The Third Reason (1/1)
Rating: PG-13
Category: SR (a little angst)
Spoilers: The Beginning
Keywords: Mulder/Scully romance
Summary: Mulder reflects after the events of The Beginning. Scully
comes over to talk.
Disclaimer: They're not my characters. They belong to Fox and 1013.
He's a jerk; he knows that. Occasionally, he tries to rise
above it. It is rare that he succeeds.
He hasn't been succeeding lately, and that's one reason why he's
getting drunk tonight.
A bottle of scotch and a glass. He's at home this time, so that no
well-meaning bartenders can cut him off when he starts talking about
aliens. He can't really blame them when they do. The one at Casey's
a few weeks ago did it more nicely than most, at least. Someday,
he'll learn just to say that he's unemployed or something when
they ask him what he does.
Maybe, if he's lucky, the next time he goes to a bar he'll be able
to say that he's unemployed and be telling the truth.
It's taken him surprisingly little alcohol to get the point where
being fired seems like a desirable goal; this worries him a little,
but not enough that he doesn't still relish the thought of quitting.
Fuck it. Fuck them all. If the world doesn't want to be saved,
he doesn't care. He'll take off and live his own life and on the
day that the aliens come, he'll laugh in their faces and say that
he warned them all. He'll go up to the nearest alien colonist and
say, "EBE, go home." He'll probably get his face ripped off then,
but he'll die happy.
She'll die too, or maybe worse.
He pushes that thought away. Where will he live until the aliens
come? Not the East Coast. Too many bad memories here. Somewhere far,
far away from the FBI.
But everywhere he thinks of has memories. California is Emily
dying; Oregon is a young Scully and joy over a spray painted orange X.
Idaho is Scully with a gun and lost memories. Florida is a dark
forest and Scully's voice. Texas is...Texas is Texas. He's not going
anywhere near Texas. New Mexico is Scully asking him to find answers
and a burning boxcar. Utah is where Scully might have gone. Illinois
is a mental hospital and Scully's disbelief.
Have they been to every state? Maybe. Maybe it's time to leave
the country. Not to Canada, which is bees and his sister. Mexico's
too close to Texas. Russia is Krycek; so's Hong Kong. Australia
was on the way back from Antarctica.
He shudders and pours himself another drink. England is out.
Phoebe's there.
Switzerland. Switzerland? Switzerland. A nice neutral country
that probably holds the bank accounts for the government conspirators.
He weighs watches and yodeling and distance from the U.S. against
the possibility of running into cigarette smoking man.
Not Switzerland. Damn. He'll never learn to yodel now.
Where?
He lets it go. They can't possibly have been to all fifty states.
He'll choose one when he's sober.
Except he knows that when he's sober he won't quit. He'll drag
up determination from somewhere and keep on going. He'll make his
peace with Scully and the science. He'll keep looking.
That seems to require another drink.
Scotch, his father's drink, his father's vice. It burns going
down. His father may have called him a mama's boy on occasion, but
he doesn't use his mother's escape of sleeping pills. He rarely
even drinks, because of his father. As a result, his tolerance
for alcohol is fairly low. Not embarrassingly so, but enough that
it annoys him. He's a cheap drunk. Scully, his Irish witch, could
probably drink him under the table.
It might be comfortable under the table, if Scully came down
there with him. She probably would; she's a kind girl. She'd tell
him about the science of getting drunk.
Scully's science, another reason why he's getting drunk tonight.
Scully herself. She's the third reason.
She's the main reason.
***
He should have done this the night that he went to the bar. He
should have known that he wouldn't get drunk enough in a bar. And
if he'd never gone to that bar, Kurtzweil never would have come to
him. He would have tried to take the blame for the Dallas bombing
instead of going back to Texas on the word of a crackpot. Scully
would have tried to shield him, but they probably would have let him
take the blame and fired his ass. Scully might have quit. She would
have gone to be a doctor. They would have lost touch, and when he
returned to DC from whichever of the fifty states they hadn't been
to, they would run into each other on the street.
She would have aged, a little, but there would be laugh lines in
her face again.
She would be beautiful, and happy, and she would have met some
guy who had children. She would have convinced herself that most of
what she had seen in the X-Files was a bad dream. But she'd still
be friendly. She'd tell him about her stepchildren and her practice
and she'd ask how the guys were, laughing a little as she remembered
their belief in conspiracies.
