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Indelible
"I won't let you go alone." -- Scully, Requiem
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Scully staggered through the trees, panting, gasping as the branches and thorns pulled at her clothes. She had to get out, had to get away, had to find Mulder and warn him before -
She spotted headlights ahead, through the darkness. Must be a road. With one last burst of energy she propelled herself through the final row of trees, falling to her hands and knees on the shoulder. She felt like hell. She just thanked God she'd escaped before they had a chance to - another car sped by.
Mulder's in there, she thought. She just knew it, somehow.
"Mullderr!" She shoved herself to her feet and called as loudly as she could. Digging into newfound reserves, Scully ran after the car, faster than she'd run in her life, screaming Mulder's name at the top of her lungs.
She didn't get very far before she had to stop, bending over, wheezing. Had he seen her? She thought maybe he had. She looked up. The car wasn't stopping.
Damn him, she thought, wiping angry tears from her face. That's just like him. He never believes what I want him to.
With a deep breath, she got a grip on herself. All roads lead somewhere. Eventually, there will be a town, with a phone. She raised herself on shaky legs and began to walk.
Two steps later, Dana Scully disappeared.
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FBI Headquarters
Washington, D.C.
10:53 A.M.
Mulder sighed. He hooked his glasses over the desk lamp, rubbed his eyes, and leaned back in his chair. He missed Scully more every second, but he missed her most acutely when he had to write up case reports.
He hadn't asked Doggett to take over report duty. He wasn't sure why, exactly, except that maybe he felt he owed it to Scully to write them himself; that by not turning over this one duty that had always been Scully's he could assure himself that she had not been replaced, that she'd be coming back soon.
That, and while he trusted Doggett, he didn't quite trust the man to write a completely objective report on a paranormal casefile.
Mulder grimaced. Not that he was exactly Mr. Impartial. Scully could turn shit into gold. She'd taken the most bizarre cases imaginable and spun them into something so natural, so obvious, so logical, that even Kersh would be willing to sign off. He, on the other hand ... Scully came at things from a different tack, yes, but with an open mind that Mulder was just not capable of.
He frowned as he read over his words. Scully wouldn't call the little man a "shapeshifting butt-genie." She'd say something like, oh ... "diminutive Indian mystic with a remarkable penchant for disguise."
Mulder snapped his fingers. Thanks, Scully, he thought ruefully. He crashed his chair upright and began to type.
Three loud raps sounded on the door, and Agent Doggett walked in. Mulder glanced up, a twisted smile on his face. "You know, Doggett, theoretically this is your office. You don't have to knock."
Doggett blinked. "I didn't wanna disturb -" Mulder chuckled. Doggett scowled. He sat heavily in the chair across from Mulder and tossed a file onto the desk between them.
"I was goin' through the files on Scully's disappearance, seein' if maybe we missed something the first time around. I found somethin' odd."
Mulder thumbed through the file, frowning. Credit card statements. "Oh yeah?"
"Yeah." Doggett leaned forward, intense. "Over the past year, her credit card was used seven times at a gas station in Warrenton, Virginia. It don't correspond to any of your official cases, and as far as the bureau's aware she has no friends or family in the area. What was she doin' there, Mulder? You got any idea?"
Mulder put down the file and sat back, biting his lip. "Maybe she did have a friend down there. Or .. it could be anything, Doggett. I don't think we should jump to conclusions."
Doggett's eyebrows rose. "You don't think it's worth checkin' out."
Mulder sighed. "Look into it if you want, Agent Doggett, but it's not gonna help find her." A thought crossed his mind, suddenly. He stood. "Oh, are we back to this again? Look, Doggett, she was not a member of any cult, and she was not undergoing fertility treatments without telling me, and no matter where you look you won't find any -" Mulder's eye fell on the first statement in the stack. "Wait a minute." He slowly sat back down again, as though afraid he'd break in half with a sudden movement. "You said Warrenton, Virginia?"
Skyland Mountain. Oh, God.
Doggett nodded.
Mulder closed his eyes briefly and, steeling himself, stood and shrugged into his trench coat. "You up for a drive, Agent Doggett?"
Doggett felt the breeze on his face as Mulder dashed out the door. He snorted. "Thought you'd never ask," he muttered, and followed.
