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 (bstrbabs@earthlink.net)


Chapter 26a:


"I had to find you 
Tell you I need you 
Tell you I set you apart 
 
Tell me your secrets 
And ask me your questions 
Oh let's go back to the start
 
I was just guessing 
At numbers and figures 
Pulling your puzzles apart
Questions of science 
Science and progress 
Do not speak as loud as my heart 

Tell me you love me"
                       ---"The Scientist" by Coldplay



**I watched you from a distance a thousand times.  But I remember 
most vividly the winter I was losing you.  Moment by moment, 
breath by breath, you were slipping away.  I knew there was a 
nameless monster creeping in from the edges of our world and 
waiting to steal you from me and into its darkness, waiting to 
steal your light and life.  And for all my endless hours and work 
and devotion to being the slayer of monsters--I had nothing I 
could offer.  I had no rope for you to hold onto, no magic potion 
to vanquish the evil.  And I couldn't reach you.  You wouldn't 
let me into that place inside that feared the fall.  I would 
watch you--with your flaming red hair and dark trench coat on the 
streets of a grey winter twilight--and you would catch my eye and 
give me a gentle, sad smile; try to make me believe everything 
was okay.  But I would continue to watch, and you would forget I 
was watching.  And you would continue to work in the bitter wind, 
and I would see the wear around your eyes and the distance in 
your gaze.  And I would feel the wind pulling you away.  And my 
fingers couldn't hold on.  I was afraid to blink in case you 
vanished.  I don't know what would have been left if I had lost 
you.

And then I went on to make you think I was gone.

I was too weak to be the one to stay behind.  If you had done 
what I did to you...I might not have survived the loss.

I'm sorry for every moment you hurt, Scully.

But I had to try to slay the monster.  It's all I can do.**



She was half asleep in his arms.  She was exhausted, he could 
feel it in her slackened limbs, see it in slight tension around 
her eyes and the downturn of her mouth.  He knew nothing if not 
the pulses of Scully's days, the cycles of her body.  They hadn't 
needed to take the last step as lovers to entwine their physical 
lives.  They had come to that long ago.

He also knew she had been pulling her right shoulder to loosen it 
more often than before he had left.  She had done something to 
injure it, perhaps.  He would have to ask.  There was time for 
that, now.

Scully shifted sleepily in his arms.  A gentle rain had begun 
outside, and played on the roof of his top floor apartment.  He 
hoped there weren't any leaks.  He hoped he wouldn't live here 
long.

He hoped Scully felt safe.

His eyes traced the scars on her arm.  He shouldn't appear with 
her at the hearing.  He might kill James Maley.

"What have you been studying?" Scully asked, beautiful back 
against his chest, hair in his mouth.

He couldn't stop a snorted chuckle.  Only Scully's first coherent 
words in the afterglow would ring vaguely academic.  He pushed up 
on his elbow to see her more clearly.  "What have I been 
*studying*?"

He heard her soft smile, but she was insistent.  "Yes, Mulder.  I 
mean, you've had two years of excesses of free time.  You must 
have read your way through a library of congress worth of 
paranormal theory by now.  So what's your present interest?"

He was quiet a moment, listening to the rain and listening to her 
breath.  He was blindingly aware of her bare skin.  She turned 
slightly his way, eyebrow raised.  At last, he said, "Ghosts.  
Specifically animal spirits."

"Animal spirits.  Like Indian mythology?  Spirit guides?"

"Well, related to that, yes, but more like people's pets.  The 
human-animal bond.  Return visitations from pets, often with the 
apparent intent to help or protect their former owners."

Scully was quiet.

Mulder smoothed a gentle hand down the side of her face, across 
her hair.  "You want to hear this?" he asked, unable to keep the 
childlike wonder from his voice, the innocent need.

Scully closed her eyes.  "I missed you," she breathed.  And he 
wouldn't have thought he had the energy left for the erotic 
thrill her whispered words rushed through him.

Mulder shook his head.  "I can't get used to this."

"Used to what?"

"Being allowed to touch you."

Scully rolled onto her back, still tight against him, and gazed 
up into his eyes, unblinking and unnervingly serious.  His 
Scully.  "You've been allowed for a long time, Mulder.  You just 
didn't see it."

His stomach clenched.  "We weren't ready."

She swallowed hard.  "Maybe not.  Although sometimes it felt that 
way.  A lot of things happened and didn't happen between us for a 
lot of different reasons.  Internal and external."

"But it was always you and me, Scully.  Always."

