From: "EPurSeMouve" Date: Thu, 18 May 2000 21:00:00 -0800 Subject: NEW: Joining You (1/2) by EPurSeMouve Source: xff TITLE: Joining You AUTHOR: EPurSeMouve [epursemouve@goplay.com] CATEGORY: SA RATING: PG SPOILERS: Set early Season Four. KEYWORDS: None. SUMMARY: A road trip with Mulder. DISCLAIMER: This story contains characters spawned by The X-Files, a show copyrighted by CC and 1013 Productions. Let's leave it at that. DISTRIBUTION: Archive anywhere you like, but let me know (just because I like knowing where my stories are) and keep my name with it. Author's Note at end. Joining You By EPurSeMouve epursemouve@goplay.com Saturday, December 7, 1996 8:47 PM He was a paradigm of panic. Hair disheveled, eyes wild, face pale. Shirt half-tucked, pants at an odd angle, shoes untied. A duffel bag dangled by one strap from his left wrist, the surveillance equipment and extra Sig inside threatening to fall out. His right hand gripped the doorknob, his arm tensely holding the door open. In the doorway of his apartment, Mulder stood frozen, staring as if he didn't quite see her. Scully, her hand still raised from her one tentative knock, stared, dumbstruck. "Mulder?" she blurted, her voice coming out an octave higher than usual. He started at the noise, then seemed to focus on her. Puzzlement, then raw tension flashed across his face. "What are you doing here?" His words came out rushed, nervous. Her eyes narrowed. There was something was going on. "I was in the neighborhood. Thought I'd drop by. What are *you* doing?" Her gaze focused on the duffel bag; he looked down as well, appearing to be surprised by what he saw. "Nothing," he said quickly. The disbelief in Scully's voice rang clear as a bell. "Nothing? Mulder, you're packing." "Just getting my gym bag ready for tomorrow," he countered, avoiding eye contact, his gaze jumping from the floor to her shoulder to down the hall and back again. "Scully, do you think we could talk about this later?" He was still speaking quickly, and with each word, his desperation was becoming more and more apparent. But it was at hearing something else in his voice, something not quite audible, that Scully began to feel frightened. "Mulder, you're lying to me. What's going on?" "Scully, please just-" He cut himself off, his voice regaining some of its anger. "Look, I gotta go. I'll see you Monday, in the office." He began to close the door, just slowly enough not to be considered a slam. However, that little portion of her brain not reeling from the circumstances was able to shove her foot forward to jam the door open. Summoning all her determination, she pushed the door back towards Mulder, arresting him with her eyes. "No," she said, understanding and anger thick in her voice. "No, you won't. Tell me what's going on, Mulder." He met her eyes with equal determination, though she could see the fear behind his gaze. "Scully, you have to go. You can't stay." The words were desperate and powerful. She suddenly realized how serious this was. A softness born of sadness crept into her features as she felt emotional control escape her. "Mulder, what's going on?" He sighed, the slight exhale a partial surrender. "I don't have the time to explain." "Then tell me on the way," she said automatically. "I can't take you, Scully. I have to do this alone." "I'm your partner. I can't let you go by yourself." His gaze dropped away from hers, and he began to move back into his apartment. "This has nothing to do with the Bureau." The words rushed out of her. "That *wasn't* what I meant." He stopped moving. She pressed her advantage. "Look, Mulder, if you want, I'll leave it up to you. But if you go tonight, after four years, without letting me know the *truth*..." She trailed off, at a loss for words, desperate to find the right thing to say. "Jesus, Mulder. The truth. It's got to mean something, still." His gaze locked with hers once more. And she realized it did. Mulder hesitated for an instant. Then, in one quick movement, he zipped up the duffel and grabbed his coat from the rack by the door. Resignation and desperation warred upon his face, and his voice was full of other emotions, too complex to pin down. "All right. Let's go." He jogged quickly down the hall. Scully had to sprint to keep up. ------------ They took Mulder's car. It roared to life, seemingly powered by the tension in the air. Its acceleration forward, however, was mainly the result of his lead foot. Silence reigned until they were on the highway, headed north, flanked by a few dozen other travelers. Only then, in that sea of anonymous white and red lights, did he numbly explain, in quick, tensely-worded sentences, what was going on. Once he was done, he quickly took his eyes off the road, checking her expression. It was completely blank. He braced himself for the explosion. "You were going to leave. Without saying a word." She said it quietly, without emotion, her voice echoing in the darkness. "You were going to leave your life and your job and... everything. Without even saying goodbye." "I would have left some explanation. A letter or something. Or I would have called from the road." It