From: ephemeral@ephemeralfic.org
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 01:53:35 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: The Marriage of True Minds     (MSR fic, post-IWTB ) by Mary Hugh
Source: direct

Reply To: maryhugh@live.com


Title: The Marriage of True Minds
Author: Mary Hugh
Ratings: PG for some mature subject matter
Classification: MSR
Spoilers: Yes, from The X-Files: I Want To Believe and the series.
Keywords: The X-Files: I Want To Believe
E-mail: maryhugh@live.com
Summary: Scully ponders the events of I Want To Believe and the
entire past of M&S. Character study.
_______________________________


The Marriage of True Minds

Lying on her right side, she heard his measured breathing with its
little, irregular hitches behind her. She was awake, again, and he
was sleeping soundly. She wondered when they had exchanged nocturnal
habits. 

Actually, insomnia hadn't plagued Mulder much at all since they'd
moved into this dilapidated country place about five years ago. But
then, he didn't crash on a worn leather couch anymore or keep a TV
running into the wee hours as background noise either. He occupied
his customary side of their king-size on her left every night. He had
never ventured out the front gate which was always locked with a
hefty chain and padlock to keep the curious out on the road. His days
of accumulating zillions of preferred traveler miles in pursuit of
manic paranormal investigations had been behind him.

Yes, they had been behind him. Until FBI Agent Drummy. Until Father
Joe. Until the case that nearly lost Mulder his literal head --

No. She would not bring that awful picture of the axe high in the air
to mind again. She wanted to sleep, dammit, not screen that waking
nightmare. 

Rewind. Back up. Um...Mulder's sleeping habits. That was a safe,
maybe even lulling topic. The man didn't haunt the night as he had
so often at 42 Hegel, but he usually stayed awake longer than she
did. He didn't have to get up before daybreak but she had to when she
had early surgery scheduled the next morning. On those nights before,
she tried to be in bed by ten and in sandman's land no later than
another half hour. He often read until midnight, downstairs if it was
an early night for her, in bed if she was going to the hospital at a
more reasonable hour the next day or actually had the entire day off.

But tonight -- she didn't really want to look at the alarm clock to
see how much time her restless mind had robbed from her body's need
to sink into oblivion -- she had been listening to peacefully
sleeping Mulder for, she reckoned, still not looking at the
noctilucent floating figures, at least two hours. Oh, what the hell.
She squinted at the clock. 1:17. Okay, not quite two hours. 

She turned on her back and stared at the unadorned ceiling. No
surgery tomorrow. Still, being sleepless irked her. What was keeping
her from dropping into unconsciousness? It wasn't Christian. He had
been able to go home two days ago. He was better. The experimental
course of epithelial stem cell treatments, completed, had given him a
chance at life and he was eagerly grabbing it. Yet, maybe Christian
was keeping her awake. As his physician she'd put him through a great
deal of pain. His suffering was something his parents, Father Ybarra,
and she would always hang around her neck. Blaming her for the boy's
agonies went hand in hand with the parents' gratefulness to her for
pushing them into giving permission for the string of procedures and
giving them back their son. 

The administrator was another story. Always observant, he now kept a
much more vigilant eye on her. She was now a curiosity to him, a bit
like a religious statue weeping blood. Before she had been a highly
competent staff doctor maintaining a low profile, Now, she stood out.
Today he had stopped her in the corridor to ask about Lucy Karnes,
the teen with metastasized pancreatic cancer. Her condition? he'd
asked. There was no good news. The girl was stage four. There was
nothing more they could do. Truly. Lucy was going home, where her
parents had arranged for round-the-clock palliative care. Lucy would
not see her sixteenth birthday. Father Ybarra seemed to expect that
if he waited long enough, Doctor Scully would give him a different
answer. If only she could have. She wasn't even Lucy's primary
physician. She had only consulted on the case one time. But the tall
priest, whose stand-out ears reminded everyone of Alfred E. Newman,
knew all this. What, she suspected, he really wanted was to squeeze
out of her whether God had sent her a message about Lucy. When Father
Joe died that same night Mulder was almost killed, gossip flew around
the hospital about the former priest's psychic pronouncements and
her, Scully's, connection to him. Somehow, even Father Ybarra had
learned that Father Joe had told Scully something that had swayed
Christian's fate. If a defrocked pedophile could be the conduit for
saving one sick child, perhaps, for example, Louie Billet, the
schizophrenic who, when he went off his medication, paced
relentlessly a block from the hospital, could also deliver a message
about Lucy. Of course, Father Ybarra, a practical man not about to
admit lending any credence to psychics bearing messages, didn't
actually ask. And she had nothing to tell him in any event. Louie
just mumbled 'good day' to her same as he did to every passer-by.