She nodded softly.  She was quiet a moment, processing things in 
her own time as she always did.  The amber light from the bedside 
lamp dusted her hair with gold dust.  "Do I surprise you?" she 
asked at last.

"Only when I come in contact with you.  But how do mean that this 
time?"

And now he caught the heavily suppressed hint of a flirtatious 
smile in the set of her eyes, the slight parting of her lips.  
"Not everyone who knows me, expects...this side of me."

He lifted an eyebrow, smirking now as he watched her wait for her 
meaning to soak in, watched her try to hold her cool.  "This 
side," he repeated.  "Meaning...you're asking me if I'm surprised 
that you're good in bed?"

Her eyes slipped away, as she drew a breath, half-shy, but she 
was still on the edge of a smile.  "Not exactly that I'm *good*--
but, thank you--as much as...that I have a very...strong sexual 
side."

And suddenly he was very serious, and as sincere as he had ever 
been in his life.  "People miss that?"

Her smile vanished.  Because there was something here that meant 
a great deal to her.  He couldn't quite define it.  But he could 
give her all he had to offer.

"Scully...I *always* saw that.  In the way you move all day, the 
way you think, the way you carry yourself, the way you touched 
me...  It never crossed my mind that you would be otherwise.  If 
it had, it would have been a whole lot easier to work beside you 
all those years."

She half-smiled at that.  But his words were soothing something 
inside of her, he could see it.  And that made *him* feel safe.  
Family was something he had denied.  Family was something Scully 
had never let him lose.

"What was it like?" he asked abruptly.

"Sex?"

He laughed out loud.  "Well, I'm hoping I already have a pretty 
clear idea where you stand on that.  No, actually, I meant--
working with a different partner?"

Scully drew a slow breath through her nose, and for the first 
time, he felt the path of that breath down the length of her body 
as her ribs and stomach and thighs pressed against his skin.  
"Weird, actually," she said.  "I mean...Michaels is a great agent 
and I think we made a good team, but...  You just never realize 
how many little things you've worked out over the years that are 
suddenly all new and you have to start again.  Just all our 
little systems when you and I were on the road...the water we 
always kept in the car, or the way we traded who filled the gas 
and who bought the coffee and sunflower seeds at gas stations and 
never had to say a word, or the way we both knew when we'd had 
too much greasy food in small town diners and started looking for 
Subways along the highway and skipping the burger joints, or the 
place we always met at the airport without arranging it.  Or that 
extra pair of my shoes that somehow found a permanent home in 
your trunk."

He grinned down at her.  "And let's not forget that Pink Floyd CD 
that found its way into your briefcase."

"I remember nothing of the kind."

"Is it still there?"

"It was never there.  I recall one time, rescuing it from a 
rental car where you had carelessly left it behind, and if it 
stayed in my briefcase for any length of time, it was simply for 
lack of opportunity to return it to you."

He nodded in mock agreement.  "Uh-huh.  Understandable, as we saw 
each other so rarely."

She glared at him.

Then after a long moment, her expression softened into something 
deeper and she reached up and drew the backs of her fingers down 
his five o'clock shadow.  "We're here, Mulder," she breathed.  
"We're doing this."  She pulled in a shallow breath across wet 
lips and it took all he had not to kiss her.  He could still 
taste her on his own breath.

He gripped her hand, hard.  "Yeah, we are.   Are you scared?"

"Of what?"

"Of...losing what we have.  Romance, lust, it can all...be so 
fleeting.  We both know that.  I mean, no one wants to think 
about it in the moment, in bed, certainly, but we're not 16 
anymore, we know that the wild lust part doesn't last a 
lifetime."

She nodded.  "So, you're asking if I'm afraid of what we'll be, 
at the end of the infatuation phase.  Me, the single mom.  You, 
the rogue agent."

"Yeah, I think so...basically.  I mean, that's the cliche, isn't 
it?  Friends who are tempted to become lovers but are afraid to 
lose what they already have if things don't...work..."

