From: ephemeral@ephemeralfic.org
Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2000 02:48:17 -0500
Subject: Visions In Tandem by Trixie
Source: direct

Reply To: scullymulder1121@hotmail.com



Title: Visions in Tandem

Author: Trixie

Email: scullymulder1121@hotmail.com

Rating: PG

Classification: V, A, MSR

Spoilers: Requiem, and, by extension, all things.

Archive: Sure.

Summary: "I don't taste you the way I would ice cream or
cotton candy, but rather as an essence I have yet to
identify. I taste you, not with my mouth, but with my entire
body, with my mind, and I am open to you, and you to me,
beyond my wildest imaginings."

Notes & Thanks: First, I wasn't even going to =write= a
post-Requiem, but I had this idea in my head that demanded
to be written. Then, I wasn't going to post, but three very
sweet people encouraged me to do so: Brandon, Brynna, and
Narida. (Narida lso helped me with the title, and assisted
me in finding the right passage for the summary field, as I
am now allowed to write summaries -- I suck at them cause I
always feel like I'm giving too much, or too little, away.

Disclaimer: Scully's pregnant. Moose & Squirrel are finally
getting laid. By each other. Nanner, nanner, naaannnerrr.
(Yes, I have the emotional maturity of a five-year-old --
deal with it.)

~

I have only one dream left.

My scientific mind tells me this is untrue. The human mind
is capable of an infinite number of imaginings. In a
thousand lifetimes I would be unable to go through even half
its possibilities. Surely with the life I have led, the
things we have both witnessed, a lack of things to see in my
R.E.M. state should be at the very bottom of my list.

In my life with you, I have learned to open myself to many
things I never would have considered before.  This is no
different. Is it my own guilt that keeps me from seeing
anything but you, as I remember you last? Is it a misplaced
sense of responsibility? Is the unborn child inside me
refusing to give up hope on its father? Because I haven't
given up hope, Mulder. You, most of all, have taught me the
importance of belief and faith.

I have faith in the belief that I will find you. I will tell
you about this miraculous gift we have been given, and we
will go on with our lives, somehow.

Until then, I will continue to search. I will continue your
work, our work, and the pursuit of the truth. Now, more than
ever, I believe the x-files are the only recourse I have in
my search for you.

The day will come that I hold you, Mulder. The day will come
when I place your son or your daughter in your arms,
something I hadn't allowed myself to envision before.

The day will come when I dream something that doesn't bring
a pain so acute, so primal that even the life inside me
could name it. The day will come that I have something more
to hold onto than the look in your eyes as you walked away
from me.

~

"I won't let you go alone."

They are silent for a time, comforted by the exquisite
embrace they hold. It is small comfort, but it is all they
have, all they have ever had, and it is more than enough.

He is the first to pull away. That is not the way it
normally is between them, she being the one always most
resistant to physical intimacy. That has changed somewhat
over the past few years, as so many things between them
have, a change so subtle to call it change does it a
disservice. It's much more like morphing, if it were
possible for something without substance to morph.

"You know I can't let you take this risk, Scully."

Her head shakes at his assertion. It never once crossed her
mind to refuse him this and insist on remaining by his side.
He is right. There is danger to her if she goes, and she
will not jeopardize all they have gained in the past few
months simply to assert her independence, her ability to
take care of herself. He has taken care of her for years.
They have taken care of each other.

Silently, she reaches her hands around the back of her neck
and removes the small gold cross she wears. In the past, he
has had trouble reconciling her scientific nature with such
a strong religious conviction. Nearly as much trouble as she
herself has had. That is not what this moment is about,
however. The piece of jewelry given to her by her mother so
many years ago did not represent God, or church to either of
the two people in this hall.

It was a promise in the form of a talisman, something they
never said aloud, never acknowledged, but existed all the
same, stronger than the invisible tethers pulling them
apart, a symbol of a bond incapable of breaking.

"I can't be with you the way I'd like to." Her voice breaks
the stillness that surrounds them, and her arms wrap around
his neck, fastening the chain that once rested around hers.
Tucking the cross beneath his dress shirt, she places the
flat of her palm against his chest, measuring the beat of
his heart with great care. "But I am with you, Mulder.
Always."

