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The white light is blinding.
“No,” she gasps. Her plea is weak - strained, as if some unseen force is stifling her words the moment they ghost past her lips.
She arches to sit up, her back stiff and ice cold where she lay, but she can’t move a muscle. She is frozen.
Her heart thuds beneath her breast so hard it hurts.
“Please,” she hears herself whimper. “Mul-”
Brightness burns her eyes until the intensity sends searing tears down the swell of her chilled cheeks.
“Mulder!” Her partner’s name tears roughly from her throat like velcro, her mouth dry and tongue thick. “MULDER!”
A cold pearl of panic rolls her belly.
“Dana?” A tinny voice weaves its way through the ominous fog swirling through her mind, but she sees no one.
She is completely and utterly alone.
“Dana, wake up!”
Scully jolts upright, a soft and familiar cushion bounces beneath her. She squints under the glow of the muted television in her living room. Disorentied, she looks up to see men in football uniforms run across the screen as their fans cheer wildly within a dome-shaped stadium.
“Wha… what time is it?”
The clock face above the fireplace reads a blurry 3:18 AM.
“What are you doing sleeping on your couch? This is why you didn’t want to stay another night in the hospital, isn’t it?” Melissa’s wide eyes lock with her own as her sister squats down in front of the loveseat, concerned hands framing Scully’s face. “You’re remembering.”
“I was dreaming, ” Scully insists. Insomnia had taken hold since she’d awoken from her coma and had only fallen asleep a mere two hours earlier. “What’re you doing here, Missy?”
Scully had barely recovered enough to be released from Dr. Daly’s care, but she’d been certain the last place she wanted to be was stuck in a sterile room with her exhausted mother and questioning hospital staff, poking and prodding her a minute longer. She’s confused and uncomfortable in her own skin as it is.
“I came to check on you when you didn’t call me back earlier and wouldn’t answer your phone. Mom was worried. And you scared the hell out of me when I heard you screaming for Mulder through the door.” Melissa brushes away a wild wave of hair stuck to Scully’s forehead and tucks it behind her ear. “Dana-”
“Drop it,” Scully insists. “Please? It was a dream.”
“A nightmare, you mean.”
“I’m fine.”
Melissa rolls her eyes. “You know, you’re more like Mulder than you may think.”
Scully stiffens. “What do you mean?”
“He was living in darkness, too.” Her words tug on Scully’s heartstrings as a sliver of recognition tickles the back of her mind: I don’t know if me being here will help bring you back. But I’m here. “And what are you watching?
Scully’s tongue swipes across her lip. “Oh um, Superstars of the Super Bowl .”
Melissa arches a brow, tilting her head, watching Scully squirm with unrestrained amusement.
“He cares, you know. Mulder cares a lot .” Her sister bites her lip, just like Scully does when she contemplates her choice of words. “More than he realizes.”
“Missy,” Scully sighs. She loves Melissa’s spirit and intuitive thinking. Even envies her open mind at times, but flights of fancy regarding her partnership with Mulder isn’t something she’s willing to hear.
“I talked to him,” Melissa continues, undeterred as Scully stands to flee. “He was so angry, Dana. Hurt and terrified about losing you.”
Scully finds her shoes, anxious adrenaline urging her to leave. To seek comfort elsewhere. She grabs her sweatshirt she’d used as a pillow to pull over her head and snags her keys from the counter. Her sister doesn’t ask where she’s going, and Scully chooses not to voice it.
“Mulder told you he was terrified?”
“He didn’t have to.” Melissa twists the crystal dangling from her velvet choker between her fingers. “He was heartbroken.”
Scully’s eyes fall shut.
“You don’t have to be alone, Dana. Neither of you do.”
***
Scully knocks three times under the number 42 and slumps against the doorframe. She’s still weak after her ordeal, and as a doctor, she knows she should have taken a cab instead of driving. But after rapping on death's door mere days ago, her heart simply won’t allow her mind to rationalize missing out on the man on the other side of this one.
“Scully?” Mulder swings the door open in a rush. “Hey, are you okay?”
He looks at her through his lush canopied lashes. His eyes are narrowed, their forest green red-rimmed and worried, and the way they grab hold of hers takes her breath away.
“Yes, I’m fine. I’m glad you’re awake. I just…”
She steps past him as he holds the door open for her and freezes.