She'd invite him to dinner, to meet the husband and children, but
he'd tell her that he had a flight out that day, whether or not that
was true. And he'd go home again until the aliens came, and they
killed her, or worse.
It all comes down to that. His role is this whole game is to be
the crazy fool who keeps looking for aliens because there's no choice.
When he wants to quit, they dangle aliens in front of him. When he's
really serious, they bring in his sister. And when he does look, they
take Scully away. And if he doesn't, they'll take her away some other
time. Staying drunk, in the face of these choices, is a reasonable
option. His father had been a reasonable man.
Tonight, it's an option he's choosing. He wishes that he had chosen
it instead of listening to Kurtzweil.
If he had, he might have let her quit instead of running after her.
He might have let her go without telling her everything she meant to
him. He might never have leaned in for the briefest, lightest,
sweetest kiss he'd ever known.
But he had. He'd poured out his heart to her.
Poured out his heart. Jesus. What an expression. Sounded all mushy
and Hallmarky. It wasn't; it was a hemorrhage.
And Scully has said nothing about it.
This is the main reason he's getting drunk tonight.
He didn't expect her to say anything when they were still at the
Australia hospital. They'd mostly slept and matched their stories.
And the plane ride back wasn't a good place for an emotional scene.
He understood that.
But since then? Nothing. She'll talk about the science, about the
X-Files, about Diana. She'll thank him for coming after her (he
himself, looking back, is amazed by the risks he took). But she
doesn't seem to want to remember that they talked in the hallway.
She certainly doesn't seem to want to remember that their lips just
barely, barely brushed.
For five years, he dutifully told himself that she would never feel
that way about him. That even if she did, he couldn't take advantage
of it. It would put her in danger. It would put the work in danger.
He had a hundred reasons, all good, for not telling her how he felt.
And the hundred and first, the one he never admitted to, was that she
couldn't tell him no if he never asked.
But he did. And she said no, though not in so many words. Without
any word at all, in fact.
He knows that she loves him. He's known that for awhile. But now he
knows what kind of love it is. In her silence, he can read any number
of "just friends" speeches.
The only time she has brought up the hallway has been to throw his
words back in his face, to defend her disbelief. You told me that my
science saved you.
He'd told her that he loved her. He can't believe that she didn't
understand that.
***
There is still Scotch in his glass, but he's lost all taste for
it. He can't even get drunk right. If a mysterious informant shows
up, he will still be able to listen, and that's not nearly drunk
enough. He's at a dangerous stage now, where anything seems
reasonable. Going over to Scully's apartment and asking why she
can't believe, why she doesn't want to believe, why she doesn't love
him back...he could do those things.
He forces himself to drink the rest of the Scotch as medicine, an
inoculation against his own stupidity, and pours himself another
glass, but it sits on his coffee table.
Living without Scully is a hemorrhage, but living with her is a
thousand paper cuts bleeding all at once. She refuses to believe, and
he gets angry. He behaves like an asshole, and she gets angry in
return. She uses science as a barrier against fear, and he uses his
quest as a defense against her closeness, throwing Diana in her face
even though he doesn't want Diana's loyalty, not really. He could
dress it up in fancy psychological terms, but basically they're both
fucked up, big time, beyond recovery.
He doesn't see an end to it in sight. He used to believe in
evidence, but that's the fourth reason why he's drinking tonight; he
doesn't anymore. His quest is futile, which hurts; he still can't
give it up, which hurts worse.
***
There is nothing on the TV that he wants to watch, but he clicks
to an infomercial anyway. Hours of paid programming await. Alcohol
may not work, but the TV will. During bad cases in VC, and during
the endless time after Duane Barry, he didn't sleep. He watched TV,
brain shutting off and heartbeat slowing down. He was never well
rested, but he was functional.
Songs of the fifties. A full hour of testimonials from people who
want to express their delight that they have found the perfect set of
CDs. It is not impossible that these people deserve to be killed by
aliens.
That is the last coherent thought that he will have for awhile.
His body settles deeper into the couch. His eyes blink every so often.
He'll snap out of this rudimentary self-hypnosis when his apartment
grows lighter.
***
Nine o' clock on a Saturday morning, and nothing much going on
in the world. His eyes are shut against the light. He's listened to
the morning news, and is now listening to cartoons. The numbness has
left his mind, but the tiredness hasn't. He doesn't want to get up,
even though he knows he should. Running is the quickest, easiest way
he knows to shake off feelings of depression.
