Falling Through Time

2/23/01
Title: Falling Through Time
Author: ML
Feedback: would be terrific, thanks!
Distribution: Xemplary and Gossamer, yes; if you’ve archived before, yes; if you haven’t, please drop me a line so I know where it’s going, and keep my name & email attached. Thanks.
Spoilers: Requiem. Some general S8 references, nothing specific.
Rating: Teens and older
Classification: V, Scully POV
Keywords: Mulder/Scully Romance
Summary: Scully musings about what she went through while Mulder was gone.

Disclaimer: I don’t own these characters. They belong to Chris Carter, TenThirteen, each other & themselves. I mean no infringement, and am making no profit from this.

Author’s notes: This vignette is part of the “Another Gray Morning” series. It takes place somewhere during the events described in “Homecoming.” You could read it as a stand-alone, but heck, why not go for broke and read the whole series while you’re at it; you won’t be sorry! <g>.

by ML

I love the feel of you next to me, Mulder. The rise and fall of your chest under my cheek. I know you’re not asleep. You may think I am, I can tell by the slow caresses you give me, the gentle kiss on the top of my head. But I can’t sleep. I’ve missed you for so long, I don’t want to squander this precious time. I never thought our time was unlimited before, but I also never thought you’d be taken from me in the way that you were, so very soon.

In my darkest moments, I thought perhaps that was why it happened–that our coming together as we did somehow sent the cosmos out of balance, and the only way to restore it was to take you away from me. That’s certainly a theory worthy of you, isn’t it? But I could not, would not, see God’s hand, or any divine intervention in your abduction, truly. I wasn’t always sure it was alien hands, either. Perhaps aliens in concert with humans. I still don’t know what to think for sure.

I thought I was dreaming when I first felt your arms around me, the night you came back to me. After dreaming of you for so long, I couldn’t let myself believe. Until I heard your voice, felt the whisper of your words in my ear, that unmistakable tone.

Neither of us wanted to sleep that night, which seems like forever ago, though it’s only been a matter of days.

I was unguarded that night, emotionally. Having you back did that to me. I said things that I’d kept secret in my heart for a long time.

The next morning, in the cold light of day, I wondered if I’d been fair to say such things. I felt I’d made assumptions I’d no right to make. My old reticence had returned. I was unsure again of you, of what you wanted. Fatherhood had been presented to you as a fait accompli. Above all, I didn’t want you to feel burdened or obligated by it.

If I’d been thinking more clearly, maybe I would have remembered the look on your face when you held our son for the first time. Or the words you said to me, unprompted by any such declaration on my part.

But my old habits of diffidence and insecurity are hard to break. Even though we’d finally broken the last of the physical barriers between us, the mental ones are harder to overcome.

Mulder, I am so glad you’ve come back to me. The words are inadequate to express what I feel. I know I haven’t been able to say them to you the way I’d like to, but I will try to convey them in other ways, as best I can. Neither of us have ever been very good at words. Oh, we’re very articulate. As long as it’s about flukemen, and unexplained lights in the sky, and other phenomena of the natural (and unnatural) world. But talk to each other about ourselves? Express our feelings? Much easier to talk about cattle mutilations and little gray men.

I should have said so much more that first night. I should have said it earlier this evening. As usual, we’ve been at cross-purposes, each of us trying to second-guess the other, interpreting silences and reading between the lines when it would be so much better to come right out and ask what needs asking. We are still working on that.

So much has happened since you’ve been gone, and I know part of you is worried about what you’ve missed. Not just in my life, but on the X-Files. I will tell you what I can, I will bring home casefiles and whatever else you want. But you have to ask me what you want to know, too. I see the questions in your eyes, but you haven’t yet found a way to ask what you really want to know.

Our trip to see the Gunmen didn’t help at all, I know. You were presented with too much information at once, and I could tell that it really bothered you that so much had happened while you were gone.

I would not have chosen for you to find out about Agent Doggett in the way that you did. I wanted to be the one to tell you, to smooth the way somehow, and to let you know in my own way and time. Not because I had anything to hide, but because I knew what your reaction would be when you found out I’d been partnered with someone else. In this, you did not disappoint. I could see the pout forming almost before the words were said. You didn’t say anything, but I could tell you felt betrayed.

Last night you were distant from me. I didn’t know if you were angry or just hurt. I didn’t know what to say to you, how to talk to you. You’d gone silent at the Gunmen’s lair, and you stayed that way when we got back home. I tried to give you some space and time to sort through things, and hoped that you would start to verbalize some of those unspoken questions.

Questions like, what was Agent Doggett to me? How could I allow myself to be partnered with someone else? What did he do with the X-Files? I expected this; the one other time someone else was assigned to our work, it was a fiasco. I could have reassured you that though Doggett is a skeptic and not likely to ever believe in most of the stuff we accept as our daily lot, he did not dismiss the work. The methods sometimes, yes, but not the work.

