From: eponine119  <eponine119@att.net>
Date: Sat, 10 Feb 1996 12:11:37 -0800
Subject: NEW: On His Own (1/1)



Disclaimer: Mulder and Scully belong to Chris Carter, 10-13 and Fox.  Not 
me.  No infringement is intended.

Warning: Not to give everything away, but this story has sex in it.  I'm 
not too good at rating my stories, but I think this one should be R - not 
a lot of graphic description, maybe slightly more than a romance novel.  
And it's not very nice.  So if you don't like that, don't read this.

If anyone is still reading, I would appreciate comments on this.  It's 
different from the stuff I usually write.  Thanks.

On His Own
by eponine119 
eponine@uci.edu
2/10/96

	Mulder flipped through the pages of the book and let it fall 
closed.  He hadn't come here to read.  He had to think, to make some 
serious decisions about his life and his work, and this was the most 
serene place he knew.  And he was certain no one ever got killed in the 
library.
	He stared over the table at the shelves of books.  No one 
stirred.  He'd planned it that way, knowing college students had better 
things to do on Friday night.  He picked at the pages of the book again, 
but was unwilling to commit himself to reading the words.
	Then he heard a sob.
	Mulder's shoulders tensed, the hair on the back of his neck 
standing straight up.  He'd though he was alone.  He hated women who cried.
	His stomach rejected the thought.  He didn't hate women who 
cried.  He understood them; even envied them.  He wanted to cry himself.
	To avoid the thoughts that would surely follow, he turned to look 
at the girl.
	She was looking out the window.  He could see the full moon and 
the gargoyle from the neighboring roof beyond her.  Full moon.  
Gargoyle.  The unbearable pain filled him.  Scully.
	The girl wiped her nose on the back of her hand, completely 
unaware of his presence.  Mulder's eyes slid over her, from her lightly 
curling reddish hair down to her heeled shoes.  She looked young to be a 
college student.
	She looked like Scully.
	Mulder's instincts told him to run, but he knew there was nowhere 
far enough for him to escape all the things he didn't want to be 
feeling.  So he leaned back in his chair, trying to make it creak and 
alert her to his presence.
	It didn't make a sound.
	Mulder pulled the handkerchief from his pocket and held it out to 
her.  She didn't see it; she didn't know he was there.  He got up and 
walked over to her.  "Here," he said gently, offering her the bit of cloth.
	She looked up at him, surprised.  He could see that she didn't 
know how to react for a second before she muttered, "Thanks," and wiped 
her eyes.
	Mulder stood there.  He didn't know what to do.  If it had been 
Scully, he would have put an arm around her.
	If it had been Scully, she wouldn't have been crying.
	Was she made of iron inside? he had to wonder.  Did she cry 
sometimes when she was all alone?  What could upset her badly enough to 
break her control?  Had she ever cried over him?
	"Are you OK?" Mulder asked, wrenching his thoughts away.  She 
nodded and gave back his handkerchief.  He could see that she was 
embarrassed. And still upset.  If he walked away now, she would start 
crying again.  "What's wrong?" he asked.
	She shrugged and the tears threatened to fall again.  
"Everything.  Nothing." she said.
	"Do you want to talk about it?" Mulder asked.  He didn't know why 
he couldn't walk away and leave her alone.  Maybe because he was tired of 
being alone with his pain.  Maybe because she reminded him of Scully.
	She shook her head, trying to be strong.  She sniffled loudly and 
looked at him.  "Can I buy you a cup of coffee?" Mulder offered.
	"Sure," she agreed, but didn't smile.
	"OK," said Mulder.  He left the books spread out on the table and 
allowed her to lead the way from the library.
	The walk over to the coffee shop was silent.  Not a hostile 
silence, like Mulder had gotten used to over the past few months, but not 
comfortable either.  Just...silence.
	"Be right back," Mulder said as the young woman settled hreself 
at a table just out of the light.  He touched her arm before he started 
over to the counter.
	"Two coffees," he ordered and he could feel her eyes on him.  I 
shouldn't have done that, he thought.  Touching people - women - was 
one of those things he did without thinking; it was instinctive.  He 
forgot some people didn't like it.  The girl probably saw him as a 
potential threat, Mulder reminded himself.
	He added cream and sugar to her coffee without thinking or 
realizing it.  He set it on the table in front of her and she looked at 
him in surprise after taking a sip. "How did you know?" she asked.
	"What?"
	"How I take my coffee?" she added.
	The realization of his unconscious action hit him like a sledge 
hammer and his eyes started to burn.  This is not Scully, he told 
himself, all that anger and pain welling up in his again until it 
threatened to control him.
	She took another drink of coffee and put a stray lock of hair 
behind her ear.  Mulder watched her do it.  Her fingers slid down, 
smoothing the strand along the line of her face before tucking it behind 
her ear.  Just like Scully.
	Millions of women do that, he thought, ill at ease.  Hair-tucking 
is not distinctive.  It just - he just - he missed her.
	He noticed the young woman was staring at him.  He met her eyes 
and she didn't look away.  "She's dead," she said.
	"Who?" asked Mulder.
	"Someone close to you." she answered slowly, watching him.  
"Someone you love.  Died.  Violently."
	Mulder's calm facade crumbled into distrust.  "How do you know 
that?" he demanded.
	She looked away.  "I know things that way.  Why -" she stopped.  
"Why did you ask me to come here with you?"
	"I don't know." Mulder admitted.  "You remind me of her."
