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randomfoggytiger · 22 hours

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*-*-*-*-*-*-* Brief Encounter *-*-*-*-*-*-*

-*-*-*- of the Interdimensional Kind -*-*-*-

Happy Birthday, @baronessblixen! :DDDDDDDDD

Words cannot express how deeply your work and your ways have impacted my experience in this fandom (and life, as a whole.) So, I shall keep all speeches short; and only observe that-- having spent a month first watching, then writing, then thinking and rewriting-- I hope this endeavor does credit to your favorite movie. You deserve it, and much, much more~.

*-*-*-*-*

Prologue

We're neither of us free to love each other. There's too much in the way.

-Brief Encounter

*-*-*-*-*

The clouds had gathered for a storm, but only succeeded in blocking out the sun.

Whimpering drizzles pattered the windshield, streaked tears across the windows, glistened occasionally in the waxing moonlight. The road stretched on and on; and the wind, the rain, and the engine roared with cacophonous, irrepressible force. Her head thrummed with pain, drumming in time with Nature’s protestation.

Twenty more minutes and she would allow herself to think.

The trees on either side began to gather around fences. Then farmhouses. Then neighborhoods, landmarks taking shape in the mystic dark. Turns, lanes, and the final road.

Then home.

Five more minutes.

Purse, keys, exit.

Her mother met her at the door, gloved and coated and anxious. “We were worried sick-- are you okay, sweetheart, where’ve you been?”

“Yes, Mom. It just took a while getting back.”

“It’s been over an hour, Dana.” She paused, snappish and loving and hurt.

“I’m sorry.” Purse, shoes, coat. “I won’t keep you, it’s late.” House slippers.

“Tomorrow, then. We’ll talk after your shift.”

Kiss goodbye. “How was William?”

“You should ask him, he’s still up.”

Ask him, ask him. Can’t ask him. “Why? Does he feel sick--”

Her mother’s hands, warm and clean, gently touched her face, gently drew her chin away from the stairs. “He wouldn’t say. But he loves you, Sweetheart-- he needs you.”

Scully stilled, stayed in that spot until her mother kissed her cheek, said her goodbyes, drove down the driveway and into the night.

“But I don’t, Mom,” she confessed, startling as the wind howled and the house groaned. Their anniversary clock ticked its seconds loudly in judgment. I no longer love him.

*-*-*-*-*

Chapter 1

I'm a happily married woman - or I was, rather, until a few weeks ago. This is my whole world, and it's enough, or rather, it was until a few weeks ago.

-Brief Encounter

*-*-*-*-*

Four weeks ago, she saw him.

She saw him; and doubted herself, doubted the familiarity he shed in passing. Set aside the prickling sense of deja vu and kismet and every other word she’d once learned to give meaning. Dismissed the force of loneliness pinching, squeezing, crushing her heart. Labeled these sensations under false names and placed them in faulty categories. Stood in the weakening sun of a small-town airfield and refused to think until the skies opened up and the rains fell.

It wasn’t unusual for rain to sweep the airfield and wash five to five dozen soggy souls into the small, stapled airport. Workers and servicemen, mothers and children were fractured into groups and driven off to their chosen recreational areas-- chaos and skinned knees and runny noses often mingled in the lunch hall; restraint and sopping boots and rustling purses often flocked to the lounge.

Four weeks ago, only two wandered aimlessly down the long, rangy hallway.

She heard his voice behind her, stumbling curiosities to an attendant; and turned, turned, turned against every force of nature to drink him in with her eyes.

“I’m Fox Mulder, I’m with the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” he was rambling, patting at his coat, rifling through his empty pockets. “Um, I don’t have my badge on me, but…. I need to use your phone so I can call my boss-- my boss, Assistant Director Skinner-- if I could just call him--”

“Mulder.”

He stopped, a toy unwound with its key removed. Lost, vulnerable; a breath away from flustered, furious.

His hair was dark, bangs flat. The creases in his forehead were smooth, the hollows under his eyes filled, the ridges of his cheekbones soft and young. He looked for all the world like a boy, innocence barely tainted enough to be searching for a badge in a coat.

Fox Mulder wore a wedding ring.

That ring shook Scully from fantasy to reality; and she stared at this man, this stranger, and didn’t run. She didn’t run, but maybe she should have.

“Do I know you?” he asked, ring sweeping back and forth as Fox Mulder with the Federal Bureau of Investigation ran a hand through his hair. Stepped forward in cheap leather shoes and a mismatching cheap, polyester tie. “Ma’am?”

“No,” she replied, but it felt like a lie. “But I overheard; and… and you can use my phone. Here.”

He stared at her, stepped back, wrinkles appearing above his furrowed brows. Took her phone carefully, flipped it open like it might explode. Studied it like a holy relic. Looked back as if she’d given him a miracle.

“You know where I can get one of these?”

*-*-*-*-*

They ate lunch together. Something small from the food court, something he could eat one-handed while pressing buttons, opening and scrolling and marveling. She sat across and watched the wonder wash afresh over his face with each discovery, wondered herself what would inspire this abject devotion.

