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The road is empty for miles behind and ahead of them, when the car suddenly begins to stall.
Scully has burrowed into her coat, asleep in the passenger seat. It’s chilly, though he did try to have the heater on. She gets cold easily, his small runaway reckless love. Her arm, in the sling, is protectively cradled against her middle, the coat draped over her shoulder. She was drugged to the gills when he checked her out, insisting that she was “fine, Muller”, and managed a straight line to the car only because he steered her towards it firmly. She was asleep within minutes of pulling away from the parking lot.
He wants to be angry at her for going without him. He wants to be angry with her for going at all – they’ve been so careful.
When they called him from the hospital, his heart stopped, a million images of her flitting through his mind: Scully on life support. Scully, scraped and bruised, wounded and concussed, shot and cut. Scully, warm and whole and vital, calmly letting him know that she was dying. Scully on life support again.
He broke the speed limit all the way to Richmond, and found her bandaged, stitched and stoned, but whole, and only then released the fear in his lungs.
“Crap,” he whispers now, steering to the shoulder with the old sedan’s remaining breath of life, before shifting to park. Scully’s beautiful, expensive, four-wheel-drive pride and joy, is on a tow-truck.
She said something about being blinded by someone’s brights, losing control, ending up in the ditch, and he tries not to think about whether or not this was an accident. He’s already called Skinner.
He waits a few minutes before trying to start the car again. If he’s lucky, they’ll be on their way and home before Scully wakes up. But the car has other plans – it coughs pitifully, whines, and refuses to go anywhere.
“Crap,” he whispers again, emphatically.
He looks at her now, going over his options. Trying to fix the car himself is an impossibility. Calling for a tow truck? She can’t stay out here all night. And he isn’t eager to spend time parked on the highway, either.
Her eyes are tight. The painkillers are wearing off. He wants to hold her, make her take the pills she was given, smooth her hair back, sooth her back to sleep.
He pulls his cell phone out of his pocket, praying for reception. “Crap.” Of course, the perfect time for the battery to die. He wishes for the days of those long-lasting cell phones, the ones you could drop from your desk or from a fast-moving vehicle, and only plug in once every two or three days.
Or, at least, for a portable charger.
Scully’s phone is likely to still be working. She usually keeps it in her right jacket pocket. He wonders if he can reach for it without waking her up. He braces himself on the centre console, then stretches an arm around her, gently reaching for the device with his fingers.
He’s very close to her face in this position and she smells like antiseptic and lotion, her breathing soft and slow. He tries not to think about missing her scent on his pillow, her cosmetics on the nightstand. Her eyes flutter as he pulls the phone free. He lingers another second, and she opens them. “Mulder?”
“Sorry,” he says, before slowly returning to his seat. He wanted her to sleep for as long as she could, and he curses himself now. He can see the tension in her face, the telltale way she’s holding her arm. “You should take another pill.”
“What’s the matter? Why did we stop?” She ignores his recommendation, and looks adorable when she’s confused.
“The car stalled.” God, he should have gotten rid of this piece of junk years ago. “I was going to call another tow-truck but my phone is dead, so I grabbed yours.” He holds her phone up to show her.
She nods and closes her eyes. “Okay. What’s wrong with the car?”
“No clue. I’m not exactly a mechanic.”
“They didn’t teach you that at Indian Guides?”
“Alas, no.” He swipes her passcode into the phone. Years together, months apart, and still, few secrets between them.
Scully’s mouth curves in a half-smile for a split second, but he catches it, just before she winces in obvious pain. His heart constricts.
A few minutes later, their rescue is on the way, but a long way away. “It’ll be about an hour. We’re sort of in the middle of nowhere.”
"Great."
"I'm sorry."
She turns to him. "What for?"
"For driving this piece of junk. You were right, I should have traded it in years ago.”
Scully sighs and leans back. "Well, I’m sorry for making you drive out in the middle of the night to get me. And thank you.”
It shocks him that she might have thought, even for a second, that he might not have come. “Scully, why were you out there?” he asks, even though he knows.
She shakes her head, sighs. “I just wanted to know that he was okay. That they were okay. I thought I’d be there and back. No one the wiser.”
He tamps down the little pang of hurt, that she went alone. “What were you going to do? Knock on their door?”
“No,” she says, and huffs mirthlessly. “I don’t know, I just… couldn’t sleep.”
“You could have led someone to them.”
“I was careful. And I don’t really believe they can’t be found, anyway. They moved them so close to DC… And how can we trust the federal Marshals anyway, if the whole government is… what it is. If even Skinner’s people found out the address.”
She’s right, and he knows this, but they’ve had to put their trust in it, and some days, more days than not, it kills him inside. When the threats first came, he didn’t think it would get this far, go on this long. You need to appear as un-united as possible. They’re scared of you the most when you’re together.
"Scully." He reaches towards her again, opening the glove compartment and pulling a brown paper bag out of it. "Take another painkiller. I can tell you're in pain."
She shakes her head and he wants to shake her, always the stoic martyr. "Mulder, it's fine, I can wait until I get home."
He pulls the little orange plastic flute from the bag. "Scully, we won't be home for at least four or five more hours." Whose home, anyway, he wants to ask, but doesn’t. Where is home anymore, anyway. It started out as pretence, but the longer this separation goes on, the more real it feels.
She closes her eyes, clenches her teeth, nods. "I'm sorry."
