From: Dreamland 525 Date: 08 Oct 2000 23:19:31 GMT Subject: Playalinda (1/2) post-Req Title: Playalinda (1/1) Author: Jessica (dreamland525@aol.com) Rating: PG Classification: MSR Spoilers: Nothing significant. This story is based on the events of Requiem, and some speculation on season eight. Disclaimer: I had no part in the creation or distribution of these two fictional characters. I will, however, take credit for Mulder, since CC doesn't seem to want him anymore. Summary: This is the first in what may turn out to be three stories. Post-Requiem, post-first-half-of-the-eighth-season, and post-Mulder's-return. In the aftermatch of his abduction, things have changed, and something has to give. Notes: I got tired of reading post-Requiem stories that were Scully POV, got tired of perfect happy endings and depressing not-so-happy ones. This is Mulder POV, and I think it falls somewhere between the two extremes. Other stuff to follow. Playalinda by Jessica Florida is a welcome relief from the icy winds and bitter cold of DC in winter. Scully and I stepped off the plane Thursday morning in sweatshirts and jeans and nearly suffocated when we got outside. From fifteen degrees to eighty, and from a negative wind chill factor to humidity, is a big jump in one day. We traded our winter wear for shorts and T-shirts as soon as we got to the cabin. Scully's was her old U of Maryland shirt; mine I picked up at one of those T-shirt specialty shops in the mall. It says: 'Reticulum. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.' And it has a picture of Marvin the Martian in a UFO on the back. Needless to say, Scully was not amused. I thought it was sort of funny, but then again, under the circumstances, I suppose my sense of humor leaves something to be desired. Our cabin is small yet tasteful, with French doors that open to a long strip of golf course. There is a kitchen, a living area, two bathrooms, and two bedrooms. Ours is decorated in shades of peach, from the bedspread to the curtains to the lampshades to the doilies. I told Scully they may have overdone it a little. She said the other room was done in pink. Peach it is. It's a nice resort. Quiet, which was what we wanted all along. Away from the hustle and bustle of Orlando and the Walt Disney area. Close to the beach. There are palm trees aplenty and a warm tropical breeze that blows in through the open doors, ruffling the sheer curtains and Scully's newly chopped hair, as she stands looking out over the golf course. She's dressed casually - I adjusted to the shock of Scully in shorts yesterday - and looks very patient as she waits for me. I'm getting a little tired of her feeling the need to treat me with kid gloves, but I'm hoping by the end of this vacation she'll have loosened up. I finish tying my Nike's and straighten up. "Ready to go?" I ask, pretending I hadn't realized she was the one waiting. She turns and gives me a smile. The sun streaming in through the screen doors offsets her hair, bringing out its gold highlights and giving the illusion of a halo. "I'm ready," she says. She turns to the kitchen counter, but comes up short when she realizes her quarry isn't there. "I've got them," I say, jingling them around in my pocket. She's looking for the keys. She thinks she's driving. Fat chance. I snagged them earlier, when she was in the bathroom. I need her to understand that she no longer needs to be my chauffeur. She looks doubtful. I try not to let it irritate me. "Are you sure?" she asks. "Yes," I say firmly, and turn away before I say something that will provoke an argument. I didn't come here to stress out. I came here to relax. And so did she. To her credit, she lets it go at that, following me silently to our unremarkable rental car and getting into the passenger side without a word of protest. I settle behind the wheel, pushing the seat back a foot or two. It's like becoming newly acquainted with an old friend. I haven't driven myself anywhere since last spring. Key in the ignition, foot on the brake, shift into reverse, gas pedal...what do you know, I remember how to drive. Both of us relax considerably. Scully flips on the radio as we drive east, toward the interstate and the beach. She hums along to a catchy song - 'Where Have All the Cowboys Gone' by Paula Cole. I sigh deeply and roll down the window, letting the salty breeze flow into the car. There is nothing like warm tropical weather when you're feeling down. We reach the beach in due time. Its a long stretch of white sand on Merritt Island, with a perfect view of the Cape. I've been to Canaveral before, of course, but always viewed the launchpads from the tour bus. Now, from here, Launch Pad A stands proudly across the glassy blue surface of the Atlantic, and to my delight there is a shuttle there too, all ready to go. I'm surprised as well -- there are several websites that I check with regularity, and nasa.gov is one of them, but