	Her lips started to form the word "who" but stopped as she 
realized what he meant.  "Oh." she said and set her coffee aside. She 
looked at him intensely, studying him, and Mulder wanted to squirm under 
such scrutiny.  "What do we do now?" she asked.
	He drank some of his own coffee finally, avoiding answering.
	"How old are you?" she asked suddenly.
	"Thirty five."
	"I'm twenty one." she told him.  "Are you going to ask me to go 
back to your place?"
	"Should I?"  Mulder watched her as carefully as she was watching 
him.  One night stands weren't generally his style.  Especially not with 
women fourteen years his junior.  Who reminded him of Scully.  But the 
idea of going home and falling into a heated sexual encounter was 
actually not without it merits.  "Let's walk," he suggested, getting up.
	She fell into step beside him and they walked along in silence.  
For a moment, for two, Mulder could almost forget.  He put his arm around 
her lightly, almost casually.  He caught the scent of her perfume on the 
breeze and recognized it.
	Lots of women wear that scent, he thought.  Not just Scully.  But 
for a moment, he could almost believe.
	"Tell me what happened," she said, a fraction of a second after 
he started searching for the words to explain it to her.
	"We'd argued." he said.  "She said I didn't trust her.  Wanted to 
know what she was supposed to do to prove herself to me.  And then...the 
situation..."  He found it hard to breathe. "Escalated.  The gun - he 
pulled a gun.  She looked at me.  I knew then and I couldn't stop it.  
She jumped in front of me.  Trying to save my life."  Mulder forcibly 
removed himself from the moment in the past.  "I was wearing a vest.  She 
wasn't.  She died," he swallowed hard, "a couple of days later."
	They'd stopped walking.  The woman came to stand in front of 
him.  "It's OK to cry," she said, not really encouraging.  He nodded, but 
didn't cry.  She put her arms around him like a lover.  Like she wanted 
him to kiss her.  For a second he considered it, and that made him want 
to die.
	He took a step back.  She touched his face hesitantly and he 
looked into her eyes.  They were dull and shiny, almost entirely 
lifeless.  Meaningless sex would make the pain stop for a little while, 
he thought, and she didn't seem to care.  Do my eyes look that blank? he 
wondered, or is there no spark of life at all?
	I'm never going to sleep with Scully, he thought, a knife in his 
heart.  I'm never going to taste her lips, make love to her, hear her 
cries, feel the surrender of her body -
	Mulder kissed the woman before him, his lips hard, forcing his 
tongue into her mouth.
	It didn't make the thoughts go away.  How would Scully have felt 
melting against me? he wondered.  Like this?  Would it have been like 
this if one of the hundred times he'd been tempted to, he'd kissed her 
with desperate abandon?
	His fingers tore through her hair, tangling the shoulder length 
strands in his fingers.  His other hand was rough as he seized her 
breast.  He spun her around and shoved her up against a tree.
	Was the library still empty, he wondered frantically.
	She groaned, a sound full of pain but also pleasure.
	Would it be like this with Scully?  It kept echoing through his 
head.  His lips gentled at the thought of her, as he closed his eyes and 
pretended, trying to banish her from his thoughts.
	He took a step back and looked into the woman's face.  Her lips 
were swollen and her face was flushed.  Her eyelids dragged and her 
pupils were dilated with arousal, but there was something wary there as 
she looked at him.
	How would Scully have looked at him?  With that same caution?  
More?  Just because you loved her doesn't mean she loved you, he 
thought.  Oh God, she would never look at him with those wide blue eyes 
again.
	It wouldn't be meaningless sex if he kept thinking of Scully.  It 
wouldn't be escape.  It would be torture.
	If he did this, how much would he despise himself in the morning?
	Compared to how much he would despise himself if he didn't?
	"What was her name?" asked the woman.  Not Scully's voice.  
Because it wasn't her.  He would never hear that voice again, playing 
over his name, trading facts with him, serious in her quest to refute a 
theory.
	Mulder felt something change within him.  Between them.  "What's 
your name?" he asked.
	She hesitated.  She knew what he was doing, so he wondered why 
he'd asked her.  "Evelyn," she said at last.
	He agonized over what to tell her when she asked his name.  He 
didn't want to hear anyone but Scully scream his name in the heat of 
ecstacy.  And she never would.  How could he go through life without her 
by his side, never hear her speak her thoughts, never see her again?  He 
couldn't think of that.  He realized he'd accepted sex as the inevitable 
outcome of this encounter.  But she didn't ask his name.
	He looked at her carefully.  His vision no longer clouded by 
memory, he saw her.  As a woman, as someone all her own.  Not as a one 
night stand, not as a plaything or an anesthetic, or a stand-in.  She had 
thoughts. She existed.  She wasn't an extenstion of him and his mind.  
She existed.
	If he walked away, she would still be.  And he should walk away.
	Mulder realized he wasn't the only person mourning for Scully.  
Because she, too, had existed apart from him.
	"What are you thinking?" he asked, focussing again on the woman 
in front of him.  She has a name.  Evelyn.
	"I'm wondering what you are going to do." She was still watching him.
	Mulder's realizations hadn't ended.  She had emotions, feelings, 
needs, wants, desires.
	So had Scully. What had she wanted?  What would have made her 
happy?  She'd known, just as he had, in that second when their eyes met.  
