Aporia

RATING: PG-13 for a few bad words

CATEGORY: Post-ep for "Three Words"

FEEDBACK: My little inner Oliver Twist says, "Please, may I have some more?"

DISCLAIMER: Not mine, etc.

Aporia: a difficulty, impasse, or point of doubt and indecision.

Jenny Jones is on when there's a knock at my door.

Unlike action figures and the latest version of Nintendo, the recently deceased and resurrected don't come equipped with proper accessories and a user's manual. So I lie on my couch and surf my ninety-nine channels of viewing pleasure all day.

Is it a bad thing that I'm really worried about "Buffy" making the move to UPN?

Whoever it is knocks again more insistently. Since my return to the land of the living, I've experienced an exponential increase in the number of visitors who "just wanted to make sure I had everything I needed." My second night back from the hospital Skinner dropped by for an awkward supervisor-who-lost-his-supervisee visit. We never even achieved lift-off conversationally, so we ended up filling out all of the paperwork generated by my coming back from the dead. It was just like old times. He got to tell me that I must have inherited the stupid gene when it came to doing paperwork. I got to think to myself, "Not everyone gets a hard-on when signing forms with titles like "Notice of Change of Status to the Living."

I'm counting down the days until Krycek and Marita stop by with a welcome-back cake.

"Mulder, it's me."

Scully and I haven't spoken since the Federal Statistics Center debacle three days ago. Correction. I haven't heard from or spoken to Scully since the Federal Statistics Center debacle three days ago. When I got home that night, I unplugged the phone and the answering machine and turned my cell-phone off. I haven't checked my email in three days.

"Mulder. I know you're home. I can hear the television." She sounds like a harried mother trying to coax a sulking six year old out of a corner.

"Mulder. I'm going to use my key and let myself in. I'm worried about you."

Three clicks and she's in the foyer staring at me with a mixture of relief and exasperation. "You're okay."

Back in the pre-abduction days, I would have said, "Take a load off Scully and watch Sergeant-Major Larry Dan Joe Bob kick some problem-child ass." She would have arched an eyebrow and said, "He's a drill sergeant, Mulder. Sergeant-Majors have much spiffier uniforms." Then she would have proceeded to chew me out while my little heart went pit-a-pat pit-a-pat and I concentrated hard on nodding at the appropriate times.

The projected behavioral pattern for the post-abduction era seems to be a strained silence signifying all sorts of unspecified injuries and grievances. Scully stares at a point in space two inches above my head. I stare at the television screen. Call me paranoid, but I think there's a cloning program somewhere that churns out adenoidal pre- pubescent punks for the sole purpose of having them populate the "Help My Kid is a Card-Carrying Member of the Junior Psychopaths" episodes of Jenny Jones.

Silence stretches thick between the two of us. "What we have here is a failure to communicate," I think stupidly to myself. Onscreen, Punk Number Five grabs his crotch for the audience. It's a move that looks weirdly choreographed as if he'd stood in front of his mirror this morning and practiced.

Scully sighs, a soft, ragged sound I've never heard her make before. "I guess I'll go then. I just wanted to make sure that nothing had happened to you."

"Not to worry Scully. Everything's just peachy." I still haven't looked at her directly.

Scully staccatos her way towards the door. I don't have to look at her to know her shoulders are squared and her back is ramrod straight. I wonder how long she's held herself in these stiff, precise geometric angles. Impeccable posture is Scully's way of bracing herself for the next inevitable blow.

I can't seem to stop the words from coming out. "Be sure to lock up on your way out."

The door snicks open and then slams shut, broadcasting self-righteous outrage. "You're such a bastard Mulder," Scully states in a completely uninflected tone.

I've actually heard this line from Scully before. Three times before to be exact. Never in such a flat, dead voice though. I knew she wasn't going to leave before speaking her mind, but I had been expecting anger telegraphed in her usual crisp consonants. Not this. Never this.

I look at her, really look at her, for the first time since I told her I was "happy for her" with the kind of warmth dentists use to congratulate their patients on their cavity-free state. She's still standing in the foyer. One hand covers her stomach in an unconsciously protective gesture. From the nose down, Scully has the glow of a pregnant woman. Her lush belly swells out gracefully like a well-wrought urn. Her skin shines with the muted radiance good ivory must have. Even her lips seem plumper. Her eyes, though, are a joy-free zone in the midst of her body's extravagant fertility celebration. Famine-stricken villages in a land of plenty. The contrast is obscene.

I did this to her. I'm doing this to her. I've always done this to her. See kids. This is how you conjugate verbs at the Fox Mulder School For the Eternally Guilt- Stricken.

