Title: Un Milagro
Author: RM >lebontrager@iname.com<
Disclaimer: Mulder and Scully belong to CC, 1013, and Fox. No fringe is
intended.

SPOILER::::Milagro

Milagro means miracle, remember? That's important.

~~~~
Un Milagro
~~~~

I am eating a hamburger, spreading the thick mayonaise and the watered
down ketchup along a pitiful soybean patty, when it comes to me.

It just comes to me.

She is already in love.

Yes, yes, I know that. I heard it anyway. And it puzzled me, frankly, but
what really, could I do about it? I can't ask her what she thinks, or even
if it's true, because if it is, then it will really be awkward.

At least, that was what she wanted me to believe, for so long. Has it
changed since yesterday?

Seems ages ago, seems heartbeats ago.

The hospital food is sick and loathesome, but we both eat it
noncommitally, Scully with her mandatory liquid diet, and me my soy.

She glances up to me for an instant, and it is that instant that the
phrase comes to me.

She is already in love.

Already. . .

I know without doubts who she is in love with.

Me.

I wonder if anything can be done about it.

Her look used to tell me no, tell me, I am too far away from you for
anything to make sense between us.

That is what it used to say. 

When she woke with a surge into my arms, with her entire body trembling in
fear and agony, her eyes said nothing but this:

hold me.

I did. I responded and I will always respond.

She knows that, and that is why she will not ask for more than she thinks
I ought to give.

Scully with her aloofness, Scully with her distance, Scully with her
nonchalance, finally, finally broken in two pieces. Broken into Scully
and. . .Dana. Maybe that is it. Maybe not. Because even in the moment her
eyes asked to be held, she was still Scully, still strong and grounding
and reassuring, even in her fear.

There is no Dana separate from Scully, and she knows this, knows it has
always been this. 

She has her own way for things, her own form of what is good, what is
content.

She loves and lives and is not lonely, but for the moments at night where
doubt assails. Moments that come even to those married for eons.

It happens, we live through it, we grow, we dismiss the thoughts.

She's not letting go of this one, though.

She is changed. She is. It's all in her eyes, those messages have changed.

They say to me this:

here i am.

It's thrilling, this change.

(here i am)

It's like a whisper and a scream all at once.

Here I Am.

I wonder what I'll do with this, now that she's letting me see her, see
her completely and assuredly.

She's no less beautiful, no less strong.

I bite into my soyburger and lick the corner of my mouth, catching ketchup
with my tongue.

She sips at something like soup, but is more a V8 nasty tasting
concoction. Her bones ache and creak, her lungs draw her sharply, and her
heart misfires on occasion, but she is not ill, she is not wounded
physically.

I think nothing will happen differently. Maybe we'll argue less, I'll
respect her more, she'll stay over and watch movies with me, I'll make her
popcorn when she asks, we'll have X-Files, solve cases, believe or
disbelieve.

Our hearts keep beating, and our minds keep whirling, and nothing will
change that much.

I'm sure of this.

It's her way, and it's mine, and being in love did nothing before, will do
nothing now.

She leans back with a sigh and I sit further up her bed, so that my hip is
pressing into her shoulder.

She moves until her head is in my lap, and I quickly touch her forehead
with a reverent hand, easing my back against the wall.

Her hand curls on my thigh and I am glad to comfort her.

Maybe this will change.