A new song kicked on, overhead-- something the composer must have thought was heady on paper, in the sound booth; but was cheap and tawdry and overdone, pitchy and nichey, among the living. Fox Mulder slammed his thumb one last time, turned around, and tilted his head from side-to-side until he located the speakers. “Never heard that one before.”

“Hm, neither have I.” Scully unwrapped her sandwich, delicately nudged the ingredients apart, and handed him a pickle with the tip of her manicure.

“You don’t like pickles?” he asked, plucking it from her finger, trepidatious.

“I do,” she realized, set her sandwich down. “My husband, William, used to love pickles. I never got out of the habit of trading for his onions, I suppose.” William’s fingers, cold and slack. William’s voice, damaged. William, changed.

“My partner, Diana, prefers mustard on everything. Plain, only mustard. She’d take it with her coffee, but the Bureau’s got rules against that.”

“Your wife?” A funny detail to neglect-- a wife at home-- with a female partner at the FBI. A funny detail she’d neglected, too, until his mouth softened around Diana.

“Not my wife.” He let the statement rest, clicking a few more buttons until her stare realigned Earth’s gravity, pivoted his eyes back up again. “My partner. She put a ring on it,” Fox Mulder of the Federal Bureau explained, twitching his fourth finger, “but not my wife.”

“Why not married?” Scully caught a new notification sliding across the screen, looked up in time to catch its reflection in his pupils.

“We’ve never really found the time.”

“I and my pickles, you and your ring?”

“No,” he chuffed, “Your husband's pickles and my partner’s ring.”

“Well,” she conceded, crumpling up a wrapper to bide time. “You still haven’t called your boss. How do I know you’re actually with the Bureau?”

“You wouldn’t have handed me the phone if you didn’t believe me.”

Perhaps there were moments that made as much sense, as much nonsense, as this, in recent years. Scully couldn’t remember them, couldn’t help wondering when life had started making too much sense. Stopped herself from wondering because she knew; she knew when. “And how do you know that?”

“I’m a profiler-- ‘t’s what I do.” Fox Mulder stopped his idle investigation, drummed his hand on the table, wiped a stray dot of ketchup off his forefinger, and clenched his jaw. “I don’t even know if he’d answer my call. Can I tell you something?”

“Tell me what?” She was eating the last of her fries, not quite sure when she’d started, not quite sure how they’d quickly disappeared. Not quite sure where this conversation was going; but suddenly sure, absolutely sure, where it was going.

“I think I’m from an alternate universe.” He waited, shoulders tense, for her reaction. Waited longer, exasperated, when she paused, mid-chew, to weigh his seriousness.

As if waking from a dream-- from a nightmare, its funk still putrid in her mouth-- and finding the world brighter and more beautiful for it, Scully blinked, sat back, and whispered, “I thought you were going to suggest time travel."

*-*-*-*-*

Though not out of the realm of possibility, dimensional travel was a topic neither wanted to explore in the din of the food hall. Reclaiming her phone and navigating them down the hall seemed the best option. Picking the cafe or the lounge or the tourist traps to settle did not.

Fox Mulder spotted the rec room, old-school projector queuing up a movie as they scuffled in and settled in the back. In the darkness, they crackled with anticipation, the energy of like-minded intrigue and challenge flowing between them like an entity, like a conduit of another world, bearing messages and olive branches to fortify communication.

It was 1991 and Fox Mulder was 30. It was 2004 and Dana Scully was 40.

“If your theory is correct and we’re locked in an unfortunate crossover, then there would be some sign, universally, that the fabric of known reality was being torn through, or punched through, or, or, burdened, in some way, in order to break the known laws of physics. And there isn’t, as far as we know. I mean, have you noticed anything odd, Mulder, about our reality?”

“I have, yeah.” He had snagged a bag of peanuts, the mainstay of all liminal spaces, during a brief but necessary cooldown from string theories and Copenhagen Interpretations. “You keep calling me Mulder.”

“What?” Scully moved away, jolted from the security their heated debate had given. Aware of the dangers a dark room with a relative stranger posed; began to seriously question how long they had been exchanging strange and alluring ideas.

“Not Fox, but Mulder. The only ones who call me Mulder are field agents, or my superiors. But you knew.” He was reaching past her to the empty seat where they’d flung the coats; and she half-thought Mulder was going to grab his things and run, half-afraid she’d grab her things and run after.

“Knew… what?”

“That I preferred to be called Mulder. That I was going to propose something as wild as time travel. That I needed help calling my boss,” he added, mouth slipping into an easy grin, tap-tapping at the phone lying by her purse.

An old, uneasy feeling slid into Scully’s gut, crawled up the back of her spine and clutched at her throat. “You think I’m behind whatever happened to you?”

Mulder stopped, surprised she’d assumed his assumption of her guilt. Surprised he hadn’t assumed her guilt. “I think you’re connected to it, somehow. I believe the sooner that we--”

And Fox Mulder vanished, snatched away by the inscrutable universe.