was a weak reply, and he could tell she knew it. "I saw the state you were in, Mulder. You wouldn't have taken the time to sit down and write out some lengthy goodbye. And if you had called from the road, I would have been able to find out where you were going. No, you wouldn't have said anything. You would have just left." "Scully, I'm sorry." Her voice held some passion for the first time, quivering slightly with the force of the emotion she was holding back. "No, you're not. Not really. You're only sorry because you're here now, and you have to explain this bullshit to someone. You're only sorry because you couldn't make a clean getaway." "Look, I know that-" "Mulder, just drive for a while. Just drive." So he did. ------------ They were playing the silence game, waiting to see who would speak first, each unwilling to break the quiet. They'd played often during the course of their partnership, the score pretty much even, but this time, Scully knew that she was going to crack first. She kept trying to think of something to say - something intelligent and insightful and contradictory and reversing. Reversing... That was what she wanted to do. Slam the car into reverse, slam her life into reverse, and pick up the pieces of her sanity that lay strewn behind them. Along with so much else... "So," she said at last, a little too loudly in the stillness. "Where is this Area 52 we're looking for?" He sighed. "Scully, I wish you wouldn't do this." Her temper flared, and she lashed out. "Do what? Tag along on your suicide mission?" She had almost expected a wince, a flash of anger - any sort of reaction. Instead, his face became even more frozen than usual. "If I had thought your becoming involved was a good idea, I would have called you. But I didn't. I didn't think that you should get involved with this one." She seized hold of the opening. "Why, Mulder? Why not?" His voice was cool, impersonal - the voice of the criminal profiler, the professional investigator. "It's personal for me. It has nothing to do with the X-Files." She could tell by a hundred gestures and twitches that he was holding back, trying to keep himself contained, and it frightened her almost as much as their destination, the almost-certain outcome. Reach him, make contact, get him back... "Mulder, Samantha *is* the X-Files. Nothing else matters, right?" She hated saying it, hated the rainy-night memory that flashed through her mind, full of innocence and closeness. He took his eyes off the road for a few dangerous seconds, met hers. "Not anymore," was his oh-so-quiet reply. Their silent communication, always adding subtext to what was said between them, wasn't used to this new strain, and it shut down abruptly, plunging them once more into quiet as they watched the ribbons of red and white illuminate the darkness. ------------ "I don't want to take you to the site," he said after a long silence. She stared, open-mouthed, at his bluntness. "What do you plan to do, Mulder, leave me at the side of the road?" He shot her a quick look, as if embarrassed. "No..." He faltered for a minute, his mouth opening and closing without emitting any sound. "No. Not like that. We'll find a place where you can get a ride back to DC, a bus station or something. You can call the guys, maybe, or your mother." "Hi Mom, my partner just ditched me for some asinine rescue mission that'll most likely get him killed and I need a ride home from Pennsylvania?" "You can leave out the asinine part, if you want." She shivered. His deadpan had too much dead in it. "I won't let you ditch me, Mulder," she said at last. "Not this time." "I never agreed to your coming inside with me. I don't want you there." Scully watched the muscles in his jaw clench as he spoke. It was easier than acknowledging his words. But she couldn't do it forever. "You don't think you'll need my help?" she asked. The words hurt, but they only made her angrier. It seemed to get a reaction, and she was surprised to see some pain on his face. "I just don't want you involved, Scully. It's not your problem." "Then why am I here?" she blurted out. Another flash of his face as his gaze quickly diverted from the road. She'd seen his eyes assess, question, caress her - but she'd never seen them do all three at once. A blush assaulted her cheeks. "You wanted me to tell you the truth. So I did." It was said quietly, in that low tone she remembered from their more personal conversations. She wanted to ask why she was still with him. Why he hadn't stopped the car immediately after telling her and dropped her at the side of the road, maybe just a short walk from her apartment. But Special Agent Dana Scully, confronter of Congress, tamer of mutants, was afraid. So she didn't ask why. ------------ As they flew down the road, just another set of headlights on the increasingly narrower concrete river, Mulder suddenly, inexplicably, thought of Matchbox Cars. He'd played with them as a kid, running them up and down the staircase and furniture and carpeting, never crashing them together, like other boys did, but rolling them back and watching the spring action send them flying across