Title: Reassurance (1/1)
Author: RM >lebontrager@iname.com<
Disclaimer: Mulder and Scully belong to CC, 1013, and Fox. No fringe is
intended.

SPOILER:::: Biogenesis--I just can't stop myself....aghhh...

~~~~
Reassurance
~~~~

She paused on the sun drenched shoreline and looked back behind her.

So many things...

She'd been here for two days, crouched before the artifact in the sand,
pad and pen in hand, attempting to write down as much as she could see,
make note upon note about the size and shape and symbols decorating the
disk.

She had filled a spiral notebook with her science, and still, she was no
closer to understanding the strange truth.

The workers at the site offered no help, and they steadfastly refused to
go near her, thinking she had obtained some kind of curse my osmosis.

She couldn't got back home until she could tell Mulder that it was
nothing, that this crazy idea that aliens gave Moses the Bible was
nuts....it wasn't possible.

It couldn't be possible.

This wasn't happenening to her. . .

Scully dusted the sand from the back of her legs, wincing as it abraded
her skin, praying that she wasn't too badly burned.

The water rushed to meet her ankles and she reveled in the coolness of
its touch, then slipped down further into the ocean. 

Like a balm, the salt and waves lapped her red body and her troubled
soul,  calming her disquiet with the gentle tugging of the tides.

The sand shifted beneath her feet, then spiralled between her toes,
sucking her down into its depths. She splashed her hands in the cool
reflection, then wiped her face with her now-clean, but shaky, fingers.

This wasn't a fake.

It was all she could do not to destroy the thing, burn it far from
Mulder and his damaging ideas. But the truth of it smacked her face, and
she felt sick.

The only thing she could think was that maybe God was playing around
with them all, putting things in place so that she'd be tested, giving
Mulder and her a way to meet....

Aliens were God's plan to get her and Mulder together?

Maybe not. But it felt better than saying that God did not exist.

God could create aliens. Why not? He could do pretty much whatever he
wanted.

Being supreme and all.

She shivered and moved out of the waves, refusing to think that there
could be no God, that the world was random suffering and chaos.

God had put order here. He gave life.

She knew that deep in her, somewhere in her soul where she believed.

But the world and Mulder's ideas and her own facts were pulling at her
like those ocean tides, shifting the sand beneath her feet. Sand that
she had once thought was solid rock.

Oh God....how could she face Mulder now?
~~~~

2:39 a.m.
two weeks later
motel room

~~~~

She touched his face with a gentle finger, tracing his lines and age
markers with abandon.

His lips twitched, but he didn't wake up.

Scully shifted off her knees beside the bed and onto her bottom, leaning
back against the wall and closing her eyes.

She could hear Mulder's breathing and the scratch of roaches in the
wall, then the clink and groan of pipes, or maybe lovers. The whisper of
the toilet as the bowl leaked, and the rush of traffic outside their
tiny motel room accompanied her distraught silence.

Silence.

Mulder hadn't opened his eyes since she had stolen him away from the
hospital, almost two days ago. His look then had been one of abject
terror and betrayal.

He blamed her.

She could feel it. 

She deserved his anger. She had left him there for weeks on his own
while she tried in vain to disprove something he wanted so badly to be
true.

And it was.

Completely and utterly. A real artifact from about four thousand years
ago, when Moses had been around. Or was it Abraham?

Maybe. She wasn't even sure about that. Church History hadn't been that
interesting to her during Sunday school.

She realized now that there were two differences between her and Mulder.

He wanted to believe, she didn't.

Still, her mind scrambled with theories and explantaions, ways to show
that this disk in the ocean didn't mean there was no God.

She closed her eyes tighter and prayed.

Oh God, Oh God, don't let this be real. Make Mulder wake up and tell me
that everything's okay, that this isn't important, that it's just a
joke.

A throat cleared and she jumped, her eyes snapping open.

His hand was reaching for her cheek, his eyes fixed on her with a kind
of panicked desperation.

"Scully. . ."

She scrambled up to his side, taking his hand and running her fingers
over his forehead.

"How ya feeling?" she asked, watching his body for signs of trouble.

"Tired."

She nodded. "They put you on a lot of sedatives."

"Can I have a hug?"

She jerked, startled more than repulsed, then smiled at him.

