Title: A Knight's Last Crusade (1/1)
Author: RocketMan >lebontrager@iname.com<
Disclaimer: Mulder and Scully belong to CC, 1013, and Fox. No fringe is
intended.

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A Knight's Last Crusade
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The road was tilted and brown with dirt, the potholes uneven and deep, and
the fields stretched on either side like eternity. His shoes were pinching
his toes and his tie had been left about a half mile behind, along with
civility. He dragged his feet forward and squinted beneath the baking heat
of the sun, all of it so bright that his forehead was cramping and his
lids were half-shut.

This was the valley of the Shadow of Death. The ironic thing was that it
was no valley, no beautiful changing scenery or rolling land to break up
the monotony, and there were no shadows either. Only bleak bright
sunlight that struck the earth like a hammer blow, consistent and heavy.

Fox Mulder was walking through it, and he was not afraid. Not because he
had any higher power's comfort, but because he found a certain relief in
dying. Death held no fear, no sting, because, by this time, death was
preferrable than living through this. He wanted to lay down in that
brittle grass and sleep away the heat and the exhaustion and the
weariness.

But he had the distinct impression that the heat would only be worse, and
that the grain was sharp and jagged and waiting to flay his sunburned
skin.

He wished he knew where he was. It wouldn't help him all that much,
really, but it might be of some comfort. While the landscape looked like
the States, he couldn't be completely sure. He had been taken from his
home a long time ago, and then he was here, walking. These were the only
impressions he had:

Flatness and heat. Screaming awake in his apartment to find his nightmares
were reality, and then screaming awake to find he had stopped dreaming,
and woken up in this other hell. A hell of land and dirt and fields and
heat.

He wondered if Scully was looking for him, or if she had been convinced by
now to give up the search. He wondered if maybe it had all been a time
lapsed thing, and he would arrive nearly one second after it had happened,
no one having missed him. Or perhaps it had taken hundreds of years, and
he had slept away the eons with nightmares in his head, and now that he
was back, there would be no one.

It was a nasty thought in his mind and he faltered on the road, thinking
about it, considering it all.

He had been gone, completely missing, and he didn't know where he was,
where Scully was, where he was even going.

His legs gave out and he collapsed to the raod on his knees, a keening
wail rumbling through his mind and chest to explods into the stillness of
the heat. He could not possibly live if all things were gone, if Scully
was nowhere here, if she was out of his life.

No. No, he had been asleep in his room, tossing and turning with a
nightmare about vampires cutting off his arms and sucking on his blood
while Scully closed her eyes and didn't believe. He had been dreaming and
then he had woekn up and there had been that light. She would be looking
for him, she would.

And after the light? Fragments of pain and the sense that his soul was
separate from his body, that his ideas and beliefs were being schismed and
shattered like glass.

And then this heat, this existence of grain chaff and murky irrigation
water as he trudged through the shadow of death, watching the road shimmer
in the nighttime heat. He had very solid sensations of pressing his lips
into Scully's forehead and touching the warmth of her cheek, or smelling
her soap and flowers scent and tasting her spaghetti when she offered to
cook him dinner.

He knew these were solid real things. And she would come for him, and he
would have those things again.

They had to be real solid things. He was walking this desert-death and
drinking this bacteria-water and eating this grain-leftover so that he
could come back to her, to find her waiting for him.

He wanted, longed, to be embraced by that scent and those arms and that
Scully. He needed to tell her what he had learned in his nightmares. He
needed to let her understand.

Mulder pulled himself up, off the dirt road and the stains of his tears,
then began forcing his legs to walk. This death would have to wait.
====

When Dana Scully stepped into the hospital room, six years of plane rides,
secret informants, disasters, bogus leads, and immeasurable
hope/desperation came at her in a rush of crushing need.

She pushed away the still-clinging doubt and gathered the thin little man
into her arms with a ferocity she could not deny. His tears of relief were
mixed with her little gasps of brokenness, and she held him tightly,
stroking his cheeks and hair and eyelids and arms as if she had never seen
such a man before.

"Scully. . ." he said.

It was not his voice, but it was close and it was said the right way and
she was willing to let it be him for now.

"Mulder. Mulder. I thought you'd never come back."

He was more than weak, but she held him up effortlessly, her hair touching
her shoulders and brushing his cheeks. His tears blended into hers and he
sighed hard and long.

"I'm so glad you're here," he said. "So glad it wasn't just part of the
nightmare."

"Do you know what happened to you?" she asked, glad for the privacy of his
room. He looked more gaunt and haggard than his 38 years, and she still
had to blink and startle whenever she thought that he was no longer her
young, Spooky partner who drew X's on the raod to scare her away.

"I think. I was in my apartment, dreaming--"

The look of panic darting across her face was enough to make him stop, and
he clutched her hand, noticing for the first time that she was somewhat
awkward with him, standing by the bed and hedging around him.

"What?" he asked.

"You weren't taken from your apartment."

"I wasn't? I. . .I remember the dreams. . .sleeping in my bedroom, which I
had just begun to do, and waking up to them--"

"Mulder. . .Mulder. You've been gone five years."

"Five years. . .Scully. I. . .guess I missed the Y2K thing." He gave her a
soft smile, making a lame joke without much enthusiasm.

She was clenching his hand tightly, her brow furrowed.

"Mulder, what year is it?"

"What do you mean? if it's. . .five years. . .then that would be 2004. .
.right?"

"Mulder it's not. . .not 2004."

He frowned, then counted on his fingers, mouthing the numbers as he went.
He hoped his brain hadn't been so scrambled that he was counting wrong. .
.