the hot pavement of the driveway, or the slick and hard wood of the front hall. Then, picking them up, he would drive them around the house on fantastic adventures to places he'd never been - Alaska and Hong Kong and Russia and Antarctica. He'd let Samantha come, sometimes, and she would clutch one of her dolls and listen to him describe the monsters that lurked in the jungles they drove past, the grand and exotic palaces where they stopped for lunch. And when she got bored and wandered off, he would go back to setting them up and sending them flying. In his memory, so clear, was the clicking noise the wheels made as the car was pulled back, the screeching whirrs of the gears as those little pieces of metal took flight. It seemed completely possible to him that, when he had been younger, he had thought that those plastic sounds were what a real car would sound like. Not a lot of cars on Martha's Vineyard, and certainly nothing that roared like the engine of his current, impersonal sedan. He hated these cars - hated them passionately. He missed the die-cast roadsters, the fantasy voyages. All he had now was the ability to burn rubber. And even that was different, now. For one thing, he'd never gotten lost in the hallways of his parents' house. ------------ They still weren't speaking, but Scully could tell something was going on - and she'd seen this pattern of behavior often enough to make a pretty good guess at what it was. "There was a Gas-Food-Lodging sign a few miles back," she said casually, interrupting his subtle bobbing head/furtive squint routine. "We should be just coming up on it." His movements halted, and he resumed his usual driving posture - crouched over the wheel slightly, his head's upright position in complete opposition to the hunch of his back. She'd seen him slip in and out of that pose over the course of too many car trips. She'd even caught herself emulating it occasionally. She wondered if he stared at her the same way, when it was her turn to drive. Probably. He was a stickler for detail, when it suited him. But not when he was careless. She had to speak. "Mulder, you do know where we're going, right?" she asked at last, trying to keep her voice calm. "You have directions?" He blew air out of his mouth in an unintentional raspberry. "Sort of. The tip told me Interstate 86. I should be able to find an interchange eventually." "But you want to make sure, just so that we don't get hopelessly lost?" she asked, hoping she didn't sound too patronizing. She was fairly confident she didn't. This was a line of conversation they'd had many times before. He nodded in his usual way. "We wouldn't want to get too sidetracked." Usually, they smiled when they had this interchange - those small, tight smiles they felt comfortable sharing when eye contact was not very feasible. It was their way of joking about his believed infallibility when it came to directions - his way of admitting he could be wrong, her way of admitting she didn't want to trample all over his feelings. It felt utterly wrong, in the tense stillness of this night. Scully's stomach twisted in revulsion. Pleasant memories, unspoken jokes nearly killed already. She wondered what else would die before the sun rose. The bright lights of Denny's and Mobil came into view. The rest stop was right where she had said it was. And so, they rested. ------------ They had a routine for these rest stops, another product of innumerable long road trips. Since they only stopped when Mulder had to ask for directions, it would be Scully who would check on the gas situation, then make a bathroom run while Mulder leaned over maps with the person behind the counter. He'd go afterwards, while she grabbed some sodas. She hated the sidekick duties, and though she didn't like driving for such long stretches of time, she'd always offer to take the wheel at the rest stop, to which he'd agree, grudgingly. The routine went as usual, except for the occasional twist. Scully didn't offer to drive. Mulder went to the bathroom before haggling with the counter jockey. And Scully made sure that she was between Mulder and the car at all times. Not that she really thought he would leave her. Really. End Part 1/2 Joining You By EPurSeMouve Part 2/2 Back on the road. Fewer cars, this time. The absence of headlights made the night seem much darker than it had before. It was with a shock that Scully saw the bright glow of the digital clock. 