Reach
By RocketMan
>lebontrager@iname.com<

Disclaimer: Mulder and Scully belong to CC, 1013, and Fox. No fringe is
intended.

Dedication: This is for Melissa, and her wonderful insights, her
appreciation of pain, and her understanding of divorce and affairs.

~~~~
Reach
~~~~

"I will take from the Reach all that she has to teach, from the depths
of my soul. . ."
--"The Reach" Dan Fogelburg: The Innocent Age

~~~~

She licked her lips nervously as the car slid across the street, no
traction available as the black ice glinted dimly in the headlights.

She began praying and the wheels nosed the curb, then bumped to a stop.

Mulder let out a breath.

"I'm glad you're driving," he whispered.

She put it in reverse, easing out the slippery patch, then had to gun it
a bit to make it over an incline. Out of the ice for the moment, she
turned to the far left lane, then made her right hand turn from there.

She made a mental note to avoid the turn lanes.

Creeping down the highway, she spotted the sign for the interstate and
betted on the snowplows.

She relaxed a bit when they got to the expressway and the dangerous
black ice was mere slush, with white flakes covering it in the places
where cars had not travelled.

"I don't like this at all," she said, and tapped the accelerator up to
fifty.

"Uh, Scully? Should you be going that fast?"

"I have to Mulder. Everyone else is, and if I slow anymore, we'll cause
a wreck."

He merely grimaced and clutched the seatbelt.

She frowned into the darkness. "Trust me," she said softly.

She felt him shift next to her, then sigh. "I do."

The flakes were no longer fluffy and white, but sharp and smacking into
the windshield like little pieces of glass.

When they'd come out of the Federal Building, her car had a finely
sifted layer of ice and sleet covering it, and they'd have to chip away
with cheap plastic ice picks for the better part of an hour.

Finally, it'd been half way clear, and they'd warmed the car and
attempted to find the feeling in their fingers again.

Making her way along the side roads was actually easier than some of the
more heavily traficked streets, mainly because her tires could find
traction on the white piles of snow and ice, while the black patches
left her coasting.

She hated that feeling.

The almost free-for-all that the car did, the way it just slid across
and into a car, a curb, a patch of even worse ice. They were lucky they
weren't stuck like the hundreds of others on the side of the road.

"Scully?"

"Mulder, please don't say anything."

He shut up, watching her concentrate, fingers clenched on the wheel, her
body poised for action as if she held a gun on a dangerous criminal.

When they finally got to their exit and stopped at the light there, she
turned to him with softness in her eyes.

"Sorry, Mulder. Your voice is kind of distracting."

He lifted an eyebrow at her and then gave her a leer. "That can only be
a good thing."

She snorted and faced forward as the light changed, then slowly got the
car rolling again, turning widely left in the intersection.

She could speed up a bit when they hit the side roads again, and made it
safely back to their house, managing to only lose traction a few times.

With the garage door shut, and her coat hanging over a kitchen chair,
Scully called her mother to let her know she was home safely.

"Mom?"

"Dana. You didn't have any trouble, I guess?"

"No Mom. Some slipping, but it was all right. I'm glad Grace is with you
though. She doesn't need to hear the words that came out of Mulder's
mouth."

He glared at her and poked her side.

She batted him away and listend to her mother go over their day.

"Can I talk to Gracie, now?"

"Sure, Dana, hold on."

There was a loud clunking and then the phone dropped to the floor and
she winced.

Suddenly Grace's voice was on the line.

"Mommy?"

"Hey, Gracie. How was your day?"

"Fun. We made cookies again and I got to put food coloring in it so the
little men turned out green, like Daddy's aliens!"

"Oh, that's great baby. Are you okay with me and Daddy letting you stay
with Gramma?"

"Yup. I like it here. And Gramma says you need to talk."

"That's right, Gracie. We do."

"Hey, can I talk to Daddy a little bit?"

"Sure, baby, hold on."

She moved to the side, letting Mulder have the phone, and returned to
the kitchen to get her coat and gloves.

She heard snatches of their conversation as she hung up her things, and
thought maybe Grace was telling him a story, when he suddenly motioned
to her.

Handing back the phone, he shrugged.

"Grace?"

"Mommy. Are aliens really grey?" she said, sounding peeved.

"Um, well. I don't know, baby. I've never seen one."

"Oh. I told Daddy about the green men I made and he said aliens were
grey," she replied, and Scully could just see her pouting.

Throwing an evil look to Mulder, she tried to appease her. "I think
aliens can be whatever color you want since they're imaginary Gracie."

It was Mulder's turn to shoot her an evil look, and he shook out his
coat and huffed off.

She rolled her eyes and sighed. "Is that all, Grace?"

"Uh-hm. Love you lots Mommy."

"Love you too, baby. Good night."

"Night."

The phone clicked in her ear.

At least she had *somewhat* better phone manners than Mulder.

"What was that, Mulder? Sorry, Grace, aliens are grey, not green."

He frowned and shook his head. "I was just trying to correct her."

"Notice how it mainly hurt her?"

"Scully-"

"I don't even believe in aliens, but I didn't tell her, sorry Grace, it
doesn't matter what color your men are, because there's no such thing as
aliens."

"Scully, sheesh. She's not going to be scarred for life because I told
her aliens were grey."

Scully threw her hands in the air and stormed off, fuming.

He followed close behind her. "No, wait. Scully, wait!"

Grabbing her elbow, he turned her back around. "Talk to me, Scully. This
is one of those times."

She gaped at him. "This is *not* one of those times, Mulder. This is an
age-old difference of opinion that will *never* be settled between us."

He shook his head. "Not the part about the aliens. The part about why
you're mad I told her they were grey."

"I'm *mad* Mulder, because you *hurt* her."

"I didn't hurt her, Scully," he said softly. "I told her the truth and
she went to you looking for proof of it. She's completely like you. Just
because you go off and search for evidence doesn't mean you're hurt when
I tell you that aliens are real, does it?"

She glared, having nothing to say to his words.

"So, who did I really hurt, Scully? You?"

She bit down furiously on the inside of her cheek, releasing only when
she tasted the coppery smoothness of blood.

"Yes, Mulder. Is that how you planned to start this 'talk'? By forcing
me to admit that you hurt me?"

He stepped back. "Not really. It's a good start though."

Her mouth hung open and he leaned over and touched her chin, closing it
again.

"I'm not doing this, Mulder. I'm not going to be part of a
'conversation' where you pry all my feelings from *me* and say nothing
of yourself."

"I've told you about myself Scully. You know all there is to know. You
made me tell you about Diana, about everything, and still, you show me
nothing, you don't let me *in* one bit. I'm sick of it Scully. I thought
when we got married it would somehow change, then I thought well, maybe
it would take a while, then I thought, maybe after the baby. But it just
keeps going on and on, Scully. On and on."

She yanked her hand from his grip and stalked to the doorway, attempting
to get out while she still could.

He stalked after her, grabbed her wrists, held tightly enough to make
her squirm.

"Stop it, Mulder. Stop it."

His eyes were weary and hurting, but he shook his head. "No. No. We need
this, Scully. You promised."

She dropped her eyes. "Feels sick when someone breaks their promise,
doesn't it?" she asked, and then leaned in to his grasp, trying to throw
him off balance.

But he skirted back, recognizing her tactic.

She grew frustrated and pushed at his chest, an almost panicky sensation
climbing through her.

He wouldn't let her go.

Her breath grew erratic and she twisted in vain, somehow feeling so very
exposed, so defenseless and helpless.

"Mulder," she gasped and he eyed her, eyes narrowing.

"Mulder, let me go. Let me go."

He shook his head and gathered her closer to him.

"Scully, we need to talk."

She shook her head, practically climbed out of his arms.

"I can't breathe!" she hissed and felt his hands drop, his body stiffen.

She slumped to the floor, heaving in great huge breaths, the palms of
her hands covering her eyes in shame.

She hadn't done that in years.

He was on the floor next to her, touching her softly, lightly, the
barest of contact along her arm.

She shivered and turned into his arms, wishing that had not happened.

"Scully?" he said, his voice frightened, arms encircling her.

"I panicked," she said, words muffled by his chest.

"I'm sorry. I thought you were angry, and . . .I . . ."

"It's okay. I . . ." She shook her head, unable to say what she meant.

"Has this happened before?"

She felt an irrational twinge of laughter. "There's the psychologist . . .
and yes, it has."

"When? Why?"

She still refused to look up at him. "When I was about four, my brother
and some mean kids from across the street tied me up to a tree. They
were pretending to be Cowboys and I was an Indian, and one of my
brother's friends was supposed to save me. They had real fire. I freaked
out."

He shivered. "Understandable. Explains a whole hell of a lot."

Her hands unclenched from his arms, and she pushed away a bit, still
relatively within his embrace.

"I . . . I don't know why I did that just now. It's embarassing . . ."

"It shouldn't be, not in front of me. But I should have seen what was
happening, let you go."

She glanced to the floor, then back in his eyes. "I guess that's our
problem, huh? I don't talk and you don't listen."

He smiled sorrowfully and pulled her into his arms, cradling her for a
moment.

In a brief flash, she wondered if he'd done this to Diana, if she had
ever needed his touch and sank into his arms.

Rising quickly, feeling sick, she skittered away, angry at herself for
feeling bitter, angry at him because it was his fault.

"I'm going to sleep, Mulder. Let's talk tomorrow."

"Oh." he said, face somewhat pained, but looking as if he *knew* it was
his fault anyway. "I'll sleep on the couch, Scully."

She nodded, keeping a tight reign on the tears until she was far enough
away from him that she could sob and not have him running to touch her.

She shivered and pulled off her business suit, then her shoes and hose
and bra, the tears drying against her salty cheeks. She didn't want him
touching her for awhile.

Not until she could unpaint the picture of him holding Diana, drunk and
aroused and laughing.

Because it seared right through her every time he even looked at her.

And, oh God, it hurt.
~~~~

Mulder laid on his couch, the green leather one he had brought over from
his old apartment, a companion he'd forsake for one night to simply hold
Scully.

