Chapter Text
With the winter chill slowly thawing into whispers of spring, April stretches its lazy limbs over D.C, wearing the ashen dampness like a cloak. It’s oddly fitting, Mulder thinks, driving to work in a particularly dreary Friday. It makes sense to him that the insipidness of his inward cosmos twist itself around the tangible until all is gray and muggy.
But it is, he knows, no more than a veneer. Soon the sun will be peeking timidly through the clouds, and the trees will be awakening from their slumber in shades of ever-brightening green, and life will blossom with a fierceness reserved for the mindless creatures of the world, unaware that all springs have their end. And Mulder resents them, as he lately resents any reminder that the world can be bright and vibrant when his own balances on a knife’s edge, the passing days announcing themselves like bell tolls as they move towards inevitable, crushing darkness.
Hear the tolling of the bells — he recites in his head, and smiles, cold.
Sitting in his office, mindlessly reading through long-memorized files, time seems to stretch and contract as Mulder counts the minutes until Scully arrives. Nothing makes much sense anymore, nothing outside of her clicking heels on the concrete floor, the heady spiciness of her expensive perfume, the mellow contralto of her voice as it catches on each syllable of his name. She is the steadiest, most fragile thing in his life.
She comes in as she always does, unobtrusively, sipping on the fancy coffee she occasionally treats herself to, crisp and warm as the shades of autumn in her hair.
“Morning, Mulder,” is thrown businesslike over her shoulder as she hangs her coat, nothing but the angle of her eyebrow betraying that she’s happy to see him.
“Morning, Scully,” is quieter, a little more content and more sorrowful.
Keeping time, time, time...
Scully can feel more and more of her fragile inner balance slipping every time she catches Mulder’s furtive glances mapping out her face across the desk.
She wants to snap at him. She wants to shake him so that he knows it isn’t fair, it isn’t fair that she’s the one required to hold all the angles of her psyche together while all of his edges fray. She hates the look on his face, the terrifying knowledge that he is storing up images of her like treasures in heaven, that in his eyes she’s already translucent and half-gone.
She’d dared to hope that death would claim her in an instant, that she would leave the world exactly as it was when she walked its twisting, inscrutable paths side by side with Mulder. In her mind, there would be no casualties, no secondary losses.
Looking at Mulder over her laptop, her eyes travel over his drooping shoulders, the downward slope of his eyebrows, the shadows under his eyes that could rival her own. I need you , she feels him scream, and it cuts her so deeply that she will, ultimately, be powerless to save him.
She can’t save either of them.
“Hey, Scully,” comes across the desk, hesitant. Lately this has been his way, seemingly afraid to disrupt her stillness with his energy.
“Yes, Mulder?”
“I just got an email from Skinner saying he’ll be sending in a file for us to look at later today.” His eyes are restless over her face, making her dizzy.
“And?” she says simply. Mulder has a point, she knows, but will take his sweet time getting to it. Her head throbs.
“Well, we’re pretty much done with the paperwork today, so maybe we can check out early and I could bring it for you to look at tonight.”
Her mind’s first instinct is to say no. There is no good reason to continue non-urgent work on a Friday night, no reason to spend more time together. He’s asking what he won’t dare ask, words and manners straw-spun signs relying on the alchemy of her silent interpretation. I realize I am asking too much , says the self-deprecating tilt to his head. Your time is too precious for me now. I can’t afford it.
A small, lopsided grin that makes his gentle eyes sparkle. But I’m asking anyway, she reads into it.
She is Icarus, balancing precariously as she flies over uncharted territory, warmed slowly into ruin by the sun in Mulder’s eyes.
“Okay, Mulder,” she says cautiously, recklessly. “I’ll see you at 8.”
She gets up to retrieve her coat, heels tap-tap-tapping on the floor, and tries not to feel guilty for allowing herself to solidify her presence in Mulder’s life a little bit more, to burrow a little deeper into his heart that will be empty before the year is out.
She’d sworn she wouldn’t be another ghost. How could she have known, then, that he’d so passionately plead to be haunted?