When the footsteps and then the knock come, he ignores them. When
the key turns in the lock, he doesn't move.
Footsteps, and then someone stops by the couch. He keeps his
breathing deep and even. If this were an enemy, he could be dead by
now. But it's not; he recognized the footsteps even in the hall.
She crosses over to the TV and turns it off.
"What, you don't like Saturday morning cartoons?" His eyes are
still shut.
There's a brief silence, and then her voice comes, a little stiff.
"I thought you were asleep."
"I didn't sleep."
Another silence. The footsteps come closer to the coffee table,
and he can hear her pick up the glass, still full, and carry it out
to the kitchen. It splashes in the sink, and then the water rinses it
down.
His sink faucet drips unless you turn the handle very far to the
right, but he doesn't tell her. The dripping of the faucet accompanies
her back to the living room, as he finally manages to get his eyes
open and sit up.
She's wearing an old sweatshirt, and jeans. His jeans. He didn't
think to bring clothes for her to the Antarctic, and in the hospital
it didn't matter. But she borrowed clothes from him and the nurses
for the flight back. Underwear and socks and a raggedy pair of tennis
shoes from the nurses. A henley and a pair of jeans from him. She
rolled up the cuffs at first, but that looked ridiculous, and he
borrowed a pair of scissors from the nurses and handed them over.
She returned the henley, but it would have been difficult to
return jeans that were eight inches too short. He expected her to
throw them out. That she is wearing them now, here, is another tiny
paper cut.
"So," he asks, looking at the bag and the files she has laid down
on the coffee table, "what's up?"
"You weren't answering your phone," she says.
He looks over at his phone, which is unplugged, and his cell phone,
which is turned off. "I wasn't really in the mood for talk last
night."
"Obviously. I was worried, so I thought I'd stop in before I headed
over to Mom's."
"I'm fine."
She nods towards the bag. "I also thought we could talk about the
test results on the DNA, since we can't really discuss it at work. I
brought bagels."
"I'm not hungry," he says absently, looking at the files beneath
the bag.
It is the silence that alerts him, and he looks up to see her mouth
tighten. "It was just a thought," she says, and then reaches toward
the bag.
He's a jerk, but he didn't mean this, and he reaches for her
wrist. The bones are thin and strong beneath his fingers. "I didn't
mean for you to leave, Scully. We can talk. I meant...honestly, I'm
just not hungry. Stay and eat."
"Oh," she says, a little ruefully, and looks away from him.
"I don't have anything to drink, though." Their eyes both fall
on the bottle of Scotch. "No orange juice or anything, I mean."
She bends and reaches into the bag. "I brought some," she says,
pulling out two small single serve cartons. "And coffee." Two
styrofoam cups come out.
"I at least have coffee," he says, feeling slightly insulted.
"You may have coffee, Mulder. But this is *coffee.*"
That wins a reluctant smile from him. Scully's a coffee fiend. She
treats coffee like other people treat wine, classifying a million
different flavors and textures. He rarely tells her that he can't tell
the difference between the varieties she has him try.
It makes shopping for her at Christmas easy, at least. A big bag
of whatever her most recent favorite kind of beans is.
"I...give me ten minutes, okay?"
***
Ten minutes later, he has hastily showered and hastily dressed.
She is sitting on his couch, in the middle of a mouthful of bagel,
when he returns to the living room. She seems to have already inhaled
her coffee and is now working on the orange juice. He considers the
orange juice, her empty styrofoam cup, and her coffee habit,
and decides that caffeine can't possibly be a good thing for him
right now anyway. She looks up inquiringly when he pushes the
full cup towards her.
"So you're going to your mom's today?" he asks.
She swallows and nods. "In a few hours, yeah. I'm going to stay
the night there. I haven't had the chance to really spend time with
her since Antarctica." She half raises her eyebrows, in an are-you-sure
gesture. He nods, and she shrugs and pries the lid off the styrofoam
cup.
"How's she doing?"
"Okay. I think she was kind of freaked out when she came to the
airport and saw the frostbite. She'll be glad to see I'm fine now."
Mrs. Scully had met them at the airport, but Scully didn't go
home with her. Maybe they were being paranoid, but maybe just smart.
They went to a hotel room instead, paid for in cash. One room, two
beds. He fell asleep listening to her breathe.