*-*-*-*-*

Chapter 2

You see, we're a happily married couple and let's never forget that. This is my home. You're my husband.

-Brief Encounter

*-*-*-*-*

She searched: the rec room, the lounge, the food court, the cafe, the terminal, the front desk, every space in-between. No one answered to his description: tall, hazel-green eyes, flat hair, Fox Mulder-- “a gold ring on his left hand”, she’d remember, then forget again. The day spent, she drove home, bereft of something she couldn’t name, couldn’t place.

Her mother answered the door, updated her on the home health nurse’s instructions while Scully tucked away her purse, slid off her coat, unbuckled her watch and placed it with the keys. Listened as Captain Scully’s widow promised to drop in tomorrow afternoon.

“William’s asleep, but he finished a sudoku puzzle today. Dana, you should have seen his face-- it lit up with pride.”

“Oh, Mom….”

“I know, dear,” she cried, gripping them both in a long, tight hug. “He said Mom just like he used to. He even asked for his special candy afterwards.”

“He always asks for his Thursday candy.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s not a good sign. Oh--!” Maggie darted away, disappearing into the kitchen where the faint whistle of a kettle began to shriek. “I made tea to take up with you. Hopefully it’ll help settle his stomach after the medications.”

“Thanks.” Acquiescing and agreeing were all Scully felt up to, the smell of peanuts on her hands, on her sleeves narrowing her abilities to a singular focus. To the mystery of the vanishing Mulder, and his theory of her connection to his displacement. He was no longer displaced, now; or, rather, she hoped he was back where he came from.

The house was emptied, dinner eaten and tea drunk, before she was aware time had moved on and left her behind.

She was at the table, and William’s scratched-up worksheet hung proudly on the fridge. Her mother had written Time: 8 hrs., 8 min., 8 sec. in the top-right corner and -William underneath. A thin, whispery line under -William was drawn from dash to ‘W’ before the writer changed his mind and started afresh, tracing badly over the old one but following it through to completion. (William’s line) was scrawled underneath, with a neat, precise arrow pointing upward to his contribution.

William no longer finished crosswords, no longer lobbed her questions across the table, across the couch, across the room; no longer asked her, in Trebek accent, “What’s Mount St. Helena?” to make her smile. William no longer drove, no longer left home, no longer left bed.

Time had left Scully behind again: it was seven thirty, it was eight, it was going to be eight fifteen. She was tired, it was late, her husband was awake by now. It was eight twenty by the time her dishes were done, eight twenty-five when she began to trudge up the steps and realized her heels were still on.

“William? Are you awake?”

His door was already open a crack, wooing her with lamplight and weeping violins. Sharing William’s secrets, or the allure secrets, to draw her closer and closer in. Her iPod was playing Bruch’s Fantasía Escocesa Op.48, the third on a playlist he’d requested she or her mother or the nurse cobble together. Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor, Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy.

“Violins are beautiful,” she’d told him one night when he was relearning her. “I can always hear them on the opposite end of the house.” And he’d laughed, the mirth of one relearning himself, and kept asking which were her favorite songs. She’d express a preference once, and he’d forget; and ask her to repeat it countless times. Bruch and Grieg and Mendelssohn had worn thin, then reinvented themselves through necessity-- for both their sakes.

Her husband driving home from work, dashed on the road, split open, by a drunk. Her husband seizing on the table during major surgery. Her husband surviving, a miracle of God. Her husband becoming gravely ill, losing two years of recovery due to brain lesions. Her husband losing his job, losing his independence, losing himself, completely.

She’d misspelled Grieg as Grief, once.

“Yeah,” his voice piped, long a smothered under the coverlet. Sleepy, accomplished.

“Your meds on the desk?”

William’s second “Yeah” was quieter, drifting off before Scully finished shuffling across the shag carpet. Shaking one of the pill containers softly by the bed lump made it shake, further evidence he’d fallen neatly into a doze; but his hand slowly maneuvered out from the pile of blankets, grabbing at the air until she secured it with her arm.

“First one,” she dictated, humming affirmatively when he echoed her. “Don’t chew, remember?”

“Not for the night pills.”

“Right. Not for the night pills. Do you want to take them all at once, or with some water?”

A head-shaped lump shook-- no-- and she guessed that meant no water.

“All right. I saw your sudoku today. You finished it in eight hours?”

“Yes.” The s stretched out, theatrically. “I still don’t like it.”

Knowing he couldn’t see, Scully squeezed her eyelids shut until stars behind them faded into darkness. “I know. Do you want to do something else? I can have Mom bring you a different puzzle in the morning.”

“No, I. I want… to like it.” Voice matter of fact, smooth. As smooth as extensive damage would allow. William Smooth, as he called it on his good days.

“I know, William.”

“I want to like things, Dana.”

“You’re still healing.” Slipping onto the bed, she patted him to scoot backward. Cautiously. He’d fallen on his side again. “Aren’t you?”

