Title: Burn Out
Author: RocketMan >lebontrager@iname.com<
Disclaimer: Mulder and Scully belong to CC, 1013, and Fox. No
infringement is intended, no sale is made.

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Burn Out
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I'm amazed that I'm still standin'
and i demand that we all blend in
metamorphosis
and i can't change back for you
i will not change back for you
i must live in skin that's new
i will live in skin that's new

--'live-in skin' foo fighters

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He was surprised when he found her, surprised in all directions and all
manners and all circumstances. San Francisco was a city of culture, of
sub-culture rather, and newness and ideas and individualism. It was easy
to blend in to San Francisco because no one blended in. Mulder was not
out of place, in his dark leather jacket and grey T-shirt and lived-in
blue jeans. His hair was spiked from sleep and his eyes looked dead and
glazed, set into dark circles and puffy lids.

She was across the street, exactly where everyone had told him she'd be.
Her apartment had to be small, but the charm of the Victorian style
houses made up for it. At least, she would think this. He wouldn't live
there for anything.

Maybe that was the point.

She looked bright to him, not only intelligent, but ferociously shining,
beaming, a kind of spotlight in the gloomy, rainy feel of San Francisco
that day. He wondered where this brilliance had come from, where the
absolute beauty and delicate fineness of her had been found. Had she
always been like this to him, or was it the five years of being in such
darkness that made her so vibrant?

Her hair was long and free, gently wavy and bending around softly to cup
her cheek. It was dyed a dark black brown that accented her pale skin
and wide eyes. As he watched her, he could see her lips move in words to
a music he could not hear and her hips slide like melting butter across
hot toast. He wanted to still those hips and clamp that mouth shut.

He knew she could always drive him crazy, but this rebirth of herself
was shining into him like a fire.

She pushed open the heavy iron door, larger than her by several feet,
and locked it carefully. She tripped as she bolted down the steps, but
there was no embarrassment, no flush of her cheeks. She just caught
herself and kept going.

He followed at a distance, realizing that it had been too long since
she'd left. Her mother had told him to come after her, his boss had told
him to come after her, and whatever friends she and he had left had told
him to come after her.

Five years ago. And he hadn't. He wasn't sure she wanted him at her new
door, begging from his old knees with his old promises to her new soft
hands and her new brighter eyes. And it had been a five years of begging
himself not to follow.

In the end, San Francisco had called him. So he had gone looking. She
hadn't moved in all those years, and even if she had, she would have
left her address with her mother and Mulder could have gotten it anyway.
There'd been no hiding, no furtive escape in the night. She had come to
his office and stepped inside and then left. She had told him to his
face, I'm leaving Mulder. 

I'm leaving Mulder. I can't do this anymore.

She was right of course. He knew she'd been suffering for a long time,
and he knew that while it might partially be his fault, it wasn't
completely him. It was the both of them and it was the X-Files and it
was the stress and the death and the patterns of hurt they could not
change between them.

She was different now.

He was right behind her before he was consciously thinking about it, and
then he was reaching out and snagging her shoulder with his long firm
fingers, his eyes steeled to accept blame and reproach and rejection.

"Mulder!"

She was staring at him with a grin on her face, and he was staring at
her bewildered, as if she was the one who had hunted him down and he was
the one who had run away.

Run away? No, she had not run. She had quietly and boldly left.

"Scully."

She took his hand and twined her fingers through his, pulling him to a
large, pillared building that offered classes and programs and a private
library. Trust Scully to be a member of a private library.

She was not Scully.

"Come in here with me, Mulder. We can talk in one of the reading rooms."

Talk? He had just now chased her down, after five years of nothing, no
word no Christmas card, and she wanted to talk? She wanted to talk. She
was different and she was changed and he was still that young-old man
with wild ideas, only there was no one at all listening to him now.

He followed her into the private library, smelling the dark old wood and
soft leather and musty pages of used books. Everything was antique, the
lamps were stained glass Tiffany replications, the book cases had
engravings of mermaids and dragons and gnomes. Intricate moulding
spilled over the ceiling and along the corners where the walls met. The
paint peeled in places and in those white spots, someone had drawn
detailed illustrations of the classics--Moby-Dick, Great Expectations,
Little Women, and even the Pooh bear.

She took him to a closed off room reserved for her alone from one
o'clock to three in the afternoon, and sat him down in one of the
understuffed chairs, packed firm and supple with the years and the
people sitting and the getting comfortable as they read. 