"You're sure you don't want a bagel?" she asks, perhaps feeling
guilty that she is snarfing down his coffee. "They're good. Fresh
made."
He shrugs and reaches for the bag. "You get the lite cream cheese?"
"It tastes exactly the same."
It doesn't, and he bets she doesn't really think so either, but he
grabs the little plastic knife and the lite cream cheese anyway.
"I was thinking we should ask the guys to run a background check
on Kersh," she says, taking another bite.
"Already done. They're working on it. They said hi."
"Have you talked to Skinner at all?"
He shakes his head since his mouth is full of bagel. "You?" He asks
indistinctly.
"No. I feel bad about that, Mulder."
"Yeah." Skinner's being reprimanded was pretty far down on the list
of why he was drinking last night, all things considered, but it
was probably there. He fucks up everyone's life. "Have you heard
anything about Kersh?"
She shakes her head. "Tough but fair. That kind of thing. But I
thought Michaud was honest."
"I did too," he says.
She sets down her bagel. "Mulder." She stalls.
"What?"
"You aren't gonna want to hear this."
"Okay." He sets down his own bagel as well, and his throat
constricts. He wishes he hadn't eaten even two bites.
"I don't think we can push the evidence right now. Maybe in a few
weeks, when things die down. But right now...we're skating on really
thin ice."
A beat of silence.
"Mulder?"
"I thought you were gonna quit for a minute there."
"I told you that I'm not."
"Yeah, I know."
Another beat, and then her voice comes very softly. "Is that what
You want me to do?"
He swallows painfully. "Maybe you should think about it."
The quality of her silence scares him, pushing him into speech.
"You could go be a doctor. You could make a life for yourself, you
know?"
The half-eaten bagels, the cups of coffee, and the bottle of
scotch are a still life on his table. He can't look at her.
"Are you saying you want me to quit?"
"Of course I don't want...Jesus, Scully. But maybe you should
consider it."
"Uh huh. And while I'm off being a doctor, what are you doing?
Running after evidence with Diana?"
No. He would be running after evidence that she could somehow have
children. And if he found it, he would give her back that chance and
then get the hell out of her life. And away from the FBI, to whichever
state they hadn't been to. And he'd wait for the aliens to kill him
and to do worse to her because of the chip in her neck.
"No, I wouldn't stay," he tells her.
"*You* want to quit?" she asks, incredulously.
"No."
He finally manages to meet her eyes, which are concerned, and
puzzled, and maybe scared. "Maybe," he amends, and even voicing the
possibility scares him, too.
She shakes her head and reaches for his hand. Hers is warm from
the coffee. "What is going on here?"
"I don't know," he tells her, although that is only half true.
"You told me that if you quit now, they'd win. Do you still mean
that?"
"Yeah."
"Then what's going on?"
"I don't...I don't believe anymore."
"What? Mulder, yesterday you told me definitively that you
believed in EBEs. What the hell happened between last night and
today?"
"No, I didn't mean...I still believe in EBEs, Scully. Beyond a
shadow of a doubt. I know what I saw in Antarctica. I've seen too
much evidence not to believe. It's everything else that..."
"I don't understand."
He sighs. "If I quit, they win. If I don't quit, they win anyway.
It's kind of hard to keep believing when it's not gonna make a damn
bit of difference in the end."
"Mulder, that's futility. You can't stop now, not when you're so
close...when we're close. This new evidence..."
"*That* is what I don't believe. Okay. You remember when you first
came into my office, Scully? Do you remember what you said?"
"I remember a discussion about my credentials."
"You said that what you found impossible to believe was that there
was answers outside the realm of science. You know something? I
didn't buy that then. Honestly? I still don't buy it. But you know
what I did buy? You brought this faith in science, Scully, and you
brought this faith in *evidence.* And I fell for that one, you know?
Big time. I started to believe that if we could only find enough
evidence, the right evidence, that it would be ok. That we'd win.
And that's a *lie.* We've had evidence, and it doesn't make a damn
bit of difference, because no matter how good the evidence is, no
one wants to believe it. Even you don't want to believe it."
"Mulder, it's not that I don't want to believe..."
"Yeah?" he challenges. "Even Gibson knew."
"Okay, fine. I admit that there is a part of me that doesn't want
to believe. There's a part of me that's terrified that this is
all true. But that does not mean that I can quit looking for the
truth."
"You were going to."
"And I was wrong. I was tired, and I was losing my faith in myself,
and in the FBI."