He knew what she'd been thinking, in that split second where she gone
from turning *to* him to turning *away* from him.

She was thinking about Diana. He could see it right there in her eyes,
made dark and sad by her thoughts, by his own stupid mistakes.

Regaining her trust wasn't going to be easy, but he wasn't going to sit
back and wait for it to happen either. She'd been right.

She never talked, and he never listened.

He wondered which had come first.

He never listened so she never talked.

Or:

She never talked so he never listened.

They both needed to change, to find a way to express things that hurt,
and to open their hearts to the other's needs.

He supposed they'd gotten this far for three reasons: Grace, lack of
time, and lack of energy.

They just weren't ever squared off anymore, except on cases, and that
helped to sublimate things a bit. They came home and focused on Grace,
and went to bed happy to be alive and loved.

Until the time came when Grace didn't require them around the clock, and
work slacked off and things they'd forgotten about came to haunt them.

Mulder closed his eyes and tried to push away the thoughts spinning
around in him. He needed to sleep so he could be alert in the morning
when she finally did want to say something.

He just hoped it was something he wanted to hear.
~~~~

~~~~

She came awake.

Darkness.

Chill around her, but hot hot inside.

Shivering, confused, the feeling of wetness down her face, smooth and
tangy and sharp.

Grief.

It was grief.

She was crying. The wetness was tears.

She was Dana Scully.

The darkness drew back, became a familiar night, as the heaviness
lessened into things she knew: blankets and pillows and a bedspread.

She shivered and wiped the tears from her face, then pushed her feet off
the bed.

Standing quickly, she wiggled her toes on the carpet, warming them up
before moving on.

The moon was low slung in the sky, very orange and very pregnant.

She wondered what it would birth come time.

Light and moonbeams, or emptiness and space?

Finding a patch of silver remaining still and calm on her floor, she
stood before the window, relishing the otherworld feel of waking from a
nightmare she couldn't remember and standing in the false warmth of an
orange moon.

She was grateful to Mulder for insisting they buy a place away from DC's
city lights, away from the smog and noise and pollution. At the time,
she had only thought - inconvienent, far away, no mall.

Now, she could stand at this window, as she'd done countless times
before, and watch the stars dazzle through the vacuum of space, small
points of hope that promised that she could make it through the bad
times.

It was frosted outside, the orange of the moon making the snow and ice
seem like frozen fire, its sharp contours rough and ragged.

Standing here, she remembered the better times, the content times, as
Mulder would pace the room, Grace's small bundle in his arms, rocking
her to sleep, and unable to help his curiosity, pausing at the window to
look out, inevitabley starting the baby's crying all over again.

And she had stood here alone too.

As she waited for Grace to come, her hand on her swollen belly, thinking
that this was the day, the very night, and knowing it, knowing for
certain.

Mulder had flown in from a lame conference in Florida, and then she
hadn't been alone anymore.

Looking now from the window, Dana could spot the places they'd trekked
through, the tree where Grace had discovered baby birds and insisted
that her mother, being a doctor, could fix them, and the hideouts they'd
all made together, she and Mulder reliving childhood as Grace grew.

There'd been the night they had starwatched, as Grace called it, each
one looking in a different direction, counting the falling stars and
meteorites burning, burning through the sky.

Closing her eyes now, she remembered that feeling.

Stretched along the earth like she was sacrificing herself, her body
almost molded right to the ground.

There'd been the awesome expanse of stars and heavens before her, and
the feel of a heartbeat beneath her body, as if she could feel the
earth's ancient rhythms.

Then she'd closed her eyes and everything had been swirling, shifting,
speeding along like a plunging roller coaster, going too fast to ever
ever stop.

She had felt the earth turn, felt it spin dizzily in space.

Her eyes closed, her body stretched through summer's grass, the earth
turning, then the hands of God, reaching down to lift her right up, to
place her among the stars.

Still, the heartbeat of the earth echoed in her body, and the stars
thrummed with a universal song, and the very space around her vibrated
with the harmony of creation, murmuring in the entirity of the cosmos.

And for a brief instant, she had joined in.

With her entire being.

And it was good.

Her own sigh brought her back to the room, the carpet under her feet,
the window glinting in the light of an orange moon.

Glancing at the sky, she longed to feel that completeness again, the
knowledge that she was a part of something greater and more valuable
than the troubles on earth. 

She knew that it had only come with the ability to leave her worries and
fears and bad feelings behind.

But this night, as the nightmare faded and the orange moon began to be
normal again, her own worries and fears and bad feelings lay too heavy
upon her for flight into space.

She bowed her head, feeling tears and emptiness come rushing through her
like a tsunami, crashing into shore, rearing back, then breaking once
more over her soul.

Her thoughts drowned in seas of sorrow, her hope left at the bottom of
the ocean.

With her head bowed, the words came with remembrance of a childhood
habit.

"Dear God," she whispered.

As she spoke the name, the stars seemed to shift, the moon duck its
head.

"Dear God."

The tears welling in her would not be held back, but the words she
longed to say would not come.

"Dear God. . ."

It was choked by sobs this time, and still she could say no more, offer
no pleas or questions.

She was screaming deep within her spirit, but it'd been so long since
she'd screamed to God, to anyone, that she didn't know how anymore.

"Dear God. . ."

He knew.

He had to feel the echo of her escalating agony as it schismed the
universe's song into cacaphony.

"Dear. . .God."

Her eyes closed.

She slumped to the window, hot forehead pressed to the cool glass.

And cried.
~~~~

Mulder woke early, eyes opening slowly.

He saw her sitting before him, her body relaxed and sleepy looking.

She hadn't seen him.

He closed his eyes again, ducking back to sleep. 

Listening carefully, he wondered what she was doing there, sitting in
her pajama bottoms and a white T-shirt, shivering.

She murmured something to herself and he realized she was singing.

He couldn't recognize a tune, but with her, he *never* could, so he
didn't pay it much attention.

He waited like that, feigning sleep, wishing she would give him some
sign that she wanted this to work as badly as he did.

She merely sat there.

He opened his eyes, found her staring straight at him.

He blinked.

"Scully?"

"I couldn't sleep."

He nodded and pulled himself into a siting position. She remained firmly
entrenched on the chair, tucking her legs up under her.

"Good morning," he replied, raising his eyebrows.

"I thought of a lot things last night."

He nodded for her to continue, not daring to interrupt.

"I thought and thought. I realized two things. One, that I can forgive
you quite easily because I love you. And two, I can't forget so easily
at all, for the same reason, I love you. You're mine. . .I suppose."

He gulped and nodded, glad that she was making this easy for him.

"But Mulder. . .in order for this to work, I *have* to forget it."

She stared at him with no small measure of fear and ferocity, her eyes
like blue moons.

"How are you going to do that?" she said.

He frowned. "Do. . . what?"

"Make me forget. I've tried already. And it almost happens. Then it
doesn't."

"I have to make you forget, that's . . .it?"

"No small order, Mulder. This isn't like we go to some hypnotherapist
and you brainwash me. . . I mean like we put this back together so
strong and so undefeatable, that I'll be sure. . .sure."

"I want you to be sure of me, Scully. Sure of the right things though,
not the wrong ones."

"I do too, Mulder. But that's going to be hard to have unless this
somehow never happened."

"All right. Do you think talking it over would help you?" he asked,
feeling his psychologist training kick in.

She frowned. "No. It makes me feel worse. I'm glad you told me the
truth, and yet, I wish you'd let me go on living in ignorance."

"No. You don't."

She grit her teeth. "Yes, I do."

He ducked his head and rubbed at his eyes.

"So. . .are you going to stay here?"

She was watching him intently, and her eyes softened. 

"I don't think I can Mulder."

He nodded, expecting it.

"Your mother's then?"

"Yes."

"I'll. . .see if Grace can stay longer with your mother so you can have
time with her every day."

She smiled. "Thanks. . ."

As if she needed an appointment to see her own little girl.

He shook his head. "I think this could be a good thing."

She smiled tightly. "I think we can *make* it into a good thing."

The couch was hot from his skin when she sat beside him, and he glanced
over at her as she shivered.

Touching his hand softly, she traced the lines of his palm.

"I still don't know why you did that, Mulder. I still don't understand
it. But I'm going to try and not dwell on it. So forgive me now for
whatever insensitive things I might say in the future."

He shook his head. "You've done nothing wrong, Scully."

When she lifted her head, he saw tears shimmering there in her
moon-eyes.

"That's what I thought too, Mulder. But we both must have done something
wrong for this to have happened."

He touched her cheek, but she shrank away.

"I wish I could give you some tangible, concrete evidence that I'm never
going to do this again. I wish I could take you into the future and show
you that this never will happen. Maybe then you could forget."

She shivered. "There are some things in life we just don't need to
know."

He stood, leaving her side.

She was like a black hole beside him, her vain attempts at hope only
succeeding in killing his own.

"I'll make you forget, Scully. I will."

"Then it might all be okay again."

He closed his eyes, breathing in the new hope found lurking in the air.

She had come to him, put it entirely in his hands, while still reserving
the ultimate control.

But she wanted this.

She wanted this.
~~~~

~~~~

"Tina says don't talk to me like I am deaf and dumb
we've broken down and broken up so much that I am numb
talk about - don't shout about - the people we've become
there's a little girl who's crying over here."
--"How Do You Tell Someone?" Cowboy Mouth

~~~~

Scully was walking through the hall feeling better than she had in
months, the sudden flashing hope rising through her.