She had already put in her request for a two-month leave of absence.
In another week, she and Mulder would be on a plane to the Caribbean
where they would hop to an island mapped on few charts. They would be
its only inhabitants for sixty blissful (she hoped) days. Father
Ybarra, a pretty unshakable man, noted with his usual even inflection
that she had never taken off  more than a couple days in a row
before. 'Is everything all right? Is there something I -- the
hospital -- ought to know?' he'd asked.

Mulder, due to his legal problems, had never been part of her
conversations with anyone at Our Lady of Sorrows. She kept her
private life private. Even though Mulder was no longer wanted by the
FBI for a sham of a murder conviction, she didn't want to bring him
up now. She wasn't embarrassed, of course. That wasn't it. Possibly
the long practice of keeping their relationship under cover -- to
avoid the FBI and other zealous law enforcement agencies, not to
mention supersoldiers or just plain snoops -- was too ingrained. Then
again, maybe she just didn't want to open their life to scrutiny and
speculation at the hands of the workplace gossips. So she's just told
the administrator that she now needed some time to recharge her
batteries. He'd looked skeptical. She still hadn't heard back about
whether said request had been approved. Whatever. She and Mulder were
going, even if she had to quit to get the two months. 

Next to her Mulder mumbled what sounded like, 'schleroozimmer
off..blick com.' His forearm closest to her involuntarily jerked and
flung out, lightly grazing her hip then retreating back to the
mattress. 'Bin. tar. Scul...." She waited for further acrobatics from
him but aside from showing his back to her for the first time
tonight, and a sigh, he settled down again. She hoped he wasn't
having a nightmare, especially since she seemed to be in there
someplace. Over the years, Mulder's sleep habits had toned down
considerably. He hardly ever woke bathed in cold sweat anymore, and
he didn't do a lot of flailing these days either. When he had been
more inclined, their king-size had come in handy; both had slept at
the far edges to avoid any chance that she might have to hide an
accidental black eye from her medical colleagues. Both of them had
slowly shed the nightmare habit, and this was one of the reasons she
had opposed letting the 'darkness' back into their life together. 

But perhaps a reason she was lying here awake with eyes itchy with
fatigue was that operating room of Frankensteinian horrors she had
followed Walter Skinner into so few weeks ago. Her brain might be
staving off a macabre dream about the undead head she had had to
disconnect from th blood pump/gas exchange system to save the
girl. He would die when she stopped the blood flow from the girl to
him. She had told him, 'There's nothing I can do for you. I'm sorry.'
And she had been sorry, sorry that he had ended up in this desperate,
horrible condition, clinging to life, if it could be called that. 

A few nights had also been sundered by bile-raising flashes of the
killing place where Mulder very nearly lost his head. She was very
likely subconsciously avoiding adding another picture show to the
list tonight. 

This just wouldn't do, she told herself sternly. Don't worry about
some leftover neuronal discharges that might arise and freak you out.
Just sleep. She turned her head toward the window, seeing, through
the light curtains the quarter moon just nudging the top sash. She
sighed. 

And then, in the dimness she smiled because next to her slumbering
Mulder sighed again too, as if in total sympathy with her.   