“Yes.” He played with her arm, rubbed and smoothed the fine hair there. “And I solved kid sudoku today.”

“It’s still sudoku, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” Long s, tired.

“Do you want me to read tonight?” He hummed, groaned. A broken but healing sound that reminded her of Mulder’s frantic, searching eyes. “Moby Dick? Just skip the…?”

William chuckled. Light, tonight. “Just skip the kissing parts.”

“All right, all right. But you owe me when it’s your turn to read.” Moby Dick, collector’s edition, hardback, lay face-up on her end table. With practiced ease, she heaved off the bed, around the baseboard, and back again before her husband had a chance to nod off. Pushed his Thursday treat into his hands and settled while he thumbed it absently. “Chapter 16, The…. Oh, my mistake. There’s no title for this chapter.”

“Hm. Melville?”

“Yes, Melville. ‘Not seldom in this life, when, on the right side--’”

Scully read; and the candy dropped to the floor, and William slept.

*-*-*-*-*

Chapter 3

I imagined being with him in all sorts of glamorous circumstances. It was one of those absurd fantasies, just like one has when one is a girl being wooed and married by the idea of one's dreams.

-Brief Encounter

*-*-*-*-*

She saw him, again, at the airport.

“Dana!” Mulder yelled, bursting from the teeming crowds of collected newcomers. “Dana Scully!” Hurried, harried, haggard, he rushed down the hall where she stood, wallet in hand, by a food stall.

“Mulder--” He was here, he was here, and what did it mean?

“What day is it?”

“Mulder, how did you--”

“Dana, what day is it!” He was gripping her arm; she was dropping her wallet. “I need to know.”

Someone was asking if she needed help, someone else was handing her her wallet, and a third person had recognized her, she could see it in his eyes. “It’s nothing, we’re fine, my friend’s just upset, Mulder, let’s go to the--”

“Dana!”

“It’s Thursday, Mulder! Let’s go--” But where would they go? “Let’s go, Mulder.”

Tugging his hand, plucking his sleeve, pulling at his arm, Scully caused him to yield. The fight left and he followed, shoulders drooping, to the car where she swiftly undid the locks, threw on the air, and told him to loosen his collar and take deep breaths. He was sweating, and flushed, and stank.

“How long have you been here?” she asked, handing him a bottle of water always kept in case of emergencies.

“All morning. All night, I think. I woke up to someone patting my face. Didn’t have my badge, didn’t have cash, didn’t have your phone.”

She snapped away, glaring thunderously up at him. So used to standing above William that it annoyed her having to look up to a man. “You stole my phone?”

Mulder’s head rolled from right to left, trying not to blink when a flat, sweaty bang fluttered, caught in his eyelashes. “I didn’t mean to, Dana, it was in my hand when I teleported.”

The fight curled and snapped and wanted to bare fangs, but now was not the time to lay blame. Not when they had a crisis on their hands.

“Where were you before you… ‘teleported’?”

“Home. I think. I came home from work and went to bed. I woke up, here.”

“Was Diana there with you?”

Mulder scowled-- at her, or in recollection, or over some third thing he hadn’t shared. “No, Diana wasn’t there. She was out of town.”

“Was she there last week?”

“No.” The scowl deepened, and he drew upright to analyze her evenly. “Do you think she’s involved in some way?”

“I don’t know, Mulder. I just… want to solve this as much as you do, and we have no place to start except the variables. What changed from last week to this? What changed from last week to the week before? Any, any difference in routine, in, in professional or personal relationships?”

His face smoothed, conscious diving deep into the unconscious for answers. The shift and the click of his mind, its turning and butting and rerouting, were visible/through the green of his eyes, in the tugs of each zygomaticus muscle.

“Dana, I never made it home.”

“I thought you said--”

“No, no, I thought I did, too. I was flying back to D.C. after wrapping a case. And I… I stayed behind, got a late flight, and slept on the plane. I don’t remember waking up.”

“Were you traveling last week?”

He nodded.

“On a case?”

“It’s why they put the ‘I’ in FBI’,” Mulder shrugged, lips curling, eyes twinkling when she gave him a pity smile.

“Did you fall asleep at the airport?”

The gears, turning. Without another word, he leaped from the car, blinking against the sunlight.

“Mulder, where are you going--”

“The airport, Dana. I was here, at this airport, last week.”

Evil can lurk behind the heart of any man, she knew. But it was hard to imagine 1991 rural West Virginia in such turmoil that it had to personally call in an FBI profiler. “Really.”

“Yes. And yesterday, the plane would have had to fly over this airport to land in D.C.”

“So, I’m not the problem,” Scully whispered, watched his inconsistent double growing and shrinking on the hood of her car. “I didn’t cause this.”

Mulder was quiet, too quiet. He was waiting for an explanation, his arms bending, melting over each other in the car wax.

“Last week, you said I was connected to… this.”

“I thought you were, Dana. And I was wrong.”

A wail from the mercurial wind promised rain; and they both looked up to see distant clouds gathering, blackening. She dipped down, grabbed her spare umbrella, and closed, locked the car. He shut his door, too.