"So, what made you decide now is the time?" she asked and pulled her
backpack from her shoulders.

He just watched her, feeling lost and old and out of her time. She was
new. She was new and different and talking to him like nothing was
wrong.

"Are you glad you left?" he countered.

"Yes."

"No regrets?"

"No. It has to work like this Mulder."

He nodded but he did not understand. His world was a dark and gloomy and
down place, and her brightness had been like a candle that was never
extinguished, merely flickering. That was how he saw her. She was a
candle, and that in and of itself showed him just how depressed and old
and gloomy he could be. A candle. Not even a sun, or a star, or
something equally as romantic or bright or uplifting.

And yet, that light of the candle had made a path for him, had shown him
the way just as effectively as the sun, or the moon, or a star.

"What exactly is working out, Scully?"

"Destiny maybe. God probably. The whole plan in general."

"So, meant to be. . ."

"No. Just that, for a long time, my world revolved around you, and
that's not healthy for anyone. Least of all me."

"Why you least of all?"

She smiled gently. "Because I'm no good at helping myself. I'm selfless
to a fault."

But even that sounded selfish. She mused over the irony of being honest.

"Yes, yes you are."

"Not anymore. I'm still relatively stupid about giving myself away, but
I'm more guarded, thanks partially to you and partially to this city."

"You. . .you weren't hurt, were you?"

"Life gives you hurt, Mulder. I've been hurt. Does it make any
difference that it wasn't you doing the hurting?"

"Yes."

"Well, it wasn't you. It was me and my expectations and my demands and
my--"

"Scully. I think you're giving selflessly to a fault again."

She smiled. "See, sometimes, some things don't change. But I have
changed a lot Mulder. And I was waiting."

"For what?"

"For the change to be a permanent thing. And I was waiting for you."

"For me? Why would you wait for me, Scully? I'm old. I'm dark and
depressed and I can't even be grateful to you the right way. I can't
even appreciate it when I have you."

She shrugged. "I don't know why, Mulder. It's just there. I've thought
about you a lot, but I refused to let myself go back. I needed this
evaluation of myself and of us."

"Us?" he croaked and nervously spread his fingers across his thighs.

"I needed to be free enough to bring you up with me. Bold enough to show
you light. Do you understand?"

"Not particularly," he confessed and shook his head.

She stood up and moved to stand between his legs, her fingers reaching
out to stop his nervous twitching. She ducked her head and kissed his
lips in a soft, sensual way that he never knew was in her.

"I'm confident in us, Mulder. And I needed to be. I had to be.
Otherwise, we'd fail and that's not acceptable."

He just watched her lips move and tried to understand her words and her
thoughts and all she was trying to say to him.

"So, I'll ask again. What made you decide that now was the time?"

"I don't want us to fail," he admitted. "But I was afraid you hated me
and I was afraid you would never want to see me again. And then I
realized that even if you did, I was no worse off. Even if you told me
to my face that I'd ruined your life and you thought I was scum, it was
no worse than being alone and being without you."

"So you came."

He nodded. "I came. I wanted to see you, I had to see you one last
time."

She smirked at him and sat down on the arm of his chair, touching his
hair reverently.

"I have the confidence in us now, Mulder, and I want this for us. I want
it enough to make it work despite how gloomy or depressed or old you
are."

His smile was faint but positive, and his hands went to her waist to
just touch, to rest against her skin after such a long absence of
nothing.

"You give me confidence, Scully. You give me light."

"And my world still revolves around you, Mulder. Even with all the
change, you're still my focus."

He sighed softly and titled his head up to look in her eyes, amused at
the height difference and the way she was being. Like a child, like an
excited ten year old with a new present and a new hope. He wanted that
change to remain, yet he also wanted his Scully back.

"Are you going to come back with me?" he asked.

"And the X-Files?"

"Yeah. The X-Files too."

"Yes. It's my place. I belong there, here with you, Mulder. Don't you
know that?"

"After these five years, I feel it, Scully."

"Do you love me, Mulder?"

"How could I live in such darkness and not adore the light?"

She kissed him then, her lips like the inside of a warm peach, slick and
soft. He moved his hands to her shoulders, then to her neck, playing
with her dark hair and white skin. As her hands grazed his cheeks and
teased his hair, the kiss bloomed and erupted and she was something
dazzling to him, something bright and furious and heating. 

If darkness was the absence of light, then maybe he was not darkness.

She was bright enough to burn away the shadows.

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end
adios
RM