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Skyland Mountain
Skyland, VA
4:18 PM
Gravel crunched beneath the tires as they pulled up to the lift base. In three years, not much had changed, Mulder reflected. The small parking lot and thin dirt road winding up to the peak were just as they'd been after the lighthouse massacre. The attendant's station still needed a new coat of paint, but the skyway lifted majestically up the mountain, disappearing above the fir trees almost into the clouds. Promising peace and natural beauty. Promising the stars.
The car sputtered into silence as Mulder turned the key, and perfect quiet descended like a curtain. It felt for all the world as though time had stopped. The early sunset glinted orangely from the mountain and reflected off the plate-glass windows of the resort hotel, giving everything such a surreal, timeless beauty that Mulder closed his eyes, wanting to believe with all his soul that at this cusp in time he'd open them to find Krycek in the passenger seat, Scully missing (but coming back in just short months), or he'd walk up the mountain and there she'd be, trying to convince him that a meadow full of crispy corpses could only be due to homicidal E.B.E.s ...
Doggett cleared his throat, snapping Mulder out of it. A young man was walking toward them from the direction of the lift station, passing a tennis ball from hand to hand and curiously eyeing the bureau-issue sedan. Mulder smiled wryly at Doggett in acknowledgment and stepped out of the car.
"You work here?" he called out, slamming the door behind him.
The kid stopped in his tracks and was looking from Doggett to Mulder warily. "Yeah .. look if you guys want a ride, we're closed. Come back tomorrow at ten."
"Actually, we just wanted to ask you some questions." Mulder pulled out his badge; beside him, Doggett followed suit. "Agents Mulder and Doggett, FBI. Can we come in for a minute?"
"Hey, man, what's this about?" The kid was walking backwards now, hands in the air, eyes wide and tennis ball clenched in one nervous fist.
"Calm down - you're not in any trouble." Doggett put his badge away and stretched a hand forward placatingly. "We just have some questions for you about a woman you mighta seen. All right?" He took a few steps forward and the kid visibly relaxed.
"Oo-kay." He glanced at Mulder distrustfully, but tugged at the brim of his baseball cap and turned around. "This way, I guess."
Doggett shrugged bemusedly at Mulder, whose eyes were lost on the horizon as the pair followed trudging footsteps into the station.
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"I dunno, we get a lot of people through here." The kid, Joe, took another long look at Scully's photo and then glanced up, worrying his lower lip. "Maybe she came in? I dunno if I'd remember ..."
Mulder paced the length of the small room. He would walk to the window, gaze up the lift trail to the top of the mountain, run his hands over the controls, walk three paces to the gear box, stare at Doggett and Joe through the chicken wire, and repeat. He was reliving the nightmare of six years ago, trapped in this room while Scully was tied and in pain, unable to reach her fast enough.
It was driving Doggett slowly insane.
Doggett called his name. Mulder's head whipped around. "Yeah?" With a quick shake he came back to the present, intensely focused. "Sorry." He quirked a self-deprecating smile at Doggett who sighed in exasperated understanding.
Mulder sat down at the table across from Joe and pulled out a calendar marked with the dates of Scully's gas purchases.
"She would have been here on these dates at least, maybe some others." He spun the calendar around and placed it facing Joe, next to Scully's photo. "Does anything about these dates ring a bell? At all?"
Mulder's eyes searched the kid's face, bare need written all over his features. A lead - any lead - at this point was more than he'd dared to hope for.
Doggett stood back, frowning, concentrating in turn on Mulder's features. He'd grown pale and gaunt in the few months since the two men had met, and after a number of hospital stays Doggett was starting to get seriously worried. He didn't know what it was, but with every mention of Scully, Mulder seemed to collapse bit by bit. Doggett narrowed his eyes. Whatever was goin' on, he'd be damned if Mulder would "Spooky" himself to death on his watch.
Joe was spinning his cap around on an index finger, shaking his head. The crease between his eyes deepened as he looked at the calendar. "No, I don't think there's any - oh! .. wait, hang on." He stood and pulled a logbook from a shelf behind the desk.
Mulder watched impatiently. "You remembered something?"
"I think so, hang on ..." Joe flipped through pages, excited now at the prospect of helping an official investigation. "Yeah! Here it is."
