Title: Visions In Tandem

Author: Trixie

Email: scullymulder1121@hotmail.com

Rating: PG

Classification: V, A, MSR

Spoilers: Requiem, and, by extension, all things.

Archive: Sure.

Summary: "I don't taste you the way I would ice cream or cotton candy, but rather as an essence I have yet to identify. I taste you, not with my mouth, but with my entire body, with my mind, and I am open to you, and you to me, beyond my wildest imaginings."

Notes & Thanks: First, I wasn't even going to =write= a post-Requiem, but I had this idea in my head that demanded to be written. Then, I wasn't going to post, but three very sweet people encouraged me to do so: Brandon, Brynna, and Narida. (Narida also helped me with the title, and assisted me in finding the right passage for the summary field, as I am not allowed to write summaries -- I suck at them cause I always feel like I'm giving too much, or too little, away.)

Disclaimer: Scully's pregnant. Moose & Squirrel are finally getting laid. By each other. Nanner, nanner, naannner. (Yes, I have the emotional maturity of a five-year-old -- deal with it.)


I have only one dream left.

My scientific mind tells me this is untrue. The human mind is capable of an infinite number of imaginings. In a thousand lifetimes I would be unable to go through even half its possibilities. Surely with the life I have led, the things we have both witnessed, a lack of things to see in my R.E.M. state should be at the very bottom of my list.

In my life with you, I have learned to open myself to many things I never would have considered before. This is no different. Is it my own guilt that keeps me from seeing anything but you, as I remember you last? Is it a misplaced sense of responsibility? Is the unborn child inside me refusing to give up hope on its father? Because I haven't given up hope, Mulder. You, most of all, have taught me the importance of belief and faith.

I have faith in the belief that I will find you. I will tell you about this miraculous gift we have been given, and we will go on with our lives, somehow.

Until then, I will continue to search. I will continue your work, our work, and the pursuit of the truth. Now, more than ever, I believe the x-files are the only recourse I have in my search for you.

The day will come that I hold you, Mulder. The day will come when I place your son or your daughter in your arms, something I hadn't allowed myself to envision before.

The day will come when I dream something that doesn't bring a pain so acute, so primal that even the life inside me could name it. The day will come that I have something more to hold onto than the look in your eyes as you walked away from me.


"I won't let you go alone."

They are silent for a time, comforted by the exquisite embrace they hold. It is small comfort, but it is all they have, all they have ever had, and it is more than enough.

He is the first to pull away. That is not the way it normally is between them, she being the one always most resistant to physical intimacy. That has changed somewhat over the past few years, as so many things between them have, a change so subtle to call it change does it a disservice. It's much more like morphing, if it were possible for something without substance to morph.

"You know I can't let you take this risk, Scully."

Her head shakes at his assertion. It never once crossed her mind to refuse him this and insist on remaining by his side. He is right. There is danger to her if she goes, and she will not jeopardize all they have gained in the past few months simply to assert her independence, her ability to take care of herself. He has taken care of her for years. They have taken care of each other.

Silently, she reaches her hands around the back of her neck and removes the small gold cross she wears. In the past, he has had trouble reconciling her scientific nature with such a strong religious conviction. Nearly as much trouble as she herself has had. That is not what this moment is about, however. The piece of jewelry given to her by her mother so many years ago did not represent God, or church to either of the two people in this hall.

It was a promise in the form of a talisman, something they never said aloud, never acknowledged, but existed all the same, stronger than the invisible tethers pulling them apart, a symbol of a bond incapable of breaking.

"I can't be with you the way I'd like to." Her voice breaks the stillness that surrounds them, and her arms wrap around his neck, fastening the chain that once rested around hers. Tucking the cross beneath his dress shirt, she places the flat of her palm against his chest, measuring the beat of his heart with great care. "But I am with you, Mulder. Always."

"Always," he repeats. In these moments, his voice becomes reverent, something lower and more meaningful than his normal conversing tone. He makes her promises with the tone of his voice that words could never say.

He does not take her in his arms, or kiss her full on the lips. Save the first in a hospital waiting room, he has never kissed her in public. It is something he hoards, away from prying eyes, cherishes to himself. What he doesn't know is that she does the same. They never kiss good morning or good night, not even on the few occasions they've spent the entire night wrapped around one another. It's still new to them, and until that newness has worn off, they won't risk anyone learning more than they need to know.

So he doesn't kiss her. Instead, he brushes the very tips of his fingers over the bridge of her nose, the indent her top lip makes in the very center, the lush fullness of its lower mate. Again, he makes promises that have no voice, and they whisper against her skin long after he walks down the hall and out of view.


I'm so scared, Mulder.

Not of the dream I've already told you about. That, in its way, has grown to comfort me. It is a bittersweet comfort, but one I do not think I would be capable of functioning without. Each day I wake up, go about my routine, take care of myself and the life growing inside me, a single goal waiting for me at the end of the road.

I know I will see you when I fall asleep. And even though I will be unable to hold you, unable to tell you all the things that have changed, all the things that will never change, I long for the glimpse into your eyes, the feel of your hands. In this dream, it is a perfect pitch of sense memory. I can smell the very essence of you, see each line and imperfection on your beautiful face, hear all the things you say, and understand the things that you don't. Touch goes both ways, the tickling hairs on the back of your neck against my fingers, your touch moving past my skin and into the very center of who I am.

The thing that unnerves me most is the sense memory of taste. I don't taste you the way I would ice cream or cotton candy, but rather as an essence I have yet to identify. I taste you, not with my mouth, but with my entire body, with my mind, and I am open to you, and you to me, beyond my wildest imaginings. I believe now, more than ever, that this is how we were meant to be. All these years, all the time we've spent together, each individual road in our lives have lead us to the place we have finally achieved.

