DISCLAIMER JAZZ: "The X-Files" and its characters are the creations and property of the fabled Chris Carter, Ten Thirteen Productions and Fox Broadcasting. I am, of course, using them without permission. No copyright infringement is intended. All other concepts or ideas herein are mine. RATING: NC-17 SPOILERS: Through US season 7 ARCHIVE: ONLY ON THE AUTHOR'S OWN WEBSITE (http://rowan_d.tripod.com/elizabethr.html) UNTIL STORY IS COMPLETED. This way I can mess with the early parts as later parts develop... TIMELINE: Though this takes place sometime after "all things", in this universe "Requiem" did NOT happen... "Water's Edge" by Elizabeth Rowandale Copyright (c) 2003 Chapter 20b "Let's go down to the water's edge, we can cast away those doubts. Some things are better left unsaid, but they still turn me inside out..." -- Annie Lennox, "Why" The evening wind lifted the hair from her neck, caressed her skin. There was a luxurious texture to the air that hinted at a coming rain. Scully tried to draw a deep breath beneath Mulder's penetrating gaze. "I--I'm not sure what you're asking me, Mulder." He flinched ever so slightly. Looked hurt, really. Weary. It pushed her forward. "What do you want me to say? You were my best friend. Probably the best friend I've ever had, I--" "Past tense." "No, don't do that, you *asked* me about the past." "Your best friend." "Yes. Of course. Wasn't I yours?" But he shook his head, withdrawing, and turned away. Took a step down the path. Scully felt like something had hooked its claws in her stomach and wouldn't let go. She took a step after Mulder, and now they were walking again, but she was half a step behind, and feeling like she couldn't catch up, couldn't reach him. "Are we still in that same little circle, Scully?" "What circle, what are we talking about?" He shook his head, frustrated, pacing faster with the rush of emotion, and she brushed hard past the slower oncoming patrons of the plaza to keep up. He kept his eyes forward. Scully reached out and grasped his arm. "Mulder, talk to me." He stopped, turned toward her, and the blaze of emotion in his eyes made her fight the urge to take a step away. But she never had and never would. Not from Mulder. "Talk to you? Scully..." he gave a breathless sound like a black laugh. "We don't do that, do we? Have we ever talked, Scully? Have we ever just really said something real to one another? You say I was your best friend. Yet, you yourself pointed out that I didn't know your favorite song. How the hell do best friends spend 16 hours a day together, and I don't know your favorite song?" "Mulder, we lived our lives in a very narrow track, that's true. And some of the finer points may have suffered, but how on earth can you say that we never really spoke honestly with one another? Never shared anything? Mulder...maybe it wasn't that real for you, but I know I shared things and moments, and fears and joys with you that I have, to this day, never shared with anyone. And I will not defend that." "Scully, I'm not asking you to." He reached out and rubbed her upper arms, and she almost didn't want him to touch her so intimately right now. The need hurt. "I know we shared things. I don't mean to discount that. We were battle brothers, no gender offense intended. Soldiers forging a friendship in the trenches. But our trust, and sometimes I fear our friendship, was limited to the scope of those events relating to the war we were waging." "I don't think that's true. Maybe on the surface, but not about the things that counted." He looked at her for a long moment, dark eyes endlessly deep, holding a glimmer of something like hope, like a need that ran as deep as the one that made her want to keep his hands off of her for as long as possible. "Mulder...your mother, the death of my father..." He nodded, acknowledged, but she wasn't satisfying what he was reaching for, and he was leaving her floundering in the dark. "Mulder...*what*?" "What about Emily?" "What about her?" "Did you cry when she died?" "What?" "Did you cry when she died? Beyond the day of her funeral?" Defensiveness was molting into the sharpness of anger. "She was my daughter." He lifted his eyebrows, pushing for the hard answer. She hardened her jaw, but spoke. "Yes. Of course, I cried." He nodded. "I never saw it." She half lowered her lids, glanced away. "I don't see how that....it was private. *Mine* to feel." Mulder nodded for a moment, then turned away and started walking again. "Right. Private. Yours." "Mulder." She hurried to catch pace with his long runner's legs. "Mulder!" He slowed a fraction, but wouldn't look at her. Outside glances were starting to linger on their two figures, passers-by picking up on the tension and surreptitiously eavesdropping on what they might have thought a lovers' quarrel. Scully