“Lunch,” she decided. “Bring your wallet next time. You owe me two meals and a phone.”

*-*-*-*-*

Mulder was expertly juggling two green salads dripping in bacon grease, two wraps coated in garlic sauce, and two supersized, overpriced waters when he drifted back to her side, looking from her to the display and back again. “This where I found you?”

“This is where you made a scene, yes.” Rich vanillas and caramels, salty toffees and shortbread, woody almonds and pecans, butters, creams, and chocolates blended, broke apart, came together in an unmistakably luxurious scent. One that deceptively passed itself off as simply coffee, simply butter, simply vanilla, all while evolving into unimaginable decadence. Simply delicious. A matter of survival.

The server looked up and grinned-- a regular. “What’ll it be for William today, Ms. Scully?”

“Two Billy Butters, please.”

“They make fresh candy here?” Mulder asked, chest swelling as he took methodical, insatiable gulps of air.

“Yes,” laughed the server, punctuating her statement with a smack, catching the register with ease as its door sprung open, “every day a new batch.”

“You must be talented bakers.”

The server laughed again; and Scully smothered a chuckle, knowing what was coming. “No, no one’s a baker here! We simply make up the treats.”

“They serve family recipes,” she explained, “passed down to the owner.”

“Yes-- and very good ones, too. Anika learned them from her grandmother; and she follows the instructions, and we follow her instructions. And every Thursday,” the server chattered, pleased to have a captive audience, “we put secret messages inside William’s wrapper for him to read.”

“He’s always pleased to read his messages. Thank you.” Fishing out her change, Scully handed a five and declined the receipt, tucking a candy into her purse and handing the other to Mulder. “For you.”

“Sweets for the sweet?” he returned, palming his reward with unexpected tenderness.

“Alms for the poor. Let’s go find a place to sit.”

*-*-*-*-*

It happened while she was trying to tell him a story.

Melissa was perpetually slipping in the creek because Scully couldn’t get past that part without giggling. Mulder was chuckling, too, trying to help her rework a sentence or start the story someplace new-- in vain.

“You look so young,” he said; and the world stopped, it melted, it was consumed by the burning flesh of the sun. Cold, beautiful, fearfully made wonders bloomed from the stars, stretched their wings into nebulas, formed their magic into galaxies.

“How?” she trembled, fearing, believing.

“Your eyes.” His voice was impossibly soft, his gaze immovably fixed. “They contain… everything, Dana.”

Languages of the ancient dead thrummed and rang and sung inside his eyes. Immutable strengths that fell greater men and plunged down, down into the deep. Love, she knew, that was more precious because it could not be taken, only given. That would not let her go until she turned away.

“Scully. Call me Scully, please.”

*-*-*-*-*

Chapter 4

It's awfully easy to lie when you know that you're trusted implicitly. So very easy, and so very degrading.

-Brief Encounter

*-*-*-*-*

I no longer love him.

The rain keeps falling, she mused, afraid to move from the door. Scully didn’t know what she meant to think; only that she did, and that was what she thought.

“I’ll be here next Thursday,” Mulder had warned, grin splitting his face when she gave up the act and smiled, too. “I’m buying.” And that had seemed too wonderful for words, too tender, too glorious.

That’s why she thought of the rain: the night had shuttered in and the heavens had opened, dashing down their young ones against her windshield, trapping the moon in their little bodies splattered on the car wax. It was too wonderful, it was too glorious, warned Icarus’s wings. It had to end before it started. Before it continued. Before it came to a filthy, fleshy conclusion.

The rain had flooded in as her mother left, dripping, dripping from her hair, dripping, dripping from her clothes, dripping, dripping from the walls and ceiling and onto the floor. Spreading inescapable mirrors Scully must tread through to ascend the stairs.

The server will recognize him. We’ll have to stay in the car, with the sun visor up. But my car will be seen, and the visor will add to suspicion. Someone I know will be there, and will spot us.

And it would break William, irreparably.

He was sitting up in bed, head bent towards a sudoku booklet in his lap, shocks of silver hair sprouting from sutures sewn lengthwise across his skull. Her irrepressible, unbeatable, unsinkable Molly Brown sinking into a man she didn’t recognize-- one without likes, dislikes, preferences. One who clung to the booklets handed to him because they were handed, to her books and her music because she volunteered them. Who shied away from stories before the accident, before the illness, before the lesions and the loss of that last bit of himself. He loved her. He needed her.

She had believed she loved him, too.

William shuffled to the next song, and the next before she could face him.

“'She walks in beauty,'” he quoted, painstakingly looping a circle before looking up to her.

“'In the night',” she finished, settling on the bed, under the quilt before unfolding her palm. “For you.”

“Ah, a Thursday surprise.” William carefully closed his fingers, one by one, around the gift before slowly lowering his arm to the bed. One by one his fingers pawed at the wrapping, one by one they peeled back this, then that corner. “Did Anika make this looser just for me?”