Instead, you pretended to fall asleep on the couch, and I went to bed alone.

Then, when you told me this morning that you wanted to go to your place, I was afraid you were withdrawing entirely from me. That you were too overwhelmed with what had happened while you were gone, with what you didn’t yet know, and what you couldn’t remember.

I had to let you go. There was nothing I could say to make you stay if you didn’t want to. I had hoped that things could be different for us, that what we had together could overcome the obstacles before us. And still I couldn’t say the words that might have made you stay. I was too afraid that they would not work.

I was equally afraid that if I didn’t lose you to your own fears, that something would happen to you while you were out of my sight.

After you left, I called Skinner. He was apoplectic, as you might imagine, but he was also prepared. Your place has been surveiled from the night you went missing. If you like, you can view hours of shots of me entering and leaving your apartment, Skinner or Doggett entering or leaving your apartment, and your sub-let tenant, Calvin Packard, entering and leaving your apartment. But never anyone else. Until today, of course. Today we finally got pictures of you entering your apartment. I wanted them to shut it off, give you some privacy, but I was afraid, and when Skinner forbade it, I didn’t protest. Fortunately, as it turns out, because now we have Krycek.

I had to leave for an appointment, and so I missed the excitement of hours of no one entering or leaving your apartment. At least you stayed put. You didn’t try to ditch me, go off who knows where to find your answers. You seemed instead to need to look for them within for a change.

And while you looked for your answers, I went to the doctor.

This was an appointment I wanted your company for, Mulder. I was pretty sure the doctor was going to give me news that you would have an interest in, but when you left me, I was no longer so sure of that. As I expected, the doctor gave me a clean bill of health, and permission to do pretty much anything I wanted with my body, short of perhaps hang-

gliding. I thought it was something you’d want to know. I wanted you to want to know.

Instead of going back to the Gunmen’s right away, I went back to my place, where Mom was with David. She’s so thrilled to have him named at last, Mulder, though I think she was secretly holding out for William. She’s already calling him Davy, though. I think we will have to put a stop to that.

Mom knew right away that something was wrong, just from the fact that you weren’t with me. She asked me why, and I broke down.

This is the thing I forget about Mom. She knows how to cut to the heart of the matter. She is the one who told me I should go to you, not sit at home and worry and wait and stew over what was unsaid. She couldn’t give me the courage to say the things I need to say, but she could make me go to the place where I had to say them. I know you think I’m brave, but my mom is braver. She’s the one who gave me the courage to continue while you were gone.

I feel your hand against my belly, almost flat again. At least as flat as it’s likely to become, now. You seem to have accepted this new part of me–of us–almost without question. You seemed to know by instinct that the baby is yours too, though you knew long before I did that I was supposedly incapable of conceiving a child. You saw the evidence of what They did to me. You tried to shield me from the knowledge with your usual knight-errantry. I can appreciate the reasoning behind it, at this distance and in these changed circumstances. I could not appreciate or understand it at the time. And yet, when presented with a child, your child, carried and delivered while you were away, you still found the faith to believe.

This is what I tried, and failed to achieve, in your absence. I could not make that leap of faith you make so often, so effortlessly. I couldn’t even see how to get to the place where you started.

I was so afraid, Mulder. I didn’t even want to go to the doctor for fear of what would be found. I wanted to believe that the baby was yours, ours alone, but I lacked the kind of faith you’ve always had. I feared–so many things, so much. That Smoking Man had somehow done something to cause this. That something in the chip in my neck activated some of the long-dormant alien “junk DNA” in my system. I had nightmares. Not just of your abduction and torture, but of giving birth to some creature I could not bear to acknowledge and raise. Or, the flip side, that the baby was fine, but would be taken from me.

Worst of all was having no one to share these fears with. I couldn’t tell my mother. She was only somewhat pleased as it is. How could she be entirely pleased that her single daughter was suddenly pregnant, apparently without even a boyfriend, and the only man she’d shown any interest in for years gone missing? How much worse would it be, if I had to explain to her that the baby was not entirely human? Sometimes I wish I’d shared more with her over the years. Mom has taken as many blows as I have, with even less warning than I’ve had, in some cases. You can’t imagine how hard it was to break the news to her. And yet, when I really needed her to understand, she put aside her misgivings and did what needed to be done. She offered to go to Lamaze classes with me. She took me shopping for a layette. She nagged me to make sure I was eating properly. In short, all the things one would expect a mother to do under normal circumstances. And never once did she, in my hearing, breathe a word of blame on me, or you. Not to mention she shielded me from Bill’s wrath, once he knew.

It was because of my mom that I finally went in for the tests. I couldn’t possibly have told her if there was any chance that there was something…unusual about this baby. When I finally had the courage to get the analyses done, I was beyond relieved. Still not happy, but relieved.

