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His back is killing him because he’s been sleeping on floors and in cars and in some shitty bed in a shitty trailer in the desert for nine months, and he needs to sleep tonight—this is what gets him out of bed at four in the morning to go get ice across the motel parking lot. The sky is cold and clammy because it had been pouring rain all night, but it’s just a drizzle now. He misses Scully’s drool on his shoulder already; by the time he’d woken up, creaking with the somewhat humiliating joint pain of middle age and the emotional exhaustion of their escape, both of her arms were curled tightly around his bicep, her fingers gripping the fabric of his shirt even in sleep. She’s so fucking anxious. He’s never seen her this way, so desperate to be touching him. She doesn’t even hide it anymore, like she used to try to. Ever since he kissed her in that jail cell she’s been on him like white on rice, always touching him, always keeping tabs on the fact that he is there and alive and well, physically at least. Well, almost. Other than his fucking back.
He shivers as he scoops the ice into the bucket he brought from the room. Scully hates touching ice, he remembers suddenly. Before he went back to Bellefleur, before he was dead, before everything went to shit, he was always having to drop the ice cubes into one drink or another of Scully’s on her behalf—once she started letting herself act silly and sweet around him she realized she could demurely assign him any task she didn’t feel like doing and he’d follow orders like it was privilege. Because it was. Anything with her is a privilege.
He’s grinning about her weirdo ice thing—that this relic of her might have survived even into the current shitstorm they live in—and fiddling with the lock on their room door when he hears it, this unsettling gasp coming from inside. He pushes the door open, the ice bucket clanging against things and making too much noise. Scully’s sitting up in bed. Her head snaps to look at him.
“You good, Scully?”
She gasps again, like an inhale got stuck in her throat. He can see she’s breathing heavy, her chest is heaving, actually, and as a the beams of a passing car pass through the room he can see that she’s white as as sheet, eyes huge, mouth open and trembling but unable to form words.
“Scully?”
Her voice is tight when she answers him. “Where were you?” she asks. “Where—where did you go?”
He holds up the ice bucket. “I was just getting some ice…” he trails off the harder he looks at her. Her face has scrunched at his explanation and—oh shit, he knows this face, he knows what’s gonna happen next, and why the fuck—she bursts into tears. Not just tears, even, but big, keening wails. He sets the ice bucket down and kicks the door to the room shut with his foot, rushing over to sit by her on the bed, to cup her face in his hands and smooth her sweaty hair back from her forehead, “Scully, hey, Scully, what’s up, what’s wrong?” She can’t catch her breath, really, she looks like she’s trying to pull air into her lungs but can’t get it all the way in there. Her eyes search his face and her hands release their grip on the covers to clutch at his forearms. She’s desperate, and he’s totally lost. He can’t catch her eyes. He shifts away from her to turn the bedside lamp on but she cries out when he does, pulling him back to her. Fuck, he realizes. She’s terrified.
He gathers both of her tiny hands in one of his and pulls them to his chest. His other hand slides around the back of her head, her delicate skull, and guides her forehead to rest against his. “Shh,” he tells her, and she sniffles. “It’s okay, it’s okay.” And after a minute: “What happened?”
She sniffs again, presses her face into his neck. “I thought you were gone.”
His heart breaks. He holds her tight and squeezes. “My back was killing me. I was gonna ice it.”
“Please don’t leave me,” she begs him seriously, pulling away from him to meet his eyes. “Please, I—I couldn’t handle—even if it was nothing, and you were out there, and I couldn’t protect you—”
“I’m never leaving,” he tells her. He means it this time. He is so sorry. “I’m never leaving.”
“I couldn’t go through it again,” she tells him honestly, and he’s shocked at how unguarded she is right now, how little she cares, how vulnerability has become the least of even her problems.
“I’m sorry,” he breathes. “I’m so sorry.”
She starts to relax now, her adrenaline rush fading out. “It’s alright,” she forgives him.
“I’m sorry I left you alone,” he continues. “I’m sorry I scared you and I’m sorry about—” his own voice catches now, seeing how much this has killed her, hurt her, damaged her. “I’m sorry about William.” The words tumble out of him too quickly for him to stop. This probably isn’t the time but: “I shouldn’t have left you alone with him, I should have come back, I can’t believe I… Scully—”
“We agreed,” she tells him wetly. “I told you to go.”
“Never again.” He wishes she could sink into his skin. He wishes he could sink into hers. “Nothing is worth this.”
She nods against his chest and stays quiet. A moment later, she shifts, and wipes her nose with his shirt. He laughs. “We’re so fucked up,” she says. “A fucking panic attack when you leave the room? God. And you laying here awake, hurting, feeling guilty…”
“We’ll fix it,” he promises her. “We just need time to fix it.”
“I don’t know if I can live like this,” she admits. “Without him.”
“Scully…”
“I was a terrible mother.”
“No.” His voice is loud, suddenly. “You are a blessing to him, Scully.” This is for her, and her language is what he needs to make her believe. “I wish I could have seen you with him.”
She stays quiet. “Think of yourself like Ahab now,” he says. “He spent time away from you, when you were little. Because he had to protect you. And you respected him for that. His strength was the heart of your bond. It was something you loved most.”
“That’s an oversimplification, Mulder. It’s… it’s not the same. What I loved most was when he was with me.”
“I believe… I believe that he’ll be with us again. I need you—I hope you can believe in that too.”
“I don’t know if I can live like that either, Mulder. Hoping like that. When… when the end—”
“Don’t think about that now, Scully,” he pleads with her. “We have time. And I have… I have faith, in you, that you’ve protected him—” he wishes that one of them could stop crying for two minutes.
“I wish we could stop crying,” she whispers his thoughts aloud. “I wish you could have known him. He is so perfect, Mulder. Even when you were gone I was alright because he’s so perfect. But how could you have faith in me when I sent him away, when he is such a gift to us…”
He needs to do something to ease her grief, at least for now. He needs to tell her something; he needs to tell her how happy that makes him, that their son could make her happy.
“I do know,” he assures her, whispering. “I knew he would he save us when I wished for him.”
She wipes her nose again, lifts her head to look at him, puzzled. “When you wished for him?”
Mulder smiles. “Not for him, exactly. But for you to be alright. For you to be strong. Even if I was gone. And for you to be happy. That was my third wish.” It felt like forever ago that he’d set Jenn free, with a hint towards this condition of his: happy Scully. Loved Scully. And maybe a baby if she was feeling generous, because Scully would really love a baby, and he would really love a baby with Scully. “I didn’t tell Jenn that I wanted us to have a baby, specifically, but—”
Scully kisses him. “I love you,” she says. “I love you for believing in her, even now. For believing he was more than fucking manipulative science—” her anger at doctors and shadow governments and alien species builds and dissipates in a second. “I love you for the possibility that he came from love.”
She brushes her teary, sticky nose against his puffy, teary cheeks. “He did,” Mulder whispers. “He did.”