Work was the same, but Mulder was being careful, the cases light, never
out of town, the work easily done by phone, yet also very boring.

Waiting on a lab result, Scully headed for the coffee machine, needing
something to help her wake up after the week of sleeplessness in her
mother's house.

She missed Grace.

That feeling still ate away at her happiness, and only the thought that
they could eventually work this out was getting her through the cruelly
short times she had with her little girl.

She was remembering Mulder's soft voice on the phone the night before,
the way it had once more fired her soul, how she again had found the odd
delight in the cadence of his words.

She was remembering when she ran head long into another agent.

Apologizing before she lifted her head, Scully stopped dead still as her
eyes met those of Diana Fowley.

Her breath rushed out in a gasp of fear and pain.

"You okay, Agent Scully?"

She blinked, shook her head. "Fine. Fine."

Almost running, Scully darted from the woman, her thoughts wild and free
after her hope had smothered them so completely.

Thoughts and visions of Mulder with her, making love to his first wife,
taking pleasure in the places he once found joy, creating warmth between
their bodies, all tumbled through her.

She plunged into the bathroom, threw open a stall, and slammed its door
closed behind her.

She dry heaved over the toilet, gasping.

Crying.

Why couldn't she just forget this?
~~~~

Mulder licked his lips as he watched her leave, felt sure everyone in
the room knew of his affair and was hating him for it.

As soon as Diana left, he buried his head in his hands.

It was hard to keep his feelings and his thoughts and his sudden, quick
mind from leaping in the wrong directions.

Diana had been his wife and he had known her fully and completely.

And, unfortunately, that information chose to volunteer itself at
precisely the wrong times.

It was this hole in him that ate and ate and ate at him until he
shovelled a bit more into it, in a vain attempt to fill it up.

When he was littler, it was getting a kick out of chasing the girls on
the playground, pulling on their hair and sneaking a kiss under the
slide.

After Sam disappeared, girls were too complex to chase on the
playground, and his father had mistakenly left some magazines out in the
open, wonderfully revealing the mysteries the girls presented.

He remembered the first time he'd opened up the magazine, coming right
to the centerfold, the woman naked and bare and beautiful, her fingers
in strategic places that made him twitch.

It had started then, started with one accidental viewing.

It had grown and grown and festered within him, assuaged slightly with
the fantasies he dreamed at night, but as he fed it, the hole caved in
more and more, taking out chunks of his soul while growing still bigger.

It'd been soft porn before, now it was hard core stuff, and mostly it
was the thrill of maybe getting caught that aroused him.

With Diana that day, it'd been fear and pain and the haunting memory of
Scully lying on the hospital bed, drowning in her own grief. And then
the hunger within had awakened when she had touched him, and he was
drunk again and had no control and nothing had stopped.

Now, this hunger had been found again. The hole in him grew again, made
itself known to him.

The girls he had only kissed in the bar had been dangerous temptations,
the devil's own, and he had succumbed. 

And she had discovered his sin.

He wanted to make this right again, but with the hole in him widening,
that hunger ravenous and pushing at him, he found it hard to keep his
thoughts pure.

Scully was no longer a mystery, no longer something to be 'caught' with.
While he still ached to touch her, still found himself helplessly crazy
about her, it did not fill the evil hole in him.

He had thought she had, thought she'd cured him from his disease, but it
had come back.

With a vengeance.

He did not want this.

He wanted Scully.

He needed help.
~~~~

The room was dark and seemed to ripple in the shadows as he passed by
the only light glowing.

It reminded him somewhat of a womb, warm and comforting and dark, the
slow steady tick of the clock like a mother's heart.

He sat down again and waited for her to acknowledge him.

Karen Kosoff nodded to him, her eyes troubled, her brow steepling.

Although he could tell immediately she was worried over him, he trusted
her immensely, especially after hearing Scully had seen her a few
scattered times.

Scully had not talked to him, but she had talked to Karen.

"I need help," he said softly, his lips dry after telling his story.

She nodded thoughtfully.

"To tell you the truth, Agent Mulder, I never would have thought."

"Most wouldn't realize the depth of the problem, no."

"She told me a little bit about your . . . videos, the porn. She said
they bothered her at first, but not anymore. Because she knew that was
just a fixation for you, just as you had fixations about other things,
and that it couldn't be a real problem. Not for you. She said you were
too strong."

"Are you allowed to be telling me this?"

She smiled a bit and her eyebrow rose. "Actually, Dana came to see me
earlier, looking rather upset. She said you might come in later to talk
over some things, and that she was allowing me to share with you
anything she'd ever told me, in hopes of helping you."

Mulder blinked.

She had him all figured out. 

"Did she know this was the problem?"

"Not at all," she said softly. "Not at all. She mentioned some
unfaithfulness, and that it was rough and causing a lot of tension. She
told me the proposition she'd given you, about making her forget."

"Did you talk to her about her reasons behind that?"

"A bit. Her main reason is because she really does want to forget, and
she honestly believes you're the only one who can do that for her. Of
course, I told her that she thought she'd given you control of the
situation, but ultimately, the decision was still hers. She couldn't
blame it on you if she failed to forget."

He nodded. "I've told her the surface problems, the pain when she
wouldn't ever speak to me, and the confusion about her reaction to
things. I've tried to base my actions from those irrational parts of me,
but I think she senses there's more to it than that, more than my own
hurt at her silence."

The psychologist studied him for a moment. "I don't know if she does."

"She must. Why else would she be so insistent on needing to know why,
and for what other reasons would she push at me to do something?"

Kosoff looked at him increduously, her tongue clucking.

"Not everything is about you, Mulder. She does this because she's
hurting a whole hell of a lot after what you've done."

Mulder sat back with shock, the sting of mental slap fresh and raw.

He licked his lips and held his head in his hands, elbows resting on his
knees.

"I. . .I am a pretty worthless piece of sh-"

"No. Mulder, you're not. And I won't have you saying that about yourself
while you're with me."

He glanced at her shyly.

"What can I do?"

"For what?"

"For this. . .this perversion!"

She picked at her skirt for a moment, then reagarded him with eyes that
begged to be trusted.

"I can help you, Mulder. I really feel that I can. And in helping you
defeat this, you can start getting your wife back. I really believe
that. But you're going to have to trust me. You're going to have to
endure some pretty tough things and a lot of really rough weeks. But
this can be taken away, Mulder. You did it on your own for a little
while, at least until you let sorrow and alcohol loosen the lid over it.
With a bit of prodding from me, you can wipe the hunger out of
existence."

He wanted to nod eagerly, wanted to do anything she said for the chance
to have Scully back and not mess it up.

But he considered every word she said carefully, knowing it was expected
of him.

"I want you to help me. I want to kill this thing."

She nodded and stood, shaking his hand.

"We'll start tomorrow, at noon."

He agreed, but felt let down; he wanted to start immediately, right
then.

As he gathered his suit jacket, she stopped him with a word.

"And Mulder. If Dana asks where you're going, by all means, don't *lie*
to her."

He realized with shame that he'd been trying to come up with ways to do
just that.
~~~~

Dana woke feeling sick, her insides roiling and her throat raw.

She wondered if she had sobbed herself into coughing fits during the
night, just as she had the two nights in a row when she'd first come to
her mother's.

She remembered her dreams. Mulder had been telling her all the reasons
why he didn't love her that she had listed for herself a week ago in the
intense moments of self-pity.

Sitting in bed, she pulled the phone to her and called AD Kersh,
explaining why she couldn't come in to work, letting him hear for
himself her raw, low voice.

She told him she was sick.

And as she hung up, she realized it wasn't a lie.

She was sick.

Sick of being hurt by Mulder.
~~~~

Karen's room was bright this time, the noon sun reflected off the chrome
in the cars out her window. She had placed two things on the table.

His gaze was drawn from the moment he walked in.

Two pictures: one of Scully he'd never seen before, another of a stark
naked woman, in a decidedly sick pose.

He gulped and refused to look at the woman he did not know.

His eyes kept wandering though.

She watched him battle for control, every emotion played wickedly in his
eyes, the longing and fear, the need and raw ache, the overwhelming
determination to end this.

"Mulder?"

Her voice broke through his fought-for control, and he raised his eyes
to meet hers, his cheeks flushed.

"Mulder, I want you to stare at the picture of Scully for one full
minute."

He frowned, confused, but obediently placed his gaze on the photograph
of her.

She began timing, always always looking at his eyes.

At first, it was easy to gaze at her, taking it all in, not pausing to
examine the details, just bask in the comfort even her picture seemed to
exude.

Then as his mind grew restless, he frantically poured over each and
every detail.

Her hair, pulled slightly to the side, lighter than it usually was now,
longer and more curled.

Her eyes, intense, concentrated, their blue seas caught right in the
midst of a look she'd given him often enough.

Her lips, pursed and reddened by cold, oddly set in the rest of her
features, but somehow more alluring that way.

She was young here, and innocent, and her gaze and stance seemed to call
out at him for a return to those days, the times when a mere nine
minutes lost was of major importance.

He found it easy to simply content himself in watching her.

Karen called time, and he snapped from his trance, eyes back to her,
then rushing to the clock. It had been five minutes, not one.

He questioned her with a look, but instead, she merely reach for the
photo of Scully and replaced it with another one.

"Okay, once again, look only at her picture for one minute."

He complied again, first taking stock of the overall image.

Scully: a bit later in their career, and by the hardness of her eyes,
after her abduction.

He moved immediately to the details.