“Hm, no. I think your fingers are getting stronger.”

“That’s good. One of these days I’ll be able to hold your hand properly.”

There existed a violent and fierce love in her soul for the wounded fighters with odds stacked against them. She knew it. She needed it, craved it. “Give me your hand. We can try now.”

He became still, muted in the face of challenge. “I… think we should wait until I’m stronger. I don’t want….”

“William,” she pleaded, dabbing at the tips of his fingers, closing them in her doctor’s hands. “I’d never hurt you.” Please, she thought as his exhale shuddered and creaked.

Slowly, slowly, he nodded. Slowly, slowly, she slid her palm over his, slowly, slowly pressed on it until the candy wedged between them.

“Try,” he whispered; and she clasped his fingers and tugged them towards her own.

Scully waited for the Eighth Wonder of the World. She waited for resurgence: for the disintegrated terra firma to reconstruct its borders, for the galaxy to be shrunk, infinitesimal, and swallowed by the immeasurable pull of a black hole. But there was only waiting, then wincing, then a noiseless yield in William’s stifled groan. Her hand sprang back, wrapper sticking to her hand like flypaper.

“William--”

“I’m fine, Dana, I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine, William--”

“You’re not, either.”

The wind machine whirred and the iPod played Mendelssohn and neither moved. Could move.

Working her throat past the taste of hot iron, Scully dipped her chin and focused on breathing. “Do you still want to hear what Anika says?”

Yes, he nodded. “Yes.”

She peeled the wrapper off, held it between both her index and middle fingers, worked her thumbs under the smudged, smeared, illegible script. Sighed, aimed for a believable lie. “She sends her love.”

He nodded yes, no, or perhaps nothing intelligible. “Will you help me lie down? I, I can’t….”

“Yes, William. Always.”

*-*-*-*-*

Chapter 5

As it is, you're the only one in the world that I can never tell. Never, never. Because even if I waited until we were old, old people and told you then, you'd be bound to look back over the years and be hurt. And my dear, I don't want you to be hurt.

-Brief Encounter

*-*-*-*-*

She didn’t go Thursday.

She wouldn’t. Couldn’t, not after the week William had. Not after she’d watched him meekly tailor his preferences to hers, watched him choke down a tasteless bran muffin not because it was tasteless but because he was proving himself. Not after he’d clung to her hand like a failure and tried to solve a sudoku a day for the nurse to hang on the fridge-- proof that he was better.

Scully couldn’t stay home, either.

She told her husband, “I can’t swing by the airport today”, and drove as fast and as far as possible before coming back to herself.

The breeze sighed into her window, unfamiliar with its scent of golden sunshine and golfer grass and white flowers and old metal; twisted somewhere concretely in her chest. It was the type of breeze, the type of day, that siphoned wishes from the ether, transmogrified them into reality.

She couldn’t be here, either.

*-*-*-*-*

Scully drove into the hospital, let the car idle in the parking lot, and listened. Wondered if it was fate that the sky remained cloudless. Wished Mulder would materialize from the oppressive heat like an Arthurian legend, a mirage that promised unconquerable hope. Hoped he wasn’t wandering lonely and hungry, distraught she hadn’t shown. Wondered if he did bring his wallet, wondered if she was missing out on a king’s feast.

It hadn’t rained today; and she wondered if that was a sign.

*-*-*-*-*

“Dana!”

Scrubbed, prepped, and reading through the schedule, Scully knew, knew it wasn’t Mulder; but her hands wouldn’t pry away from the clipboard no matter how she willed them. By the time she’d straightened and released a breath, a fellow doctor flanked her, throwing intrusive questions and curious glances behind a cup of coffee and two, three, four scratches on a sheet of desk paper.

“Dana, I thought you took off today--” It was Dolly: innocent curiosity in one hand, rumors and unending speculation in the other. A far cry from Mulder; an inescapable force of her own. “Was there an emergency autopsy? I didn’t hear about one, mind; but then again, I’m hardly ever up to date on morgue affairs--”

Scully grit and bore it, chastised herself for not anticipating gossip. Smiled at a passing student as she mused on the inescapability of Thursdays-- how they attracted run-ins and questions and mysteries she wanted to avoid after William’s escalating traumas. One transfer hadn’t escaped them; a second was not only impractical, but cowardly. She’d resigned herself to fate and chose her battles.

Then Mulder appeared.

“It’s not William, is it?” Jerked back to reality, Scully stared, eyebrow up and eyes slit and sharp while her interlocutor rambled on. “He was doing so well this past month, y’know. Maybe he just wanted some alone time with your mom--”

Scully cut in, sharp and demanding. “How did you know my mother stays with William on Thursdays?”

"Now, now, Dana, don’t get your back up. You told me before, remember?” Had she? “You poor lamb, it’s all the stress you’re going through with… your situation. And understandably--”

“Excuse me,” Scully mumbled, speeding away from the desk, mentally lost to time slots and autopsy assistants and trying, trying, trying to remember if she’d mentioned that fact before. No, I haven’t. She must have learned it from Mary or…. She paused, feeling an immense rush to sit down; and resisted the impulse. I didn’t tell her. I know that much.