of late I've been neglecting many of the things that were once second nature. I hadn't been aware there was a launch coming up, and this bothers me in a way I can't really put my finger on. I guess its just yet another example of how out of touch I am with life lately. An oblivious Scully spreads our towels and then unfurls the large, unwieldy beach umbrella, stabbing it into the sand and settling beneath it. I dig through her pack for the digital camera and take a few shots of the space shuttle on the pad, wondering which one it is. "When's the launch?" Scully asks. I turn to put the camera away and she's stripped down to her bathing suit and is rubbing sunscreen on her shoulders and upper arms, despite the fact that she's under the shadow of the umbrella. "I don't know," I reply vaguely, pulling off my own T-shirt and toeing off my sneakers. I settle myself beside her on my towel and, just to be annoying, sprinkle a little handful of sand onto her legs. She gives me a look, and I smile and settle on my back, edging away from the umbrella. While Scully may need to stay out of harmful UV rays to protect her lovely complexion, I've been pale to the point of ghastly since my return, and am absolutely determined to get some sun. The beach isn't too crowded, which is just the way I remember it. There are handfuls of people dotting the sand here and there, but its nothing like some of the tourist beaches down near Miami and Ft. Lauderdale -- I wonder what Scully would say if she knew this beach was once frequented by naturists? Regardless, not many people who come from out-of-state are even aware of the existence of the Playalinda Beach -- it isn't even on my Rand McNally road atlas. And it doesn't hurt that its the end of January, when holidays are over and everyone's back to work. Everyone except us. Amazing what you can get away with after you've been kidnapped by beings from another galaxy. "Are you going in the water?" Scully asks about fifteen minutes later, breaking the comfortable silence that had fallen between us. Other than the call of seabirds and the crash of waves, this spot is peaceful. It's a breathtaking change from the hectic pace of the city. "Maybe in a little bit," I respond, sluggishly. I'd been dozing off under the heat of the sun. "It'll be freezing, you know." I raise my head and turn a little, squinting at her in the glare. "It'll feel pretty good after I bake out here for a while longer." "Don't fall asleep," she warns. "I did that once and woke up red as a lobster." "I trust you to look out for me, Scully," I say, and smile sweetly at her. That particular statement takes on triple meanings these days, since looking out for me 24/7 seems to be her most recent attempt at Sainthood, but she doesn't seem to get it. She rolls her eyes and settles back on her elbows, gazing out over the water. She is wearing a serene expression; one I don't get to see on her often. "This is so beautiful here," she murmurs at last, her words doing that slur thing that I've always found endearing. "So untouched." "This whole island is a wildlife refuge," I say, yawning a bit. "NASA owns it, but there are trails that you can hike, and maybe even a visitor center..." I trail off, trying to remember. It's been awhile since I was here. Ten years, at least. "That town we drove through yesterday...Cocoa Beach?" I nod. "It's close by, but you would never imagine. I mean, it's very touristy, all those tacky beach shops and hotels--" "Not to mention great seafood restaurants," I interject, giving her a lazy grin. She raises an eyebrow, turning to look at me. "Really?" I chuckle. Scully's a sucker for seafood. "Well, one or two." I nudge her lightly. "You were saying about the beach? I thought you'd want to just dig for clams or something and have dinner here...nature's buffet." She knows I'm teasing, of course, but she puts on her indifferent act, removing her sunglasses to squint dramatically at me. "I don't think so, Mulder. You couldn't dig up a clam to save your life." "Oh, really?" My eyebrows shoot up. "Why would you say that?" She gives me a patronizing look. Geez, she's the daughter of a sea captain and thinks that gives her the authority on everything 'ocean'. Sometimes she forgets I grew up along an ocean myself. Now, I may not be too fond of boats, but the shoreline is another story. "We used to have clam bakes on the beach during the summer, up on Martha's Vineyard," I tell her. "So I was pretty young when I learned how to find 'em. Fishing and lobster traps too - my next door neighbor was this guy who looked about three hundred years old; he was all grizzled and shriveled from the sun. He used to tell these amazing tales - " I pause, thinking back, and a smile involuntarily spreads across my face. "See, he used to be a swordfisherman, back in the day, before he married into money and retired. He told us - us kids - the most incredible things that he'd