There again were her eyes, but this time cold and almost lifeless,
caught in ice and memory. 

There again her hair, redder, almost the shade he now recognized, as if
she were still experimenting.

There again her lips, formed flat and unhappy.

It wasn't a picture he liked so much, but he realized with a start that
she was smiling in this one, and had been frowning in the other.

That was telling him something significant, but he wasn't sure what.

Maybe just that her life kept getting worse with every year that passed.

His eyes strayed and before he knew it, the naked girl was smiling at
him with lust.

He cried out and glanced away, to Karen Kosoff, ashamed, feeling sick.

She noted the time.

He glanced to the clock.

One minute only.

He ran a tired hand over his eyes and then looked at her, purposefully
ignoring all of the photographs on the table before her.

"What did that measure?"

"Your processing."

"Of what? My wife?"

"No, of details. You adapt very quickly, Mulder. The first time, it took
you five minutes to get bored with looking at the picture. Or I should
rather say, it took you five minutes to process every piece of that
photo and memorize it. I called time before your eyes moved on to the
other. This time, you knew what was going on, you zeroed in on the
details, ignoring the simplicity you had sought before, and simply
memorized, perhaps ever reflected, for that first full minute. Then you
moved on. I let you keep going."

"What do you mean?"

"I told you to look at her for a minute. At first you analyzed it in
such a way that you thought might waste a full minute. The second time,
when you had a rough estimate of how long a minute would be in this
moment here, you skipped the time wasting procedures and looked for
exactly one minute. You did everything right."

"So, you mean I tried to fill up my minute the first time but went
overboard, so the second time I knew better how to fill a minute. And so
I got finished faster and moved on."

She nodded excitedly. "What does that say to you?"

"I need to slow down. Do things like I want."

"Okay. Slow down how?"

"Maybe take the time to notice my wife more? To really take her in, find
new things about her that I've either forgotten or never really knew."

She murmured encouragement. "How else could you slow down in life?"

He scratched his chin. "Take a bit of a vacation. Play with my daughter,
and tell her stories. Whenever I tell her a story, time seems to drag on
endlessly, and yet it also sweeps past us. We're almost out of the
moment, out of the flowing of time. She relaxes me."

"Make time slow down for you, right?"

"Right. Make it slow down for me. Pay careful attention to Scully."

She smiled and tapped her pen next to the picture of the naked woman.

"Okay, now I want you to merely take in this picture. No need for
special attention, just so you can recall some details later."

He looked at her warily, but let his eyes fall to the page.

He glanced at the woman, his eyes lingering on certain curves, hands
twicthing in his lap.

When he looked back to Kosoff, she was watching the clock.

"Done." he said.

She looked at him in surprise. "You're done?"

He nodded.

"I'm surprised. I had expected you to fulfill the minute time
requirement I placed on you before. But you looked for thirty seconds.
What do you think that says?"

He frowned. "Either that your advice went completely out the window, and
my mind refused to slow down, or that maybe I don't need to look very
long because my curiousity it satisfied with a glimpse."

"My advice to you was to pay more attention to your wife, right?"

"Right."

"This isn't your wife here."

He dropped his mouth open, stunned. 

"Yes. You're right. Maybe I changed myself. Convinced myself to pay more
attention to Scully, and therefore less to others. I didn't need to look
long because it wasn't Scully!"

"Right. Did you think anything while you looked?"

He thought for a moment. "I don't think so."

"Did you think anything when you looked at Scully?"

"Yes. I remembered the time when she looked like she did in that first
picture, how innocent she'd seemed. And in the second, I remembered how
jaded I'd made her, how sickened at life and the government, but still,
she fought."

"You had complex thoughts while looking at her, didn't you?"

"Yes, I suppose I did."

"You had no thoughts with the naked picture, right?"

"Yes."

"What do you think that means?"

He frowned, wondering if maybe she would tell him what it meant.

"I don't know."

"Surely you do, Mulder. You've studied psychology."

"I suppose I realize that my relationship with Scully is more real, more
complex and tinted with shades of both happiness and pain, while I have
nothing but basic instinct with the naked picture of a woman."

She smiled at him. "I think that's good. Now, tell me what we discovered
about what you're thinking."

"I believe I have a reality with Scully, a life, and that I tend to rush
through the good times, always waiting for the bad, when I should pause
to take it all in, appreciate her more."

Karen looked surprise.

He grinned. "I did major in psychology."

She rolled her eyes and stood, signalling the end.

"I hope to see you tomorrow, Agent Mulder."

He nodded and turned to leave, but stopped at her door.

"I have a question."

"I'll do my best to answer it."

"Scully didn't come in to work today. Do you know what that might mean?"

Kosoff was silent, contemplating him.

"It could mean she's afraid of confronting you. Or maybe afraid of
hurting."

He nodded painfully and stepped once more for the door.

"Agent Mulder?" she called.

He paused, back still to her.

"This isn't going to be easy, for either of you. Let her work this out
on her own, and when she comes for you, take her back as quickly as you
can."

The warning was ominous and he slipped out the door, feeling dead again.
~~~~

~~~~

"Michael says don't shout at me like I was born a fool
You speak of love and scream of love
now dare to treat me cruel
nothing's fare in love and war
so please let's make some rules
there's a little boy who's crying over here."
--"How Do You Tell Someone?" Cowboy Mouth

~~~~

Mulder found the store quickly enough, and managed to grab the few
things he needed without much hassle.

The grocery clerk glanced at him, but said nothing, and Mulder had the
irrational feeling that everyone in the world knew his secret, that
everyone everywhere could tell that he was a perverted, sick man.

He licked his lips, grabbed his bags and change, and then headed for the
door, glancing to his watch.

He really had to go get Grace, it was past nine o'clock.

The session with Karen Kosoff has lasted a lot longer than either
expected, ending with him sobbing on the floor like a child, and her
trying to make him see that a cure was possible, that he really could
surmount this.

He was having a hard time thinking so.

It'd been a month now.

A month since she had walked into that bar, her face frozen, her fingers
clutching Grace's shoulders, and seen him there, arms around that girl,
face pressed so close, he could smell her soap.

At that instant, he had felt the change, felt the very air charge with
something that made him sick.

He had looked up, glanced to the door, almost as a reflex, almost
feeling her waves of horror throughout his body.

And he had seen her, just as she had seen him.

Their eyes had met.

Locked.

He pushed the woman away from him, felt sick, sick sick.

Felt he couldn't breathe.

She had quickly turned Grace to the door, escaped.

Escaped from him.

He had nightmares about that day, had that feeling forever imprinted
upon him like a brand.

He would never forget the look in her eyes.

Broken. Everything was broken.

Her trust in him, their marriage, their love.

Her.

All fell to pieces in a brief second of his own weakness.

He knew there had to be time for them, time to at least marginally heal
the wounds ripped deep within them both.

Racing home after her, in the same route he now took from the store, he
had recited an apology over and over, mumbling to himself his stupidity,
imagining the conversation in his head.

Of course, the conversation was unimaginable. He never would have
thought he would have to beg her forgiveness after committing adultery.

Never thought he'd ever be unfaithful.

After Diana, he had sworn never to let it creep in, never to collapse
into that kind of life.

His own inconsolable guilt after it, the way she would look at him with
such grief in her eyes after the death of their child and he would see
the grief for what he'd done. It made him shake.

When he'd married Scully, he'd thrown out the videos, all but a few, and
when Gracie had been born, he had gotten rid of it all.

He thought he had gotten rid of the hole too.

It seemed as if he never would.

He pulled into the driveway, unthinkingly opening his door and
depositing the bags on the counter. Only then did it hit him that he
hadn't picked up Grace yet.

Groaning, he grabbed the phone.

Mrs. Scully answered immediately, concern lacing her voice.

"Mrs. Scully. I just got through with work. . .Is Grace asleep?"

"Yes. When you called and said you might be late, Dana put her to bed at
eight thirty, as usual."

Mulder swallowed the unnatural sense of sorrow this thought produced and
scratched at the countertop with a fingernail.

"Do you mind keeping her overnight? I'm about crash."

"No problem, Fox. You can just come for her tomorrow."

"I'll call at lunchtime to talk to her, make sure she knows I'm not
forgetting her."

He could hear Mrs. Scully sigh softly. "You're a good father, Fox."

He wanted to throw up. "I'm hardly even a man, let alone good."

"Fox. . .I know you've made mistakes. This takes time. Time."

"Mrs. Scully. . .I don't think I'll ever get my family back."

She said nothing, merely listened to him breathe sobs over the
phoneline.

"I've been going to a counselor. Did you know that?"

"Dana told me that first day you went. Is it helping?"

"It's made me realize how much I take things for granted. I also think
I'm getting things back on track, repairing the damage I did to myself a
long long time ago."

She sighed, a mixture of relief and sorrow. "I'm sorry it took this for
that to happen, but I'm glad you're resolving things about Samantha."

Mulder wanted to let it go at that, wanted to let her think that was all
there was to it, but he couldn't.

He couldn't let this claim another part of his life.

"Mrs. Scully, it's not about Samantha. I'd come to terms with that long
before. That's not it at all."

She was silent, tense and waiting.

"Could I talk to Scully for a bit? There's something I need to tell both
of you I think."

"Not over the phone, Fox."

He picked at the counter, rubbing his thumb into the little hole where
Scully had placed a hot pan and burned the formica.

"No. Not the phone. When I come over tomorrow."

"Let me get her."

He took a shaky breath, gathered whatever courage he still had left in
him, wanting to sound confident to her on the phone, even if he was
shaking inside.

"'Lo?" she said, the first part of her word cut off as she turned from
the phone.

He could hear Margaret explaining in the background.

"Scully."

"Mulder, what is it?" 

She sounded worried, not frustrated at him or annoyed. He took it as a
good sign.

"When I come over tomorrow, I was hoping I could talk to you, and your
mother."

"All right. Do I need to make Gracie scarce?"

He breathed out heavily. "Oh, yes. Yes. She doesn't need this at all."

He could hear her voice catch as she agreed.

"Scully, it's not. . .not going to be that great."

"What do you mean Mulder? Why don't you just tell me now?"

"I need to do this face to face. I need to see you, your eyes."

"You. . .you don't want this anymore?" she whispered, a shot in the
dark.

He froze. "No. No. I want this so bad, Scully. But I need to be truthful
with you. Honest."

He knew her mind was racing.

"Mulder, this is cruel. You can't be ambiguous like this, and then
expect me to go to sleep tonight, work with you tomorrow, and not
worry."

"*This* is cruel? And you telling me two days ago that you'd call, and
then ignoring me completely, isn't?"

She sighed and slumped to the couch. "Mulder. . .I. . .I hadn't found
the courage."

He bowed his head. "Neither have I. . .Since when do *you* need courage
to talk to me?"

She bit her lip and closed her eyes. "Since you came home to tell me
you'd cheated on me. On us."

He felt the great sobs tangling him again, and he must have made a
horrid noise because she sighed.

"That was unfair of me," she whispered.

"This was all unfair of me," he answered. "I'll come over tonight. I'll
tell you then."

She paused, and he knew she was afraid of what he might say.

"All right. All right."

She was about to hang up, but he shouted out her name, suddenly feeling
panicked.

"Scully. Scully, wait."

"What?"

"Whatever happens. . .don't take Gracie from me. Please, please don't."

"I couldn't Mulder. She wants *you.*"

He closed his eyes. After this . . .that would no longer matter.

"Be there in about twenty minutes, Scully."

She made a noise and they hung up simultaneously.

If he told them this, she would have every right, every *legal* right,
to take Gracie away from him for a long lonely time.

He would never see her again.
~~~~