Scully shifted again, pulling away a bit, but not withdrawing, 
merely giving her words more force.  She propped up on one elbow, 
hand on her temple, and for a moment he saw the young woman in 
the white robe who had rushed into his motel room one stormy 
night in Oregon.  Except this time, she was covered only by a 
sheet tucked tactfully beneath her arms.  She was so open to him 
right now.  So soft.  He was afraid to blink, certain it wouldn't 
last.  He couldn't believe how precious every moment with her 
felt.  "I don't think we'll fail," she said simply.  "And if we 
do...it will have been worth the risks.  I'm too old to put my 
life on hold any longer.  This is what I want.  *You* are what I 
want.  And I won't be afraid to try for that.  But as far as the 
lust factor...the fire burning down after a year, two, 
three...and I know that's life, though I can't imagine it now, 
with you..." her gaze dipped deliberately as her lips entertained 
a brief, seductive smile that made his pulse quicken.  But she 
was quick to return to the heavier subject.  "What would I be 
afraid of, Mulder?  If the fire fades, worst case scenario, I'm 
left with the best friend I've ever had."-- *I didn't know, 
Scully.  I didn't know I was your best friend, too.  I only knew 
I was the only one there.*--"Only now...I get the intimacy.  I 
get to sleep beside you.  I get to hold you, when no one has died 
or caught fire.  Be held."  She paused, and he lowered himself 
down to the pillow, entranced by her sleep-hoarse voice.  She 
took his hand and pulled it against the sheet between her 
breasts.  "I get to feel safe with you," she whispered.

He closed his eyes, reached out blind to touch the skin of her 
throat.

Then he opened his eyes and met her cool gaze with all the 
strength he could find.  "Scully.  Are you scared?"

She held his gaze for what felt like forever.  And he watched as 
her throat tightened and her beautiful steel-blue eyes sparkled 
with tears.  "Yeah," she whispered.  "I'm scared."

He twined his fingers through hers, never breaking the thread of 
their gaze.  "Of what?"

"I'm afraid...to believe.  I'm afraid to believe you're really 
here.  That you won't disappear again."

They were moving instinctively closer.  As they always had when 
one of them needed shelter.  At a crime scene or alone in a 
crowded restaurant, closing their cocoon.  Just the two of them, 
safe within each other's range of breath.  The rain tickled the 
rooftop.

Mulder leaned his forehead against Scully's and she closed her 
eyes, a single tear slipping down her freckled cheek.  "I'm 
here," he whispered again.

They held still for a long moment, breathing together.  Then in a 
rush of air and motion and rain on the rooftop, Scully pushed 
forward and wrapped herself hard around him, clinging to his 
shoulder, pressing his body to hers, and he could feel the 
ripples of tension beneath her skin.  He folded her into his 
arms, cradling the back of her neck, drowning in her hair as the 
water streaked the windows.  "Hey, G-woman," he whispered into 
her neck.  He kissed the warm hollow of her collar bone, held on 
tight, but her grip did not slacken.  "It's okay," he whispered.  
"It's okay."

He wouldn't let go.  This part he could get right.  Because for 
the first time since his sister vanished, he felt like someone he 
loved needed him as much as he needed her.

He held her until they slept, and didn't let go in his dreams.


*****


Scully pulled out of a disorientingly deep slumber, mother's 
instinct not allowing her to miss the cries of her child.  She 
lifted her head from Mulder's chest as he startled into 
consciousness.

"Christopher," she whispered, clearing her throat to restore her 
voice.

She started to push up from the bed, but Mulder staid her with a 
gentle hand.  "Let me get him," he said softly.

"No, I don't have any bottles with me, he needs--"

"Just let me get him," Mulder said, his voice gentle, kind.  
"I'll bring him to you."

Scully stopped for a deep breath, let the moment sink in.  Mulder 
wanted to cradle Christopher, wanted to comfort him, come for 
him, in the night.  And suddenly she wanted that same thing very 
deeply.  "Okay."

By the time Mulder returned, inconceivably warm in nothing but 
his boxers, she had switched on the dim bedside lamp and slipped 
into the luxurious burgundy robe she had found over the back of a 
chair.

Christopher, no longer crying, but mumbling softly, was nestled 
in Mulder's arms amid a mass of blankets.  The moment Christopher 
saw Scully seated on the bed, he squealed and reached out his 
chubby little arms.

This was the best part for her.  The moment when she would reach 
for her son's warm body, and he would be in her arms again.  
These were the moments she wouldn't trade for all the career 
successes in the world.  She nuzzled Christopher's nose, drinking 
in his sleep softened skin, and he squirmed and pulled at her 
robe.  "Are you starving?" she said gently and she settled 
Christopher into place as Mulder stood above and watched.

After a moment, Mulder lowered himself carefully to the edge of 
the bed, eyes still on Christopher at Scully's breast.

"He's yours," Mulder whispered.

Scully lifted her eyes with a smile, warmed by the sense of 
wonder in Mulder's gaze.  "Yeah.  He's my boy."