She would have been lost if she hadn't been able to come home to
him anymore. Thank God they had a new understanding. Thank God Mulder
had reached a stage of maturity where he could make adjustments. She
wondered whether, typical of their dance of opposites, she, in
juxtaposition, had become someone with less tolerance for making 
compromises or simply acquiescing. During their X-Files years, Mulder
had almost invariably been the partner leading the chase, pulling her
along in the wake of his obsessive enthusiasms. Oh, she didn't fool
herself. She knew she had followed him of her own free will. She'd
been young and her 'brilliant but crackpot' partner had been a free
ticket to very unusual experiences. Or so she'd thought. Their
adventures hadn't been free at all; shattering prices had to be paid
and neither of them came out of the X-Files unscathed. Their battle
scars, physical and psychological had been exceedingly deep. Still,
Mulder had used any instrument of persuasion at his disposal to get
her to accompany him on that journey, and she, younger soul that
she'd been, had almost never balked. In those rare times when she had
put her foot down, something had always intervened to restart their
partnership cycle. This time, she had, selfishly or not, refused him
when he had come to the doctor's locker room. 

Was that what was keeping her from sinking into sleep? Was she still
second-guessing herself for not handling that fateful talk better? If
she had gone with him, been his trusty back-up, he might not have
nearly ended up parted from his head. She knew the stress of just
having administered Christian's first treatment had left her few
mental or emotional reserves for dealing with Mulder at that time.
She remembered not expressing herself too well, and she'd made a bad
relationship mistake: she'd delivered an ultimatum. At the time she
hadn't been able to see out of the box she thought they'd been
crowded into. Strangely, even though she had said she would not be
home, that night, she was the one who was at home. Mulder, chasing
the suspect in traffic and in an unfinished high-rise and then giving
his statement multiple times to police and FBI after Agent Whitney's
murder, had only dragged himself home after she had gone to work
again.

The house creaked and Mulder turned over, facing her. She wanted to
reach over and ruffle his chestnut hair, but instead she pulled the
ugly midnight blue and silver blanket he'd dislodged up to his
shoulders again. More accurately, it wasn't a blanket. It was an old
curtain used as a makeshift cover. In winter they kept in on at night
since they turned the heater down. Sometimes it reminded her of a
starry sky -- mainly because Mulder wisecracked once, "Our own
private dome of heaven, Scully." Other times, she thought it looked
more like a tarp someone had randomly spray painted. It had been on
the window when they'd moved in and Mulder didn't want to throw it
away when she put up the new curtains. She tucked it up a little
higher. He'd gotten rid of that bursitis only a couple of weeks ago
and she didn't want it taking up residence again. 

Five years, about, they'd slept in this bed. There were some sticks
of furniture that, along with the curtain/bedspread and some other
household odds and ends, had been leftovers from the previous
occupants. But they bought the bed. They had picked it out of a
catalog, and then she'd ordered it -- from Beds R Us or some such
establishment -- and had had it delivered. Mulder had stayed out of
sight when the deliverymen came. She'd ordered the fish tank too, of
course, and gone, with a list he'd made, to a pet store to buy the
exact species he'd wanted. But back to the bed. She sometimes
marveled that they could both sleep (not to mention enjoy other
activities) here in harmony. Back in the old X-Files days, her
apartment and especially her bed were where she'd gone to decompress
from the enervating pressure of going monster hunting with Mulder.
Even when, after seven years, they had finally crossed the line and
become lovers, they hadn't spent every night together. But, in this
house, unless she had an emergency at the hospital, she and he both
slept in this bed every night. Wait. She'd already been over that,
hadn't she? Oh well. And even during his stretch of flailing about
during nightmares, which had prompted a discussion -- initiated by
Mulder and nixed by her -- of his sleeping someplace else in the
house for a while, she had never wanted it any other way. 