She greeted him at the door, her face a mask of coolness, but civility,
and he was grateful for it.

Mrs. Scully came up behind her daughter and smiled warmly at him, taking
his coat and gesturing for them to sit in the living room.

He walked in and saw Grace's Barbies sitting out, as if she had fallen
asleep in the middle of playing. Looking at them, he fingered a pink
dress placed on haphazardly, and the small fingers of one of the babies.

Glancing up, he saw Scully watching him warily, her hands on her thighs
as she sat stiffly on the couch.

"I'm gonna go see Gracie for a minute," he said, whispering as if he
thought anything more would wake her.

She nodded and accepted the tea her mother offered, then watched him
walk from the room.

Grace's bed was massive and impressive with long wooden poles jutting
nearly to the ceiling cradling a soft canopy of silky blue. The
bedspread that was now on the floor was also blue, but a dark navy color
that contrasted beautifully with the pale blue paint on the walls.

Gracie loved blue, and this room had once been a sewing room of Mrs.
Scully's, converted for the new grandchild when she was born.

Matthew Scully, her nephew, had the next bedroom when he came, but at
the moment, he knew Dana slept there, just as Bill and Tara slept in
Gracie's room when they came. The Mulders had never stayed at Mrs.
Scully's when Bill was over. It was just a bad idea. 

Walking in softly, Mulder watched her breathe.

He pulled the bedspread from the floor and covered her with it gently,
tucking it around her sprawled frame. The sheet was twisted around one
arm and he carefully freed it, then moved her bear to rest next to her.

She sighed softly with dreams and sleep, making Mulder smile.

Bending low, he kissed her brow, and then her nose, as she always asked
him to.

He sat there for a moment, gazing at her, memorizing her features as if
he expected to never return.

Wondering if Scully would ever let him near her and Grace once he
confessed his ultimate sin, he smelled her distinct scent.

He felt as if he were being led before judge and jury, with no hope of
plea bargain.

But he stood, and backed away from her bed, bumping into Scully who was
standing in the doorway.

He turned and caught her before she could teeter off balance, and she
gazed up into his eyes.

Leaning in, she placed a kiss to his chest, a soft sort of gesture meant
to give him confidence.

She thought she'd already heard the worst of it.

He took her hand and squeezed it, but let go once they got to the living
room.

She sat opposite him and he took a deep breath, looking once to Mrs.
Scully, then back to Dana.

Here it all goes to hell.
~~~~

Scully watched him fidget for about a minute, still warm with the image
of Mulder tucking Grace in, still content in the state of limbo they
seemed to be in.

He opened his mouth, and by the funny look in his eyes, she knew it was
going to be bad.

"I've been seeing Karen Kosoff for the past month," he said, then
paused.

She blinked, confused and feeling fear creep over her. "Seeing her?"

He glanced to her, then his eyes grew wide. "No. Not like that, Scully!
For help. As a psychologist."

She nodded as if she knew that all along, but he saw the relief in her
eyes.

"I have a real problem, Scully. . .and it's not a pretty thing. When I
was about six, I found some of my father's magazines. . .they were
pretty uh, explicit."

Mrs. Scully watched him calmly and he wondered if telling this to Scully
in front of her mother was a good idea.

"It kind of grew from there, especially after Samantha was taken and I
really didn't have many good friends. It heightened when I got my
license, and took off when I went into Oxford. It was easier to get
things in Europe."

"What. . .what took off? What are you talking about?" she said.

"I have a problem with . . .with porn," he said softly, and would not
meet her eyes.

But she laughed. "Mulder. . .I found those videos the first year of our
partnership. Don't you remember that? In fact, we joked a *lot* about
those videos."

He shook his head. "Scully, I don't think you grasp the seriousness of
this. It's not just videos. . .ah. . .I've called 900 numbers. . .even 
when we were married. I. . .I've gone to movies, strip clubs. . .
prostitutes when I was younger."

She had her mouth hung open, then she glanced quickly to her mother. He
thought he detected a hint of shame.

She was ashamed of him.

"Mulder. . .that was when you were young. I. . .I don't see. You threw
out the last of it when I had Grace. I watched you."

"And I stopped for awhile. But when Grace was only six months old, I
went to some adult stores along the Strip. It was small stuff, not quite
hard porn. But it quickly grew. . .Scully, it's all encompassing. And it
started with Diana."

She was silent, her hand placed over her mouth as if she could keep in
all the bad things she wanted to shout at him.

Her eyes drifted shut, pain etched in her face.

"Scully. . .I'm sorry. I'm trying to make it go away."

She took in a shaky breath and her eyes were bright when she looked at
him again.

"I. . .I never thought it was a problem. I thought it was harmless.
Something all bachelors did."

"Scully, most bachelors I know don't go to the lengths I did even after
we got married."

"This is my fault. I knew it was going on, Mulder. I knew you went to
those movies. You didn't hide it well. I just thought you assumed I'd be
angry at you. I knew this was going on and I didn't see it for what it
was. Or maybe I did and deluded myself into thinking everything was
okay."

He reeled back, stunned.

She was blaming herself.

He looked to Mrs. Scully, as if for help. She shrugged.

"Scully, Scully. This isn't your fault. I got caught up in this when I
was six. It's hard to stop, harder to know the reasons why it seems like
I need it."

"I. . .I should have understood. Those girls. . .they were all part of
it, weren' they?"

"A lot of it. Diana, I explained before."

"Mm. We don't need to get into that again." She gave him a tentative
smile.

He nodded, too overcome with shame to look at her straight.

"Scully. Please don't take Grace away from me."

She drew in a quick, sharp breath. "I'm not doing anything until we get
this all resolved, Mulder. Let alone grab Gracie and leave the country."

He shook his head. "You could legally. This is more than enough to-"

"Mulder, you trusted me with this. I hope you did, anyway. I'm not going
to make you wish you'd never told me. I know you would never expose this
to Grace, I *know* you'd never hurt her."

He gave a sigh of relief.

She paused. "You do trust me, right?"

He looked startled. "Of course. Why else would I even come here
tonight?"

She shrugged and glanced to her fingers. "Is there anything I can do to
help you with this, Mulder?"

He rubbed his hands over his face, then saw Mrs. Scully looking at him.

She stood and touched his shoulder. "I'm also honored that you trusted
me with this, Fox. I'll let you talk with Dana alone."

He gave her a grateful look and watched her leave.

Scully repeated her question.

"I don't know what you can do. This is my personal beast, Scully. . ."

"Let me help you *fight* it."

He felt bitterness seep through him. "You really can't do that, Scully.
All I need from you is . . .you. And you're not willing to give that to
me."

She breathed in sharply, stung.

He looked at her softly, wishing he hadn't said it.

"I understand why, Scully. You can't forget. But that doesn't help me
much. I have to deal with this, and then work on us."

"Why can't we do both at the same time?"

He closed his eyes, weary.

"It's hard enough to beat this thing. But it's the root of all our
problems, Scully. I can't work *us* out when this is still here. I'd end
up hurting us more than I already have."

She looked away. "All right then. If that's what you've decided."

"It's not so much me, Scully. But how can you forget what I've done when
it's intrinsic to this bigger problem?"

She hung her head. "I. . .I don't know."

He stood and pulled on his coat again, easing toward the door.

"I do love you, Scully. Never doubt that. But this has complete control
of me, of even my love. I can't love you properly when it has me. It
wouldn't be fair to you *or* to me."

She turned at his voice, met his eyes with tears that refused to fall.

He felt his back hit the door, she standing in the foyer.

"I don't think either of us can love properly. We just have to do the
best we can," she replied.

"My best isn't so hot right now."

She let him open the door, watched him glance out at the rain pouring
down now.

"So, I guess we're on hold for awhile?" She was trying to prolong the
moment, maybe trying to get him to stay; she wasn't sure what she meant
anymore.

He turned back, pushed open the storm door with a shaking hand.

"Until I can beat this."

She nodded, feeling hopeless, suffocated.

He closed the door behind him.

She slumped to the floor and cried, pushing away her mother and wanting,
needing to feel miserable.

He couldn't beat this by himself.

And she couldn't heal helping him.

It was a horrible, never ending war.

And their little family was loosing all the important battles.
~~~~

~~~~

"The closer they get the further they're slippin' away
I can almost feel the redemption forgiveness becomes."
--"Man On the Run," Cowboy Mouth

~~~~

"I keep feeling like I'm getting somewhere, but then I'll start to think
about Scully and it gets me depressed again. . .and. . .it all goes
downhill," he explained softly.