"Always," he repeats. In these moments, his voice becomes
reverent, something lower and more meaningful than his
normal conversing tone. He makes her promises with the tone
of his voice that words could never say.

He does not take her in his arms, or kiss her full on the
lips. Save the first in a hospital waiting room, he has
never kissed her in public. It is something he hoards, away
from prying eyes, cherishes to himself. What he doesn't know
is that she does the same. They never kiss good morning or
good night, not even on the few occasions they've spent the
entire night wrapped around one another. It's still new to
them, and until that newness has worn off, they won't risk
anyone learning more than they need to know.

So he doesn't kiss her. Instead, he brushes the very tips of
his fingers over the bridge of her nose, the indent her top
lip makes in the very center, the lush fullness of its lower
mate. Again, he makes promises that have no voice, and they
whisper against her skin long after he walks down the hall
and out of view.

~

I'm so scared, Mulder.

Not of the dream I've already told you about. That, in its
way, has grown to comfort me. It is a bittersweet comfort,
but one I do not think I would be capable of functioning
without. Each day I wake up, go about my routine, take care
of myself and the life growing inside me, a single goal
waiting for me at the end of the road.

I know I will see you when I fall asleep. And even though I
will be unable to hold you, unable to tell you all the
things that have changed, all the things that will never
change, I long for the glimpse into your eyes, the feel of
your hands. In this dream, it is a perfect pitch of sense
memory. I can smell the very essence of you, see each line
and imperfection on your beautiful face, hear all the things
you say, and understand the things that you don't. Touch
goes both ways, the tickling hairs on the back of your neck
against my fingers, your touch moving past my skin and into
the very center of who I am.

The thing that unnerves me most is the sense memory of
taste. I don't taste you the way I would ice cream or cotton
candy, but rather as an essence I have yet to identify. I
taste you, not with my mouth, but with my entire body, with
my mind, and I am open to you, and you to me, beyond my
wildest imaginings. I believe now, more than ever, that this
is how we were meant to be. All these years, all the time
we've spent together, each individual road in our lives have
lead us to the place we have finally achieved.

Our baby grows more and more each day. One day he will be
ready to be born. As that day grows nearer, my fear
increases. I do not fear never finding you, because that is
not a possibility. Nor do I fear the only dream I have left.
It does not scare me to see you when I sleep.

I fear for my sanity when I see you while I'm wide awake.

~

The first time it happened, she stopped breathing for
thirty-seven seconds.

In her living room, sitting on the couch, sat the object of
every moment of her attention. Not even the first time did
she really believe it was him. He didn't look up, didn't
speak, did nothing but stare at a blank television set. Once
she found her voice, she spoke his name, quietly, a note of
disbelief coloring it.

A blink later, and he was gone. She had shaken it off,
quickly attributed too much stress, and too little sleep to
the delusion.  Then, she was five months along and the baby
chose the moment he disappeared to flutter for the first
time. Later, she would write this off as coincidence.

The second time it happened, she was carrying a sack of
groceries. It took her nearly an hour and a half to clean up
the mess ice cream and eggs made splattered all over her
carpet. She was grateful for something to do. It distracted
her mind from what must surely be a form of psychosis taking
hold.

That time, he had turned to look at her. His mouth had
formed her name. No sound had come out, but she had watched
his beautiful lips speak her name enough times to know
exactly what it looked like.

Weeks passed without incident, without leads, without
anything to keep her frustration at bay. When there was
time, she bought baby clothes. Her frame wasn't meant to
hide a pregnancy, and soon everyone knew. They whispered
behind her back about poor Dana Scully, whose partner got
taken by little green men after he knocked her up. It didn't
matter what they said, or what they thought about her.  It
was liberating the day she realized that.

The third time it happened, she wasn't surprised at all.

Instead of trying to speak, she moved to the couch and sat
beside him. He turned to look at her and they held each
other's gazes for a moment. Finally, he opened his mouth to
speak again, but she held up a hand to forestall him.
Feeling the moment stretch, she moved her hand to his face,
watching in fascination as his eyes fluttered shut. Hers
closed as well, the instant she would have made contact with
his skin, and when she opened them, he was gone.