"It's 1999."

He froze, absolutely still, his breath like the rattle of a dying animal,
his face white and blank and not accepting.

"Mulder. Mulder, please. . ."

"How. . .if it's 99, and I've been gone six years, then how do you know
me?"

"You were taken at Ellens Air Force Base, and when I went looking for you.
. .they wouldn't let me in, and I couldn't. . .oh god, I should have
forced my way in. I should have done something. . ."

He dropped her hand, eyes like flint and just as dead. The shine when she
had entered was nothing, and he turned his head briefly, mourning the loss
of Scully, his partner.

"You searched for me because you feel guilty," he said, his voice flat.

"No. No, because you're my partner, Mulder."

He couldn't even begin to think of all the things that weren't the same,
the things that had changed. They had almost kissed, and she had become
such an ingrained part of him. To suddenly cut that off would be like
crushing his soul.

"Why did you do this for five years?" he asked, eyes tight with the pain
of loss.

"Because you. . .you told me once that finding your sister was the most
important thing to you, that nothing else mattered. You became my. .
.quest."

She shrugged, fingering his blanket and avoiding his eyes. Mulder was
watching her in a haze of disbelief and growing despair, but the
revelation that he had become to her everything Samantha embodied to him
was strange and frightening. He didn't want to be her crusade, her
obsession.

"What did you do?" he asked, almost horrified.

"I had a hard time keeping the X-Files open, but with your disappearance,
they couldn't really ignore all the cases that piled up. I worked alone
for a year, the the higher powers demanded I have another partner."

She shuddered, remembering something that never happened in Mulder's mind,
but had in her world. It wasn't right; it wasn't real. He didn't want this
to be the truth of his existence. 

"So. . .you were given another partner?"

She gave him a quirk of a smile. "I wiggled out of that one by arranging
for two agents to transfer into the X-Files department. They usually do
most of the field work, and I go out with one of them on the more
important cases. It's not so bad. . .but I missed you."

She said it softly, her eyes shy and still retaining some of that early
innocence he had missed. He had falsely missed, but still, the memory was
there. A memory that wasn't reality, but had been his for the past five
years.

She was shy. He wanted to reach out and hold her, but settled on lacing
his fingers through hers and kissing her knuckles.

"You. . .can't possibly understand how much a part of me you are, Scully.
All this time, I have memories of it. Memories of our partnership of five
years. . .and I. . .I can't just let that go. I need you too much."

She sat down on his bed, tucking in close to his body. "Mulder, do you
think I'd be here if I didn't need you?"

He wanted to weep for everything he was losing, but somehow, he still had
her. He still had her.

"My entire life is a hallucination, Scully. All the good parts that I
remember, all the times when we did things, and discovered things, it's
all lies. I don't know how to make that go away."

Scully closed her eyes for a moment, then gave a soft, yearning sigh.

"Tell me your memories. . ."

"What?" he asked, frowning.

"I want to know what we've done, Mulder. I've been without you for five
years. . ."

He watched her eyes shift under the light, changing as he stared up at
her. She was different, that was sure, but she used work to move through
her pain, and she had established the X-Files out of some driving need to
stop feeling so bereft. He knew that feeling, knew it from the months of
her disappearance.

Months which hadn't occured, yet still clung to his soul like bitter rot.
Seeing her before him now was erasing that ever present guilt, especially
with the way her eyes were so innocent, stil so very soft and vulnerable.

He reached out and touched her cheek, watching her eyes open to his gaze
like a flower to the sun. Love and admiration beamed from the blue depths,
a kind of hero worship he didn't deserve, but felt grateful for. He had
become her icon, her quest, and now her crusade was at an end.

"Tell you my memories. . ."

She nodded, biting on her lip and squirming around on his bed. Mulder
propped the bed up and encircled her waist with his fingers. She was stiff
for a moment, stunned acceptance in her face, but then she moved closer
and wiggled next to him.

"Well, there's lots of them. Five years of moments. One of the best
though, is when you said you wouldn't change a day of our partnership. You
wanted to be there, and I was grateful. Things became easier for me to
accept after that."

She was watching him carefully as he spoke, then turned away when he
looked at her, so he smiled, tilting her chin towards his eyes.

"They're still memories for me, Scully."

She nodded. "I know."

"Your crusade may be over, but mine has just begun," he whispered.

"Yours?" she said, concern racing like panic across her face.

"My crusade for you. To make this up to you, this five years of nothing."

She blinked and tears slid down her cheeks, wetting the sheets. Her hands
clenched in small fists at his sides.

"You don't--"

"Scully, can I. . .kiss you?"

She slowly drew her head back to look at him, shock in her face but her
eyes heavy lidded and sleepy looking with a kind of desire he had never
seen. He realized she even smelled differently than his memories. A kind
of herbal flowers and honey scent that caressed his mind and eased his
heart. And her hair was longer, more of its original reddish brown, less
the bright orange she had tended to in his memories.

This was real. This was more real than he had ever imagined.

"You can if you promise me one thing."

"What's that?"

"No more crusades. This is our last."

He grinned and brushed her hair from her face, then swiped her bottom lip
with his finger.

"Sounds good to me. I don't want to be anywhere without you."

She leaned forward and received his kiss, her fingers brushing his chest,
lashes against his cheek.

"I've been waiting for this for five years," she said.

He gave a soft chuckle. "So have I."
=-=-=-=

end
adios
RM

======
Of making many books there is no end,
and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
--Ecclesiastes 12:12

For my webpage:
http://shannono.simplenet.com/basestation/
======