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“Mulder, she was trying to tell you to stop. To stop looking for your sister. She was just trying to take away your pain.”
He clings to her, even as he feels the sorrow and the guilt rise up to swallow him whole. All of the strength he had marshalled, all of the perverse comfort he had taken from the belief that his mother’s death had not been by her own hand… all of it retreats now in the face of the horrible truth Scully has brought him.
She didn’t want to live.
Now that the tears have started, he can’t stop them, can’t curb the sobs that soon leave him gasping. The grief consumes him, gnaws on his very being until he can no longer tell up from down. Gone. They’re all gone. Samantha, his father, and now his mother. He is the only one left. He thought he’d felt alone for most of his life, but now that he actually is, he realizes he never truly understood the feeling before now.
He’s sinking, plummeting into the black depths of his own despair, alone, alone, alone…
No.
He’s not completely alone. There is still one person left in the world with him.
The fingers rubbing softly on the nape of his neck start to bring him back to himself. Slowly, he begins to find his breath again, gradually becoming aware of the gentle murmuring against the back of his head.
“It’s okay… it’s okay… I’ve got you…”
Her words are a rope dragging him back out of the darkness. He latches on to them, hauls himself out of the spiral. His hands still desperately grip her jacket, and it is only with conscious effort that he is finally able to relax them and push himself upright. Scully reaches over to grab a napkin off the coffee table and hand it to him. While he blows his nose and fights to fully regain his composure, she gets up and goes to his bedroom, returning with a box of tissues.
He takes it from her with a nod of thanks but sets it on the table and stands, albeit somewhat shakily. Still not trusting himself to speak, he walks to the kitchen and pulls a bottle of bourbon from one cupboard and two glasses from another. It is not until he has collapsed on the couch and taken a long, slow sip of bourbon that he dares trying his voice again.
“I was so sure--” He cracks on the last word and sets his glass down to scrub his hands down his face. The couch dips beside him as she sits down, and he feels her light but steady touch on his shoulder.
“Mulder, I know how difficult this must be for you.”
He shakes his head, dropping his hands and reaching again for his glass. “She asked me to call her. But I thought it was because of Samantha, and I didn’t want to call her back until I had answers. I didn’t know--” He can’t continue, takes another drink instead.
“From the medical records, it seems she only found out about it herself a couple of weeks ago.”
“But she tried to tell me, and I…” Guilt is a runaway freight train, unstoppable and overpowering. “I wasn't… I should’ve been there for--”
The nausea gives no warning, and he flings himself off the couch, nearly tripping over Scully as he stumbles toward the bathroom. He barely makes it. The whiskey burns coming back up, bringing fresh tears to his eyes as he retches again and again.
She is there with a glass of water when he finally comes up for air. He takes it from her with shaking hands, and she rubs his back in silent comfort while he rinses his mouth.
It’s a long time before he’s able to drag himself off the floor again, but when he does, she is there to help pull him up.
***
He’s well into the bottle when the sorrow circles back around again to anger. How could she just kill herself without giving him a chance to know the truth? Why the cryptic messages? Here he is, feeling guilty about not being there for her, but she didn’t really give him a chance, did she? If she’d just come out and said, “Fox, I’ve had some news from the doctor, and I’d like to talk to you about it,” of course he would have called her back. Instead, she left him to pick up the pieces on his own, couldn’t even be bothered to leave a note.
It is surely some trick of his subconscious that his gaze is pulled to the notebook tucked beneath a stack of papers on his desk.
He scowls. It’s not the same. What’s going on with him… well, the last scans were better, weren’t they? He promised himself he would tell Scully if things got worse, and they haven’t. The doctor even seemed pretty optimistic at his last appointment, all things considered. And anyway, even if he’d been given a terminal diagnosis, it’s not as if he would just off himself and leave her wondering why. He could never do that to her.
It’s not the same.
It takes Scully’s gentle touch on his arm for him to realize his hands are clenched into fists. He relaxes them with effort, then lets out the breath he was also apparently holding. He lets his head fall backward to rest against the back of the couch and closes his eyes. The world spins around him, and he resists the urge to hang on to the couch cushions.
“I’ll never do that to you, Scully,” someone mutters, and it’s an embarrassingly long time before he realizes that someone was him.
He blinks his eyes open and turns his head, fighting against his rioting vestibular system to focus on her face. She’s watching him with a quiet intensity that almost takes his breath away. Have her eyes always been this blue?
“Mulder?”
He looks down. “Sorry. It’s nothing.”
Her hand finds his, and he threads his fingers through hers without even thinking about it. “It’s okay to be angry.”
He swallows, nods, a thousand quips about which of them has a doctorate in psychology dying on his tongue.
“Just… if push ever came to shove, I wouldn’t leave you to find me… like that.”
She squeezes his hand. “I know.”
***
Sometime later, he wakes up on the couch, alone, with a desperate need to pee. Pushing himself upright takes a few tries, not least because (he finally realizes) Scully apparently covered him with a blanket before she left. Heaving himself to his feet, he stumbles through to his bathroom, catching himself on the sink when he clips the door frame with his shoulder.
On his way back through the bedroom, he’s startled to see her sitting up in his bed.
“You… you stayed.”
“Yeah. I hope that’s all right.”
He nods, then goes to the other side of the bed and climbs in beside her, pulling her in for a hug. She’s warm and soft and wearing one of his t-shirts, and in this moment he loves her so much it almost hurts.
He falls back asleep wrapped in her arms.
***
She wakes up around her usual time; the light bleeding in through the bedroom window is faint. Mulder’s breathing is deep and even, and she watches him for a little while. In sleep, the sadness and anger have vanished from his face. He looked so anguished last night. It was heartbreaking to watch.
With any luck, he’ll be sleeping off the bourbon for a little while still. He deserves as much of a respite from reality as he can get.
In the meantime, she can do them both a favor by starting a pot of coffee.
Careful not to wake him, she eases out of bed and pads barefoot to the kitchen. It doesn’t take a lengthy inspection to find that he is nearly out of coffee and completely out of milk. She scribbles a quick note to leave on his nightstand, then returns to the bedroom to pull on her clothes from yesterday. She’s just slid her shoes on when she hears a knock at the front door.