wanted to temper the moment, default to propriety. But something long buried in her fueled her drive and she refused to let the moment slip away. She kept her voice full volume. "Mulder, you left me. You *left* me." The harshness in her words made him stop and face her from a few paces away. They were beneath the shadow of a draping willow now, minimally sheltered from the sparse crowd. He was listening. "How the hell was I supposed to feel? I had two years, Mulder--*two years* to sit and wonder if everything that had ever been between us had been on my side and never on yours. Because you were capable of leaving me behind like that, of doing what you did. Of the ultimate ditch, Mulder. Of finally putting our quest so far ahead of our personal lives that you got yourself killed and left me permanently alone." "You weren't alone very long." His words washed over her like acid, anger flushing her skin like a shield rising for protection. She pulled physically back. "Go to hell," she breathed. "Scully, wait--" But she had turned and cut across the parking lot, back toward the car, away from the flow of shoppers. She squinted up at the sky as she walked, a thin haze of clouds was moving over the near full moon. Darkness was blanketing everything that had once been bright. She heard his footsteps behind her, gaining speed, gaining ground. She didn't slow. "Scully. *Scully!*" She whirled on him just as his hand came into contact with her shoulder. "*What?*" He looked like a wounded deer. All that height and strength and knowledge and he looked lost and betrayed and helpless and she wanted to stroke his hair and shelter him in the basement and threaten the life and limb of anyone who struck out at him when he was down. As she always had. But she couldn't move. Couldn't speak. "Scully, I'm sorry. I didn't mean that, I'm just...this isn't easy for either of us, and I'm just as guilty of old patterns as you are. It's always easier to push away the people you care about the most. I ought to know. You're one of the few people on the planet I haven't completely alienated yet, try as I might." She stood and breathed for several seconds, only now becoming aware of the rush of adrenaline in her limbs, the pounding of her heart. The old blackmail card. Played invariably for the needs of Mulder. His one in five-fucking-billion. His better half, to make him a whole person. His touchstone. "How could you say that to me?" she asked softly. The lines in his brow only grew deeper. "I'm sorry, Scully. You're right, of course. You had every right to move on, to...to go out and find a life for yourself. Make something happen. Stop driving. Get out of the car. Everything you wanted." "'Find a life?'" she parroted, forced precision on each word. He flinched slightly, a trace of confusion crossing his countenance. She'd thrown him. "Yes. To go out and have for yourself all the things you always wanted that life on The X- Files hadn't allowed. Daniel offered you all of that. You had a past with him, it only makes sense that you would--" "Take the first proposal that came along? I mean at my age, I couldn't wait too much longer, right, or maybe--" "Scully, stop. That is not what I was saying, and you know it, I--" "No, Mulder, *you* stop. You're missing something, here." He just looked at her. The hurt animal again, the deep set eyes that could touch her soul. And she turned from the pain in his eyes to the greater darkness away from the street lamps. She paced a small circle, hands on her hips, pushing back her coat tails. Her heels felt incongruous on the rough concrete. "That grey rug on the stretch of floor in front of my fireplace?" she began, turning only halfway his direction, giving him a fleeting glance. Mulder offered an almost imperceptible nod. She nodded acknowledgment and once again looked up at the sky, ignoring the lump in her throat. "He dropped there. Right in front of me. And I spread my mother's hand-made afghan over him because he was so cold. And Christopher was sleeping on the sofa like an angel thinking the world would always be here and his father would be smiling and holding him when he woke up. And I called the paramedics and unlocked the door for them, but Daniel was fading fast, and I knew it and he knew it. We were both doctors and there wasn't a Goddamned thing we could do... And he just reached up and pulled me down beside him. And I curled up on the floor, and spread the blanket over both of us. And I just lay there with him and listened to him breathe and counted the seconds until the paramedics would arrive. But by the time they got there, he wasn't hearing my whispers anymore. I had unlocked the door, and when they came in, I was still on the floor with him. And my mother was on her way over to take Christopher, so I could go to the hospital. But