Title: Today Spoilers: Teensy ones for Colony/Endgame, Redux II, Detour, Fearful Symmetry, and Rain King Rating: PG-13 Classification: SRA Keywords: Mulder/Scully married Summary: An anniversary. This is a sequel to two previous stories, Maybe Today and Yesterday. Disclaimer: Not mine. 1013 and Fox's. Making no money. Author's notes: Much thanks to everyone who suggested a sequel to the previous stories. To those who was hoping it would be a happy smutfest...sorry, it didn't turn out that way (ducks head to avoid flying objects)...but I hope this is an acceptable substitute. And title credit goes to Goblin. Thanks :) The viewpoint in this starts with Scully, and then alternates whenever there's a *** Today Maria Nicole Today we've been partners for ten years. We went out to dinner to celebrate at one of those places where the prices aren't on the menu, and toasted each other with the best wine I've ever tasted. "To a woman who's ten times sexier than she was ten years ago," you said, and the look in your eyes was a better buzz than any wine. Now back at the apartment, I move to turn on lights and nudge off my high-heeled shoes, while you drop down on the living room couch. "I don't think I'm ever going to eat again, Scully. Nothing's ever going to taste that good." "We could go back there," I say, coming to stand in front of you. Your arms slip easily, automatically, against my waist, and you lean your head against my stomach. "Maybe in another decade we'll be able to afford it again," you say wryly. "I'm going to hold you to that." "Good." We stay peaceably quiet for a moment, and then you sigh. "Ten years. A lot's happened." There is a tinge of melancholy in your voice. "A lot of good," I say. "Yes," you answer, "that, too," and tighten your hold on me, pressing your face against the crushed velvet of my dress. I run my hand over your bicep, about where Krycek knifed you six months ago, although I can't feel the scar through the fabric of your shirt. It was a shallow cut, fortunately. "The rat bastard," you mutter, voice muffled, but the melancholy gone. "Well, if you'd just handcuffed him and then called for backup instead of trying to beat the information out of him without even checking to see if he was carrying another weapon..." "All right, all right." I feel your face move into a smile. "Sheesh, Scully, you're turning into such a nag. Pick up your shoes, Mulder. Take out the garbage, Mulder. Don't let Krycek get away next time, Mulder." "If you don't let him filet you, I'll be happy. And you're the one who always trips over your shoes, not me." We stay silent for another moment. "I wish..." you say. "I know," I say, smoothing your hair with one hand. "I'm not unhappy, Scully. I'm happier than I thought I could be. If changing the past meant that we wouldn't be here, where we are today, I...but, God, I wish that..." "I know," I say. "I know." *** Yeah, I know you know, Scully. I don't remember much about that day. We were jostling for space by the garbage can, scraping the burnt black stuff off of the grilled cheese sandwiches that I'd made us for lunch. They weren't badly burnt, just a little, and the kitchen smelled like melted cheese, Kraft American, and Cream of Potato soup. I think the phone must have rung about then, so that an anonymous voice could tell us go to Pennsylvania because there was something there that we might be interested in, but I don't remember it, or even know which one of us answered it. Your hand rested on my back, between my shoulderblades, as we stood in the morgue, looking at the skeleton of a woman who had died, the medical examiner was saying, probably-about-eight- nine-years-ago-judging-from-the-(the raised bump on her collarbone underneath my fingers)-oh-that's-not-recent-more-like-from-a- childhood-injury-it- "She fell off a swing." "Until we do the DNA tests, we don't know that this is..." you and he both said at once. But I knew. I don't remember anything else. No. I remember one other thing. I remember that you cried for her before I could myself. *** You may not remember that day, Mulder, but I remember all of it. When I answered the phone, and there was yet another anonymous voice telling us to go somewhere that I didn't want to go, I was pissed off. I was speaking pretty sharply to try to get more information out of him, and you looked up from where you were pouring milk into glasses-- milk, because you'd read an article in one of my medical journals about osteoporosis and had taken it upon yourself to up my calcium intake-- with a gleam in your eyes that said, "Oooh, goody, another mysterious informant." You were making up a smartass nickname for this one already, I could tell, and I was trying to guess what it might be even as I was asking why we had to go to Pennsylvania. "They uncovered a body, Agent Scully. A body that was supposed to remain buried." You were walking towards me, beautiful, hardheaded, oh-look-it's- another-opportunity-for-me-to-run-into-danger idiot that you are, and I waved you away irritably. "What kind of body?" 