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“Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea; joy to you and me.”
The acrid burn of sparked gunpowder sticks the rest of the verses of Joy to the World in Scully’s throat. She tapers to a hum, and then nothing, preferring instead the familiar sounds of nighttime, of insects, of Mulder’s breathing. She tallies respirations against the chronometer of her heartbeat.
Mulder’s weight in her lap is sweet and still and satisfyingly grounding, a terrestrial Stella Maris. For weeks now there has been a pulling, a restlessness, right at the nape of her neck.
Home, home, it says.
At night— especially at night— it vibrates through her to all the points of her body’s compass rose, deep in her bones, electrifying her nerve endings. She’d meant it earlier when she said she wouldn’t get tired.
The moaning branches of a nearby river birch are a dark and swaying ship. Scully can half feel herself drifting, unmoored. She may have enjoyed such an indulgent feeling, once; now, instead, she thinks of little white stones, marking their trail like a hundred will-o’-the-wisps, until her skin begins to feel pleasantly tight with the haptic memory of dried salt. She closes her eyes, breathing once, twice, the earthy scent of wet wood and musty loam sitting heavy in her chest before she sighs into the wind.
“What are you thinking about, Scully?” Mulder mumbles warmly into her thigh. He has developed a certain vulnerability with her in the past few weeks, months. It grew slowly alongside her cancer, rooting deep. She runs her fingers along the chilled outer edge of her ear.
“Sometimes Ahab would wake me up in the middle of the night and we would sit in the backyard together and find constellations.” The salty smell of wet rope; a spray of dew; her fingers stiff against the height of Polaris: her and Ahab, navigating the Atlantic.
“Do you have a favorite?”
She pauses. Mulder warms the bridge of his nose against her leg. “Ophiuchus.” Ophiuchus: the serpent-bearer. He doesn’t ask, and she doesn’t answer.
The night deepens slowly around them. Scully seeks out Sirius amongst the blackness and marks time by moonlight, by the sea song of cold wind across her face: eight bells and all is well. She’s never minded the dogwatch.
“I’ve always felt a connection to Cetus.”
She reaches far into her mind. “The sea monster?”
“Mmm.” His eyes are closed.
“You know, Mulder, that doesn’t even surprise me.”
“No, Scully, not for reasons you might think. Imagine it: you’re a misunderstood fish just trying to get an honest meal, and all of a sudden some Fabio with a hero complex jumps you and your skin and bones are being paraded around town by the locals.” He shifts his weight against her, settling in. “And all because Cassiopeia thought she was a hottie.”
Cassiopeia.
Home, home.
Scully feels the restlessness creep down her spine toward her shins, tingling through the soles of her feet and into her toes. She forces herself to concentrate: the rough wool of Ahab’s uniform; the whip crack of snapping canvas; Mulder below her, all foxfire and fault, her unlikely true north.
“Get some sleep, Mulder,” she says. The cold air tamps her words low and close, centered around her heart as soon as they leave her mouth. “I won’t get tired.”