by the time we got to the hospital Daniel was in a coma. And I stayed with him for 36 hours, and I let Christopher sleep beside him. And I didn't close my eyes. Until he stopped." She paused, trying to breathe, to maintain her voice. Her stomach ached deeply and her vision blurred through hot liquid. She had to look at Mulder. She couldn't manage more than a whisper. She had never told anyone before. Had never recounted the moments. "So don't you ever, Fox Mulder, even for a moment, consider that I married my husband for anything less than love." She didn't know what she expected from him. If she expected him to walk away. To quietly take her home. To argue with her. To pull away. But she didn't expect what happened. Mulder moved forward through the shadows, and closed his arms around her, encircling her, enfolding her, holding her arms at her sides and swallowing her slender form in his long muscular arms. He leaned his cheek against the top of her head, and didn't say a word. He just held on, and after a long moment of stiff tension, her muscles started to let go. She sniffed softly as the knots in her stomach pulled and loosened. The release hurt more than the initial pain. She couldn't let go completely. But they stood like that, there in the dim parking lot, her cheek against Mulder's chest, with the rain hanging in the pregnant air; and for a moment, Scully let Mulder be there again. Let him be Mulder. Let him be the strong arms that had caught her every time she fell for almost a decade. The arms that had carried her out of an alien tomb in Antarctica, the arms that had sheltered her from Donnie Pfaster and held her up when she was poisoned by pheromones. She let herself admit she had buried her husband. Mulder was the first to move. He kissed her hair and leaned away, catching her wrist in his hand as he turned, and she felt her own pulse against his warm palm. She felt the loss of his nearness. "Come on. Your little boy needs a book with a thoroughly terrestrial duck." ***** She squatted down at the rotating rack, sorting through the rows of books like they were medical records, giving each item the same concentration and care. He was familiar with her expression, her posture, the waterfall of her fingers as she traced the bindings. He couldn't help but smile at the merging of Scully the Scientist and Scully the Mother. Scully caught his smile and looked up at him, eyebrow arched. "What?" But he only shook his head with a gentle smile. "Nothing." She knew there was more, but after a moment, she turned her attention back to the row of plastic books. Cool and practical, that was his Scully. No one but he would have seen the gentle quiver to her left eyelid when she blinked that evidenced the lingering tension. "Oh, hey, look!" Scully said from the floor, a note of childlike pleasure in her voice that made his pulse quicken. She held up her treasure for his appraisal. In her hand was a net bag containing a plastic Ernie bath book, and fastened to the side was one small, ordinary, large-beaked, small-eyed yellow rubber duckie. "Does this meet with the Mulder Rubber Duckie Standard?" Mulder reached down and lifted the duckie set for inspection. He took his time, looking it over at great length, holding it at arm's length and staring at the duck head-on, evaluating its impact on the innocent eye. Scully pushed up to her feet, quietly observing his critiquing process. At last he handed it back to her. "Yep. I think you've found yourself a proper duck, Scully." The smile between them was gently affectionate. But, Scully glanced down first, drawing a quick, uneven breath and tensing her neck. Something had crossed her thoughts. Mulder felt his own brow draw in in sympathy, and he started to reach his hand to touch her arm, but she turned on her heel before he could make contact. "I'm ready to go, if you are." And he was left with no option but to follow. Mulder paid for the duckie, insisting he wanted it to be a gift from "Uncle Mulder", correcting the wrongs of his own childhood. Scully indulged him. But something he said hit her wrong, and he couldn't for the life of him pin down what it was. They set off on the walk back down the length of the plaza in comfortable silence. They were walking closer again, the way they once had. Shoulders brushing now and then. "Do you want to go back to The X-Files?" Scully asked, catching him completely off guard. "Where did that come from?" he quipped, obviously delaying his response. Scully wasn't buying. She narrowed her eyes and gazed up at him in the dimness, awaiting a real reply. She was beautiful in this light (every light). Even after the stressful day she had weathered. He turned his attention to the path ahead. "Honestly, Scully, I haven't thought that far ahead. Right now, all I want is a