Title: Another Point of View (1/1)
Author: RocketMan >lebontrager@iname.com<
Disclaimer: Mulder and Scully are not mine.

Summary: Give it a chance. I can't explain it at the beginning.

=-=-=
Another Point of View

"In my dreams I'm dying all the time.
In my dreams I'm jealous all the time."
--Porcelain, Moby


See, this is how it usually went with them, with her, and with their
feelings.

Feelings were funny things when you didn't think about them. You just had
them, these feelings, and you either forgot them or you found them again
at some point and they embarassed you.

Well, when Mulder had feelings, he liked to be a martyr about them. He
liked to be stony silent throughout the day, throughout the entirety of
the scene, wherever they were, and she would know then. She would know
that he was into those feelings again.

Like this one:
She could have a normal life if it weren't for me--she could *get out of
the car*. (He forgot that she had said, don't you ever want to get out of
the car? *We* should get out of the car. He forgot the *we* when he was
having these feelings.)

Like this one:
She wouldn't be childless if it weren't for me. (He again forgot about
adoption, about her choice in all this. He forgot these things.)

Like this one: 
She could be in a safe, productive relationship with a nice doctor who
treats her right. (He forgot again that the nice safe things weren't ever
the things she'd been attracted to. In fact, he maybe never knew that she
was the type that would never have found her strengths if it weren't for
the weaknesses in him. She'd told him these things at one point, hadn't
she?)

Yet, when these feelings came around that one day, she didn't want to say
that one small thing that would make him okay. She didn't want to say,
softly and with her usual reserve, 'hey, i acknowledge you, i need you, i
respect you.' Not that she actually said it in those words, but there
would be a glance, a movement of her hand, a smile perhaps, if he was
being especially quiet.

She didn't want to do that on this day. Not at all. She wanted to let the
blame fall squarely on his shoulders. She really did. Because it was his
fault, not in a bad way, granted, but it was still his fault.

She was not married, she had no kids, she lived inside that basement
office alongside him.

However, she chose to. She chose it, but it was his fault, it was because
of him that she chose it. If Mulder had not been Mulder she would have
left long ago, debunking the entire thing.

But he *was* Mulder, and she, Scully, and they were supposed to stay as
they were. She could not be some nice safe doctor's wife, and she could
not be a mother to someone else's child, unless Mulder was the surrogate
father. That's just How It Was.

She accepted it. He ought to do the same.

So she ignored him. And he didn't call, of course. And it lasted for about
a year, or two. Maybe you've seen that year of theirs, where she got a
tattoo and he pulled a dead man's head from the garbage bin and she became
preoccupied with cancer. I think you've seen that one.

Well, that's just How It Was. For them anyway. It was their dysfunction.

And then he met her brother, and maybe that made it worse, but Bill didn't
say anything he wasn't already thinking. And then she was better.

Just like that.

She stopped thinking about him so much and couldn't help smile whenever
she realized that she was better. Better. And she tried following him
everywhere, tried giving that respect, that look, that told him he was
wanted and needed and admired even. But there were some places she could
not follow. Not when he was doubting himself and doubting his beliefs and
yes, doubting her.

So they just jumped around like that. They always did. He was really
silent a lot. He didn't call anymore, nor come get her, nor even try to
talk to her outside of work. Except, with there not being that many times
that were outside of work, she hardly noticed. She enjoyed the solitude
when she could get it.

But this is about that day, that final day, after all his emotional
outpouring and her beesting virus thing and then his lack of affirmation
and their tiny kiss on New Year's.

The final day of his martyrdom and the final day of her denial of it.

I'm not sure what it was they were doing. Maybe just working, like usual.
I can't remember, it's not a place where I was at that time. I was farther
down the road, much farther.

Here's the story as they half tell, half remember, a third make up.

A secluded day for them both. A rainstorm that made the streets slicked
and smelling like wet pavement and wet dog and all those awful city things
that you smell when you never want to. Sometimes, especially when it's
your first visit to the city, it smells like sour beer and body odor and
wet dog. The city is better when it's not raining.

I think that's what he said to her: "The city's better when it's not
raining."

She said: "I think I like the rain. It seems. . ."

And she hadn't finished it. He looked up once, but she was no longer
looking dazed and dreamy, so he stopped it.

And then what?

She said: "I like it because the city seems different. Like anything could
be different."

Trust the non-Romantic one of the two to say something as abstract as
that. As Hemingway's "White Elephants" as that.

"What anything did you plan on making different?" he asked.

That was a bold totally un-Mulder thing to say. In fact, all of this
conversation was so not them that sometimes I wonder if perhaps they got
their sides mixed up. Would it sound more plausible if the alien-chaser
said he liked the rain because it made things different? And would it be
better if the scientific, follow through on everything, Scully asked what
he meant. . .

"Anything, Mulder."

"Everything?"

"Sure. Everything as well."

"Where would you start first?"

"Maybe with the smell. . ."

He smiled then, slightly because he was still in that silent,
martyr-woe-is-me phase of his life.

She hasn't told me this, but I think the smile thrilled her a bit, made
her remember just how long it had been since he had smiled at her for
something.

"What next?"

"Us."

That was all she said, all they said at all. The day passed on by like it
was nothing, and it would have been nothing to anyone else. But this is
Mulder and Scully, and that was like shouting 'I'm sorry; I love you' from
the very heights of the heavens.

She was the not-brave one in their partner-relation-ship. But he took that
as a sign anyway, just as she'd taken his blatant 'I love you' in a
hospital bed as a sign.

They both knew what had gone on in that brief word--us. They both wondered
about it, about how things would change. But the thing was, nothing really
changed. Nothing overt. He talked to her now, called her up right before
she went to bed to say hello and to pretend he was a habitual insomniac.

She responded to that. After all, a woman's greatest need is for
affection. A man's greatest need is for sex, according to experts, but
that doesn't really equate, since they never had sex. But he filled that
need in her, that crave for affection. Not a conscious one anyway, and not
a conscious fulfillment of it.

Even now, he says she started it.

He had some dreams about death. He had a lot of dreams about death, about
his own death, but he didn't tell them to her. Who wants pity-love? Mulder
had been running from pity-love all his life, and here was the one person
who loved? loved him for what he was, and for what he did, not what he
endured.

Plus, some of the dreams, some of them he was jealous because of her
attentions towards other men. Like the incident with the tattoo except
these were dream men and he was wildly jealous--like he had a right to be
jealous.

But this is important to the story because it was a combination of those
dreams and her 'us' that made 'anything' possible.

She didn't ask about the dreams, she just came into his motel room one
night and said--

"We ought to do something about this."

"The rain?" he asked, because it was raining in Oregon, like it always
rains in Oregon.

"Sure, the rain," she replied, and she meant more than that.

He understood.

"It will change everything," he said.

She nodded. "We ought to do something."

"How?"

She leaned over and pressed her right hand to the top of his head. He was
lying down on the motel bed with the remote dangling from one hand and she
was sitting beside him.

"How?" he asked again.

She was still afraid, but they were there, together, on the same idea for
once, so she leaned forward and--

Well, I'm not their third child for nothing, let me tell you. If I learned
one thing from having them as parents, it's "always keep'em guessing."
=-=-=

end
adios
RM