'Body' could mean anything from fake alien to to elephant in our world; I wanted to know what we were getting into. "Your partner is really quite physically resilient, you know. It's a shame that that wasn't a family trait." "What are you impl--" Oh God. Oh no. "If it's any comfort, she was never supposed to die," the voice said, and the phone clicked as he hung up. Oh God. You were quiet on the plane ride out, nearly silent in the morgue. You sat without speaking while I arranged for DNA tests, and called to reserve a room at the local Holiday Inn. When we got to the room, you headed straight for the shower, stripping off your clothes as you went. Your tie, your shirt, your shoes, your socks. You reached the tub around then, turned the water to hot, and stepped in without removing your pants. Eight years. Eight years of searching, of wondering, when all along she had been in the ground. We would never know exactly, but she had probably died just around the time that they assigned me to work with you, her body not strong enough to endure the tests they'd subjected her to. God. I stripped off my own clothes and joined you, where you were fumbling with your belt and pants, fingers clumsy. "Shhh, I've got it." Your hands fell away obediently, coming to rest on my shoulders for balance as you kicked out of the tangle of pants and boxer shorts. "Scully," you whispered, as I moved to place my arms around you. "I'm so sorry, love," I said, and your hands moved from my shoulders to my head, tilting my face back, threading through my hair. "Scully," you whispered when you saw my tears. "I'm so sorry, Mulder," I said. Your mouth was hot and desperate on mine, the tiles of the shower wall cold against my back. Later, we lay wrapped in each other under the sheets of the hotel bed. Your hair was still damp, pressed against my neck. The water had run cold enough that the metal of your ring left a cold imprint where you clutched at my back, my shoulders. (The next day, I would find small bruises on my shoulders from where your fingers had dug into my skin. The next night, you would run the tips of your fingers gently over the bruises, and lean down to kiss each one, so lightly that I shivered.) "Talk to me," you said into my shoulder as I rubbed your back, conscious of the gold of my own ring against your skin. "Well, you know that the DNA tests will take--" "No. Not about that. I need...just talk to me, Scully. Bring me back." So I told you about the article I'd been reading in the newspaper while you had been making the grilled cheese sandwiches, what my mother had said the last time she had called, what I thought about our latest case. I told you about my first pair of high-heeled shoes, my father pointing out constellations to me, my first day of medical school. I told you a lot of things, while I watched the room get darker and listened to my voice hoarsen. I was telling you about an article I'd recently read about techniques to decrease the risk of rejection in kidney transplant patients when you finally spoke. "This shouldn't hurt so much. I haven't been doing this just because of her for a long time now. I'd reconciled myself to the fact that I would never see her again, that I'd never really know what happened to her. I thought I'd accepted it. It's been over twenty-five years. How can this possibly hurt so much?" Your tears were hot as they slid down my collarbone. You cried in fits and starts throughout the night, and neither of us slept. *** My sister has two names, now. Samantha is the name that belongs to the girl I knew. But the adult, she was someone different. When I think of the adult, I use the name she thought was her own. Her name was Megan Harper. During the weeks we were waiting for the DNA results, we began to search through the Missing Person's database. Megan Anne Harper was one possibility, geographically and height wise, and as soon as I saw her picture, I knew it was her body we had found. I'd met her likenesses before. She had been a secretary who had worked for a variety of temp agencies. A good secretary, but it was hard for her to hold a permanent job; she would disappear for weeks at a time and refuse to explain it to the agency. They'd learned to only send her to companies that would need someone for a day or two. She'd been dating someone, who had since married. A nice man named Ken. "I've always wondered what happened to her," he had said slowly, looking at a picture of her, and then out the window to where his children were playing on the swingset. "I was never sure; I thought maybe she just took off and didn't tell me. She had been hurt, you know. She had a lot of secrets. But she was starting to work through them with a therapist, starting to deal with what had been done to her. She was just beginning to trust me, and I thought maybe she'd run away from that." He'd blinked away tears. "For her sake, I wish she had, but another part of me... please don't take this the wrong way, because if it had been my choice I would have chosen to have her alive and well even if I never knew what happened to her...but in a way, I'm glad to know that this wasn't her choice, that she had the courage to stay. I'd like to remember her as having that courage." She'd liked dogs, but not cats. She'd told Ken that she'd been raised by foster parents, but other than that she'd refused to talk about her childhood. Records didn't seem to exist for her before she was eighteen; we never did find who raised her, although I have my suspicions. She