Karen nodded and leaned back in her chair, anxious not to have a repeat
of his last four visits, where he ended up storming from the office in
frustration and fear.

They seemed to be getting nowhere.

She said it just had to take time.

"Have you thought about asking her to help?" she asked.

He shook his head. "I can't. She can't help me. This is most of the
reason why we're separated at the moment, and asking her to come in on
it would be like asking her to willingly subject herself to the things
that hurt her most."

"And you're not doing that either?"

"I am, but not really because I want to. I'm not going to let her do
that."

"If you really don't want to be doing this, then why are you here?"

He shifted in the couch, then glanced nervously out the window. 

"Because I want her back. But I want her to feel safe about it, to know
that nothing's gonna happen this time because I beat it."

"If you let her help you, maybe that would help her feel that better."

He seemed willing to listen; she continued.

"If she can have a part in helping you control this, then she'll feel
she has more vested in this, and she'll see firsthand how you can keep
this from dominating both of your lives."

"I guess you want me to ask her, huh?"

"Only if you feel comfortable with it." Karen smoothed her notepad and
settled back into the seat again.

"I don't. I really ought to do this myself. If I do it on my own, then
she'll know I can master it without help. She sees strength in terms of
what one person alone can accomplish."

"You think she'll see you as weak if you ask her for help?"

"Yes. She never asks me for help. It's the way she is. I know that
asking for help isn't a sign of weakness, but of strength. She doesn't
see it like that." Mulder spoke as if he were the praticing
psychologist, sure in his profile of his partner.

"What if she didn't think it weak, but felt it necessary for you to do
this together?"

"If she did, I'd willingly accept her help. Willingly ask."

"But you don't think she feels that way."

"She wants as far away from the memory of what I did to her as she can
possibly get."

His nose crinkled and she detected traces of his old guilt.

"But wouldn't you be a reminder to her?"

"I have to make her forget. And this is the only way how." He looked her
straight in the eyes for the first time in two days.

"That's why you're determined to go through with this."

She tilted her head, watching his response.

"Yes."

"All right. But just think about it for me, all right?"

He nodded easily, meaning he had no intention.

She sighed and they began discussing the journal he'd kept for the
previous week, going over point by point, everything he felt and heard
and anything that might have triggered the raw ache in him that needed
to be filled.

She was feeling pretty hopeless.
~~~~

Scully had taken off work to see Grace, missing her presence.

Usually Mulder got to her mother's house just after her, so that she
only had a few minutes with her daughter. The weekends Grace was hers,
but Scully knew that wasn't enough.

It would never be enough. This was her little girl, her baby.

It made her sick to realize that, if it came down to it, she'd use
Mulder's confession against him to keep Grace with her.

But she was hoping that Mulder would get things together and they could
work everything out.

She knew she was ready to do that, absence from him and Grace was making
her long for some kind of progress.

"Mommy?"

"Yeah, baby?"

"I want nut and jelly for lunch," she said and danced through Scully's
legs.

It was her way of saying peanut butter and jelly.

When she was littler, she used to say nut butt and jelly. It had made
Mulder laugh so hard he'd fallen off his chair and cut his head on the
table.

She smiled and took out the bread for lunch, grabbing the jars and some
sliced deli turkey from the fridge.

Making lunch for Grace felt natural, but achingly bitter too, as she
realized she hadn't done it in a long time.

Not since last weekend.

It was a long time to be without.

An even longer time since she'd felt Mulder near her, felt him at least
trying to put things right. She knew he still went to the therapist,
knew he was battling the beast inside him, but it seemed hollow in her
life without him.

She missed his odd humor, his smile and leers and lips.

She wanted his hand in the small of her back again, wanted that caress
of his eyes along her form. She missed him.

He'd hurt her, hurt her very deeply. 

But in the loneliness, in the times when Grace was gone and Mulder
further away than ever, she begged God for her family.

Then Mulder would come in for Grace, shy and hesitant, and she would see
the hurt there again, see the guilt he projected at her in volumes, and
she would want to retch, want to run from the room in tears for
everything that was destroyed.

It made her feel awful, made her swing back and forth between adoring,
loving him and fearing, hating him.

Some days she called in sick, moped in her bed under the covers and
found pity her best and worst friend. On those days, Grace would sneak
in while she slept, and Scully would wake to find her little girl curled
up at her side, sleeping peacefully.

Not a day went by where Grace didn't say she missed her mother.

It made her ache.

All in all, everything made her ache these days.

She was going to have to get over this, going to have to accept that
Mulder might not be coming back.

Ever.
~~~~

Karen Kosoff watched him through her glasses, the haunted look in his
eyes making her wince. He'd lost a lot of weight and his pants hung low
on bony hips. His chin was more prominent with the tight look of the
sick.

She motioned for him to sit and he cradled his head in his hands.

"Mulder, have you thougtht any more about asking Dana to help you?"

He stood violently, his eyes blazing, furious. "Would you just shut up
about it? I am so sick of you asking that!"

Karen steeled her gaze and it dropped him like a bird hit with a rock.

He slumped into the couch, mumbling apologies.

She shook her head. "Mulder. . .Mulder, I really think you need her."

"Of course I need her. She's my life. But I'm through with being selfish
about everything. She can't. . .doesn't need this."

"Or maybe you just don't want her to know all the sordid details. Is
that it? Maybe you really are being selfish. Maybe it would be the best
thing in the world for her right now and you can see that, but you're
afraid."

He stared at her. "How could this be selfish of me? I feel like I'm
going to fall apart at any time."

"You're hurting her by not letting her in. You're hiding yourself from
her, just as you told me she hid from you."

"No, no. Quit confusing me on this."

"Maybe you're confused."

"Stop it!"

"Maybe you want to think you're protecting her. But hasn't she told you
numerous times she doesn't want you to do that?"

"Stop twisting this all around."

Karen backed off, knowing he was treading on dangerously thin ice.

"Mulder, if there wasn't that thing about patient confidentiality, I'd
call her up in a heartbeat and get her down here."

He sighed wearily and moaned. "Would you just stop already? Stop making
me confused, and help me cure this."

She closed her eyes and debated a very risky thing.

It could destroy his trust in her, it could ruin him forever.

Or it could push him away from the edge.

"I don't think I can go any further with you, Mulder. You refuse to help
yourself in the only way I see possible at this moment. I can't help
you."

He stared at her, shaking, his eyes filled with horror and remorse.

Then they closed her away.

"Fine." 

He got up from the couch, slipped his coat back on, and opened her door.

She sat there, feeling sick.

It had been the truth; there was nothing that could be done unless he
was willing to help himself.

"I thought you wanted to help me," he said softly and she knew it was
not a guilt trip he was trying to subject her to, but the brutally
honest truth from a man who sometimes acted like a child.

He shut the door and walked away.

Karen closed her eyes and prayed.
~~~~

Mulder called at five to say that he needed some time alone, and would
they please keep Gracie overnight?

Scully wanted to know why and he refused to answer.

She felt like a stranger to him.

He collapsed on his couch and stared into the nothingness of the wall
before him, reflecting on everything that had happened.

They were no closer to repairing the hole in him, or the rift between
him and Scully.

All for nothing.

He was damaged to the core, stained from too much of everything.

What he really needed was work, work and Scully, but neither were
attainable. Scully needed a whole man, and work needed some
concentration he was just too exhausted to give.

Feeling a pain, Mulder reached around his back for his holster, the
thick part digging into his hip. He pulled out his gun and set it on the
coffee table.

He stared at it, contemplating, for a long long time.

It was dull black, like his life.

This would be quick, he thought. Unassuming. Easy to pull off.

Deadly.

No more of this ache, no more of the awful realization that if he never
beat this thing, he'd never have his family back.

As one hand snaked toward the barrel of the gun, he knew what he had to
do.
~~~~

~~~~

"Found a way to make it silent.
I'm coming up for air.
Coming up for air.
Air. . .
They hold my hand and ask me to pull through
A voice I know says dear he probably can't hear you."
--"Air" Ben Folds Five

~~~~

Scully laid the blanket over the foot of the sleigh bed, then
straightened up to pull down the comforter.

Gracie watched her from the doorway, her form framed by the light
spilling in from the hall. The stars shone in through her window,
illuminating the blue walls with a kind of gentleness that made her feel
as if everything was a dream.

Patting the bed next to her, she motioned for Grace to hop in to bed,
her stuffed bear in Scully's lap.

Gracie charged for the bed and bounced on it, then wiggled down under
the covers.

"Where's Daddy?"

"He's not coming, Gracie."

Her face screwed up as she fought to keep tears from her eyes.

Scully felt awful. "Baby, I don't mean ever. He'll be here in the
morning. He's letting us spend more time together."

"Oh. But he'll be here?"

"That's right, Gracie. He'll be here."

Scully stood, pulling the blankets and covers over her small body,
bending down to trace her profile in the moonlight.