The apartment is a wreck. Picture frames are dangling from their nails. Every kitchen cabinet is flung wide open, their contents dumped out onto the linoleum. And his living room… Jesus, she can barely see the floor.
“Mulder.”
The room that usually smells of warm leather and sunflower seeds is spinning as the implications of what’s happened here races through her mind.
“Yeah… would you believe me if I said I was spring cleaning?”
Somehow the slump of his shoulders and semblance of sadness rolling off him in waves keeps her from demanding answers. It’s the same way she knows deep down that his sheer will for her to live is what has kept her heart beating. That knowledge has inevitably led her here tonight for a reason.
“Need my help?”
He grins. “Always.”
A comfortable silence filters throughout the space between them as minutes pass. Mulder starts pushing hordes of trash into piles onto the couch, his gaze flickering to meet hers every few seconds. He hasn’t asked her why she’s here during the witching hour because she can tell he already knows.
Lesser people may call him Spooky and snicker behind his back, but she’s watched him command a room, unwittingly crowding others out just to make room for the magnitude of his presence.
It’s that very presence that both complements and comforts her in ways she hadn’t thought possible. Scully tries very hard not to question the easy comfort he gives when it’s her job to question everything.
Scully stares at him now, shifting papers and stacking books, his long fingers casting shadows along the spines of paranormal texts, and her hands twitch with an overwhelming urge to hug him.
“Watch your step,” Mulder warns. He runs a hand through his ruffled hair, chagrined. “Sorry about the mess. Wasn’t expecting company before sunrise,” he jokes.
“Oh, I can come back later,” she mutters, embarrassed. In her haste, and admittedly dire need to see him, she’d descended upon his home unannounced in the middle of the night. “Or another time…”
“No,” he stops her with desperate urgency in his tone as he moves closer. Just not close enough. “No, Scully. Please stay.”
She swallows and tries harder than ever to tear her eyes away from his before she never lets them go.
Glancing around, Scully finally asks aloud, “What happened here, Mulder?”
He scrubs his hands down his face and sighs.
“I really don’t know,” he says, defeated. “The government, Cancer Man? I wish I knew, Scully.”
“My God. Were you here, does Skinner know?”
“It doesn’t matter now. None of it,” he waves his arm around the room with a shake of his head. “None of this matters right now,” he adds pointedly, never taking his eyes off her.
A flush rushes to the surface of her porcelain skin under such intensity.
Her heart gallops as she wanders further into the living room. Case reports, monographs of published professional reviews, news clippings of the oddities they’ve discovered since March of ‘93 are scattered around the room. But it's the ripped letter addressed to Assistant Director Skinner tossed in the center that twists Scully’s stomach.
Her breath hitches.
“Mulder?”
“Yeah?” He looks unblinkingly at the piece of paper torn in fours between her fingertips.
Scully reads it once, twice, three times more before she can speak again:
To Assistant Director Walter S. Skinner,
Please accept my resignation from the Federal Bureau of Investigation effective immediately.
Sincerely,
Fox Mulder
“Why did you do it, Mulder?” Her voice is tight, rough.
“What?”
If she wasn’t holding proof of his blatant betrayal to his personal quest within her own two hands, Scully wouldn’t believe it herself.
“Why did you quit?”
“I didn’t. I mean, tried to,” he stammers.
One shaky hand covers her mouth as the other clutches her partner’s resignation letter so tightly her fingers ache. “Why?”
He was quiet for a long time.
“Because…” Mulder finally whispers. “Because the basement didn’t hold the same appeal anymore.”
She shakes her head, dumbfounded.
“But what about your life’s work, Mulder… the truth?”
He takes the torn pieces of letter and tosses them to the floor. “Come on, Scully.”
He’s trying to brush this off. And she almost lets him, knowing he’s been through a lot while she was missing, but it’s her sister’s worrisome words about Mulder’s state of mental health that beg her to pry.
“Tell me.” He looks at her, pained. Scully steps close enough to see his pulse thrumming in his throat. “Please.”
“I didn’t care to keep searching for anything without you,” he rasps.
Her heart breaks.
“Oh, Mulder.”
“Your sister was right. Even if it didn’t bring you back, I’d still know. ” The raw desperation in his gaze burns right through her. “And I do.”