seen out there in the Atlantic, on his trips up to Newfoundland and the Grand Banks; we'd never know whether to believe him or not." "Things like what?" I've managed to capture her interest - whoa, a first - and she's on her side now, staring at me with anticipation. No doubt her father told his own tales, but its nice that she's making the effort. "Really weird shit, as he used to say. Shadows that would cover their boat completely and there wouldn't be a cloud in sight. Strange ripples in the water. Sea creatures --" "Would that be Nessie or Big Blue?" Her eyes dance and I flick sand in her direction, smiling despite myself. "Ghost ships," I continue, gesturing out to sea. "There one minute; gone the next. Weird shapes on the horizon. Big-ass waves, taller than the mast, in an otherwise flat calm." I shrug. "The stuff he'd tell us used to fascinate me, Scully. I remember going to the library to find books about it. I wanted to see it all for myself." "Oh, so I have *him* to blame for your penchant for the paranormal," she says. "Just keep it up, Scully..." I threaten. She laughs. "Mulder, you should see the way your eyes light up when you talk about this stuff... I think you missed your calling. You should have been a treasure hunter, or a marine biologist or something." "And miss the chance to work with you?" I scoff. "Never." Her eyes soften, and she reaches out to trace a finger along my jawline. It is a gesture of tenderness that surprises me; Scully isn't one to express her feelings so openly. "Well," she says lightly, "you never know. I could've been a marine biologist too." I smile, kissing her finger as it passes over my lips, and watch the play of sunlight over the familiar contours of her face. "If we only knew then what we know now..." I murmur, and after a moment her hand drifts back to her side. "What would you have done differently?" she asks. I hesitate, watching her eyes cloud over. A somber mood is rapidly settling over us, where only moments before there was laughter, and it saddens me. "If you had asked me that last summer," I begin slowly, "I would have said 'everything'. I would have - protected my sister, that night. I would have stayed away from the FBI. I would have joined NASA" - I nod out over the water at the gleaming shuttle - "maybe become an engineer, or even an astronaut -- my childhood dream. I would have...found you, somehow, because that's just how we are, and we would have been the best of friends, the best..of everything. I would have bought you a beautiful house right on the ocean and we'd live out our idyllic little existence blissfully unaware of what's out there. Of what's coming..." I fall silent, staring down at the sand sticking to my hand. If I peer closely enough, I can make out little individual grains of quartz and feldspar, glinting in the sunlight. "But not now." Her voice is soft, and its a statement, not a question. When I look up at her, those deep blue eyes are shiny with tears. "No. Not now." She takes a deep breath. "Because of her." "Because of her. Because of you, Scully. Because of...all we've done together, all we've learned." I bite my lip for a moment. It feels strange to voice these thoughts, especially considering all that I have been though in the past year, but if there is anyone who needs to hear them - it's the one who has been there with me through it all. "No matter what you may think, Scully, this particular life wasn't what I envisioned for myself, back when I was a kid with my whole life ahead of me - and I'm sure its hardly what you wrote in your diary about either. But its what we've got, and I'm proud of us." I shrug, feeling slightly self-conscious. "I'm proud of all we've done." "Me too, Mulder," she says, putting a hand on my arm, and that simple statement makes it all - every shining, wretched, grieving moment in the past eight years - worth it. I sniff and swipe a hand over my face. "Something in my eye," I mutter, and she laughs, even as a tear spills out of her own eye and glides slowly down her cheek. "Manly men have been known to shed a tear once or twice during emotional moments, too, you know," she says, a smile in her voice. "I never said I was a manly man, Scully," I counter, reaching over the gap between our towels to catch the tear with the pad of my index finger. "Hmm...you have a point," she concedes, after a long moment of contemplation, and I stare at her for a moment, deciding how I should get her back for that comment, before abruptly going for her sides, and tickling her mercilessly. She gasps, gives a very undignified shriek of laughter and tries to scuttle away backwards, like a crab. I find myself laughing, too. I am feeling truly alive for the first time in months. It's exhilarating. "Mulder!" she screeches, demonstrating to me (and the rest of the beach) that it is possible, once in a while, for her to ditch the dignified exterior and just react. "You