It hurt to her soul every time Gracie wished for her Dad.

Wished not to be with her.

"Good night, Grace."

"Night, Mommy."

She crept out of the blue bedroom, feeling the girl's eyes on her,
watching as she held her head high.

Dana shut the door softly behind her, then steeled her heart to refuse
the tears welling in her. She didn't want this anymore, didn't want this
messed up life.

Why couldn't things never have changed? If she hadn't gone in to
surprise Mulder that night. . .if she had just stayed at home, she'd
have never known about his unfaithfulness.

Never have known.

They could have lived on together, whole and happy. Grace with both her
parents all the time, and Scully with her blithe innocence.

Innocence.

Shaking her head and remembering their talk in the kitchen that night,
the way he had blamed her for parts of their failures, and rightfully
so.

No, this would have happened eventually. Everything had been spiralling
out of control, nose-diving to this very event.

She supposed she didn't want him lying to her either. 

The truth was better, right? They had fought for it in the past twelve
years, dedicated their lives to uncovering the truth.

To live in a lie would be. . .

bliss.

She closed her eyes and slumped to the floor with the shame of it.

Bliss.

Why couldn't she never have known?
~~~~

She opened her eyes.

Awake.

She was awake.

Her room was dark, the deep darkness of late night or almost early
morning, with the moon obscured by hours and the stars dull and
shineless.

She sat up, heart thudding loudly.

A sound made her breath pause, her pulse quicken.

The window.

She crept out of bed, her feet touching the cold carpet with haste,
wishing she had her gun closer than the top shelf of the closet.

The noise came sharply again.

A rock hitting the window.

Going to it, she yanked aside the curtains, then carefully peaked out
the window.

A man stood below, shivering in the chill, bending down to pick up
another pebble from the yard.

She peered down and realized it was Mulder.

Pulling up the blinds, she unlocked the window, hefting it with a grunt
as the paint came unstuck.

He had just reared back to throw, arm poised above, when her head stuck
out the window, hair billowing out in the wind.

"Scully!"

She hissed something to him and he squinted, trying to understand.

"What are you doing?" she said a bit louder.

"I didn't want to wake your Mom or Gracie."

She rolled her eyes and told him to stay there.

Turning from the window, she shivered in the draft, goose bumps rising
on her arms.

She grabbed some jeans that were hanging over a chair and stuffed them
on beneath her nightgown. She pulled that off and walked half naked to
the chest of drawers for her bra and a shirt.

Then she yanked a sweatshirt on top of all of it, and shoved her tennis
shoes on without socks.

All the while, she wondered what he was doing at her mother's house at
twelve o'clock in the morning.

She tiptoed down the hall stairs and to the front door, unlocking it as
gently as possible. The resounding click made her wince with how loud it
was, and she paused there, waiting.

Her very breath seemed to be too loud, and she eased the door open, then
the storm door.

No one woke.

She closed the door behind her, then turned around.

She gasped at the face so close to her own.

Closing her eyes, breathig sharply, she rested a hand on his chest, as
if to push him away.

"Mulder."

"Scully."

She opened her eyes, and she was composed once more.

"What are you doing?"

"Looking for you."

She moved away from him, needing to keep his energy away from her. He
always could make her almost dizzy with his nearness.

She sat on the porch, letting her feet dangle above the flowerbeds.

He leaned against the pillar and watched her.

The night was darker than it had been earlier, with the stars looking
tired of shining, the moon beginning to set.

The paint on her mother's house was peeling at the foundation, the grey
smoothness marred by chips of dirt and bare concrete.

"What is it you want from me?"

She turned to see him, her mouth like metallic roses in the faint light
as she spoke.

"I almost killed myself tonight."

Her breath caught in her throat and she grew angry and frightened all 
at once.

"What is that? Are you trying to make me feel guilty, Mulder? Well, I
do. Congratulations."

"No. No, I'm not here to blame you. I'm here to rejoice with you. I
almost killed myself tonight, but I didn't. I figured everything out,
Scully. I understand myself and I can beat this now. But . . . I need
you to help me."

She turned to him, wanting to rise and go to him, but feeling as if she
were in a giant spider web.

And Mulder was probably the black widow.

"Help you?"

"I need your help. I can't get past this without you, Scully. I don't
know why. No, I *do* know why. You're my life, Scully. Without you, I
have nothing."

He was talking erratically, running his hands through his hair, pleading
with her in a voice she could never deny.

The wind made the prickly bushes growing along the house sigh, and move
closer to her, snagging her legs with their spiked leaves.

He pushed away from the pillar and walked up to her, squatting suddenly
to be on her eye level.

"I'm asking for your help as my friend, Scully. But more importantly, as
my wife."

She could feel the pain even then, even as he begged for her, and she
could hear the sounds of his words as he'd told her he'd been
unfaithful.

But she was breathing in every one of his exhalations, smelling the very
crazy essence of him, watching the centers of his eyes as he urged her.

She closed her eyes, felt the edges of the porch under her fingers,
along the backs of her legs, shivered in the cutting wind.

"What do you need me to do?"

He laughed and grabbed her in a fierce hug, forgetting everything
between them, delighting in this one victory.

She let herself be swept away by his storm.
~~~~

Karen Kosoff was shocked to see both of them that morning, despite the
fact that Mulder was standing as far from Scully as she could get him,
and that they both had sour looks on their faces.

"I'm back," Mulder said needlessly, his words soft and submissive.

Karen turned to Agent Scully.

"Dana, do you want to be here?"

Scully's face blanched and Karen thought that maybe, secretly, she
didn't.

But she was doing it for him, for them.

It was admirable, to say the most, and somewhat pathetic too.

"Yes," she replied, and set her face into a determined mask.

Karen shrugged and led them into the office.

Mulder sat in his customary place on the couch, and Scully in her
straight backed chair, the one piece of furniture that probably said the
most about her.

Kosoff smiled brightly and turned to Scully.

"So, did Agent Mulder tell you why you're here?"

"Yes. He almost killed himself."

Her brows raised, noting Scully's dejected look and Mulder's guilty
face.

"Oh?"

Mulder cleared his throat.

"I, uh. I wasn't going to come back. But I was alone in our house and
thinking and I picked up my gun, not even really thinking about pointing
it at myself, and then, all of a sudden, I wanted it to end. I just
wanted it to end. With that gun there and me there and nothing seeming
to go right, I just sat there and trembled. And I put it in my mouth,
and sat there. I sat there."

Mulder dropped his head, ashamed at telling this in front of Scully.

"And then, all I could see was Grace. See Grace forever asking what
happened to Daddy. And I couldn't. I may have done a lot of stupid
things in my life, but Grace isn't one of them. Leaving her is."

Scully turned her head, tears streaming down both cheeks, ragged sighs
escaping with her breath.

Mulder sat back.

Kosoff looked first to him, then to Scully.

"Dana, how does that make you feel?"

Her face turned, and she saw anger there, furious and indignant.

But her voice started out quietly, soft.

"It makes me sick. That he can be so calm about it. Calm. When *I* would
have been the one they called, to come identify his bloody remains. And
I would have been the one to autopsy him, he knows I wouldn't have let
it go at suicide. I would have had to look at Grace, our little girl,
and tell her that Daddy is *never* coming back. . .never coming back."

Her sobs caught up with her words and she hunched over in her seat,
trying to hide them.

She had to continue though.

"And what did he think about? Grace. Having Grace go fatherless. That's
all. Not that *I* might hurt. That I do hurt."

Mulder was feeling her anger leech into him, her arrogant sense of
righteousness.

"How the hell am I to even know you hurt, Scully? Huh? How am I to know
when you never tell me. . .when you never even look at me anymore?"

Her head snapped up, eyes flaming, nostrils wide with crying and anger.

She spit out: "How can I look at you after all you've done?"

His head bowed, anger blew from him like air from a balloon.

He slumped in the chair, utterly exhausted.

She wanted to apologize, but she didn't. She just sat there, stone cold
again.

Kosoff shifted in her chair and they both glanced to her, staring as if
they'd forgotten she was even there.

"Dana. You're angry at what he's done?"

"Yes," The word was laced with fury.

"Why do you clam up then? Why don't you tell him that?"

She was silent, having nothing to say.

"No. Don't decide to drop it now. You brought it up. Tell him what he's
done wrong. Tell him why you hate him."

"I don't hate him!"

The words came from her with such conviction, such surprise, that it
made Mulder look up, for the first time feeling that maybe she didn't.

"He thinks you do."

"I don't! I love him," she said, glancing over to Mulder, eyes pleading
to set the woman straight.

"You still do?" he said, voice awed.

She felt like she was going to sob again. "Of course, Mulder. Just
because you hurt me doesn't mean it makes it turn off. There's no valve.
Believe me, at times I *want* to."

He blinked. "Why do you want it to stop?"

She gaped at him. "Because it *hurts*."

He shrugged, moving his shoulders as if her were trying to cast off a
heavy burden.

"Isn't that what love is?" he said finally, glancing hesitantly into her
eyes for confirmation.

She sat there silently, rocked to the core.

"Love isn't supposed to hurt," she whispered, but she wasn't sure.

He shook his head, remembering his own childhood and his life before
her.

"It always has. It always will. You just have to take the good out of it
and move on."

She shook her head. "I don't want this to hurt. It wouldn't be *worth*
it."

He smiled softly at her, at the way her hair spilled around her cheeks,
dried of tears, smiling at the awe in her voice.

"It's worth it, Scully. It's worth the feeling I get waking up next to
you, worth holding Gracie in my arms. It's worth almost killing myself
and screaming at you when all I want to do is kiss you."

