Bonnie Gayle Hood
[email protected]
http://members.tripod.com/xtrordinaryxfiles/index.html
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CLASSIFICATION: A bit of angst, definite UST, post-ep, Mulder POV
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RATING: G
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SPOILERS: Field Trip, a certain scene in the movie, the Pilot episode is referenced, but not spoiled.
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SUMMARY: Mulder and Scully talk after the events of Field Trip, and they're finally honest with each other.
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DISCLAIMER: (Most writers try to have fun with this but I personally just skip it when I'm reading, so...) Mulder and Scully belong to Chris Carter, Fox, 1013, David, and Gillian, various others, and the BIG BAD WOLVES...umm lawyers! I don't own em, I just steal, but I will return them and I'll try to return them in better shape then I got 'em:>) If I did own 'em, not only would I be richer than I deserve to be, the UST mumbo jumbo would be a bad memory!
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ARCHIVE: Sure. Just keep my name, e-mail address, and website. I would love to know.
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FEEDBACK: Yes please!
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No Regrets
'Rustle rustle.'
I jerk up in bed as I hear someone moving around in my living room. I quickly jump out of bed and run in to find Scully staring blankly at my CD player. I haven't seen her since we were allowed to leave the hospital hours ago.
"Scully? It's 2:30 in the morn-"
"That's where your casket was."
Her words make me shiver and I stare at her in confusion.I start as her hand rises to point a shaking finger at the floor in front of my CD player.
"You died. It was all my responsibility. Everything. The funeral. Continuing the X-Files. All of it. I tried to be strong. I tried to carry on...but I couldn't. I just wanted to curl up and cry. Everyone was here to say goodbye to you; the Lone Gunmen, Skinner, your Mother. And I just wanted to scream at them. They were so calm." She pauses and looks up from her phantom casket to stare me in the eyes, as if just noticing me. "You died Mulder, and they were calm. I felt like I was the only one who truly realized what that meant. I wanted to punch Skinner. I wanted to yell at him. I wanted to ask him how he could continue to breathe with you gone. I felt like a widow and I didn't even have that."
It finally makes sense to me now. It was her dream while we were being digested.
"Scully, you just dreamt it. I'm fine. I'm alive. I'm standing here talking to you. I'm not dead."
She frowns at me for a second in confusion. "You're not dead."
"I'm not dead," I whisper.
Scully walks over slowly and pauses in front of me. The next thing I know, she's running her fingers over my face. Tracing my eyes, my nose, my lips, feather-light fingers on my cheeks. "What if that was real and this is the dream?"
I laugh gently. "It *is* a possibility."
Scully nods. "I *would* dream this, but I don't think I would have dreamt about being digested by a plant."
"No. That's more what I dream about." I bring her close for a hug, but she pulls back a bit to look at me closely.
"I think this is the dream."
"Why?"
"Well, look how we're acting. We never act like this."
I laugh. "We are drugged, you know."
"True."
"Are you saying the drugs are making us do something we wouldn't want to normally?" I ask cautiously.
"No. I think it just takes away our inhibitions."
I sigh in relief at what her words mean. "So this is how we would act if we didn't have our inhibitions? How we want to act?"
Scully smiles. "You said it, not me."
When Scully tries to pull me closer, I stop her. "This is dangerous. We could regret this when we get our inhibitions back."
"It is dangerous isn't it?" Scully laughs and pulls me close for a hug. I don't stop her. We stand together for a calm second before Scully talks again. "No regrets okay?"
I'm silent for a moment while I contemplate whether that's at all possible. "No regrets."
"What did you dream Mulder?"I think for a second. I hadn't thought of it before this. "I dreamt that I found an alien," Scully snorts but I continue, "I showed it to you, and you believed."
"Always aliens Mulder. Aliens, aliens, aliens. You sleep, breathe, now *dream* aliens. It's your job. Your *life* Mulder. You need to move on. How long has Samantha been gone? Do you realize that your entire life after that has been repentance?"
"That's not true." I try to defend myself, but it sounds weak to my ears.
"Oh really?"
"Really."
"What else is there in your life?"
"Basketball, The Lone Gunmen, those videos that aren't mine," Scully really snorts at this, "...you, Scully."
"Thank God for me. I think I'm the only thing in your life that makes sense."
"You make me a whole person." I whisper sadly. I don't know if the events in the hallway are completely off topic. I can't talk for Scully, but I would *really* like to start back up where we left off.
Scully lets her eyes drift shut, and I start to worry whether I pushed to hard.
"I'm sorry. I think this, 'no regrets,' thing is going to be harder than I thought." Scully sounds like she's about to cry.
"We were drugged right?" It sounds tinny and worn-out to my ears. What she said really hurt.
"I don't though," At my look of confusion, she explains. "I don't make you a whole person...at least I shouldn't. Like *I* said in your hall, my entire job was to debunk you. We were set up to hate each other."
"But it didn't happen that way," I feel like I shouldn't need to explain.
"No. But why? We're opposites, we have nothing in common, why did we get along?" She seems truly perplexed by this.
I think about it for a second. I try to remember what was going through my mind those 6 long years ago. "You were so eager. You came into my job and took it with respect. You didn't seem embarrassed to be in the basement like most people would be."
"I remember," she says with a rueful laugh, "the only reason I stayed for the first month was to prove that I could do it. Prove to my father that I was strong enough to survive the FBI, prove to you that I was an equal...even though I was a newbie and a female, that I could go match you."
"And sometimes you could even beat me," I joke.
Scully's surprised by this. "I didn't feel like it at first. I remember in the very beginning, being in a crappy hotel in Hellhole, Oregon, crying myself to sleep, afraid that maybe Ahab was right. Maybe I wasn't strong enough for the things I was a part of...swept along with, is more like it."
I squeeze her shoulder, imagining the Scully that she was then, a younger, more naive Scully, fearing that she was letting everyone down by setting her sights to high. "I never knew."
"Of course not. It was unspoken, but even from the first day, initiated by that first handshake, there were rules, an emotional status quo to be upheld. Going and crying on your shoulder was against the rules." Scully sounds angry.
I ruefully remember why I allowed those rules to be made. My last partner was Diana Fowley. And from being together, on the road, on cases, together so much, we ended up married. Which was wrong, of course. So she left, and I was left without a partner, but with a lot of hurt. Due to that whole situation, I was strict with myself to keep Scully and my partnership professional, and nothing more. I also remember when my self-enforced rules became to restricting. When I wanted more than only a partnership with Scully. So I began to break them. One by one.
"We broke that 'no comforting one' quickly," I joke.
Scully looks at me seriously, "we certainly did. We broke a lot of them."
My voice drops to a whisper. "But not all of them." I sway towards her, as if drawn magnetically. I watch her eyes drift shut and her lips part. I'm just about to lean in and finally kiss her, when her eyes pop open, and she jumps a step back.
"Scully?"
Scully looks like she doesn't want to do it, but she says it anyway. "No regrets, remember? We should only try something like this when one or both of us aren't drugged to the gills."
She slowly walks past me to the door. As she walks past, I reach out and grab her wrist, but let it slip through my fingers when she continues walking.
At the door she pauses and turns back, her hand on the knob. "See you tomorrow, regret free," something deep and unspoken in her eyes.
And then she's gone. I stand there for a full minute, perplexed, in my drugged state about all that has passed. I sigh, and then slowly trudge back to bed.
Oh yes, Scully. Tomorrow.