Had she wanted to die?
	"What do you want?" Mulder asked Evelyn.
	She shrugged.  Her eyes weren't blank, they were shuttered.  
Careful to keep the pain from showing.  Mulder waited, listening for an 
answer.  She didn't say anything, as though she was waiting for him to 
continue.
	"What do you want?" he asked again.
	Something in her face, in her stance, changed.  "For the pain to 
go away," she said.
	"What's causing you pain?" he asked.  She didn't answer.  She 
just stood there, for so long he thought she might run away.  That's her 
right, he reminded himself, but he didn't want her to go.  He put his 
hand on her arm, still waiting.
	He began to stroke the soft skin on the inside of her elbow 
without even consciously deciding to do so.  She drew in a soft breath 
and looked up at him, surprised that he was asking and actually wanted to 
know the answer.
	Mulder could sense her barriers falling away.  And it didn't 
scare him.  His hand slid down her arm and clasped her small hand.  He 
squeezed it.  "Life." she said.  "It's overwhelming, sometimes."  She 
shrugged.  "It sounds stupid."
	"It's OK." Mulder said.  They looked at each other for a long 
moment.  "I'll walk you home." he offered.  He nodded and he put his arm 
around her as they walked.
	Mulder tried hard not to notice the dormitories on either side of 
the path.  He watched the ground, his shoes scuffing in the dirt.  Her 
shoes, so much smaller, heeled Mary-Janes.  What was Scully like in 
college?  How many men had she led back to her dorm room?  He tried not 
to think about it, but the thoughts wouldn't stop coming.  How many men 
she didn't care about, who didn't care about her?  When he would never 
know her.  It was so unfair.
	He would never see her shy rare smile blossom slowly across her 
face.  How could he live knowing he would never see it again?  Never make 
her chuckle, make her happy, make her blush?  He felt her loss as a 
person and as a friend.  How could he cope without her intellect, her 
generosity, even her bad tempered moods?
	Live every moment, he thought.  How many moments had he already 
missed in this life?  Evelyn put her key into the lock and stopped.  She 
looked up at him and he saw that careful look in her eyes again.  He 
stared back at her.
	She kissed him uncertainly, inviting him to take it further.  
This is so wrong, Mulder thought, but he kissed her back.  She opened the 
door and they went inside.
	She didn't smile and she didn't say anything, just closed the 
door and lay down on the bed, waiting for him.  Mulder closed his eyes, 
blocking out the schoolbooks and the stuffed animals and the posters on 
the wall.  All he was aware of was the pain.  His pain, consuming him, 
that would continue to slowly eat away at him until he died.
	This is how she felt, Mulder realized. I thought she didn't love 
me.  Maybe she loved me too much.  He opened his eyes and joined her on 
the bed, pushing her skirt up and unfastening his trousers.  I didn't 
love her enough.  He moved her thighs apart.  She loved me and I loved 
her, why didn't we ever do anything about it?  He plunged into her and 
she cried out.  Mulder thrust into her again and again and every time she 
made that sound.  He might be hurting her.  He might be hurting himself.  
He heard her cried and his own labored breathing as though the sounds 
came from far away.
	He began to shake.  Just like when Scully was shot.  The high 
pitched cried.  His sobbing.  He held her.  She was crying.  He held her 
tighter.  She was crying.  She was dying and he couldn't do anything.
	He wanted to die too.
	He moaned and it was a terrible sound as he came. Even then the 
pain did not disappear completely from his mind, as he had hoped it 
would.  He moved his lips, trying to whisper her name -Scully, Scully - 
but no sound came out.  It was just as well.  He kept his eyes closed for 
as long as he could.
	It wasn't very long.  Evelyn was watching him carefully, no 
expression on her face.  What in hell was he supposed to do now?  "I'm 
sorry," he said, and his voice cracked. Even as he said it, he wondered 
why he had never said the words to Scully.  She nodded and he stroked her 
hair.  She winced as he withdrew from her body and disposed of the 
condom.  Mulder felt low.  He felt like he'd just kicked a dog, one that 
was already helpless and hurting.
	If he was half a man, he thought, he'd give her a little pleasure 
in return.  His hand slipped down to caress her breast.  "Don't." he 
said, pressing her knees together and rolling onto her side, facing away 
from him.  Mulder understood.  After a moment, he put his arms around her 
and held her against his chest.
	"What do I do?" he asked.  His voice was raw.  "What do we do 
now?"  He put his forehead against the back of her neck, weary.
	She was quiet for so long he thought she might have gone to 
sleep.  "Hold me," she said, almost inaudibly.  "This is what I wanted."
	Mulder felt sick.  He'd used her horribly.  His arms stiff, he 
pulled her closer.  Did she know any better?  How many people out there 
in the world were so starved for human contact that they would...he 
hadn't thought he needed anyone.
	And Scully.  His thoughts looped back to her again.  Was that why 
she was so cold?  So afraid to believe, to reach out?  Would she have 
cried if she'd known there would be someone there to hold her?  I would, 
Scully, he thought.  All he needed was the time machine.
	He thought of her now, cold and alone in a grave.  He hadn't seen 
it.  He'd watched the funeral from a safe distance then gone to the 
office to hide.  He needed to be with her now.
	But he couldn't go.  Not just yet.  He had to repay this debt 
first.  Mulder stared at the ceiling while Evelyn presumably slept in his 
arms.