Emptiness the likes of which she'd never known filled her
after that day. Half the time she cursed herself for her own
gullibility. Of course it wasn't him. Of course she couldn't
touch him. You couldn't touch a delusion. The other half of
the time she worried. It was obvious her mind was creating
some kind of coping mechanism. But it wasn't healthy, it
wasn't right.

It wasn't him.

The fourth time was in her kitchen, and she finally heard
his voice.

"You can't touch me," the disembodied voice of Fox Mulder
told her.

Spinning in place, she saw no trace of another human being
in the room. Heading into the living room, she was
half-surprised to not find him on her couch.

"But you can talk to me." Again, the voice that was but
wasn't Mulder's told her.

"You're not real." It was a valiant attempt at denial, but
her voice wavered too much, her tone belying a need to
believe too strong to be ignored.

"I'm as real as you need me to be."

She had walked to her bedroom, and now he was there, sitting
in the chair by her bed, adopting much the same pose he had
nearly three years ago. His eyes, when he finally lifted his
head, spoke to her as they always had.

"I'm as real as you can let me be."

As she sat on her bed, far enough away so that the
temptation to touch him would not be too great, she worried
more for her own sanity than she had in the last eight
years.

It still wasn't him.

But for now, it was enough.

~

It was a cold night in February when it happened.

For months, she hadn't bothered to write in her journal. Why
bother, when the man she was writing to was accessible to
her, the only cost her own sanity?

At least, that was what she told herself. That she was
crazy, because only a crazy person would see someone that
wasn't really there.

It never occurred to her there might be another explanation
for it, and even if it had occurred to her, if she'd
glimpsed another option for even a second, her rational mind
would quickly dismiss it out of hand before her treacherous
instinct could catch a whiff. For years now, Dana Scully's
intellect had been warring a silent battle with her
instinct. Her intellect usually won, but only because it
didn't play fair. Most of the time it didn't even allow her
instinct to form an opinion of its own, let alone dare think
it.

Her instinct had formed an opinion, though, while her
intellect was busying itself with its inevitable madness.
The instinct that lived at the very core of her being, that
which was both lover and mother knew something science could
never explain.

As he had done before, when he could not reach her in body,
Fox Mulder came to her in spirit. Theirs was a bond
unbreakable. That was something she knew when she got past
being too smart for her own good. It was at the very core of
her last dream. Just as she was always with him, he was
always with her. More so, now that there would be an entire
person born simply because they loved each other.

And so when she found him by her bed that night, sitting in
the chair she'd come to think of as his, her intellect
prepared itself for madness, and her instinct wept with
recognition. The baby she'd learned was a boy began to move,
waking to his father's presence.

Mulder stood, something he had never done before, to her
recent recollection. His mouth formed her name, but this
time she couldn't hear it because of the loud roar in her
ears. It couldn't be real, not this easy, not after all
this, surely it had to be more difficult, more intricate to
have him standing before her again.

His eyes moved over her body, and it wasn't until he reached
her stomach that she began to believe that it just might be
so. The touch she'd ached to feel again was as exquisite as
she'd remembered. His palm settled over her stomach and he
moved until his forehead rested against hers, solid, firm.

Real.

Sliding down her body until he rested on his knees before
her, a supplicant, he pressed his ear against the upper
swell of her stomach and listened to two hearts, beating in
tandem.

"You're here."

He lifted his gaze to hers and smiled. "I'm here."

"You're real."

He took her hand and pressed it inside the collar of his
shirt until her fingers gripped the gold cross he wore.
Finally, her intellect was convinced and she sank to the
floor before him, on her knees as well, so happy he'd be
here to help her up when the time came.

"You remember . . ." Her voice trailed off, and she worried
he wouldn't understand she didn't mean what he remembered of
his abduction.

It was unworthy of what they were to each other for her to
worry he wouldn't understand something so simple, so
elemental.

"Everything." His hand passed over her face, leaving
whispered secrets and promises filled in its wake. "I
remember everything."