paycheck, an insurance plan, and somewhere to pay rent besides your guest room." She nodded, but didn't reply. They passed the length of another store before Mulder added. "Even if I did, I'm going to be on ass-wipe duty for as long as they can justify keeping me there. Whip me back into submission after my gratuitous display of original thought." Scully just closed her eyes. The pattern was all too familiar for them. But this was the first time the impact of his insubordination hadn't spilled over into her career. Or maybe it had, really. Did she truly want to be teaching at Quantico? His personal choices had domino-chained an endless number of shifts in her life. "Listen, Scully...about this morning." She looked up at him now, curious, pensive. Her cross flashed at her throat in the glow of the street lamp. "What?" "I wish you wouldn't blame the Gunmen for my choices. I know they were part of it, but they were only trying to--" Scully turned cold. "Don't." She gave a single brisk shake of her head, and the ice in her tone spread through the pit of his stomach. "Scully, I just don't want you to--" "You weren't there." Her words were final. She wouldn't hear anymore. She turned and walked ahead, and so he let it go. The last thing he wanted was another wedge between them. ***** The sky was gathering black clouds by the time Mulder pulled his car back onto the highway. Scully was sequestered in her own thoughts as they sped off into the night. He watched her roll down her window a bit, and let the cool night air lift her hair. He switched on the radio and fished around for a decent station. Byers had reset all the presets and he had to fiddle for a while before he could get anything but big band music and the stock report. At last he landed on something that sounded like real music. He vaguely recognized the melody, but couldn't place the artist. After a few bars of the music, Scully reached out without a word and turned up the volume. She propped one arm on the window ledge, directing the wind to push back her hair, and gazed out in the blur of the rushing night. And it hit him. This--this random melody he had found on the radio--this was one of Scully's favorite songs. Mulder kept half an eye on the traffic as he stole long glances at Scully's profile and soaked in the feel of the music. He could almost *see* the piano riff touching her skin, transferring physical sensation from the sound vibrations to her body. Which is when it clicked in his brain. Scully loved music. *Really* loved music. She closed her eyes, letting the music and the feel of the night surround her. And Mulder leaned into the accelerator, because somehow he knew that was what she wanted. This moment of escape. Of flying low through the storm-ridden night on the wings of her favorite strains of music. There was a grand piano in Scully's living room. She had stated herself she regretted stopping her lessons. Scully loved music. How the hell could he not have known that? He didn't know if the lyrics mattered to her, or only the sound. But he couldn't catch enough over the wind to make out the thread. It didn't matter. The moment mattered. The rain at last broke through the ceiling of clouds, and the further they drove the heavier the downpour until the sounds of the radio were lost in the roar. The drive home felt much too fast. Neither of them wanted it to stop. When they pulled to a halt in front of Scully's apartment building, the silence of the quiet residential street left Mulder's skin vibrating in the wake of sensation. Only the steady drum of the rain remained. "Scully..." he said, testing the strength of his voice. She looked across at him. All blue eyes and moon-glow skin. "Yeah?" "Thank you for coming out tonight." She nodded. "You knew I would." "Scully." "Yeah?" "What did I mean to you? Before I left?" The pace of her breath rose. "What did I mean to *you*?" That was Scully. "You know the answer to that." "I don't think I do. Maybe I once did. But now...I don't know." "Yes, you do." She didn't speak, but she didn't look away. Then, at last. "Mulder, you left me. I didn't know how...I didn't know how to deal with that. And then to find out that...that you lied. That you put me through all of that pain and confusion, and you could have stopped it..." Her voice was quavering and she faded to silence. "Scully...were you happy?" "What?" "You fell in love. You got married. You started a family. Your life without me...it seems...like it was so much better. Were you happy?" She stared at him hard, pale eyes dark in the shadows. The rain continued to pound on the rooftops. "I had a life. I couldn't put everything on hold on the off chance you might come back from the dead one more time and everything would be business as usual." "I know that. I understand that. I hate it, but I