This and nothing else.
~~~~

She seems more relaxed.

I thought she would not change all that much, but that earth shaking
message in her eyes 

(here i am) 

keeps playing over and over in me, like a skip on a record, and she stares
into me, expecting some kind of great change.

I am not changed.

I have stood at this brink too many times to find myself suddenly
different.

Scully dying, almost dead, close to death.

I have been there with her, without her, in nightmares, in reality, and
always it is the same: the deadening of my heart, the tightening of my
hold on her, the franticness of my touch.

I played the role again, but she wants more, she expects more.

All week she looks at me, as if to say, this changed me so much Mulder,
how could it not change you equally?

I think sadly, that if I were changed, we might be more than we are, we
might be evolving into something greater.

I wish I could find that.

Scully pulls her hand from mine to click on the television, impatient with
my silence, wanting something to do to still her restlessness.

My couch is wide, and long, but it seems as if there is no room for both
of us, with her thigh pressing into my leg, her shoulder rubbing my arm.

I want to cradle her deeper into me, but this isn't something right, or
proper, or . . . this is Scully.

I have to remember that. Scully.

She's like my sister. She's more than my sister, and more wonderful and
inspiring than any common relationship could describe, but I just don't. .
.

"Mulder."

I glance up, wracked with indecision, trying to fight off the parts of me
that have wanted to touch her since she first crawled so deep into my
heart, but not winning that battle.

"Mulder," she says again, but doesn't know how to continue.

I sigh with relief, knowing that whatever talk she wanted to have is not
something I can handle right now.

"Mulder, don't you feel any different?" she says, exasperated.

I shrug and look to the wooden floor, letting my eyes trail along the
floor and flicker to the television. The stain in the middle of the living
room crushes me again, that dark brown scar of her blood, spilled in this
very room.

One week ago.

"I feel less stable," I say finally, eyes glued to that spot.

She follows my glance and shivers, but it is a controlled reaction, one
that costs her nothing.

It costs me greatly to sit there, so close to her, yet feeling so far
away.

"But. . .don't you feel that something happened that day?"

I shrug again and glance to the vent in the wall, near the ceiling, the
ornate grill covering it.

"I think. . .I think we were given a second chance," she says softly.

I can't imagine what kind of will it took for her to say this, admit to
something more than her alone, admit to a 'we' in her world.

I want to reply, say something so she'll continue, but I just watch her
helplessly.

"I think that's what happened, Mulder," she says, growing less confident
as I stare at her.

She peers down at her shoes, then glances off to the stain.

"I feel as if you've changed without me, Scully."

The words slip from my tongue without passing through my mind, which is
how they got out in the open in the first place, and I quickly look to
her, waiting for something.

"Without you?" she says, and her voice sounds so so shaky.

I know she wishes she hadn't started this now.

"You . . . found something after all this. I haven't found that yet."

She nods her head and licks her lips, looking away from me.

"Ahh. . .forget it then, Mulder."

Scully turns back to the television, her face shadowed by blues and
whites, her nose dancing with the play of commercials and programs.

I want to change, Scully, I *want* to change with you. There's just
nothing to push me one step further.....

How is this fair?

She finally gets to the point where we can be something, do something,
create a new high to our relationship, and I can't even speak to her.

"Why didn't you change, Mulder?" she says softly, really wanting to know.

"I. . .I. . ."

She looks once at me, then nods, as if to say 'typical', and leans back in
the couch, still close to me, but spiritually far away.

"Scully."

She's listening, I know that, listening with all her heart, but doesn't
want to show that vulnerability.

"Scully. . .when you had the cancer, I changed. You didn't. So I waited,
and I waited. Then, in Antarctica, the hallway, I thought we had finally
both arrived at the same place. . ."

She blushes beneath the television lights, her skin flushing with my
words, but her lips remain pursed. I can see beginnings of tears in her
eyes. 

These are her frightened tears, not tears of grief.

They shimmer at the corners of her eyes and never flood enough to drop
onto her cheeks, but stay there, immovable, glistening.

When she spoke to me about all the writer knew about her, she had those
gossamer tears.

"I thought we *were* at the same place," she says.

I shake my head. "I think I was a step ahead of you. But when we got back,
you showed no interest in stepping up. I shoved it away."

She sighs and reaches for my hand. "Then shouldn't we be at the same
place, now?"

Linking my fingers through hers, I kiss her knuckles softly.

"I probably slid back some," I admit, thinking of Diana and the long
stretch of pity after everything that had happened.

She frowns and her forehead furrows.

"You thought I didn't trust you," I say to her softly, trying to ease this
conversation past its difficult parts, past the hurt it can pierce us
with.

Scully sinks in my couch, eyes closing.

"You. . . I'm still not sure if you really do trust me. I know you think
you do. . ."

That's a painful thing. A thing that catches in my throat and chokes me
there.

"Does that not count for anything?" I say.

She smiles at me, running her finger along my thumb.

"I wouldn't be here if it didn't count for something, Mulder."

I smile back and wish I was smiling for real, for something better than
this.

"So where are you, Mulder? Where are you in relation to me?"

I grin; I just can't help myself.

"I'm sitting about two centimeters to your left-"

A swift jab to my ribs shuts me up, and I pout at her, rubbing my side.

"That's not fair, Scully. I can't poke you back; you're a sickie."

She snorts and looks at me. "Sickie?"

I nod.

"Whatever."

The conversation falls flat and I stare off at that stain again, wondering
if it might have changed me in ways I didn't know. Deep, soul splitting
ways.

She had been dead. I had felt the deadness within me, that emptiness in my
soul as soon as I hit my floor.

She was going to die, and I could feel that.

And then it had lifted, but I hadn't believed it.

Slouching before her, fighting off intense grief, I looked and she was so
dead.

It was only a shimmer, like those fearful tears of hers, that made me
realize she was still alive.

In the hollow of her throat, a pool of her own blood had formed, still
wet.

It quivered with her breath and I rejoiced.

She was alive.

I remember that now, how deep inside me I had felt so useless, so cold and
dead and unfeeling.

Useless without her. 

And with her. . .complete.

If that isn't absolute love, I don't know what is.

She's already gone back to the television, taking my silence for the end
of the conversation.

"You make me complete," I say again, looking at her intensely.

Her head whips around to me, her breath that shimmering again.

"What?"

"I mean it, Scully. I meant it then. You make me a whole person, and I owe
you everything."

She shakes her head. "Mulder. . .you can't owe someone love."

I want to laugh, want to shake her at how stubborn she's being. She's so
insulated herself against what she perceives will be the truth that she
can't accept the good.

"I don't mean it like that, Scully. You're right. We were given a second
chance at this. We've been given a thousand chances at this, and I'm not
wasting them anymore."

Her eyes are wide when my mouth closes over hers, but she's quick, and
taking control, her lips skimming over my cheeks and eyelids and chin,
then back to my mouth.

"I guess we're at the same place, Scully," I say, smiling against her
lips.

"It's a miracle."
~~~~
end
adios
RM