He thunked the binder down in front of Mulder and pointed to the second Saturday in November. "We keep a count of how many people go up the mountain, who drives, who takes the lift, you know? This is one of your dates, right? We had about ten times the normal number that day!"
Excited, Mulder paged through the rest of the book. Doggett leaned in over his shoulder.
"Yeah, of course I remember that!" Joe went on, comfortable now that he understood what the agents wanted, bouncing his tennis ball off the floor. "We get these big groups of people in every once in a while. Come from all over, you know? Florida, Oregon, Canada ..." he frowned. "They always drive and they never schedule in advance. The boss hates that. If we knew they were coming we'd have security ready, offer to cater some barbecue, stuff like that." He stopped bouncing, looked up. "One day the boss stayed late and tried to figure out who was in charge, give the guy a piece of his mind. He couldn't find a leader. No one would say why they were there - he told me, sounded like they didn't even know. Ain't that weird?"
Mulder and Doggett glanced at each other. Doggett cleared his throat. "These people - what do they do? Just drive up, stay awhile, drive down?"
Joe shrugged. "Pretty much. They get here like, 5 PM, usually Saturday. Pay their two bucks a vehicle, drive up, stay there till about midnight. Sometimes I think they don't even get out of their cars. It's freaky." He punctuated this statement by bouncing the tennis ball against a wall. "And they might set off a firecracker or two." Scowl. "Boss don't like that, neither, but there ain't nothing he can do."
"It's a match." Mulder leaned back and propped his feet on the table. "Every one of these dates corresponds to one of Scully's fill-ups. There's about five more that don't, but each one of those matches a date that we were out of town on a case. And the last one -" Mulder pointed - "took place while we were in Bellefleur."
Doggett swallowed. "Can you get us a copy of this? Each date, number of people, anything else you got?"
"Sure." Joe fished for a pencil and paper. "This don't mean your mystery lady was here, though. I still don't remember seein' her. But like I said, we got a lot of cars those nights."
"I think it's a pretty damn sure bet at this point." Mulder's voice was quiet, strained.
Doggett glanced out the window. The sunset was in full swing now, the top of the mountain nearly combusting in a blaze of glory. His eyes narrowed in thought. "While you're gettin' that together, I'd like to take a look at the top of the mountain. If that's okay."
Joe looked up. "Sure! I mean, I'm not really supposed to let you, but seein' as you're federal agents and all .." his eyes lit up. "Say! You wanna take the lift? We just had it checked out and oiled up for spring, she's ready to go!"
Mulder laughed humorlessly. "I think we'll pass on that. I'm - taking the drive this time."
Joe shrugged. "Hey, sure .. suit yourselves." He waved his paper at the agents as they strode out the door. "I'll have this ready for you when you get back down!"
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Maybe he should have picked the lift after all. Mulder shivered and closed the collar of his trench coat more tightly around his neck. Instead of reliving the vertigo of swinging unsupported hundreds of feet in the air below a moving tightrope, he'd been treated to forty-five minutes of hell, imagining Scully tied in the back of Duane Barry's car, hurting, scared, tired, feeling every tiny bump in the unpaved road like a sledgehammer to his heart. Mulder shivered again. God, he hoped she'd been unconscious by then.
"So this is it, huh?" Doggett had gone ahead, to the middle of the clearing. He walked in circles, hands on hips, squinting at the sky. It had darkened as they drove, and the stars were out. "This is a lighthouse for alien abductions?"
Mulder worked saliva into his mouth. "Yeah. They're called by a chip, implanted somewhere in their body .. Scully's is in her neck .. and they have to come, they don't even remember later that they've been called .."
Doggett kicked at the ground, trying to visualize what this place would look like filled with hundreds of abductees, men and women brought here against their will. He frowned. "In the X-Files I read, the last time this happened everyone died. Agent Scully was hurt bad. And there was a note that this isn't supposed to happen for a long time yet." He started walking back toward Mulder and the car. "So what gives?"
"I don't know," Mulder barely whispered. "Maybe the colonists have defeated the rebels. Maybe they're being called just for quick check-ups. Maybe ... maybe they did put an embryo in her. Maybe colonization is about to start." He sighed heavily. "I just don't know, Agent Doggett."