As I watch, tears start to slide down her face. She doesn't change expression, looking at me with wasteland eyes.

"Scully--". She's in my arms before I can say a word more. Her shoulder blades feel thin and bone-sharp. She digs her head fiercely into my chest, her body shaping itself into endless semaphores of grief.

"I was so worried. When I didn't hear from you, I thought something had happened to you. That you'd been taken again. Or that you were infected with a virus I hadn't found in time and you were in a coma."

My body stiffens at her words. A hit. A very palpable hit.

Scully pulls away. "I'm sorry," she stammers. Silently, her eyes plead with me for absolution: Forgive me Mulder for I have sinned.

I can't think of anything to say. My abduction is a waiting minefield, a gaping wound. It's best not to acknowledge it directly. Cloak it in euphemisms like "absence" and "missing time" and maybe the event itself will magically disappear the way the scars on my body did.

She takes a step back. I don't know what she sees in my face, but her own calcifies into the mask of a polite acquaintance. "I really should go now," she says formally. "I'm sorry to have bothered you."

"No!" I grab her hard around the wrist before I even realize what I'm doing. She'll have bruises tomorrow. I stroke soft skin and brittle bone. "Fuck. I'm sorry Scully. I didn't mean to do that. I just-- Please. Don't go."

She looks at me with guarded, distant eyes. "You don't have anything to apologize for, Mulder. You said you needed time and I didn't respect your wishes." Gently, she frees her wrist from my grasp. "I want to give you the time and space you asked for. Just plug your phone back in. I'll feel better if you do." She walks towards the door.

I do the only thing I can. I give her my most closely guarded secret. "I don't remember Scully."

She stops, carefully keeping her back to me.

Now that I've started, I can't stop the words from pouring out. "There's so much I don't remember and that scares me. I don't remember what happened to me. I have a few images, but I don't know if they're real. I don't want them to be real. I remember flying out to Oregon with Skinner, but I don't remember stepping into a circle of light. I remember being scared shitless because I thought your cancer had come back again, but I don't remember saying good-bye to you. I remember you asking me to be the father of your baby, but I don't remember if I am." I'm crying now, loud, shuddering sobs as I say the words that frighten me the most. "I remember holding you because you were cold, but I don't remember what that means."

Scully wraps me in a ferocious grip as we sink to the floor together. I bury my face in her neck and cry for the grief that still clings to her like a constant familiar, for the thinness that testifies more eloquently than words to the agonies she's suffered, for the scars no technology can erase, for the memories I no longer have. I feel the slow, hot slide of her tears as they mingle with mine.

Cool lips touch my forehead in a soft kiss. I sigh and try to pull her closer to me, but the hard, insistent reality of Scully's impending motherhood lies between us. I wasn't lying when I told her I was happy for her. I also wasn't lying when I said I didn't know where I fit in. Now I have literal, tangible proof. Scully doesn't tuck neatly into me the way she once did. I loosen my hold on her and push her away a little. Blue, wet eyes peer at me.

"I don't want to hurt the baby," I lie. Something flickers in those desolate eyes, but I don't know what she's thinking. Apparently they made me check my Scully decoder ring at the door of the mother-ship.

"You won't," she whispers and touches a hand to the vanished scars that used to pit my face. She tugs me to my feet and leads me to the bedroom without another word.

In the weak sunshine of my bedroom, Scully and I stand face-to-face, six paces apart, tentative duelists in an arrested tableaux. I shiver. This is the last place I want to be. My bedroom smells like sweat and night-terrors.

"I used to sleep here at night when you were gone, " she says in a hushed voice. "During the day, there was work and looking for you. At night, though, I would wake up thinking you were next to me and then I would remember that you were gone and another day had passed and I still wasn't any closer to finding you and I was starting to forget things, like the way you smelled. So it was easier to sleep here." She ducks her head so that her hair covers the scorched-earth of her face. "I felt strong here. Like I could slay the dragons and bring you back to me. To us." She guides my hand to the gentle swell of her stomach. I feel the butterfly flutter of new life. Us. Our baby.

I lay my other hand against the side of her face and Scully smiles at me. A radiant smile that overflows the parched banks of her eyes. "I'm cold, Mulder," she says softly. "Will you hold me?"

The enigmatic love song of Dana Katherine Scully. I was blind, but now I see.

I lead her to the bed and turn the covers down. She slides in slowly, presenting me with her back. I wrap my arms around her and count myself among the lost who have found the way home. "Sleep Scully," I tell her. "You've brought me back."

She does, and, lulled by the soft, steady current of her breathing, so do I.

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