crocheted, and her neighbor from that time still had several beautifully designed, colorful afghans that Megan had made. One of them is draped across the rocking chair in our bedroom, now. Her favorite flavor of ice cream was cookies and cream. She had a sharp, dark sense of humor. She had courage. I want to think that we would have liked each other. When she died, you and I were just getting to know each other. She died around the time that I told you that nothing else mattered, long before I really knew you, before the quest became about so much more than her, before you began to matter. I wonder, sometimes, what would have happened if I'd known she was dead back then, if I would have kept on. Maybe I would have, but maybe I would have quit, and we would never be here now. *** "Ten years ago, did you ever envision what your life would be like today?" you ask, wistfulness shading your voice, the shadow of your sister always. "I was pretty naive back then," I respond. "I don't think I could have imagined all that we've seen since then. Or what we would become to each other." "Would you have..." and then you stall. It's the question that you'll never ask. It's the question I'll never answer. How can I balance my sister's life, Emily's life, against what we have? How could I possibly choose one or the other? "I may wish that some things had turned out differently, Mulder. I wish that I had had the chance to know your sister, that you had had more of a chance to know mine. But I'm happy with where we're at now." "Yeah, so'm I. Hey, Scully? When *did* you know we'd end up this way?" "When did you?" "Um, Florida, maybe. I figured that if I could get you to sing for me, I could convince you of anything. But then I think I forgot it again...until the hotel in Oklahoma, I guess. What about you?" "The hotel, in Oklahoma. Something clicked." *** We returned to DC after our manure-checking detail in Oklahoma. You didn't touch me more than usual, but the look in your eyes as you did so was full of promise. We didn't sit around mooning over each other, or getting distracted from our work--we're professionals, after all, and besides, your passion for the work is one of the qualities that attracted me to you in the first place, and vice versa. We waited. And then, one Saturday, three weeks later, we were sitting on the couch in my apartment, and I looked up and something clicked again. You were scowling at the expense report you held in your hand, tapping a pen against your knee, as I'd seen you do a million times before. And I thought, "Oh. Oh, it's time, now." I twisted to a kneeling position and rested my hands on your shoulders, and you looked up in surprise. "Scully?" "Hey," I said, and leaned in to kiss you. And when I pulled away and opened my eyes, I saw something in yours that looked like joy. "Hey," I said again. "Why now?" you asked. "Why today?" "I haven't a clue," I said, and laughed. "Because it's today." And you smiled at me, and I ran my hands down your shoulders, over your biceps, your forearms, feeling your body begin to tremble under my touch, until I had taken my hands in yours. Moving to stand myself, I tugged at your hands. "Come with me, Mulder?" "Yes," you said, and we began to walk down the hallway to my bedroom. I led; you followed; we walked through the doorway hand in hand. *** "It was the footrub, wasn't it, Scully?" I ask. "Because I could make your toes curl." "No, the fact that you know how to give good foot rubs is only part of your charm." "I have charm?" "Upon occasion." I pull away from you and look up, and you smile down at me. "So was it the toenail polish that got you?" you ask. "Or is that not part of my charm?" "Actually, you have no charm," I say, thoughtfully, after a moment. You quirk your eyebrow at me, still smiling. "Make this good, Mulder." "Ever read C.S. Lewis?" "Chronicles of Narnia? Sure, when I was a kid. My Great-Aunt Olive had a wardrobe; I used to go in there hoping that I'd enter another universe." "Really? You were a believer back then, huh?" "Get to your point." "Okay, C.S. Lewis. He also wrote something called _The Great Divorce_ that I read back in college. You ever read it?" "I don't think so." "The central idea is that people get to visit heaven, but it's not heaven like you might imagine it, with a lot of disembodied spirits flying around. When these people get there, they find that they're the ghosts, and the people up in heaven are the ones with bodies. Because instead of heaven being something hazy or shadowy or... unreal, it was something more real, more solid, than anything else. They had to become more real themselves to stay there." I reach up to touch the side of your face. "Charm implies magic, enchantment. You're not magic, Scully. You don't cloud my mind or my judgment. You're real. And being with you makes me more real, too." Your eyes glimmer as you lean down and kiss me, so softly. "I love you, too, Mulder," you breathe against my lips. When you pull away, you do so only to run your hands down my arms, and I still tremble beneath your touch as you grasp my hands in yours and pull me up. "Come with me, love?" "Always," I say, and we begin the walk down the hallway to our bedroom. You lead; I follow; we walk through the doorway hand in hand. End (1/1)