Doggett worried the inside of his lip and eyed Mulder skeptically. Several beats passed. "I don't believe a word you just said, y'know."
Mulder laughed shortly. "You don't have to." He was barely audible. "It's good enough that you're here."
Doggett blinked and nodded slowly, then joined Mulder to lean back against the car, staring up at the stars. They stood there, breathing in the night air, listening to the chirps and whistles from the forest around them. Mulder's hand crept to the cross at his throat.
Doggett broke the silence first. His voice was hushed. "Hey, Mulder .. d'you still think they're beautiful?" He nodded up at the sky. "All the horrible things you believe are out there - what d'you see, anymore?"
Mulder didn't hesitate. "The stars are the most beautiful sight in the universe." He swallowed. "Everything - everything I care about, is out there." He thought of Scully, trapped in a spaceship; Samantha, her brown hair flapping, so happy to see him in the blue, blue starlight. "I see hope, Agent Doggett."
Mulder closed his eyes, his voice dropping in pitch, echoing with a sadness and guilt that seemed too much for any thousand lifetimes. "How many times could I have saved her, Agent Doggett? How many times did I call her apartment, and assume she'd gone out somewhere? I could've stopped this, if I'd checked even once, if I'd asked her where she'd gone ... aaauuuggh!" He spun around and slammed his fist into the roof of the car. Mulder spoke weakly through clenched teeth, and despite his best efforts, tears leaked down his cheeks. He supported himself, clutching convulsively to the car. "Dammit, John ... I hate this."
"... You couldn't have known." Doggett spoke softly. He wasn't quite sure how to react. "None of this is your fault, Mulder. You know that." Mulder snorted. Doggett sighed. "Look, we got a lead. Might not go anywhere, but it's more than we've had. We'll get a pair of agents out here round the clock, soon's we get back, f'r as long as Kersh'll sign on it. Sound good?"
".. Yeah." Mulder stood, took a deep breath, and rubbed a hand over his eyes. "Sorry I lost it, Agent Doggett, I .. whoa." Mulder swayed, tried to steady himself, swallowed. "I gotta sit down."
Doggett helped him into the passenger side, leaned the seat back, then climbed into the driver's seat himself. Doggett peered at his partner. This was just what he'd been worried about. "You okay, Mulder?"
A ghost of a smile played over Mulder's face as he waved the car forward. "I'm fine," he rasped. "Let's just go home."
With one last glance at the trees, grass, and silent sky, Doggett turned the key in the ignition and started back down the mountain.
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Doggett glanced at Mulder, still lying in the passenger seat. His eyes had been closed by the time they reached the bottom, and Doggett had gone in alone to collect the information from the lift attendant. Mulder's eyes were open now, though, as they turned onto the county road that ran around the perimeter of Skyland Mountain, staring blankly at the roof, his hands clasped behind his head.
Doggett turned back to the road and cleared his throat. "Thanks for takin' me out here, Mulder."
Mulder turned his head in surprise. "It was your idea, Agent Doggett."
"Yeah, but -" Doggett adjusted his hands on the wheel. "You were the one who knew what it meant."
Mulder conceded the point with a thoughtful nod, encouraging the other agent to go on.
"Anyway, that's - that's not what I meant." Doggett swallowed. "It's just, bein' here with you, lookin' around up there -" he indicated the mountain with a nod - "it's like I - " he shook his head, biting his lip, trying to put what he felt into words.
Mulder's gaze was intense. "You feel close to Scully here, too, don't you?"
Doggett chuckled. "No, Mulder, I don't even know Scully. I think I'm just closer to understandin' what you and her were all abou-"
"Stop the car." Mulder sat up suddenly, straining against the seat belt. He twisted his body around to stare behind them, one hand scrabbling desperately at the door lock.
"Wha -" Doggett tried to look at whatever Mulder was seeing. The car swerved wildly. "Shit! Mulder, what the hell -"
"She's out there. Scully. I just saw her." Mulder had successfully removed his seat belt and was turning his full attention to the door. "Dammit, Doggett, STOP THE CAR!"
Scully? Here? "All right! Mulder, just calm down, let me find a -"
He spotted an opening and swerved off the road, into what seemed to be a clearing in the forest, but turned out to be six inches of mud. Doggett felt the car sink to the axle. "Shit."