“What? Mulder…” Her thoughts are as disheveled as his apartment. But whatever she was planning to say seems meaningless now, with the way his chin quivers and eyes well when he looks at her. So Scully says the one thing that matters most, “I’ve missed you too, Mulder.”
In a look so tender it sends a flutter through her belly, Mulder’s smile shines as bright as the moon. Only it holds twice the gravitational pull.
She floats forward and presses her palm to Mulder’s strong chest. Breathing in his warm, woodsy scent, it feels like Scully is able to finally take a full breath for the first time in months.
He watches as she reaches up to touch her cross the same moment she sweeps her thumb across his racing heart. His own hand mimics hers automatically, as if it’s a habit of comfort for him, too.
I was holding this for you.
His act of unfettered faith sends Scully free falling over the emotional edge.
“You…” There’s an instant ache gripping her heart, inching its way up into her throat, and she has to swallow hard to keep the prickling tears at bay. “You never gave up.”
“Never, Scully. Never. Even that last night when we all thought..." but he can’t bring himself to say more.
The flicker of understanding flashes through the swirl of his irises. Suddenly she feels seen, undoubtedly understood. Her trauma is not just a casefile with a red X on the front; this is personal to them both.
“Scully,” he breathes. His thumb cants over the cross pinched between her fingertips before gently slipping hand into hers.
“Mulder,” she responds back, as he leans down and pulls her against him needily, cocooning her in his arms and burying his head into her neck.
God, this is what she’d needed tonight. What they both have needed for a very long time.
"I'm okay," she repeats, sounding more certain than she has since her eyes fluttered open in the ICU. “I’m here.”
Mulder nods, only to melt to his knees, dragging her down with him, letting her cradle his skull and run her fingers through the unruly peaks of his hair.
“Shh.” Her entire body encircles him, pulling him impossibly close. "I'm okay,” she assures as his hands grip her waist.
It is four in the morning and they’re crumpled in on one another as the dirty hardwood of Hegal Place creaks beneath them. She wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.
Brazen under the dim light of the room, her lips press a meaningful kiss to the crown of his head as he sobs into her. She will glady absorb their mingled salt and sorrow for the both of them.
They’ve said so much tonight, yet there is much more left to say. She wants to thank him for being her friend and never letting go of his endless crusade to believe when he could have easily given up. Her unused tombstone she’d overheard her mother whispering to Melissa about getting rid of is one tangible reminder of just how close she’d come to giving up herself. But Fox Mulder never faltered or failed her, forever stalwart in his stubbornness.
Scully has never been more grateful for the gangly man braided like rope around her.
A soft growl rumbling from Mulder’s stomach breaks their silent embrace.
She smirks. “Have you eaten today?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You're stubborn,” she tells him fondly. This stubborn and relentless man who holds much more than her trust within his protective palms than she’s willing to examine. “It suits you.”
“I’ll have to write that one down,” he teases.
Reluctantly, she pulls away, suddenly exhausted. But her fingers still linger within the silk of his hair. Just one last touch, she tells herself. Just a ruffle, a soothing stroke. Instead, Mulder catches her hand and twines his long fingers through hers.
“Hey, Scully. I really missed…” He pauses to swallow, staring at the well-worn gold resting over her heart. She can see his cheeks pinken. “I’m just really glad you’re okay.”
“I am because of you.” Her breath catches as he lifts her hand to the warmth of his lips and boldly kisses her palm, her hand eagerly cupping his stubbled face.
“I’m your partner, Scully,” he says simply. Shrugging, as if it’s nothing. As if supporting her mother while she was missing, fighting hospital security, befriending her sister, and holding Scully’s hand for hours - physically tethering her to the world of the living was as natural as breathing.
A grateful smile fights its way onto her face as something warm and wonderful blooms like spring within her chest.
“See you Monday, Mulder.”
Mulder’s white teeth gleam as smiles back, eyes crinkling at their corners, and Scully thinks this moment might be the most important one they’ve ever shared.
“I’ll be there,” Mulder says. Relief and something else she can’t identify laces his words. “Always.”
He rubs her hand still curled around his chiseled jawline and gives it a soft squeeze before he helps her rise from the floor. Her palm tingles where his plush mouth met her skin.
Scully tucks her chin to her chest. The unkempt strands of red hair hide the look of uncharacteristic awe in her eyes.
“I know you will.”