a hand over his face.
Mulder did not interrupt. He knew Skinner was right. Finally, Scully had the life she had always wanted. Mulder had done some digging before he made the drive to Massachusetts. The Lone Gunmen, through suspicious and likely illegal means, pulled security camera footage from Scully’s building, and it showed hundreds of hours of time Mulder had missed. He watched every moment.
After Mulder had “died,” Scully had taken time off, a lot of time. She quit the Bureau and some time later, she and Skinner started getting lunches together every few weeks. When she started showing, Skinner came around her place more often. After a few months, Mulder noticed the pattern of lingering conversations in Scully’s hallway, dinner reservations, flowers delivered in person, and then, by the time his daughter, Missy, was born, Skinner wasn’t leaving in the evenings anymore. Mulder watched the footage transform into early morning coffee runs and late night grocery stops. By spring, Scully, Skinner, and the baby looked like any other family on the street. By the following autumn there were moving trucks in front of the apartment complex.
FBI records, also dubiously acquired, corroborate that Walter Skinner had transferred to the Boston FBI office and Dana Scully had resigned her position opting to take a job at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Brookline, Massachusetts. She was focusing on pediatrics and family medicine now. Mulder thought, the irony not lost on him, that her time with him was always focused on death, while the life she was building was vibrant now. The screaming color with which she painted these days was a stark contrast to the greys that he had brought her. He wasted so much of her time, and he stole so much from her.
He could have done this, too. If he hadn’t been so focused on chasing chemtrails, he could have this life. It was like a punch in the gut for him to realize.
“She is happy, Mulder, please let sleeping dogs lie.” Skinner did open the passenger side door now, and before he shut it, said gently, “It's time to let the ‘If only’ go now. You deserve peace too, you know.”
Mulder let Walter walk away without another word. Skinner pulled his coat closer to him and shuffled across the street and through the door of the colonial home that screamed “stealth-wealth.” Mulder watched through the glow of the bay window as Skinner pulled Scully off the couch and kissed her deeply until the baby in her arms seemed to squabble over sharing his mother’s attention. Mulder could see in the corner that there was a Christmas tree in the corner, but also that there was a menorah with two candles lit in the center of the bay window. Both Scully and Skinner did not grow up celebrating Hanukkah, but Mulder surmised Scully wanted their daughter to feel connected to her heritage in some way.
Skinner looked to have taken the baby into another room, but Scully was still watching the snowfall out the window. She seemed to look right at him, and that's what made him finally snap. Those cobalt eyes brought him to Antarctica to save her, many years ago.
“I’m so sorry, Walter.” Mulder murmured quietly to himself , gripping the steering wheel of his rental car. Then, as if propelled by a motor. He opened his car door, slammed it shut, and walked across the street, towards the front door and the woman for which he would raze entire cities and blow up entire lives.
The end.