"And me?" he throws at her.
"No, not in you. But, Mulder, if there was one thing that the whole
Antarctic thing showed me, it was that I can't quit. I'm in this
thing now. Whether or not you quit, I have to keep doing this."
"You could do better things with your life."
"They wouldn't be the right things."
He sighs. "I'm not seriously thinking of quitting. I'm just tired."
"So where do we go from here?"
"I dunno. The usual. Piss Kersh off instead of Skinner. Have
evidence disappear on a regular basis. Sneak into military bases
on the word of untrustworthy people. Yee haw."
"Mulder."
"I'm fine. I told you, just tired. By Monday, I'll be my old self
again."
There's a brief pause.
"Not that that's necessarily a good thing," he adds sourly.
"Depends on what you mean by your old self," she says, a little
tartly.
Unless he's mistaken, that's payback for his comments about Diana.
Not that she'll ever come out and say that she was hurt by his
behavior.
"Paranoid, untrusting, not believing in anyone but you and the
boys? Dragging you off to obscure places in remote villages
far, far away, whose inhabitants think that Casper the Friendly
Ghost has visited them? Not just a ghost, but literally Casper the
Friendly Ghost? Making paper airplanes out of the relevant
paperwork and flying them across the office when I'm bored?" he
suggests.
She half-smiles. She's smart enough to have picked up on the
fact that he'd only talked about him and her, together. It's an
apology of sorts. It's possibly the only one she would ever
accept. "I could do without the paper airplanes," she says gently.
"Since we don't have an office anyway, I guess you're safe."
Oops. That was a little bitter. "Monday," he promises her. "I'm
just tired now. I'll go back to being an optimist on Monday."
She closes her eyes, briefly, and then opens them and looks at
him carefully.
"Did you sleep at all last night?"
"I don't think so."
"Jesus, Mulder. No wonder. Come here." She pulls on his arm, on
his shoulders, guiding him down.
"I didn't mean tired *physically,* Scully. I meant spiritually,
mentally, emotionally, psychically...a general lowering of
energy, of chi, of life force, of..."
"Just c'mere, okay?" He ends up lying down, head in her lap,
eyes closed. She holds him to her like she did in the Antarctic.
"The fact that you haven't slept more than four hours a night for
the last two weeks isn't helping you mentally, physically, or
spiritually."
He's too tired to resist, although he doesn't think sleep
will come soon. But it's nice to close his eyes, to rest, to
know that Scully's there, that he hasn't ruined everything
by almost kissing her and then by being a jerk these past few
days. "Hey, Scully?"
"Yeah?"
"Where haven't we been? I mean, is there a state we haven't
been to?"
"Hawaii."
He could live in Hawaii. He could dream about him and Scully
in Hawaii.
"Okay," he says.
Sleep is starting to beckon, a little. Possibly. It hasn't come
easily of late. Four hours a night is a generous estimate.
"Why?" she asks after a moment.
"Just thinking of where I would go if I did quit."
Her lips touch the top of his head. "I don't want to do this
without you," she whispers.
"I'm not leaving," he tells her, and it sounds like defeat, even
to him.
Her forehead touches his, as if she's trying to push her thoughts
into his. Osmosis. It could happen. "I don't want you to be unhappy."
"It's not your fault."
"If leaving would honestly make you happy..."
"It wouldn't."
"Mulder, I want you to be..."
"It doesn't matter; I don't think it's really an option anyway.
Wake me up before you leave, ok?"
"You need your sleep."
"Wake me up anyway."
She settles a little deeper into the sofa, propping her feet on
the coffee table. "Go to sleep."
One of her arms is wrapped across his chest, and he shifts his own
arm so that hers lies underneath, trapped between his arm and his
body, hand resting against his heartbeat. He places his own hand on
top of hers and threads his fingers through hers. "Tell me a story,"
he mumbles.
There is no response.
"C'mon," he prompts. "Dr. Suess. Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
Marvin the Martian."
"I can't," she says shakily, and he opens his eyes to see that
hers are bright with tears.
"Don't cry."
She swipes at her face with the hand that isn't resting against
his chest.
"Don't cry; I didn't mean to make you cry."
"You didn't."
"Then what..." he pulls himself up, away from her warmth.
"You tell me that you don't think happiness is an option for you
and you don't expect me to be sad about that?"
"Scully, if I were happy and well-adjusted I probably wouldn't be
chasing aliens for a living. It's ok, ok? It's not that big a deal."