12:15 already? How long had she just sat there, letting him do this crazy thing, just going along for the ride... Far too long. "Are you sure you've thought this through, Mulder?" she said at last. He gave her another of those quick glances. "What do you mean?" he said. Tag in, skeptic Scully. "Well, are you sure that this will work? Or that your informant was telling the truth? Have you had previous contact with this man before?" He gritted his teeth. "Scully..." She plowed on, ignoring him. "You do realize that this is most likely a trap. That you're playing right into their hands. That they're taking advantage of your one true weakness, once again." "Stop it, Scully," he growled. She knew she was reaching him, then, and her voice became even more analytical. "Why, Mulder? It is completely possible. You know it as well as I do. They've used Samantha to set you up before, and it is highly likely that they're doing it again." For a second, all she could hear was the hum of the road underneath their wheels, before Mulder exhaled. "It's not like that, and you know it," he said, almost as coolly as she. "Things have changed. Four years ago, you would have been absolutely right. But..." He stopped, and Scully watched his eyelids flutter in concentration. She watched the quirks of his face, the furrowing of his brow, as the confusion of his thoughts showed upon his face. "But what, Mulder?" she said gently. He sighed. "I don't really know. But I do know that they could have threatened this at any time, but this is the only time that it would feel real. That I would believe what they said." "Your caller said it himself, though. They're fragmented. They're moving to seize power. It's something that was always a possibility. That's why it feels real." "There's more to it than that, Scully." He smiled, almost to himself, the slight exposure of teeth bittersweet in the moment. "I have a hunch. You know, one of those things I never have." The words were meant to provoke her. Instead, she turned her face to the window, let a tear or two run down her cheek. There were stars outside. How brightly they glowed. ------------ Mulder noted that the highway, which had been four lanes wide for a while, but had shrunk to two when he wasn't looking, was practically deserted now. That was why the car coming in the other direction, its high beams flooding the road, was so shocking. The light sent him tumbling into a gust of memory, which ultimately deposited him on the floor of the family living room, paralyzed, clutching a gun, a part of him transfixed by the way Samantha's nightgown draped off her body as she was lifted... The sudden heat and wind in the air, the stale taste of hamburgers on his tongue, the voice in his mind filling him with comfort, even as the pit of his stomach sank in defeat... He shook his head, as if the slight motion would banish the memory, erase it away like a drawing on an Etch-A-Sketch. Refocused on the road ahead. Stay focused. Keep clear. And no matter what, keep driving. Keep driving. ------------ "So," she asked after another few minutes of quiet. "Exactly what do you plan on doing once you get into this place?" He stared straight ahead. "The usual. Bumble around until I think of something." "And this seems like a good idea to you?" she murmured harshly, her voice tinted with the acrid yellow of sarcasm. "Better than the alternative." She snorted. "What, not running off half-cocked? Thinking things through? Getting the Gunmen to try and find schematics, information? Asking the Bureau for back-up from other agents? Talking to local law enforcement about this mysterious base? Contacting whatever informant you've got lurking in the shadows these days and haven't told me about?" "I'm sorry I wasn't being cool-headed about it, Scully," he fired back at her, irritation flooding his voice. "But he told me that they were cashing their chips, pulling out all the stops. That they were desperate. That they had my SISTER." "You don't know that for sure. You have no proof that your sister is even in their control. And what do they stand to gain from involving you in their power struggle? What are you to them?" "I don't know. A litmus test? A favored pet? It's not important. What's important is that they said my sister would die if I didn't come tonight. And, surprisingly enough, I don't want my sister to die." "I never meant to imply you did, Mulder. But if she is there, you stand a much better chance of helping her if you have some sort of plan." He smirked, just a bit. "Good thing you're here tonight, then. Otherwise, I wouldn't have had anyone to tell me that." She sighed, giving up. For the moment. ------------ "Why are you here tonight?" he asked suddenly. "Huh?" was her brilliant reply. "Tonight. Why'd you come by my apartment tonight?" "I told you, I was in the neighborhood." "Scully, you live in Georgetown." "Does it really matter?" But she knew if he had asked, it meant it did. The rush of words left her feeling short of breath. She sat back. And tried to remember. But all she could recall, even though it had only been a few short hours ago, was that it had been quiet at her place, too quiet, and she'd burned her dinner, and for some reason, the only thing that had made sense in the wake of it all was getting in the car and driving to Mulder's. Mulder's, where there was no deafening silence, and it didn't reek of scorched casserole, and pizza could be ordered. And shared. That was the only concrete thought she could find in the wake of this little road trip: that primary in her mind while she navigated the streets had been the notion that instead of ordering a small pizza for herself, she could go to Mulder's and share a medium one with him. "I wanted to order pizza," she said at last, softly. His eyes darted off the road for a few quick moments, quizzically