If you had been here, we could have gone through all of that together. You never got to feel the baby move inside me, never got to feel the joy of impending fatherhood. Maybe that affects me more than it does you, but at each little milestone it drove home the truth: you were not here, and I had no way of knowing when you would return. My own joy was tempered by this truth.

I have to admit, Mulder, sometimes I was angry at you, though I know you had little choice in the matter. I didn’t know who else to be angry with, though lots of people bore the brunt of it at one time or another. John Doggett took quite a lot of it, and some of it was deserved. I don’t think you would ever have stooped to the low tricks he played on me when he first started to investigate your disappearance. He seemed to think I knew more about it than I was saying. Truth to tell, I was not as open as I could have been. I had too much to protect. I told everyone who asked that you were taken against your will, by persons (or things) unknown, but I did not elaborate. I asked Skinner, who was willing to tell anyone who would listen what he saw in the Oregon forest, to soft pedal it as well. I feared for his reputation, for his job. I feared for mine, to be frank. And I needed both my job and Skinner to be able to find you.

Earlier this evening you tentatively asked some questions about John Doggett. I don’t want to attribute jealousy to you, Mulder, but I wonder if that’s part of your reluctance to ask questions. I tried to reassure you that Agent Doggett is not you, that neither he nor I could ever replace you. I tried to be you, to the best of my ability, and some day I will tell you about some of the attempts. I began to understand you better after you were gone than I could when you were right in front of me.

But I’d rather spend the rest of my life trying to figure you out than to pay that kind of price again.

I should have added more to what I said about Doggett, and working without you, Mulder. I should have said not just that I trust you more than anyone, but that I want you back as my partner. In every way. Professionally, and personally. That no one could take your place, not by my side, not in my heart.

I think I got a start on demonstrating the “personal” part tonight. I think you know how I feel about you now. But I will continue to give you proof undeniable.

So please forgive me, Mulder, for not doing as you might have done under the same circumstances–as I heard you did when I was abducted. I tried to keep my temper, and keep my own counsel. I never lied, but I did not volunteer information. I let the facts speak for themselves as much as possible. I played well with others–though it got harder and harder to do so.

People may have thought I was cold and unfeeling, as I said so little about your disappearance. I probably added more to my legendary “Ice Queen” persona. But I didn’t feel the need to share my grief with the world. These were people who dismissed you when you were here. Any concern they showed now that you were gone was suspect in my eyes. So I kept to myself, and when I went home, I cried. I indulged in little pity parties whenever I was alone at home, or when I went to your place.

And I never stopped looking for you. Never. On every case, whatever I did, I looked for clues.

Skinner, too. He spent all of his free time, and who knows what personal resources and what favors he called in, looking for you, for any kind of lead, however improbable. He was no more successful than I was. He told me not long after you were taken about a talk he’d had with you while I was gone. That he was afraid to look any further than the few unexplained things that happened to him in his youth. That he admired your ability to do so, and that you were needed. I would bet that he didn’t say it in so many words. Skinner has always been more a man of action than of words. But I was comforted by what he told me, and it made me realize that he was as committed to finding you as I was.

In the end, my commitment and Skinner’s amounted to nothing. We did not find you. You came back the same way you left–in a flash of blinding light, wholly unexpected. And this time, unobserved, except for the reports of lights in the sky. We have the Gunmen’s network of MUFON people to thank for that. There were plenty of false alarms before we hit paydirt, and believe me, we checked them all out.

Maybe we would never have found you. Maybe we only got you back because They were ready to release you. You haven’t been able to answer any of my questions yet. I cannot accept that it was random. To believe that is to believe that you are under daily threat that They will take you back again, just as They have with many, many other abductees.

Which brings me back to the most important questions I haven’t yet found the courage to ask: why did They take you in the first place? What did They do to you? Are They coming back for you again?

I think you want the answers to those questions, too.

I want us to find them together.

You once said that the truth would save me–that it would save both of us. I still believe that, Mulder. You taught me that.

You remembered something today, I know you did. You didn’t want to share it with me, maybe because of my own experiences. But I think we have to face this together if we are to face it at all. I didn’t want you to go to Oregon alone, and I don’t want you to face this alone. Together we will find the truth, Mulder. Always together.

Tomorrow we will start. This night is our time out of time. I am beginning to give in to sleep in spite of myself, and I feel you beginning to relax your hold on me as your breathing softens and you fall asleep as well. I turn to you and see your familiar, much loved face. The long lashes against your cheeks, the curve of your lower lip, and of course your nose, proud and prominent in between. I cannot resist placing a soft kiss on it, and I see you smile slightly as you feel it. I could see you in our son every time I looked at him while you were gone. Now I see him in you, and I am overwhelmed with love and gratitude that I have you back.

I want to make love with you again before morning, Mulder, and then I will do my best to put into words what I’ve thought and felt, and tried to show you tonight. I almost wish you could still read my thoughts and know that they are all of you.

Sweet dreams, Mulder.

end.

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