He sighs. “He’s my son, too. I would have gone with you.”
“We’re not really supposed to be seen together. And you would have convinced me not to go at all.”
He can’t argue with that. He would have.
But, anyway, they’ll be seen together now, and he can’t find it in himself to regret that.
Her face is dangerously close to crying and he’s suddenly desperately angry that they can’t go back in time, that he didn’t just marry her a year into their partnership, buy a home and a dog, walk away from the X-Files, never look back.
“I’m sorry, I just...” She takes a deep breath, and whispers. “I just couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I couldn’t think about anything else. I needed to go. Even just to drive down their street and see a light in the window.”
He squeezes her knee gently. “I know.” A few seconds of silence pass between them, with both of them staring straight ahead. “Just be careful,” he adds. “Don’t run away without me." Or from me, he wants to add, but doesn’t dare.
She turns to look at him, eyes hazy from drugs and pain. She tries to hide it, but he knows every minute expression of her face. "Well, I won’t be able to drive for a little while with this arm, so you don’t have to worry.”
“Thank god for small favours.”
She snorts, then sighs. “Just as well. We’re too old to still have to be doing this.”
“I wish we were.”
“Mulder, give me the drugs.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He opens the little pill holder, orange and clear, shakes one into her waiting palm. She takes a sip from the take-out cup of Coke, wedged into the holder between them. It’s several hours and miles old, picked up at a service station just outside the town she’d ended up in.
“I’d say let’s put on some music, but the only thing on your phone is historical and medical podcasts, and the car’s dead.”
“I also have some scientific journal audios.”
“Maybe you’ll send me one, for when I have trouble sleeping.”
“Sure,” Scully says dryly. “Do you want the one about new techniques for autopsying drowning victims, or the one about how many new diseases can be diagnosed from a stool sample? Sweet dreams, either way.”
Mulder scowls. “Maybe I’ll just call you for a lullaby instead.”
Scully doesn’t say anything. And it isn’t quite as funny, now, because he misses her at night the way he always knew that he would, if he lost her. More.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “That’s not funny. I just miss you.”
“I miss you too,” she says, finally. “It’s fine.”
“How long is this going to go on?”
She sighs, eyes closed. “I don’t know. Skinner says he’s close to a break.”
They’re quiet for a few seconds.
"Let's move to the back seat," Mulder suggests, because she should be comfortable and he wants to hold her and he's going to let himself be selfish, this once.
He hasn't seen her, spoken to her in weeks.
Hasn't touched her in longer.
"Okay," she says, and unbuckles her seatbelt.
He comes around to her door to help her out. "Not even a crack about keeping my hands to myself?"
"Must be the drugs." She leans against him as he opens the door to the back. Before sliding in, she pauses, and looks at him with heavy eyes. "Mulder, you know I don't like this either."
He sighs, regretting the cracks he’s been making even more.
Of course she hurts too.
He's ashamed, suddenly, when he realises that he's forgotten how much she does love him.
"Sorry," he breathes, and hugs her to him, careful of her arm. "I know. Of course I know."
When she's settled, he slides into the back from the other side, and reaches to slide his arm around her. She leans against him heavily, and he kisses the top of her head.
"I was going to drive to the house, actually," Scully says, breaking the silence. "I wanted to see you... but then I thought about William, and... I'm so scared for him all of the time. I was going to go to Skinner, tomorrow, maybe, ask to recertify and not take no for an answer." She lifts her head from his shoulder, looks up at him, pleading. "Maybe you should do it while I'm out," she says. "Don't let him say no. This needs to stop. We can stop it."
Mulder is shaking his head before she's finished speaking, though there isn't much he'd rather do than what she is asking him to do. "Scully, they're trying to keep us subdued, a move from us can cause more harm before we can do any good."
Her sob against his shoulder makes him tears at him, makes him wish for something he could break for her. If he could make her tears go away by shooting something, he would, in an instant.
"I know," she says, sniffling. "But this is killing both of us, and might not even be keeping him any safer, anyway."
He rubs his hand up and down her upper arm, careful and gentle. "I've been in contact with some people who are looking out for him."
Scully looks up at him again. "What? And you didn't tell me?"
"I didn't think it'd make you feel any better, honestly."
Sighing and bumping her head against his chest, she concedes, "No, it doesn't really. But I want to hope it's working. We still don't know why all of this is happening. Something is going to happen and I can't - what if -"
"Invasion. I know. I've thought of it."
"I don't know what to believe."
"I'll put that on a poster for the office. I don't know what to believe."
She laughs a little. A wet, sad laugh. "Can you kiss me now, please?"
"God, Scully." Her lips are soft when she meets him halfway, supported by her good arm on his thigh. It's a short kiss, but she comes back in for another one, and another, and they don't stop for several long minutes.
Finally, she is the first to pull away, and settle with her head against his shoulder again, her wet baby blues directed at him. She seems calmer, for the moment. "We've been worse before."
He laughs. "That we have."
They spend the rest of the hour quiet as they wait, Scully dozing as the medication takes hold and Mulder drawing strength from her, memorizing what she feels like, what she smells like, to get him through the next stretch of Scully-less-ness.
He's going to take her to their home, and put her to bed, and watch her the whole night, probably, he thinks. He'll call his people, make sure the Marshals are checked out again, make sure their son is safe.
Somehow, they’ll put an end to this. Somehow, they’ll endure.
They always do.