Oh, all right. Every once in a while, they'd get on each other's
nerves and be sorely tempted to stomp down to the lumpy couch. Once,
she'd gotten home at 10:30 and gone immediately upstairs, totally
exhausted, to find every surface in the bedroom, including the bed,
under a blizzard of papers. 'What the hell is all this?' she'd
demanded in her most waspish voice as she touched down her hand on
the ocean of white and tried vainly to clear a space. 

'Hey. Don't move that, Scully! You'll disturb the symmetry.'

Symmetry? Try total chaos. That's how had it looked to her at any
rate. She had not been in the mood for some kind of physics
experiment. 'What is all this?' she'd repeated in a dangerous voice.
'Never mind. I don't care. Why isn't this downstairs in your office,
or, needs be, in the living room, Mulder?'

'Not enough room in my office. And the living room doesn't have this
big bed in it,' he'd said in the most reasonable voice you could
imagine. Obviously. He'd continued fussing with another set of
papers. 'This," he'd  informed her, 'is a sequence of discrete
patterns that flow evolutionarily from monist to manifold in a way
that could prove how life traversed space and was seeded here on
earth. Each page represents a crucial linkage in the maturation
sequence.'

'Put it somewhere else. PUT in on the floor downstairs.'

'But --'

'Fine. I'll go to a motel.'

'Okay, Scully. Okay. I'll number the ones on the bed and get them out
of here.'

So, crisis averted. She smiled but only fleetingly as the memory
reminded her of her more recent threat to sleep elsewhere. She had
been so unprepared when Mulder found her in the locker room. She had
barely known what she was saying. All she'd really wanted was to stop
the conversation, to stop him from repeatedly asking her to work with
him on this case. Perhaps if she had not been so immersed in
Christian's case, she might have been more open to his pleas, but
she'd felt handcuffed to two locomotives charging in opposite
directions, about to tear her apart. She simply hadn't felt able to
divide herself, and she had chosen Christian, a stand-in of sorts for
William, over Mulder at the moment.  

Darting her eyes rapidly and blinking, she kept them dry. She'd been
too prone to crying again recently and she was determined to knock it
off. Dear God, once upon a time her armor had kept her dry-eyed for
months or even years at a time. Then, Mulder's abduction, temporary
death, and lengthy absence had sapped her of so much resilience and
left her susceptible to tears far too often. 

When she and Mulder had gone fugitive in 2002, she had slowly re
formed her core of reserves. Within a year they'd stopped leading a
nomadic existence. The FBI wasn't actively looking for Mulder anymore
(she'd learned through surreptitious calls to Skinner), so they'd
left their last temporary hideaway in Indiana and cautiously come
east again. They'd found this property and set up house while Scully
resurfaced in the medical community and did a residency that had led
to her current attending's position at Our Lady of Sorrows. For
years, she had been in the world at large but not of it, while being
practically everything to Mulder in their own private little world.
For a while she had thrived. But gradually, it took its toll. And
lately she'd felt like a knife that had been sharpened too many times
and could no longer hold a fine cutting edge. She was worn down and
again very low on emotional reserves due simply to the grind of her
life.

She had gone and seen her mother with reasonable regularity. But she
couldn't bring Mulder with her, and she couldn't talk about him to
anyone, in case some eager beaver federal agent got the idea to bag a
wanted man and asked questions of her family and colleagues. That
constraint isolated her again more than was really healthy. 

So, part of her had been glad when Agent Drummy had appeared at the
hospital, not to try to arrest Mulder but, on behalf of the FBI, to
ask his help. Getting Mulder out of his isolation, getting him into
an occupation again had been her goal then, even though she'd known
the cost might be reuniting him with the passions of staring into the
abyss of 'darkness' as she'd taken to euphemistically calling where
his investigations too often dragged everyone in the vicinity. She'd
hoped it could lead to a more normal life for them, not to another
engagement with people whose appetites and loves caused them to 
perpetrate unspeakable acts on fellow human beings.