Our baby grows more and more each day. One day he will be ready to be born. As that day grows nearer, my fear increases. I do not fear never finding you, because that is not a possibility. Nor do I fear the only dream I have left. It does not scare me to see you when I sleep.

I fear for my sanity when I see you while I'm wide awake.


The first time it happened, she stopped breathing for thirty-seven seconds.

In her living room, sitting on the couch, sat the object of every moment of her attention. Not even the first time did she really believe it was him. He didn't look up, didn't speak, did nothing but stare at a blank television set. Once she found her voice, she spoke his name, quietly, a note of disbelief coloring it.

A blink later, and he was gone. She had shaken it off, quickly attributed too much stress, and too little sleep to the delusion. Then, she was five months along and the baby chose the moment he disappeared to flutter for the first time. Later, she would write this off as coincidence.

The second time it happened, she was carrying a sack of groceries. It took her nearly an hour and a half to clean up the mess ice cream and eggs made splattered all over her carpet. She was grateful for something to do. It distracted her mind from what must surely be a form of psychosis taking hold.

That time, he had turned to look at her. His mouth had formed her name. No sound had come out, but she had watched his beautiful lips speak her name enough times to know exactly what it looked like.

Weeks passed without incident, without leads, without anything to keep her frustration at bay. When there was time, she bought baby clothes. Her frame wasn't meant to hide a pregnancy, and soon everyone knew. They whispered behind her back about poor Dana Scully, whose partner got taken by little green men after he knocked her up. It didn't matter what they said, or what they thought about her. It was liberating the day she realized that.

The third time it happened, she wasn't surprised at all.

Instead of trying to speak, she moved to the couch and sat beside him. He turned to look at her and they held each other's gazes for a moment. Finally, he opened his mouth to speak again, but she held up a hand to forestall him. Feeling the moment stretch, she moved her hand to his face, watching in fascination as his eyes fluttered shut. Hers closed as well, the instant she would have made contact with his skin, and when she opened them, he was gone.

Emptiness the likes of which she'd never known filled her after that day. Half the time she cursed herself for her own gullibility. Of course it wasn't him. Of course she couldn't touch him. You couldn't touch a delusion. The other half of the time she worried. It was obvious her mind was creating some kind of coping mechanism. But it wasn't healthy, it wasn't right.

It wasn't him.

The fourth time was in her kitchen, and she finally heard his voice.

"You can't touch me," the disembodied voice of Fox Mulder told her.

Spinning in place, she saw no trace of another human being in the room. Heading into the living room, she was half-surprised to not find him on her couch.

"But you can talk to me." Again, the voice that was but wasn't Mulder's told her.

"You're not real." It was a valiant attempt at denial, but her voice wavered too much, her tone belying a need to believe too strong to be ignored.

"I'm as real as you need me to be."

She had walked to her bedroom, and now he was there, sitting in the chair by her bed, adopting much the same pose he had nearly three years ago. His eyes, when he finally lifted his head, spoke to her as they always had.

"I'm as real as you can let me be."

As she sat on her bed, far enough away so that the temptation to touch him would not be too great, she worried more for her own sanity than she had in the last eight years.

It still wasn't him.

But for now, it was enough.


It was a cold night in February when it happened.

For months, she hadn't bothered to write in her journal. Why bother, when the man she was writing to was accessible to her, the only cost her own sanity?

At least, that was what she told herself. That she was crazy, because only a crazy person would see someone that wasn't really there.

It never occurred to her there might be another explanation for it, and even if it had occurred to her, if she'd glimpsed another option for even a second, her rational mind would quickly dismiss it out of hand before her treacherous instinct could catch a whiff. For years now, Dana Scully's intellect had been warring a silent battle with her instinct. Her intellect usually won, but only because it didn't play fair. Most of the time it didn't even allow her instinct to form an opinion of its own, let alone dare think it.

Her instinct had formed an opinion, though, while her intellect was busying itself with its inevitable madness. The instinct that lived at the very core of her being, that which was both lover and mother knew something science could never explain.

As he had done before, when he could not reach her in body, Fox Mulder came to her in spirit. Theirs was a bond unbreakable. That was something she knew when she got past being too smart for her own good. It was at the very core of her last dream. Just as she was always with him, he was always with her. More so, now that there would be an entire person born simply because they loved each other.

And so when she found him by her bed that night, sitting in the chair she'd come to think of as his, her intellect prepared itself for madness, and her instinct wept with recognition. The baby she'd learned was a boy began to move, waking to his father's presence.

Mulder stood, something he had never done before, to her recent recollection. His mouth formed her name, but this time she couldn't hear it because of the loud roar in her ears. It couldn't be real, not this easy, not after all this, surely it had to be more difficult, more intricate to have him standing before her again.

His eyes moved over her body, and it wasn't until he reached her stomach that she began to believe that it just might be so. The touch she'd ached to feel again was as exquisite as she'd remembered. His palm settled over her stomach and he moved until his forehead rested against hers, solid, firm.

Real.

Sliding down her body until he rested on his knees before her, a supplicant, he pressed his ear against the upper swell of her stomach and listened to two hearts, beating in tandem.

"You're here."

He lifted his gaze to hers and smiled. "I'm here."

"You're real."

He took her hand and pressed it inside the collar of his shirt until her fingers gripped the gold cross he wore. Finally, her intellect was convinced and she sank to the floor before him, on her knees as well, so happy he'd be here to help her up when the time came.

"You remember . . ." Her voice trailed off, and she worried he wouldn't understand she didn't mean what he remembered of his abduction.

It was unworthy of what they were to each other for her to worry he wouldn't understand something so simple, so elemental.

"Everything." His hand passed over her face, leaving whispered secrets and promises filled in its wake. "I remember everything."