get away from me," she warns. I have her cornered now, back against the umbrella, and I smile a wicked smile and advance ever-so-slowly. "I know judo. I know exactly where to kick you." "Your threats don't scare me, Scully," I say carelessly (read: foolishly), and she frowns in my direction. "They should," she says. "I could kick your ass from here to D.C., Mulder." "Scully, play nice," I admonish her. "I'm in a weakened condition." She kicks at me anyway, but I'm ready for her and grab her ankle, yanking her toward me. Her fingers scrabble uselessly over the sand, trying to dig in, but its futile. I struggle to my feet, pulling her with me, and proceed to carry her bodily toward the ocean, kicking and screaming. "Mulder! Don't you DARE! This is not funny anymore, damn it! Put me down! I mean it! I'm still wearing my shorts!" I laugh. "Sorry, Scully, no can do." She gets a large chunk of my hair in hand as her arm flails, and she pulls. Hard. "OW! What did you do that for?" "I do NOT want to go in the water, Mulder. I told you its freezing, and I haven't been sitting out in the sun like you have.....Mulder!" I wade into the surf and have to fight to keep from flinching. She was right - this water is freezing. Gritting my teeth, I struggle through the water until I'm about waist deep. I try to lower Scully, just to tease her, but she's got her arms wrapped so tightly around my neck I don't think a crowbar could pry her off. "Scully - you're choking me -" I say, laughing. "I'm NOT going into that water, Mulder!" She's like a frightened child, clinging to me like this, and the mirth of the whole situation strikes me. I shake with laughter as I try without success to pry her arms off my neck. "I'll dunk both of us," I warn, when I can get enough breath to speak again. "You do, and I will never speak to you again, Mulder-" Naturally, a monstrous wave picks that moment to sneak up behind us and crash into me, knocking me off balance. I wobble dangerously, and Scully's response upsets my equilibrium even more. My partner gives a little shriek and tries to scramble upward, as if I'm a tree she can climb to get away from the water. "Oh, shi -" is all I get out, and then there is a roaring noise and a flash of foam and abruptly we're underwater. The salty water is a stinging shock to my system, and I nearly gasp. Scully lets go of me immediately; I open my eyes to see her feet kicking inches from my head. Just to be safe, I drift away a few feet before surfacing, gasping for air. "You bastard!" I turn my head; yeah, that would be me. Scully is standing chest-deep in seawater, looking like a drowned rat. She is still sputtering, her hair plastered against her head and rivulets of water running down her face. Amusingly, there is a piece of seaweed tangled in her hair. I can't help it. I'm still struggling to get air back into my lungs, but I laugh and then choke, and then laugh some more. "God, I'm going to kill you, Mulder." She is wringing out her hair and glaring at me. I rub the sting from my eyes and try to spit the salt out of my mouth. "It was an accident," I point out. She flashes me a look of outrage. "YOU were the one who dragged me into the water!" "Hey, Sister Spooky... you've got some, uh, chlorophyta on your head there," I tell her, remembering vaguely a chapter in my freshman biology text. My astute little scientist stares at me for half a second, mouth gaping open like a fish, before she loses it. Muttering, "Okay, that's IT, monster boy" as she swipes the offending algae off her head, Scully launches herself at me through the water, and the expression on her face would make a lesser man drop over dead on the spot. Needless to say, I backpedal in alarm, windmilling my arms to keep my feet planted on the squishy sand beneath our feet. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" I say. And damned if I'm not still laughing. Another wave rolls smoothly beneath us, and it pulls her a little way downshore, which seems to infuriate her more. I regain my footing and let the current push me in, and soon I'm trying not to flinch as I limp across a fine layer of broken shells and stone. As soon as my feet hit sand, I'm running, and I know without turning around that she's right behind me. I take her towel hostage, scooping up mine along with it and waving it triumphantly. She stops a few feet away, dripping and winded. "God damn it, Mulder," she growls. "Give me my towel." "Only if you promise not to do me bodily harm," I say, in utter seriousness. "I can't believe you did that, Mulder," she snaps. "I didn't want to get wet! Damn it!" "Why not?" I ask. "Because!" "Good reason," I say, holding the towel just out of her reach. "I swear, if you don't give me my towel RIGHT NOW..." She's so angry her threat trails away into nothing. I guess I should feel guilty, but I don't, really. Scully needs to lighten up sometimes. So what if she got dunked in the