searching her own. "Pizza," he said, with all the disbelief she had ever reserved for alien abductions. "I had a coupon," she offered lamely. He chuckled lightly, the sound barely a whisper louder than the roar of the engine, as if there was more to the joke than she knew. "Then it makes sense." The sound of his laughter coaxed a hint of a smile out of her. It faded quickly, though, as Mulder hit his turn signal, changed lanes, and hit the interchange. Route 86. A bartender's 86 meant paying your tab and getting a ride home. Scully wished it could be that easy. She'd pay gladly, if she knew more about the end of the road. ------------ Backroads Pennsylvania, full of small hills and wandering brooks. At least, that's what he remembered the brochure saying at one point. But to him, most of America at night looked pretty much the same. Especially when driving down some obscure interstate in the middle of nowhere. But bridges - bridges he didn't come across too often. And as they drove across the small one keeping cars away from the shallow stream below, he had a sudden flash - Cold air and the warm smell of his sister's skin and the hum of the car engine as he and she walked from point A to point B - to the shivering head of red hair and the rough hand that held it in place, standing next to another humming car engine. And as he looked at one woman and then the other as Samantha made her plans and Scully prepared to run, all he could think was it's such a hard choice such a hard choice I couldn't even make it myself... And in that moment, there was the realization that he had been so obsessed, at one point, that he would never have expected it could be a choice at all - certainly not as hard as it was. And in that moment of calm before the storm, he had realized that over two years of partnership and three months of loss, things had changed. ------------ Scully began to mentally make lists. Lists of how many times she'd fired her gun recently. How many bullets she had left in her clip. How many other ways she had to convince him not to do this thing. Some of the lists were long. Some of them were short. All of them were utterly futile. She hated not having a plan - hated not knowing what she was getting into. The few recent times in her life that she'd acted on impulse had usually been out of reaction to something Mulder had said or done. And, always, for just a second, her heart had lodged in her throat as she made those choices. But this time, there hadn't even been a choice - none whatsoever. And she realized in this moment of calm that over four years of partnership, things had changed. ------------ The quiet, this time, was shattered by something other than a human voice. A long, loud beep filled the air, making Mulder jump, look in the rear view mirror to see a large Humvee roaring behind him, flashing its brights. Another long, loud beep, a flash of memory... And the ball soared into the net. His apartment. That evening. The buzzer sounded and the Bulls went up another two points over the Knicks and he wandered into the kitchen for something edible to drown his sorrows in. But his empty-save-for- mustard fridge only depressed him more, and he realized that he could either go grocery shopping or order a pizza - and he knew which was more likely to happen on a Saturday evening. But the pizza place he liked never put enough sausage on their small pies and he couldn't eat a whole medium pizza by himself and he was suddenly wondering what Scully was up to that night. Maybe she was in. Maybe she felt like pizza, too. He reached for the phone. It was the funniest of coincidences that it rang right then. And there was a voice speaking, right away, quick and cold. "Agent Mulder. We must talk about your sister." ------------ Scully watched Mulder shake his head, as if trying to get rid of something. He pulled over to the side of the road, letting the Humvee pass them, watching it go by with dull eyes. Humvees. Not usually found anywhere but near a military base. Like the one just a few hundred yards away, starkly lit and formidable in the late night. "I guess we're here," he said quietly. "I guess," she answered, her face a complete blank. He unbuckled his seat belt, turned towards her. And she knew that she had one last chance. One last chance to say whatever it was she could say. One chance to find the one statement that could get him to start the car and turn it in reverse. Turn everything around, and go back to the way things were. She did the best she could with the truth. It had to mean something, still. "This is hurting me, Mulder." His response came out equally as pained. "I never wanted it to, Scully. I never wanted it to hurt you, at all. That's why I didn't want you to come along." "But it does. And it would have, whether or not I joined you." "It isn't fair, though. You don't deserve any of it." His look was all canine - rabid wolves and injured puppies. Frustrated with the world's little injustices. Ready to bay at the moon. If he had started to howl, she would have been tempted to join in. But she spoke gently instead. "I don't deserve it. You're