His arms wrapped around her back and he pulled her tightly to him,
Scully trying not to stiffen with the embrace.

He rubbed a hand over her shoulder and she couldn't help but hiss in
pain.

"Scully?"

She shrugged off his concern.

"Sunburn. . ."

His hands turned gentle and he played with the belt loops at her waist.

"Sorry. . .not such a good time for a hug."

"Are you really okay, Mulder?"

He nodded, but was already on to other things. "Did you find it?"

She nodded. "Ivory Coast. . ."

"That's why the sunburn," he murmured, then trailed his thumbs in
circles along her stomach.

"Yeah. . ."

"I don't know if this thing has gone away. I don't think it has."

She shivered. "What are we going to do? It made you crazy, Mulder."

"I think I have to learn how to handle it."

"Handle it? Are you crazy?- No, never mind, don't answer."

She turned her face from him, looking to the wall, its smooth blankness
just like her mind.

They needed to get rid of it. That's what they needed to do.

"I have to go there."

She shook her head immediately. "No. No way."

"Scully-"

She stood from the bed, pushing his hands away from her.

"No. I'm not letting you go anywhere. It's my fault you got like this.
I'm not-"

"It's your fault?"

She frowned at him. "I should have known."

"What? Known what? That aliens were nudging my brain? Scully, you don't
even believe in aliens. . .that one would be kind of tough."

She glared at him, then sighed loudly. 

"You were in pain and I knew it. . .but I left you."

"No. You did exactly right. What if I had been on the plane to Gallup,
and it hit and no one knew me, no one knew what was going on?"

She licked her lips and sat back down beside him. His hands immediately
reclaimed her waist.

"So you did call Fowley?"

His surprise lit his face like lights on a Christmas tree.

"No."

She frowned, then smiled at him in relief, feeling silly for being
relieved, but nontheless....

"She said I called her?"

"She answered your phone, didn't she?"

Mulder sighed. "I tried to make her leave. . .I couldn't think straight
though. When I talked to you, I had just gotten back to my apartment
after collapsing in the University stairwell."

Her hands went to his at the news, her concern striping her face with
worry lines.

"Mulder. .."

"I woke up and there she was, hauling me to my feet, telling me I had to
walk on my own, that we had to get out of there. . .but I had already
seen him."

"Seen who?"

"Krycek. Skinner has Krycek on this case."

Scully's face blanched and she felt anger filling her again.

"I knew we could never really trust him."

"I think he's being blackmailed," Mulder said, enjoying the feel of her
hands covering his, even if he couldn't move his fingers. "That's the
only thing that makes sense."

Scully sighed.

"I don't know what to think anymore. . ."

"Then don't. . ." he said, and moved to sit up.

She placed her hands on his shoulders and pushed him back down, leaning
over him and shaking her head.

"You need to rest," she said.

"So do you," he replied, and grabbed her hands, pinning them to his
chest.

It was easy to sweep her onto the bed beside him then, and he was
pleasantly surprised when she didn't offer any resistance.

She fell stiffly next to him, then lifted her head to meet his eyes.

"What are you doing?"

"Making you get some rest, Scully."

She shook her head, amused at his antics, then pushed up.

He grabbed her again, and even in his fuzziness, managed to keep her
trapped to him.

"Mulder. . ."

"Just lie here, Scully."

She worried her bottom lip with her teeth, but allowed him to draw her
closer to his chest, until her head was resting against his shoulder.

After a few echoing silences, she relaxed, evidently too tired to
protest him anymore.

He felt warm again, and hugged her tighter to him, placing a very soft
kiss to her forehead.

She kind of curled around him, one hand coming to rest on his shirt and
idly picking at the buttons there.

He clamped his hand over her nervous one, chuckling.

Scully could feel the vibrations shimmer through her and she held her
breath.

"Stop fidgeting, Scully. I'm not going to bite."

She smiled and closed her eyes, but she wasn't at all sleepy.

He rubbed her palm with his thumb, then let his eyes drift shut too,
remembering the dead look in her eyes as she'd asked him about Fowley.

She just needed some reassuring.

"Everything's okay, Scully. Everything's okay."

As his words invaded her drifting mind, Scully remembered her prayer.

Thank you, God.

She had found her rock again.
~~~~

end
adios
RM