Joe Crissman, whether by genetics or by psychological compulsion, was
one of these predators. God, that defrocked priest had been so right:
she had loathed him for his crimes against innocent children. He'd
literally made her skin crawl, as had his roommate. She still felt
angry at herself for going to see him by herself. On the whole that
conversation had been confused, desultory, and, in the end, seemingly
useless (except for Proverbs 25:2 that, unbelievably, came in handy
when she and Skinner were searching for Mulder). She and the pervert
priest had pretty much talked around each other. Two blind earthworms
yards apart in black soil could communicate better than they had. 

And what was that 'husband' thing? 

She rolled her eyes at herself and flopped over on her stomach,
burying her face in her pillow.  

'Father' (she still resisted this honorific) Joe had assumed Mulder
was her husband. 'He's NOT my husband!' she'd snapped. Why in the 
world had she told him that? As she'd said just a moment afterward,
she didn't want to tell him about herself or her life. Wouldn't it
have been better to just let him think they were married? Or at
least, would it have hurt anything? Yet, she had found it impossible
to let that misconception stand. Her need to set the record straight
still nagged her. First of all, she rebelled at this hairy supposed
psychic apparently being able to intuit how close she and Mulder
were. As he'd allowed, he hadn't known anything about her life. Yet,
he'd instinctively grasped the basic organically intertwined nature
of their (Mulder's and hers) relationship and assumed they were
married. That insight, that intimacy had repelled her, and that, she
decided, was why she'd immediately and almost savagely corrected him
-- as if to say, NO, you don't know me, you can't know me, I won't
allow it. 

So little was in her control at that time (well, actually when, ever,
did she or anyone realistically have 'control'). She was so unsure
about what to do for Christian. And she had just had that dreadful
talk with Mulder earlier. She'd so wanted the former priest to be
able to simply tell her why he had looked her straight in the face
and said, 'Don't give up.' She'd wanted some clarity. Some direction.
Some certainty. 

Instead, he'd said he didn't know why he'd said it. He was just the
messenger. And a messenger who didn't know his master's intent or
even, really, his target. That had left her even more at sea. There
was nothing to hold onto. 

She frowned and then more carefully, so as not to wake Mulder, rolled
onto her back again. She got numb fingers and a sore neck if she
stayed on her stomach too long.

Fortunately, she hadn't been as alone then as she'd made out in her
own mind. She and Mulder were still connected, even when they were at
odds or had said things they soon regretted. And once she and he were
back home after his near death experience, Mulder had been able to
instill in her the hope and strength she'd needed to accept Father
Joe's message as one truly from God. Didn't Jesus take as his
apostles some who had sinned mightily? Paul had killed Jesus'
followers when he was still called Saul, before he had the vision of
Jesus on the road to Damascus. If the son of God could use a murderer
as his instrument, there was no reason a disgraced priest couldn't
also voice God's will. Mulder, the quicker of them to believe, had
given her his unconditional love and support, assuring her that
whether she chose to believe and do the surgery or not believe and
cancel it, he would be by her side and they would 'get out of here'
and dare the 'darkness' to find them. Those dear and selfless words
of his had renewed her. She'd gained the fortitude and the desire to
dig deep into her own God-given conscience for her answer about
whether to continue to treat Christian or not. 

God, she loved Mulder. She seldom said it (that hospital hallway
declaration about having fallen in love with him because of his
stubbornness was a decided aberration, brought about by her need to
reach out to him as a sign of regret for her earlier ultimatum). But
she didn't see how anyone could love another person more than she
loved Mulder. What made this all the more confounding and miraculous
was that she knew Mulder felt the same way about her. And yet, she
knew their 'relationship' did not fit into the conventional or
cliched annals of true love. She shook her head wryly. 'Relationship'
was such a namby-pamby, clinical and imprecise word for what any two
lovers felt and lived. For Mulder and her it was even more useless as
a description of what they were to each other. She recalled an
actress on TV saying something about some fictional couple that went
something like this: they are so much more than papers [meaning a
marriage license] and sex. She nodded. That described her and Mulder
to a tee. 