Mulder was already running back the way they'd come, the passenger side door freely bouncing on its hinges. Doggett climbed out to follow and couldn't even see Mulder's figure in the darkness.
"Dammit, Mulder ..." he sighed in frustration and clicked his flashlight on. The car wasn't sunk as badly as he'd feared - they might be able to push it out, but he'd need Mulder for that.
Doggett closed both car doors and started down the road after Mulder, walking slowly, swinging the beam of his flashlight back and forth as he went, calling out Mulder's name every few yards.
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Mulder tripped and fell, splashing mud on his slacks but not caring as he pulled himself up and rushed onward into the night. He'd seen Scully, he was sure of it, coming up out of the trees right ahead, just - there ...
And there she was, running toward him, bedraggled, shouting. He ran faster.
"Mulder! Mulder, we have to get out of here! Now!" she yelled.
Mulder stumbled on a stone, glanced down for a fraction of a second. When he looked up again, she was gone.
"Scully?" he called. "Where are you? Scully!!" Mulder slowed, wincing as he remembered why he'd been reclining in the car. He felt dizzy, and yet another headache was coming on. Taking deep breaths, he pushed the vertigo away, peering into the trees beside the road. The moon shed just enough light to show that scully wasn't anywhere close. He yelled again and wished for a flashlight.
When he looked straight ahead again, she was there, almost where he'd noticed her from the car, standing beside the road and looking disoriented. He put on a burst of speed. "Scully," he panted as he reached her side. "Oh, God, Scully." He gathered her in his arms and held her close, breathing her in.
"Mulder? Oh, Mulder, I knew you'd come!" Scully buried her face in his chest and sobbed.
After a second she got ahold of herself, and pulled back, worried. "Mulder, we have to get out of here. He probably followed me, he could be right here -"
"Okay. Okay, Scully, I have a car right down the road." He led her, not letting go of her hand. He still didn't know where she'd gone a few minutes ago, and he wasn't about to let her disappear again, not when he'd just got her back.
He couldn't stop looking at her. Scully, back! Safe and sound! And not a scratch on - he frowned.
"Scully, you were tied?" Mulder rubbed the welts at her wrist, reached out to touch the redness beside her mouth.
She flinched away. "Yes. I don't want to talk about this right now, Mulder. It can wait."
Wordlessly he dropped his hand and nodded. They continued down the road, hand in hand, Mulder still scrutinizing her face and depending on Scully to steer them right. There was something a little bit strange, something besides the rashes; he couldn't quite put his finger on it, but it was there.
Suddenly Scully was gone.
"Sc -" he gasped. But she was here, he'd been touching her, looking at her! He reached forward blindly, struggling to find her hand again, clasping only empty air.
"SCUUULLLLYYY!!"
Mulder bowed his head, lost. What the hell was going on here? Where could she be going? She'd been so happy to see him, she was trying to elude her captors - aliens, he guessed, maybe bounty hunters, or the military - why would she run back into the -
Wait a minute. She'd said "he," she was running from "him." One person. Suddenly that little bit of "off"-ness about her started to make sense, and Mulder began to understand.
He already knew what he'd see when he turned around.
Scully, fighting her way through the undergrowth; Scully struggling to stand upright, Scully looking both ways down the road, her face luminescent in the moonlight.
Now that he knew what he was looking for, it was obvious.
Her hair was too long, her face too round and smooth. She had bangs. She was wearing a suit he hadn't seen on her in -
In six years.
Mulder took a breath and walked forward. He wouldn't let it happen again.
"Scully?"
"Mulder! There you are." She trotted toward him, outwardly composed, but her eyes were wild.
He crushed her in another hug. Whatever was happening, she was still Scully and she felt real and alive, and that meant that he was more alive than he'd felt in months, and he would take that for whatever he could.
She pulled away. "Mulder, we have to go. He's not that far behind me."
Mulder sighed. "No, Scully."
She blinked. "What? But -"
"Scully, come here." He led her to a fallen log beside the road, and they sat next to each other.
"What is it, Mulder? Because we really should go. Duane Barry could be -" she looked sharply up at him. "Did you figure out the barcode on the implant?"
Mulder smiled softly, trying to ignore the fist squeezing his chest. Had he -! "Scully -" he reached out compassionately and stroked her cheek. "Duane Barry's dead."