"It is too."
"Scully, don't..." he pats her shoulder helplessly.
"Shut up. You take responsibility for my happiness all the time;
you blame yourself for every little thing that goes wrong in my life,
whether or not you were responsible or even could have done something
to prevent it. You can *not* tell me that I can't feel anything when
you tell me that you aren't happy. Especially when you don't even
seem to think that it's something important."
"Scully, it's..."
She frowns at him, eyes still wet. She is beautiful beyond belief.
He cannot keep himself from reaching out to trace a tear away. "Don't
cry," he whispers. Her skin is smooth beneath his thumb. "Working with
you makes me happy, it really does."
The air is heavy and thick. He wants to let his thumb drop to her
mouth, but restrains himself, smoothing her cheek.
"Mulder?"
"Yeah?"
She swallows. Her voice is barely audible. "Why'd you kiss me?"
"Hmm?" Surely she knows. Doesn't she?
"Why'd you kiss me? Before, I mean?"
Could she possibly have been as unsure about that as he was? Not
keeping silent out of disinterest, but out of uncertainty?
He looks up from her lips into her eyes. "Because I couldn't think
of any of my usual commonsense reasons not to."
"Yeah," she says, a quick exhalation of breath. "I have that
problem."
And then her hands are on his face, drawing him down. His other
hand comes up to frame her face.
Their second kiss is still brief, and light, and sweeter than he
could imagine. He leaves her lips after a moment to kiss her closed
eyes, the tears on her cheeks, the hollow of her throat, and then
returns to her mouth. Their third kiss is deeper. It shakes him;
this is too much.
When they part again, it is only to touch foreheads. His hands
frame her head, tangled in her hair.
"Mulder, why'd you kiss me?" she whispers.
"You just kissed me," he says.
"Not *now.* Before. You said you had all these reasons not to
kiss me; you didn't tell me why you did."
It's difficult to get his voice to work. "You gotta know that,
Scully. You gotta know already."
"Just tell me, okay?"
Her head is fragile between his hands. All the Scully intelligence,
all her will, beneath his fingertips. If osmosis really does work,
these can become part of his bloodstream, part of his cells. He
thinks that maybe this has already happened. "You make me whole,"
he says finally. "You're my truth."
Their fourth kiss tastes like the salt of her tears.
"Where does this leave us?" she asks, when they have parted to
the distance of foreheads again.
"That's your choice, Scully, it always has been."
"I love you."
"Yeah?" he manages after a long moment.
"Oh yeah."
"Wow."
She laughs a little, tenderly. He pulls away so that he can study
her. "So where's this leaving us?" he asks.
"Oh boy."
"There's a lot of reasons not to...I mean..."
"I know."
"Regulations at work, and people's opinions, and..."
"I know."
"Not to mention that it could be dangerous."
"I'm aware of that."
"You probably need to get to your mother's now," he says.
She looks at him quizzically. "Are you *trying* to push me away
or just to give me an out if I want one?"
She knows him very well. "An out," he admits.
"You don't need to."
"Force of habit?" he offers.
"Well, stop it. I do need to go to my mom's. But that doesn't
mean that this is over. We need to talk about this. We need to figure
out how this is gonna work. How to fit this in with the work."
"It could be dangerous."
"Look at it this way. If the guys missed a bug during their last
sweep of your apartment, the cat's already out of the bag."
He doesn't really think that's amusing, and sends her a look
that says as much. But she just smirks at him, which he can't
resist and doesn't want to.
So this is what is feels like to kiss a smiling Scully, he thinks
during their fifth kiss.
"Meet me for dinner when I get back from Mom's?" she asks.
"Yeah, okay."
"I better get going."
"Damn."
She stands and then bends down to kiss his forehead. "Don't get
in any trouble."
"Same to you."
She is already turning to leave, at the door, when he finds his
voice again. "I do love you."
There are tears in her eyes again, but she gives him one of her
rare, brilliant smiles. "I know. We'll figure this out, Mulder."
"I don't want to quit. Either of us."
"I'd find your ass and drag it back anyway."
And then she is out the door.
He's a jerk, but a lucky one. Six years, and maybe he finally
gets the girl.
Or maybe the girl got him. Whatever.
Maybe, he thinks. Maybe. Although even he is unsure what he
means by that.
Sitting on his couch, he begins to smile.
End (1/1)