"Does it...I mean, it looks like it would hurt..."

She shook her head.  "Not anymore.  At first, yeah.  But we've 
got it worked it out now."  Her eyes fell back to her son's 
profile, his eyes closed, tiny hand pressed to her breast.

They sat together in the quiet night, listening to the rain and 
Christopher's soft breath.  Christopher started to doze and 
Scully slipped his mouth from her breast.  "No, you don't, Little 
Guy.  Both sides..."  She lifted him and settled him into 
position again on the other side, and Christopher's mouth found 
her breast without him ever opening his eyes.  She stroked his 
fine hair.  He was asleep in less than five minutes, his tongue 
holding on as long as possible until he finally fell away from 
her breast with a light pop and a gentle snort.  She pulled her 
robe closed.

"Utter contentment," Mulder whispered, watching Christopher's 
sleeping figure and the drip of milk on his dimpled chin.  Scully 
caught the drip with her finger, and started to lift it to her 
mouth, but Mulder caught her wrist.  Their eyes met like an arc 
of electricity jumping in the darkness, and without a word, 
Mulder guided Scully's finger to his own lips and licked her skin 
clean.

She swallowed hard.  "I want to stay," she whispered.

"Then stay."

"I can't."

His eyes narrowed, brow tensing.  "Why?"  He wouldn't let go of 
her hand.

"Tasha."

For a moment Mulder's eyebrows rose, she had caught him utterly 
off guard.  Then the facts made sense, and he fell into a 
beautiful Mulder-smile.  "Your dog?"

"She's all by herself.  I can't leave her all night.  Especially 
with the rain.  She doesn't like it."

Mulder squeezed her hand.  "Okay."

"Okay."

She transferred Christopher into Mulder's cautious arms and she 
cleaned up and slipped into her clothes.  She returned to the 
bedroom with Christopher's car seat and stooped down beside the 
bed.  She worked at untangling the mass of blankets around her 
son.  Separating a dark piece of cotton, she caught her breath 
and said, "Oh...yeah.  Mulder, this is, um...it's your Knicks 
shirt."

"It's what?"

"Your Knicks tee-shirt.  I thought--"

"You kept my shirt?" he asked, still wearing only his boxers, 
still holding Christopher and looking down at her in the dim 
light as she knelt in her blouse and slacks and black heels with 
her hair so much longer than it had once been.

"I kept your shirt."  She slipped her tongue over the corner of 
her mouth.  "I...slept with your shirt.  For a long time."  She 
forced a deep breath, tried not to waver beneath the intensity of 
Mulder's grey-green gaze.  "Anyway, I--I actually just meant to 
bring it back, I thought you might want--"

But Mulder shook his head.  He motioned her hands to silence.  
"No, don't.  I think it looks good right where it is."

Scully closed her eyes.  She let the cloth fall back across her 
son.  "Okay."

For a moment she couldn't bring herself to move.  The world was 
too perfect right now.  She didn't want the ground to shift 
again, didn't want anything to move, anything to shake the steady 
foundation.  But life was action; stillness was death.  She had 
learned that a long time ago.  Scully slipped her arms beneath 
Christopher and Mulder passed across his gentle weight.  She 
settled Christopher into his carrier and he murmured softly in 
his sleep.  She touched her lips to his forehead and let him 
smell her close; his breath smoothed.

As Scully stood, Mulder rose with her and grazed a careful hand 
over her upper arm, across the site of the injection.  "Does it 
hurt?" he asked, a deep weight buried beneath his level tone.

She nodded.  "A little.  It's fine."

"Are you okay?"

She smiled.  "I'm very okay."

And he smiled back.  Then he kissed her, and she slipped her 
hands behind his neck and pulled him close and her senses were 
instantly overwhelmed again and she was drowning in his scent, 
his taste, the sound of his breath and the feel of his whiskers 
and she desperately wanted to stay.  When they broke away, she 
said simply, "Sleep."  Because she knew he was thinking the same 
as she.  Knew he wanted to follow her home.

He nodded.  They lingered, eye to eye, hands unwilling to let go.  
Then, at last, Scully stooped to lift Christopher and turned 
toward the door.  Mulder drifted behind her as far as the 
doorway.  As Scully freed the lock of the front door, he spoke 
from behind her.  "Scully?"

She turned, eyebrow arched.  "Hmm?"

"Next time?  Bring your dog."

She was still smiling when she reached the street below.


*****

(End Chapter 26a.  Continued in Chapter 26b...)
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