"Dead?" she gasped. "But - but I -" Scully looked back and forth between Mulder and the mountain. "He was -"
"Scully." He gathered both her hands and held on tight, looking into her eyes. He swallowed. "Duane Barry's been dead for six years."
She just stared at him, wide-eyed.
"Look at me, Scully. Really look at me. What do you see?"
Scully shook her head briskly and looked him up and down, carefully, hands still clasped in his. She smirked. "Your tie doesn't make me want to gouge my eyes out."
"Thanks," he said dryly. "Anything else?"
"You cut your hair," she said slowly, frowning.
"Your -" she gasped. She seemed to see his face, suddenly, all at once, and her hands went to stroke the creases by his eyes and mouth, the hollows under his eyes. "Oh, God, Mulder, what happened? You look so -" old, he heard her swallow in her throat.
"Mulder, is this all because of me?"
He smiled again. God, if she only knew -! "No, Scully, not because of you. You kept me sane." He raised her hands and kissed them. "Six - six years happened, Scully." He watched her carefully for a reaction.
"You can't mean I've been missing for six years. That's not possible, I remember everything, calling you, Duane Barry, the car, driving up the mountain -" she breathed heavily, frightened.
Mulder took a deep breath. "No, you were only missing for two months. You came back, and - and we've been partners ever since."
She was trembling now, scared. "What are you trying to say, Mulder? What's going on?"
He tried to pull her closer, but she was having none of it. He didn't want to say it. Speaking would make it real, and he wanted her - needed her to stay ...
Mulder held her eyes with his. He had to tell her. "Bear with me, Scully, okay? Just hear me out." She nodded tentatively. "I think you're a psychic impression of the Dana Scully that was trapped in Duane Barry's car six years ago. I think you were frightened - I think you were so scared that you imprinted a piece of yourself in this place. A piece whose only concern is to get away from Duane Barry and back to me."
Scully's eyebrow was twitching. He rushed on.
"There's precedent, Scully. I've - I've got files full of - they're - they're called .. residual hauntings, when, when an emotion is so strong it .."
He trailed off and looked at her carefully, biting his lip. She sat very still for a minute, then pulled away quickly and stood. Her voice shook.
"That's not true, Mulder. I'm real. I'm no - I'm no ghost. You touched me, dammit!" She was getting worked up now, and Mulder let her talk. "I don't know what kind of fantasy you've worked up for yourself, Mulder, but that's all this is, a fantasy! I'd slap you if I thought it would -! That doesn't even make sense, Mulder, even if I believed in ghosts, which I don't, that, that kind you're talking about, they, they can't interact with people, and here I - That's it, Mulder. I'm getting out of here, with or without you." And she started to head off in the direction of the car.
"Scully, please don't." Mulder's voice was quiet and desperate. She turned slowly.
"I've found you two other times tonight, Scully. Each time you disappeared when you got about twenty yards from where you're standing now. I don't want to lose you again."
With a swallow, she walked back and knelt beside him, resting one hand on his bowed head and the other on his knee. She spoke softly. "Mulder, I'm willing to listen. But as far as I know, there's a madman in that forest whose only concern is to recapture me. Can you understand that?" He nodded. "All right. Now, can you give me any kind of proof that what you're saying is true? If - if I'm not real - and I know I am, Mulder, I'm sure of it - where am I? She. Whoever. The me who looks as old and tired as you do." She quirked a smile at him and he grudgingly reciprocated. "You know me, Mulder. Now what've you got?"
"She - you -" Mulder struggled. "She was taken again, three months ago." He swallowed. "I've been looking for you ever since, Scully ... "
This time when he started to sob, she pulled his head to her shoulder and rocked him against her chest. "Shhh, Mulder, shhhh ..."
Suddenly as he moved to grasp her more tightly, she caught a glimpse of gold around his neck. She pushed him firmly back and pulled the necklace out of his shirt. Her eyes widened.
Shakily, she pulled her own necklace forward and compared the pendants.
Mulder held his breath and said nothing.
"No," she breathed. "No!" Scully stood up, turned her back to him, crossed her arms. "It's not possible, I don't believe it, it can't be!"
Mulder swallowed. "I found it where y-she was abducted."