Thursdays were Thursdays, Mary would be spoken to, and everything, she reassured herself, was fine.

*-*-*-*-*

William was pretending to be asleep when she came home. Her mother, puzzled, greeted her at the door, ushered her in with a worried, “He said he was tired.”

“Did he have any headaches, Mom?”

“No.”

“Lethargy? Speech irregularity? Did he skip meals?”

“He missed supper, but… do you think anything’s wrong, Dana? He kept asking when you’d come home.”

“Mom--.” Scully did not want to have a conversation-- not now, and definitely not with her mother. “I’ll go check on him, okay? He’s probably catching up on some sleep he missed.”

Unappeased, unabashed, Maggie Scully grabbed her daughter’s elbow before the latter could retreat. “Dana,” she warned, and Scully stalled, head down and mouth flat. “Is there something wrong I should know about?”

‘Something wrong.’ How wrong and right that word is. “No, there isn’t. I’m going to try to coax him to eat, all right? I love you.” And she hurried into the kitchen, hurried past the bare fridge-- No sudoku, today-- hurried back with his cold supper, hurried away from her mother’s parting, “Careful, sweetheart!”, and hurried up the stairs and down the hallway. Wished that she were hurrying farther and farther and farther into an abyss to think.

William was pretending to sleep, but at least he had the decency not to snore.

Releasing a breath, Scully laid the tray down on his end table and navigated the thin strip between his bed and the wall until she came to the master bathroom. A long, relaxing bath; a short, cleansing shower; and a detailed skincare ritual ate up close to an hour of her time, pushed her nearer to the crucial nine o’clock when she could climb into bed and end Thursday.

The house was groaning with age-- young in comparison to other houses, young like the houses her family would inhabit at each Naval station. It was a comfort to her to own something so closely linked with carefree times, to offset a recovering spouse and longer, demanding hours with the sense of ‘settling in.’ But there were no haunted voices to fill up the attics, or the basement, or the corners where William’s wind machine whirred, and Mendelssohn was whippled on repeat.

“Dana?” Her husband called, scratchy and retiring. Old before his years.

“Yes?” She sat on the toilet and clasped her hands before her face. Waited, listening.

“Did you bring home… something?”

It was Thursday; and he’d forgotten what she’d said in parting.

Scully straightened the bathroom, swept out in a cloud of warm vapor, settled on the edge of his bed and touched his fingers, his elbow, his shoulder while he worked it out.

William waited, waited, waited; then couldn’t meet her eyes. “I forgot again, didn’t I?”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

He stiffened under her touch, tried to pass off a lean-away by readjusting his posture. She didn’t chase him. “I’m sorry,” he echoed; and pretended to sleep.

*-*-*-*-*

Chapter 6

This can't last. This misery can't last. I must remember that and try to control myself. Nothing lasts really. Neither happiness nor despair. Not even life lasts very long. There'll come a time in the future when I shan't mind about this anymore, when I can look back and say quite peacefully and cheerfully how silly I was. No, no, I don't want that time to come ever. I want to remember every minute, always, always to the end of my days.

-Brief Encounter

*-*-*-*-*

She was late.

She was late, she was late, and she wished she could be later. One glance between them and he knew. It was over.

Mulder remained fixed, a statue with dark stubble and dark eyes, deaf and dumb to the irregularity of the busy crowds swirling around him. So, Scully went to him, reaching out to grab his hand in a way she hadn’t in many, many years. It was sure, and it was true: Mulder’s hand from another life, another world.

“I haven’t been honest with you,” she admitted, swiping her tongue across her lip in shame. “You know I’m married to a man named William.”

He nodded, tender. Serious. “His full name is Fox William Mulder-- isn’t it, Scully?”

She missed that beautiful, beautiful mind. Knew her Mulder missed it, too. “You knew.”

His eyes were the same microcosm of green, growing things, his voice the same fathomless deep. His heart the same tinderbox that set fire to the world. “I haven’t been honest with you, either.”

Of course he has secrets, this unfathomable man.

“Diana and I aren’t partners.” His hand slipped through his bangs, his hair, ring thudding against his head as a reminder, as penance. “She transferred to Europe a couple months ago.” The hazel in his eyes was gone; and they were brown, lonesome and dark. “I’m joining her in the spring.”

“Mul-- No.” Diana Fowley, perched sympathetically next to a victim, cataloging wounds and weaknesses. Compiling names for the abduction census. Mulder by her side, bangs and ring and penance. “Not with her. Not like this.”

“I was recruited, Scully. They know where she is, my sister. I’ve told you about Samantha?”

“Yes.”

“They told me they knew where she was. That they’d take me to her.”

He could not sacrifice the altar of his mind for so little, could not lose it there as he had here. “Mulder, she’s dead. They took her, and they kept her prisoner, and they experimented on her. She died in California six years after she was taken.”