And what about marriage? In the last six years, they hadn't been
rightly able to walk into any church or civil office together, so
getting a marriage license and saying 'I do' in any kind of official
ceremony had been out of the question even if they had wanted to make
their union legal. Now, of course, they were entirely free to do so.
She supposed when she and Mulder went to visit her mother before they
took off on their two-month excursion, they might have to address
this with her. Well, perhaps not. Mom knew them well enough to leave
that alone...unless they brought it up. Bill was another matter, but
she doubted he would be there. In fact, she would make sure he
wasn't. She would see him again next Christmas. Yes, that would be
soon enough to put him and Mulder in the same house again. Mom,
though, understood what Mulder and she did: namely that the
legalities of civil marriage and even the sacraments of marriage in
the church could offer them nothing that they hadn't already
committed to long ago. Sixteen years ago, the FBI had arranged the
commencement of their partnership, and back then no one, including
the two young agents, could have foreseen the destiny it set in
motion. That arranged, professional, 'marriage' soon molded them into
a team dedicated to each other, but, for years, only platonically.
Time and some bitter losses folded them closer, almost like two sides
of a piece of paper intricately folded into a delicate origami
figure. They were constantly tested, by each other and by the
dangerous purpose that bound them. Exactly when comradely love turned
into romantic love neither could ever pinpoint, but it happened,
despite both being reluctant to actually cross from chaste devotion
to sex as a part of their lives. But, then again, one day it just
seemed time. It was almost as if they were on a timetable that kept
secrets from them until the very moment another change, another
deepening of their 'relationship' was 'scheduled.' 

She supposed William was one of those secrets. Their miracle son. She
'was' a mother, even though she had remained silent when young,
scared Mrs. Fearon, Christian's mother, had said, 'If you were a
mother, you would understand.' How could she not understand when her
heart ached for William every day? Yes, William had been a gift she
had never dared hope to receive. Mulder felt the same. Some would say
she had committed a terrible crime of motherhood by giving William up
for adoption, but no matter how much she herself missed William and
how much guilt she felt for depriving Mulder of seeing his son grow
up, she believed she had done the right thing. And Mulder felt the
same: that she had done what was necessary.

So it was just the two of them, no gold rings on their left hands. If
Father Ybarra learned of her unsanctified-by-marriage living
arrangements he might tell her that as a doctor in a Catholic
hospital, not to mention as a practicing Catholic herself, she should
not live 'in sin.' Nowadays, even Catholic institutions were not
sticklers for such formalities, but then again, Father Ybarra might
be looking for a reason to reproach her since she had refused to
gamely toe his line when he had recommended Christian be transferred
to a hospice. Perhaps not though. He was a rather hidebound
administrator (she couldn't help thinking of similarities between him
and FBI Deputy Director Kersh), but he was a decent, honorable
priest. He was a man who, she had no doubt, conscientiously kept his
vows and would never, ever affront either God or man by committing
abuses such as Joe Crissman had. He prayed for knowledge of God's
will. Joe Crissman, as he'd told her, prayed for his own soul. Did
Father Ybarra ever do that? 

Did she? She prayed too, though, as with many things, she did her
praying privately, without fanfare or advertising. But did only those
who had done the unthinkable, the seemingly unforgivable really pray?
Did the rest just pray half-heartedly? Sometimes, she felt completely
unworthy herself. She still carried the burden of having killed a man
in cold blood years ago. No matter that if she hadn't killed him, he
might have claimed more victims and might have come after her for a
third time. She still felt the pangs of a mother's guilt for William.
And she had judged Father Joe mercilessly. Oh, she could claim that
only his victims were in a position to forgive him, and therefore she
didn't have to. But she also knew that he'd been a man, a human
being, who had hated his own tendencies but had still repeatedly
acted upon them. She knew, in her heart, that God, not she, was that
man's judge. If God could forgive, then it wasn't her place to do
what even God wouldn't, namely condemn him. And yet, as a mother, she
could not forgive Father Joe for inflicting grave, possibly
irreparable damage on boys and their families.