ocean? We're at the beach for christ's sake. She'll get over it. "You felt like you'd lost control of the situation, right?" I say, giving her a taste of her own medicine with The Eyebrow. "Suddenly it was all in my hands, all up to me, to decide what happened. That's what bothered you the most. You hated the loss of control. Am I right?" "Stop psychoanalyzing me, Mulder, I am NOT in the mood." "Well? It bothered you, didn't it?" "Yes," she says through gritted teeth. "Yes, it bothered me." She holds out her hand for the towel. I hand it to her and take a cautionary step back, but she just begins to rub herself down, furiously. I turn away and shake the sand out of my own towel. "Well, now maybe we're in the same boat, *partner*," I mutter, in a childish display of what thirty years ago my parents would have called 'sassing back'. The words weren't meant for her to hear, not really, but over the years Scully's gone and developed some sort of freaky bat hearing, so in retrospect I really should have refrained. The motion of her hand comes to a stop, and slowly she turns to look at me. "What?" Her tone is flat, clipped; its shrill ring completely out of place on this peaceful stretch of sand. I close my eyes, berating myself for pushing it, and feeling suddenly drained. A lot of physical activity is good for me, or so my doctor preaches, but these days it really tires me out in a hurry. Plus, I really don't know if I have the endurance to go through this with her now. Granted, communication was part of the reason I planned this little vacation, but... well, she can be stubborn, and I can be insensitive - and vice versa for both of us - and we're both short tempered nowadays and that stunt I just pulled in the ocean probably didn't earn me many points... She's still waiting though, hands on her hips, and I decide the hell with it. "Scully, you *know* what I mean," I say, sighing. "Lately, I've...I've felt like I've relinquished the driver's seat, you know? I'm not the one calling the shots for me anymore -- instead it's, it's always you, or Skinner, or... hell, even Frohike. All knowing what's best for me, all deciding what I should and shouldn't know, cooking me dinner and cleaning my apartment and driving me to work and calling me constantly to make sure I'm all right... god, Scully, it's been driving me crazy. It's not like I don't appreciate that you guys care, but you're not willing to take the first step away, to just... back off and allow me to go it alone again. I feel... I feel like I'm trapped." And there it is, in a nutshell. A tirade of words that I'd always thought would be released explosively, in the heat of an argument, but at this moment all I want to do is go lie down somewhere on this beach and just forget about it all. But I know that, today, that's not gonna happen. And I brace myself for her reply. end (1/2) From dreamland525@aol.com Sun Oct 15 10:35:13 2000 Date: 08 Oct 2000 23:20:57 GMT From: Dreamland 525 Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative Subject: Playalinda (2/2) Post-Req Scully fidgets with her towel. She looks wide eyed; maybe a little startled.... guilty? "We never meant..." "I know," I cut her off, sighing again and beginning to towel myself off. "I know you meant well, Scully. *Especially* you... but... its like I'm being purposely left out of the loop these days. I mean, you tell things to Doggett" I can't quite keep the nasty inflection out of my voice, "now before you tell them to me." "That's not true," she defends herself immediately. "Riverside?" I ask pointedly, and she blinks at me. "How did you know about Riverside?" "Your 'partner'." I make little quotation marks with my fingers, and roll my eyes. "He called and told me a couple days ago. Told me everything, Scully. About the abductions, the MUFON chapter... everything." That was when I'd logged onto the Internet and booked us a flight to Orlando airport, deciding that all the excuses and the ditching, ironically enough, had to end, before it got any worse. She spreads her towel back onto the sand beneath her umbrella and takes off her soggy shorts, settling back on the sand in only her one-piece. Her movements are jerky and I can tell she's still angry at me, but she hesitates to meet my eyes, so I also know she's distracted by what I'm saying. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you about that," she says finally. "It was just - routine - for Agent Doggett and I to handle the situation ourselves. We investigated over a dozen of these things while...um, while you were missing." Scully always has difficulty referring to the months when I was gone. I think she's either afraid of upsetting me again - I had some horrific nightmares for a while - or she just doesn't know how to put it. Even 'missing' doesn't quite define what happened to me. I was taken; abducted -- willingly enough, I suppose, although as soon as I realized there was no turning back I sure as hell didn't want to go any further. But by then it was too late. And consequently, six and a half months of my life were gone. Sometimes it's hard for me to believe that life went on in my absence -- not because of some egomaniacal self-delusion, but simply because I did not feel the natural progression of time during those months. When I woke in the hospital in Bellefleur one dreary winter morning, I couldn't have told you if one day had passed or ten years. And then Skinner appeared, and Scully...and suddenly my whole world had tilted on its axis; displaced. I was displaced. My timeframe was not theirs, and it confused me for days. 'I was gone for six months?' I kept asking, over and over, to whoever would listen. 'Six months?' Most people realize that six months is a fairly long time...hell, six months is half a year. But I'm betting they don't also know that six months is one hundred and eighty six days. Four thousand four hundred and sixty four hours. Two hundred sixty seven thousand eight hundred and forty minutes. That's a hell of a lot of time to miss out on things when the woman you love is pregnant. Looking back now, it seems that almost everything I was comfortable and familiar with changed. From rising gasoline prices to our new President; from Frohike's suspicious regrowth of hair to the updated layout in the Washington Post. And Scully... It was on her third visit to my hospital room that I was finally lucid enough to realize she'd put on weight. I remember that thought striking me as odd, because I'd actually *lost* weight during her absence. It was about ten seconds later that I realized she didn't look *fat*, she looked *pregnant*. "Scully?" I remember asking, my voice still raspy from disuse, my hands trembling slightly from shock and, I have to admit, a tiny amount of tremulous anticipation. "What's with, uh...?" And I waved my hand in the general direction of her stomach. Eloquently put, I know. It makes me cringe now; but naturally, Scully gets a big kick out of it every time she tells the story. Luckily, we don't have too many friends. When it was confirmed to me that Scully was really pregnant and the child was mine, I became convinced that I was still under Their control, and under the influence of some sort of hallucinogen. This situation was too much like what had happened to me last year - the fantasy world I inhabited in which I had everything I ever wanted, while in reality they messed with my mind and nearly killed me. I thought it was happening again. It took the better part of a day to convince me otherwise. I think that's why they became so unconvinced of my sanity so fast. Up until the news of her pregnancy, they'd all been pretty gung-ho about me leaving and going back to work; reprising my rightful role as head of the X-files division. But apparently with my lucidity (wrongfully) called into question, I was now to be handled delicately and with as much discretion as possible. And this continued right up into last week. Actually, right up to the moment that we boarded the 747 bound for Orlando. "Were you ever going to tell me, Scully?" I ask, trying not to let the frustration bleed into my voice. "Or was I just going to be kept out of the loop forever?" She sighs. "Of course, Mulder, but not until you were..." She waves a hand in the air as though searching for the correct adjective. "Retired?" I supply helpfully. "Dead?" "Mulder..." "*Sane*?" I ask, putting a wild-eyed expression on my face in an attempt to look like the loony they all seem to think I am. "Mulder, stop." She scrubs a weary hand over her face. I shake my head, staring out at the endless blue of the ocean. "You don't trust me anymore," I accuse her softly. "You don't trust me to work with you, to watch your back. You only tell me things when you think I need to hear them. You -" My face screws up as fury sweeps over me, but its gone an instant later, leaving me feeling hollow and bitterly sad. "You don't even let me hold my daughter when you're not there." "Mulder, no..." Her voice catches and she scrambles to her feet, approaching me and leaning against my chest, arms wrapped around my waist. "No, no, no...it's not *you*, Mulder..." Her voice gets very soft. "It's what they *do* to you." "Damn it, Scully! They don't do anything to me! It was just one episode, and I was suffering from post-traumatic stress for christ's sake!" Shaking my head in frustration, I push her away and take a step back, then raise an accusing finger to point in her face. My voice is hoarse; raspy with betrayal. "*Nothing* has happened to me since then. There is *nothing* wrong with me. You're blowing this thing way out of proportion!" She swallows hard, looking very pale under the glare of the sun. Her hair is still wet, dripping down her cheeks and shoulders. "But Billy Miles..." "Is not me," I interrupt. "I know he's in some sort of catatonic state. I