Breathing through her mouth, eyes turning deep blue again, she stared at
him, felt something stir.

It was resignation.

She felt the words leave her lips in shudders.

"No. No it's not worth it."

She closed her eyes, let her body slump into the chair, and wished it to
all be over.
~~~~

There was silence reigning proudly, its sceptor the golden light of the
sun warming them.

She raised a hand to her brow, biting her lip as Mulder stared at her,
her words seeming to bounce around the room, knocking over dignity and
maiming innocence.

He closed his eyes, shut out the sight of her grief, tried to comprehend
her statement.

It wouldn't process, wouldn't and couldn't be accepted.

"I don't believe that," he said. 

She looked at him.

"I don't think you believe it either."

She hung her head, rubbed the ridges of her eyes with a thumb.

"When we get past this, Scully. When it ends, we'll be better and bigger
and stronger. It's always been that way. Every awful case, every trying
time we've had only pulls us that much closer."

She looked up, opened her mouth to say something, to remind him of the
many times where things simply degenerated into spirals of uneasiness.

But he was eagerly pressing on, refuting her claim as always. This was
how it happened between them. She was able to look at reality, and he
wanted to believe the fantasy.

"Scully, remember Antarctica? That seemed hopeless. I never thought I'd
find you. But we made it. We made it."

She shook her head. "And after all that? We lost the X-Files. We lost
each other. We couldn't talk about what happened right outside your
apartment, we couldn't agree on anything. Diana . . ."

Her breath caught and she bit her lip.

"Diana came between us then, just as now."

He frowned, shaking his head. "But we overcame that. So maybe we never
agreed as to what happened. Maybe you never did back me up with the
physical proof we needed. But we overcame."

She looked at him as if he were an idiot.

"I never backed you up? Is that how you see it? Mulder, we did not
overcome anything. We forgot. We let go of it and pretended it never
happened. See where pretending has gotten us? With twelve years of
emotions and hurt and accusations bottled so tight, we don't even know
it anymore."

"But, Scully, those things don't *matter* to us anymore. It makes no
difference whether or not we have proof, or connections, or even if I
was right or you were right. I love you. Without a doubt. Forever.
That's what matters. That's what counts."

She wanted to agree, wanted to forget everything again.

"We can't go on just ignoring every problem we come up against. Pretty
soon we'll be surrounded by problems, and going nowhere," she answered.

"I really don't have a problem with going nowhere. As long as it's with
you."

"That's just it. You *do* have a problem with it. You do. Our hidden
problems made you go seek out Diana, our hidden problems tear us apart.
And you're never content to sit back and do nothing."

He gave a sigh and then leaned back in the chair.

His lips shaped the question he didn't want to ask: "So, you think this
isn't worth it?"

"That's not it. I think that ignoring this, pretending we're okay again,
is not going to lead anywhere. I think it's only going to make us hurt
worse later on. And *that's* not worth it now."

She glanced nervously to Karen Kosoff, wondering if this was right, or
if she was just making things. . .worse.

The woman's eyebrow was raised and she nodded thoughtfully.

"So what do we do now?" Mulder asked, glancing not at Scully, but at the
psychologist sitting there demurely.

"We work this out," she answered calmly.

Mulder looked to Scully.

Scully stared at him.

They glaned to Karen.

"All right. How do we start?"
~~~~

Scully arrived at her mother's house just minutes before Mulder, feeling
exhausted and pained, but with a sense of quiet calm that reached down
into her soul.

They were going to make it.

They were going to be all right.

Her mother came in from the living room to greet her, giving her a kiss
on each cheek, noting the marked change in her daughter.

"How's everything?" she said.

Scully smiled as Mulder's car pulled into the driveway.

"Mulder's going to stay in Grace's room tonight. Grace can sleep with
me."

Margaret Scully beamed, then went to the laundry room for fresh towels
and sheets.

Grace ran to meet her, excited as she watched her Daddy walk in the
door.

"Hey Gracie!"

"Daddy!" she shrieked and threw herself into his legs.

Laughing, Mulder picked her up, swinging her around and feeling good.

Or at least, better than he had last night.

"Grace, what have you been doing?" he asked, tucking her tight beside
him, kissing her cheek fondly.

She squirmed and rubbed his jaw.

"You need a shave, Daddy."

He smiled and pushed his chin into her face, scratching her.

She giggled and pushed out of his arms and onto the floor, running to
the living room.

Mulder looked to Scully, giving her a shy smile and a soft look.

That one glance was electric, made her freeze to the spot, but hot to
the core.

Grace came back in with her coloring book, flipping intently through the
pages and missing the look travelling between her parents.

She walked to her father, bumping into his leg as she anxiously looked
for the pages she had colored, standing very still.

Absently, Mulder placed his hand to her head, holding her firmly, his
eyes still on Scully.

Grace glanced up, his hand slipping with her hair, and she watched them
for a moment.

Smiling, their daughter laughed, then grabbed Scully's hand. She yanked
on her fingers and brought her mother closer to her father.

Mulder reached out tentatively for Scully, his hand coming to rest on
her waist, the air thick enough to swallow.

His thumb made lazy lines along the top of her jeans, dipping in to her
belly button and then away.

She stood very still, breathing in the new charge around them. This was
not their old desire, not the chemical attraction that had linked them
in the beginning.

It was something new.

He leaned forward, moving only inches in hours, his lips quirking over
hers.

Grace stood absolutely still, Mulder's hand still resting atop her head.
She saw Gramma in the doorway, stopped dead still with towels in her
arms.

Scully pushed up and in, and their lips touched.

Grazed.

Glanced off the slightly wet surfaces, whispering as they met.

Moving apart, but not stepping away, he was drowning in her eyes.

"Good night, Scully."

She blinked, then turned for her bedroom, dazed.
~~~~

~~~~

"Deepening shadows gather splendor as day is done
Fingers of night will soon surrender the setting sun. . .
Deep in the dark your kiss will thrill me like days of old,
Lighting the spark of love that fills me with dreams untold.
Each day I pray for evening just to be with you
Together at last at Twilight Time."
--"Twilight Time", Words and Music by Buck Ram, Morty and Al Nevins, and
Artie Dunn

~~~~

Deepening shadows gathered fears, not splendor, and Scully felt the
fingers of night crawling up and down her spine.

She twisted in the bed, then slipped from it, trying not to wake Grace.

It felt eerily familiar.

She didn't know what to do.

She liked having the distance between them not so far anymore, and she
really liked that kiss in the foyer, but it seemed so out of place.

Everything was disjointed again, missing pieces.

Mulder still had problems. She still had problems.

But for the first time, those problems didn't seem like such a big deal.

Sure it had taken a whole three weeks of counseling to get there, and
sure, there were still problems that needed addressing, but they didn't
weigh her down.

She was forgiving and forgetting.
~~~~

Mulder paced the blue bedroom, deep in the darkness of his memories.

He wished that things would go faster. He wanted to hurry up and go
home, find his family waiting there, have Scully at work with him to
tease, at home to talk to and make love to.

He missed her.

They spent a lot of time together, at Kosoff's, trying to go through the
past, digging up old land mines and sometimes safely detonating them,
sometimes not.

But they didn't just sit down and watch television, or play with Grace,
or do the dishes.

They didn't sit on the couch and have those good long silences that
could always reaffirm his existence.

Mulder found himself at the door, thinking about her.

He opened it and slipped out into the hallway.

Glancing to his left, he saw her easing shut her own door.

They smiled.
~~~~

Safe in the blue room, the covers pulled tightly around them, Mulder
watched her breathe softly in the night.

Nighttime seemed to be the safest for them. In the dark, he could hide
the guilt and the bad, and she could pretend to not feel the hurt.

He drew his arm tighter around her and she turned slightly, pushing her
nose into his chest.

"I miss you," she said, knowing that their tentative steps toward
reconciliation were still ongoing.

"I miss you too." He whispered it close to her ear, then moved his lips
to touch her hair.

She shivered and he stopped, understanding, realizing things had to be
slow for her.

Her arms twisted under the sheets and she pulled them out, resting them
along his length, then circling his waist.

He met her sigh with his own, then kissed her softly on the forehead,
unable to help himself.

"I realize this will be hard to get over," he said.

He intended to say more, but she silenced him with a palm to his lips,
her eyes blank and emotionless.

"Let's not talk about it."

He nodded and closed his eyes, feeling her hand trail down his lips and
chin, to his side.

He knew this kind of defense mechanism. Forget it happened and pretend
it meant nothing.

They could do this, just for tonight, just enough to get them through
another three or four or five weeks or months of counseling, of
screaming insults and fears and tears at each other.

Just this night of shared comfort, given to keep the hurt at bay.

He pulled her closer, brushed closed her eyes with a hand, then placed a
kiss at her lips, sighing.

She snuggled deeper into him and thought of nothing.

He felt sleep creeping in to smother him.
~~~~

Waking slowly, mouth tasting like stale Coke, Mulder blinked in the
light.

Scully was standing in front of the window, her form outlined so
perfectly by the sun that he was reminded of the night he had come to
ask her help.

That night, the moon coming in her window, he had seen her get dressed,
pulling off her top and walking naked to the chest of drawers.

That night, he'd felt guilty for looking.

This morning, he didn't.

But when she turned around, her look made him go cold.

"I'm going back to bed," she said softly, and moved for the door. "I
didn't want you to wake up alone, though."

Giving him one last thoughtful look, she turned and went through the
open door, shutting it firmly behind her.

He glanced to the clock.

Only five.

Rolling over, Mulder inhaled the scent of her left on the pillows.

It was enough.

Enuough for now.
~~~~

end part seven
Look for the next seven entitled :::::
Restore
adios
RM