right. But it's just the way life happens." "But it really has no connection to you. There's no reason you should feel pain over this." Jesus Christ, she thought. Jesus Christ. Didn't he get it? The sting of it was that the ignorance in his tone was oblivious, was sincere, and the shock of it all got more honesty out of her, rolling off her tongue with a bitterness she would have thought herself incapable of four years ago. "Haven't you gotten it yet, Mulder?" she bit out. "Your sister, my sister. Your pain, my pain. Your quest, my quest. Your life-" And her breath caught, and her chest began to ache, and for the first time in two years, the pent-up emotions of an evening were enough to make her want to fall into his arms and cry. She resisted, though, fought the stress, the hurt, the disbelief that her partner and friend would be so thoughtless and stupid and cruel as to even consider going on a one-way crusade without even thinking to call or write or say a goddamned thing... She resisted, and fought, and swallowed back a sob. "It's all the same at this point," she managed at last. "It scares the hell out of me. But it's true." She breathed in, breathed out. And finally stole a glance at him. The dashboard light on his face was pale and green, making him seem ghostly in the darkness. Shaky. Not quite there. Lost. "The harder this gets, Scully, the more it'll hurt. I didn't want it to be hard at all." "Your leaving is never an easy thing." "It could have been." The words bit at her, and she bit back. "I would have never known what had happened to you. I would have done whatever I could to find out. And I wouldn't have given up. Not if I found nothing, even after looking for twenty years. Does that sound familiar? Does that sound easy?" The words hurt him, she could tell in the flinch of his eyebrows, the twitch of his eyelids, but his specter of a mouth quirked ever so slightly. "No. It doesn't." "Could you ever give up, Mulder? Do you think that there could ever be a point in your life when you could turn away?" His head crooked to the side as his face became more Mulderish and less ghostly with every second. "No," he said at last. "No. I couldn't. She's always there, Scully. Always begging me to save her while I sit there, paralyzed. I need to end it. I'll never be happy if I don't." "And I want to help you. Because I know it's that important." "The X-Files aren't just about her anymore, though," he said in one quick burst. "They're about you, too. About finding out what happened to you." She let her hand creep over to his, brushing over it gently. "I thought that was what you meant." In that second, there was a similarity of mood and feeling, a connection of emotion. But then, Mulder pulled his hand away, and it was over. The cool air washed over her palm and sent chills up her arms as he pulled out his gun and popped out the clip, checking it before slamming it home decisively. He opened the door, and she watched him, full of shock and horror, as he grabbed his duffel, stepping out of the car. There he was, leaving her, going off to do it by himself, once again, like always... He stopped, turned around towards her. "Coming?" ------------ The sun began to rise. And an intact Mulder and Scully began to walk toward their car. "I can't believe it!" "You couldn't have known." "It was just a barracks! Every bunk filled with some soldier! Go ahead, say I told you so!" "I'm not going to, Mulder. I understand. It's all right." "You're mad at me." "Beyond belief. But it'll show later. Right now, I want you out of here." "Why would they lie, Scully?" "Why would they tell the truth?" "They're testing me, seeing how far I'll go." "Pretty far, as it turns out." "I'd go the same distance for you. You know that, right?" "This isn't about who you like more, Mulder. It isn't a popularity contest." "But still - you know that, right?" "Of course I do." "Sometimes..." "What?" "Nothing. I'm glad you came. You were right about it. I should know better than to doubt you, by now." "Well, Mulder - at least you've learned to acknowledge it." Daylight spilled over Pennsylvania. And Scully drove them home. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Author's Note: It has been a long time since I posted last, thanks to both overcommitting myself and having few stories to tell. But during that whole stretch of time, possibly going even further back, this story nagged at me. I've been working at some form of it since September. It was a joy to finish, and a relief to revise. Because it meant that the block was over. Title courtesy of Alanis Morissette and track 15 on "Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie." Always a favorite. Profuse thanks to beta readers Ropobop, Jodi, Sarah, Lucy, and JET, alchemists for a modern age. Thanks also to Caz, who saw "Joining You" long before the beta readers got started - but liked it anyways. Really, thanks to all my online friends. You remind me why I started writing in the first place: to go new places and meet interesting people. Feedback reminds me of why I continue. Please do send it to epursemouve@goplay.com. And thanks for reading.