Scully took a deep, shuddering breath. Her voice was quiet and shaky as she admitted what she'd been hoping to deny. "Mulder, I .. I don't know how I got away from Duane Barry. I - I have no memory .. between being scared to death in his trunk .. and pushing my way through the forest, right there."
She turned to him again, hugging herself more tightly. "Mulder .. I'm scared."
"Come here." He held his arms open and she sat beside him again, clutching him like a life preserver and shuddering against his chest.
He held her every bit as hard, and let her hair soak up his tears. Finally she sat back and looked him in the eye. "It's true, isn't it."
He nodded.
She sighed. "What happens to me, then? I don't want to stay here, but I don't think I can leave." She looked at him for confirmation and he shook his head, heartbroken.
She narrowed her eyes and scrutinized his face. "There's something else different about you, Mulder, that I just can't -" Suddenly a brilliant grin lit her face, and it was as though the sun came up over the horizon and flowers sprang into bloom all around.
He couldn't help laughing. "What, what is it?"
Her eyes twinkled. "We finally got it together, didn't we, Mulder? You and me?"
He laughed again, and this time it reached his eyes. "Yeah. Yeah, we did."
"Woooo!" Scully yelped for joy, and leaned over to plant a long, wet kiss on his lips. He almost fell off the log. So this is what it - Scully -
"God, I've missed you, Scully," he gasped when they broke apart.
She was still grinning ear to ear. "There were so many times I thought we'd never manage it, Mulder. Oh, that makes me so happy." She kissed him again, on his cheek, then settled in to his side and pulled his arm around her. She smiled up at him. "Tell me everything."
And he did.
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It could have been hours or minutes later that he finished the story, ending with his lonely days and nights without her and his tentative, fledgling friendship with Agent Doggett.
Finally he was silent, and they sat quietly for awhile, she mulling over the events of six years, he wondering desperately what would happen now.
A thought crossed his mind, and he hoped like hell this wasn't a hallucination caused by his hyperactive, ailing brain. All he knew was, since he'd found her tonight, he hadn't felt a twinge of headache.
Scully gathered him close to her again, cradling him in her arms. She spoke softly.
"Mulder, I think I know why I'm here. It's not because I'm scared of Duane Barry."
He swallowed, pulled back, and looked at her. "What is it, then?"
"I'm here for you, Mulder. Now. I'm here to make sure you know we'll see each other again. I'm here to make sure you don't lose hope."
He reached for her as she wiped tears from his cheeks. "Scully, I would never -"
She smiled wryly, shushing him. "Psychic impression or not, Mulder, I'm still Scully. I know you."
For a second she seemed to waver, to be looking at something he couldn't see. She looked scared again. "I think my job is done, Mulder, I - I think I have to go."
Oh no. He swallowed, stood, and pulled her to him. "No, Scully, please. Don't go. Please, I -"
She looked desperate. "I can't help it, Mulder, I have to." She faded in and out like a bad television signal, he could see the trees behind her -
"You'll find me again, Mulder. I'm sure of it." With one last breath she leaned forward and planted her lips on his. His arms went around to pull her close -
- and grasped nothing. Air.
Mulder sank back to the log and rested his forehead on his hands. He was shaking. He had no idea if the tears he shed were in joy or sadness.
And if she was right about her purpose, maybe it didn't even matter if she'd been a residual emotion or a figment of his imagination.
He could still feel the imprint of her lips when Doggett found him not much later.
"There you are, Mulder! Damn, how you got here so fast I'll never -" Doggett swiped the flashlight beam back and forth over the clearing. He frowned.
"I thought you said you saw Scully."
Mulder glanced up at him. Half his mouth smiled. "I did. But it wasn't her."
Doggett sighed. Of course not. "Well, now we gotta slog back to the car and push it out o' six inches o' mud, unless you got a tow truck stuffed in your back pocket."
"Can't help you there, Agent Doggett." Mulder got to his feet.
Doggett looked at him, concerned. "Mulder, we will find her. We will."
Mulder smiled again, for real this time. "I know we will, John. I know it." He clapped Doggett on the shoulder. "Come on. Let's go home."
Doggett shook his head. There was something different about Mulder, something about his eyes -
As they picked their way back to the car, Doggett wondered if this might be the first time he'd ever seen Agent Mulder happy.