know he was aggressive, almost violent, the first days back. I know that! But that did NOT happen to me, Scully. Scully...look at me. Please. Just look at me." Her eyes reluctantly flicker up to mine. "Do I look sick to you? Do I look unstable?" Her lower lip quivers for a moment. "Not any more than usual," she murmurs at last, and if I'm not mistaken that was a tiny smile that just graced her expression. I hold out my hands as if to say 'What did I tell you?', then drop them limply back to my sides. "It's *me*, Scully," I tell her insistently. "I'm not someone to be afraid of. I know that you just want to protect us - that you're just looking out, for all of us. But it needs...to end...now." For endless moments, the only sounds are the crashing of waves and the shrieking of gulls as they cartwheel overhead. I feel the sun beating down on us; inhale the tang of the ocean breeze and feel my heart beat in time to the seconds that are ticking by. Our entire future is depending on what she says next, and in a sense I don't think I've ever been so terrified. I've never risked so much. But nor have I ever wanted so badly. At last Scully speaks. Her voice is tremulous, yet somehow strong, and when she lifts her eyes to mine I see reflected in their ocean blue - everything I was afraid I had lost. "Okay, partner," she says simply. "Let's talk." And somehow, with those four words, I know that it will all turn out okay. That soon enough, we'll be back in our dingy basement office drinking stale coffee and arguing semantics; that we'll be opening files and investigating the latest freakish incident in yet another small town. Because they can divide us, separate us, debilitate us -- but they can't break us. We began this thing years ago, and it ain't over yet. Only now...now there is an innocent that we must protect and guard with our lives. Our daughter. And I know, as surely as anything, that when we leave our haven here on the Atlantic coast; leave our enchanted little bungalow for the real world once more, our job will be harder than ever. Over the years I'd lost my faith in myself, and in Scully, and in the truth, more than once before I found it again. But now, there is this little girl, this precious life that we created, and she...she is worth protecting. My beliefs, my faith, my hope - they now reside in her. She is our future. I take a breath, and months of tension are released on the exhale. And I think that maybe now, maybe this time, I'm free. "Let's talk about apartments, Scully," I say, settling back on my towel and reaching for her hand. She allows herself to be pulled into my arms, and settles back against me, soft and smelling of salt and sunshine and sea. "I'm thinking someplace near your mom would be convenient..." A huge smile has blossomed on my face, and it doesn't show signs of disappearing any time soon. Her fingers twine through mine. "Two bedrooms, Mulder," she says. "It has to have a nursery. I'm thinking...maybe a Reticulum theme. Aliens on the walls, one of those glow-in-the-dark universes on the ceiling..." It would seem that we've come full circle, on one count at least, in the mere space of 24 hours. She can joke about it too. I laugh in sheer relief, hugging her against me. I have my life back -- and for now, its everything I always wanted it to be. end (2/2) Additional notes: Thanks to my impromptu beta reader, Sarah, for her insight and ability to catch things I would have missed. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Any mentions of swordfishing and the like in this story - well, I know jack about it, so I shamelessly used references found in the book 'The Perfect Storm' by Sebastian Junger. (For those who have not read, the book is SO much better than the movie, if a bit technical at times.) I *have* been to Florida, many many times. The resort where Mulder and Scully stay is based on a real one that I can't for the life of me remember the name of, but I do know it was fairly close to Titusville and the Space Coast. I've also been to Playalinda beach a few times, but I may have done a little geographical rearrangement of the area by making the launch pads visible from that particular area (which, I don't really remember them being.) Oh well, it made things easier. :) If you live in the area and think I did a lousy job of writing about it, I apologize. I'm not *from* there, I just visit. Finally, I purposely left out a few side stories, like the investigations that Scully and Doggett were doing, and the "episode" Mulder made reference to that he'd had upon his return, since that wasn't really the point of the story. In real life, you don't stop and explain every single thing you do and say, so I decided not to do that in this story either. If I confused you - I guess that's your problem. :) I'm fairly new at this, so what can I say? Please be gentle? ;) Thanks for reading, and feedback is welcomed with arms wide open.