know it to be the truth. But that's not what I asked you, Scully." She fell silent. "Scully...I've had two years away from every part of my life. Two years for everything to distill. Two years for everything to stand out in brilliant relief. For it to be crystal clear to me which elements of Fox Mulder's life were worth going back for. Which elements I *needed* to go back for." He didn't have to finish the thought. The emotion waved across to her like heat. He saw the impact on her skin like the music. She turned at last and gazed out through the windshield, one hand bracing on the dashboard. "Mulder, we worked together for seven years. If you're saying what it sounds like your saying, that's a hell of a long time for reality to soak in." "You said it yourself, Scully. We were living in an artificial and constricted track. Nothing followed the ordinary rules for us." She didn't respond. The distance was growing in her. He saw the hardened line of her cheekbone, the set of her jaw. He'd seen it a thousand times before. He pressed forward, feeling his window closing. "Scully. I need to know this. I need to know where we were before I left. I need to know what it means to you that I'm here now. I need to know...if the life you found...if that was where you belong." She whirled on him with a flare of anger that caught him unaware. He had cut into a raw nerve. "What. What do you want me to say, Mulder? You're asking for confirmation of things that hung in the air unconfirmed for a lifetime. You're asking me to analyze the life I made for myself in the wake of *your* betrayal, and your endless manipulation of my life, my desires, my emotions. I followed you for seven years. Seven. Years. And if you're really too dense to realize that was more than professional dedication, you're not half the profiler you pretend to be. And you ditched me. You left me behind, like I was always second in line to the quest you really cared about--" "Scully, no, that is not what--" "Shut up. You left me; wondering if everything I had put on hold for the past seven years had been for nothing. If everything I had believed in and followed in my career and my personal life had been based on a lie. So, I backed up. I learned how to be Scully again, without the X-Files. Without you. I fell in love with a brilliant and wonderful man who had followed *me* for ten years even when I shut him out of my life. I started a new life. So, YES, okay, Mulder? You want to know? Yes, I had all of it. All the things I always wanted and you knew I wanted all that time that we couldn't have any of it because all of our hopes and dreams had been sacrificed in pursuit of the truth. I had the husband I loved, the beautiful home, the dog, parties, family, friends, joy, and a perfect little boy. And with the exception of my son, it was all a fucking consolation prize. Because it wasn't you." He couldn't even breathe before she vanished from the car. His stomach rose in his throat. His pulse raced blood through his veins and he cringed at the jarring slam of her door. He shoved open his own door and forged over the rain-drenched gutter. Scully was around the car in an instant and jogging through the sheets of water toward the apartment entrance. "Sculllyyy!" He shouted after her, but his words were drowning in the roar of the rain and he knew the effort was futile even if she could hear. Mulder slammed his car door, braced his hands on the side of the hood and smacked the unforgiving steel with the base of his hand. He squinted down the quiet street at the looming figures of the trees in the blur of rain as his clothes sank and clung cold to his skin. She hit him from behind. He barely had a chance to turn before her full weight launched into his arms and her mouth locked onto his as her knees clamped his hips. She cradled his face in her hands and his arms wrapped around her wet back and her lips clung to his in what he knew in that rain-soaked and wild moment was the most amazing kiss of his life. The downpour plastered long red hair to their cheeks and ears and foreheads. Water flooded his eyes, nose, mouth. But all he could taste was Scully. Scully. His Scully. *Oh, God, Scully in his arms.* The Scully he remembered in every detail from a single New Year's kiss so very long ago. Nothing like this. This was raw, beautiful, passionate, needy, loving--so hard to believe he nearly closed his eyes and let go of the reins of reality. Salt prickled his tongue. His tears or hers. Every muscle in her body was quivering, her breath hitched, but she wouldn't break the contact, wouldn't let go of the kiss. And there wasn't a force in the universe that could have pulled him away. *Scully. I love you. Oh, God, Scully, don't let go. Don't let go.* ***** (End Chapter 20b. Continued in 21a...) bstrbabs@earthlink.net