“That’s what they said, too.” And his eyes were green, sick. Resolute. The stars behind her lids were falling, falling, falling.

“You can’t go to Europe, you can’t give in, Mulder. These men have no conscience-- the evil they do to save their own skin is beyond words. But we don’t become like them. We fight, Mulder. We fight, and we survive, and we win.”

“We don’t, Scully.”

She paused, and a tremor of premonition passed through her. Cold, foreboding. Her tongue couldn’t form the word cancer while the world spun and Mulder looked at her with strange, dead eyes.

“Dana Katherine Waterstone died in a car accident one Saturday afternoon with her husband and his daughter. The driver, Maggie Waterstone, took a wild turn into traffic. She wasn’t road-ready but had insisted on driving. Dr. Waterstone and she survived most of the impact. Scully… did not.”

There must be another explanation. “She, she might have been a different Dana Katherine. Maybe your universe’s way of playing a cruel joke.”

“I had some friends look up the obituary. Read the memorial. Visited her grave.” Mulder’s shoulders dropped, his neck drooped, his young face looked impossibly old. “I had a busy week.”

Her fingers launched forward, clung to his cold arm like ivy. “Don’t do this.”

“I have to, Scully.” His resolve: unmatched, unchanged. Still the same man who ran after her to the ends of the earth. Who questioned her, challenged her. Who laughed with her in the rain. There would be no Bellefleur graveyard in his universe.

“Mulder, I love you.”

Mulder looked up from the impossibly polished floor, a secret smile tugging at his mouth. In another universe, it seemed to say, I would have said, ‘I know.’ “You have William.”

“He’s not--,” and she clung tighter-- couldn’t, wouldn’t, knew she had to let go, “--you.” Tried to swallow the tightness in her throat, tried to blink back ineffectual tears. Icarus had warned her.

“But he’s stable.” Yes. “Dependable.” Yes. “Won’t blink in and out of your universe at inopportune times.” Yes.

There was one last terrible look-- she peered up, fixed her gaze, and opened the gates of her soul. He’s not you. Mulder looked, and looked; was touched to the quick, and opened his mouth in reply.

And Fox Mulder vanished for the last time.

*-*-*-*-*

Chapter 7

I had no thoughts at all, only an overwhelming desire not to feel anything ever again.

-Brief Encounter

*-*-*-*-*

Four weeks after it began, it ended.

She was home early-- very early, because there was nowhere else to go.

Scully made record time leaving the outskirts of society, passing, unawares, by the woods, the fields, and the roads until the house’s pinched and preening veneer rose from the earth like a tomb. She shooed her mother away with a simple, “I need to talk to William”; then sat in the kitchen, sat in the living room away from his pinned paper on the refrigerator; fell into the gloom of late afternoon, and dozed.

She was wakened by an animal cry of pain, deep and wrenching screams echoing through the house. Scully shot off the couch, shot out of the room, shot up the stairs, shot through the hallway, shot to his room, chanting, “I’m coming, William, I’m coming!” He continued to scream, continued to thrash when she burst through his door, wouldn’t hear her, “William, what’s wrong? Are you hurt?” above the terror that gripped him, that turned his face red and sent sweat dripping across his quaking body.

“William!” She yelled, finally desperate, giving his shoulders a shake until he burst from dreamworld and glanced wildly about him, locking onto her with his one good arm as unto salvation, gripping her to him as he howled, tearless, voiceless, into her hair. She heard “-ully, -ully, -ully” tumbled clumsily in his mouth.

“Mulder--”

“William,” he whimpered, clumsy and reproachful and terrified. “William.”

“William, William, it’s me, it’s Scully, shhh--”

“Dana.”

“It’s Dana, William. It’s all right, I’m here, shhh, I’m here.”

His poor broken body would spasm if he continued this abuse. As gently as she could, Scully rolled over him and tucked herself into the dilapidated quilt, ignoring the tear her husband’s foot had rent near the bottom, ignoring the burst of humid, sweaty air that billowed from the coverlet. Pulled him closer, let him pull her closer. “William, it’s me, it’s me.”

“Thank you,” he murmured, clutching at her with his good hand, pawing at her with his other. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

“For what, William?” Waited for his words, wondered if his breath would have slowed or his heart would have stopped or his brain would have burst if he’d kept on howling, trapped and alone and afraid.

“Thank you for coming back to me.”

His eyes were fathoms and fathoms deep, hurt and broken and humbled. And they watched the storm break, and Dana Katherine Scully crumble.

*-*-*-*-*

Acknowledgments

All my thanks to Anika, whose support embraced and encouraged me in the fandom. Happy Birthday, and many more years to come~! :DDDDDDDDD

*-*-*-*-*

I shall be uploading the chapters to Ao3 here.

Tagging @today-in-fic.

#txf #Brief Encounter of the Interdimensional Kind #Happy Birthday #Anika! Hope your day is the best!#And if it isn't #then I hope this story helped make it a teensy bit better~#baronessblixen #xfiles #fic #mine #x-files #xf fanfic #the x files

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