	He opened his eyes to sunlight.  Evelyn was staring out the 
window as she had in the library the night before.  Mulder was 
disappointed.  He felt guilty; he hadn't wanted to face her.  
"Sometimes," said Evelyn, drawing up her knees, "Pain is the only way you 
know you're still alive."
	Mulder realized he'd never shared the dawn with Scully.  Only darkness.
	"Will I ever see you again?" said Evelyn, not really asking so 
much as accepting.  She didn't look at him.
	He couldn't lie so he said nothing at all.  She nodded jaggedly.  
Her mouth hung slack and her hair was snarled around her face.  She 
looked like an abused child, the image of innocence lost.  He gently 
grazed her face with his fingers and turned to go.
	"I hope-" she began and stopped.  He waited.  "I hope you find 
your peace.  And that someday someone loves you as much as you loved her."
	He watched her.  "As much as I loved her." he whispered to 
himself.  It had done her no good when she was alive and it tortured him 
now.  Still he waited.
	Evelyn turned and met his eyes.  He realized the voices in his 
head were mercifully quiet.  There was nothing he could have done.  
Nothing he could do.  When he left, he left some of his pain behind. That 
was all he'd really wanted.  But he left a piece of himself as well.
	Evelyn just stared after him.

The end.
Again, I would appreciate your comments, if you liked it or not, and why.
Thanks.  -eponine119 , eponine@uci.edu