This was something to pray about. She would. And ask for the ability
to purge her feelings of outrage against the man. She could do it
now.

After a few moments of a stilled inner voice that even brought a
glimmer of inner peace, she, for the first time that night, felt her
eyes going heavy enough to close and stay closed. She even yawned.
Lying there next to the only one in the world she could ever see
herself with she chuffed softly. Now wasn't that a pretty fair
definition of marriage? When she had taken high school Advanced
Placement English, Mr. Gilcrest had made them learn Shakespeare
Sonnet 116. She could still recite it and did so silently now:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

No, she and Mulder had no plans to get a piece of paper declaring
them husband and wife. Their marriage of true minds was an ever-fixed
mark. It had embedded its uncrushable foundations in them both before
they were even conscious of it. They weren't gushy or effusive about
their togetherness (was that better than 'relationship' or not). They
didn't call each other 'honey' or 'baby' or 'sweetie' or whatever was
in fashion. And they were pretty boringly normal about sex. They
weren't kids any longer and their love lives reflected that, but they
didn't take after some married couples who lived in the same house
but went to separate bedrooms at night and had pretty much sworn off
sex. Mulder and she enjoyed some good lovin' and the mood overtook
them more than one might think.

Why not get married? Why not be able to truthfully call Mulder her 
husband and be his wife? Was it just a remnant of her rebellious
streak? Was it a product of some buried fear that formal marriage
would do to them what it seemed to do to a great many couples: place
stresses on them that caused eventual estrangement and alienation?
No, she dismissed those, all of them. Were they just too lazy to even
wander into a courthouse and fill out a document and wait for a judge
or justice of the peace? No, again. They weren't too lazy.

She knew what it was. The plain and simple deal was that she and
Mulder were naturally very private people. Couple that with their
longstanding requirements for discretion and secrecy to stay alive
because people (or aliens) were stalking and hunting them, and there
you have it. The two of them wanted to maintain their union. They
wanted to live their lives together until life ended. But they had no
intention of announcing themselves to the world as a pair in love,
let alone formal wedded bliss. Those members of the world that came
across them might, like Father Joe, recognize them to be bonded
together as tightly as any husband and wife could be, but they were
not going to put their names on a marriage license that could be
accessed by anyone who cared to plunk down the country clerk's fee
for a copy of said license. They were going to keep their enemies
guessing about their 'relationship' and, now again, their
whereabouts. 

After the upcoming two-month vacation, she suspected she and Mulder
would not come back here. Now that Mulder was no longer a fugitive,
he had access to the prodigious assets (his inheritance) that had
been frozen by federal fiat since his conviction. They would be able
to do as they liked, go wherever they chose. But she wasn't sure yet
whether she wanted to continue as a doctor at Our Lady of Sorrows or
whether she wanted to move on to something else. She would ponder
that and discuss it with Mulder during their vacation. And Mulder
would also give thought to what he wanted to do.

Now, she felt good. She floated in the warm, hazy space between real
consciousness and full-blown sleep.                  

She frankly couldn't wait to get away. They deserved some carefree
time. They deserved some unalloyed happiness. She knew Mulder was
right that the darkness probably would find them anywhere. But they
would do their damnedest to make a very hard job of it.

Nearly at that border few if any of us ever consciously get to
witness -- the blurry margin we cross into sleep -- she sighed again.
This was a contented sigh. She had exhausted her busy mind finally
and also found some peace in some of her contemplations, so her
mental processes quieted and allowed her passage into rest. Beside
her Mulder's sleeping form might have been waiting for it, for that
particular sigh of surrender to restorative sleep. The last thing she
felt before she finally drifted into unconsciousness was Mulder's
hand reaching for and holding hers. Nothing could have been sweeter.