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He stands in front of her apartment door, wondering for the fourth time since he left his own apartment whether he should be here. Despite his doubts, he knocks.
The door opens, revealing Scully in silk pajamas and a terry cloth robe. Her eyebrows are raised in what he’s sure is surprise at his appearance; it’s been nearly two weeks since she’d last seen him, when she was discharged from the hospital.
“Hi. I’m sorry, I uh… I should’ve called,” he says, wondering himself why he hadn’t called. Because things are different now, he thinks. She’s no longer just a colleague that you can call up whenever you need something. The past three months have made that abundantly clear.
“No, no, it’s fine. Come in.” She opens the door wider to admit him and the large flat box he’s holding with both hands. A smaller paper bag balances precariously on top.
He raises the box towards her. “I hope you like pepperoni pizza.”
As if on cue, a low rumble emits from her stomach. “Pizza sounds wonderful,” she says, eyeing the box with obvious interest. She then gives him a look - one which makes clear that she’s wondering why he’s here and what’s taken him so long.
“I uh, I’ve stayed away on purpose. I didn’t want to make you think or talk about work,” he says sheepishly, not meeting her eyes. Truth be told, he doesn’t know whether she plans on coming back to the X-Files. While she was in the hospital, she’d told him she looked forward to seeing him “back at work.” But did she mean as his partner, or as just another Agent? The question had pestered him like a mosquito whining in his ear; he could swat it away for a brief moment, but it inevitably returned to torment him. After all that had happened - her abduction, her coma, and now her recovery - he was shocked that she was even considering returning to the FBI.
“I also figured you wanted to spend time with your mom and your sister.” Now he’s just making excuses.
She gives him a small smile that he takes as a sign of understanding, but she doesn’t engage him further and he wonders whether that’s a good or a bad thing. “That pizza isn't getting any warmer, Mulder,” she says instead and turns into the kitchen. He sees her open a cupboard.
“No dishes, Scully,” he says, trying to sound more cheerful than he feels. “I got paper plates and napkins. As well as a couple of Cokes.”
She allows him to steer her towards the couch and he serves her a slice of pizza. He cracks the tab to an ice-cold Coca-Cola and places it on the coffee table in front of her before serving himself. She takes an appreciative whiff before taking a large bite. Her eyes close in obvious delight. “God, this is really good, Mulder,” she says with her mouth full.
He laughs. “I imagine it is, after nearly two weeks of hospital food.”
She nods in agreement. “What else is in there?” she asks, gesturing to the paper bag next to the pizza box.
“You missed Halloween when you were… away,” he says, grimacing at the last word. “I thought I’d help make up for lost time.” He pulls a Blockbuster video from the bag and holds it out to her. “One of your favorites, if I recall.”
She takes the blue and white plastic case and grins at the title. “It is, indeed,” she says and he begins to relax. He had figured a movie would be a low-stakes way to ease back into their relationship - whatever it may be at this point. The choice of movie had been accidental: he had passed the Horror shelf of the Blockbuster store on the way to the Comedy section when the film caught his eye. He remembered Scully telling him while working a case in Tennessee that it was a favorite of hers.
He takes the video from her and pops it into the VCR. A few moments later, the unsettling, discordant notes of Krzysztof Penderecki’s ‘Polymorphia’ announce the opening of ‘The Exorcist’. He glances over to her, who has paused midway through her second slice to watch the ominous scene of Father Merrin’s discovery of a statue of Tiamat - aka the Devil - on an archaeological excavation in Iraq. He’s pleased to see that she’s regained her appetite.
He hasn’t seen this movie in ages and he’s surprised at its poignancy, especially Father Merrin’s admonishment to Damien: “The demon is a liar. He will lie to confuse us. But he will also mix lies with the truth to attack us.” It’s also undeniably scary - the sudden, abrupt cuts to the nightmarish face of the Devil make them both jump. But Scully clearly loves all of it, as evidenced by her rapt attention and audible intakes of breath at the shocking scenes of Reagan spider-walking down the stairs or rotating her head three hundred and sixty degrees in front of the shocked priests.
“Talk about spooky,” he says as the movie fades to black and the credits begin to roll. The pizza box sits empty on the coffee table in front of them, along with a couple of grease and sauced-stained paper plates and empty soda cans.
She laughs and gives a small shake of her head. “That word,” she says. “It means something different to me now.”
“Oh?” he asks.
“When we first met, you asked me if I thought you were spooky. Do you remember that?”
Mulder smiles. “Yeah, it was during the Tooms case. What about now?”
She pauses before answering. “Paranoid? Yes. Obsessed? Often. Crazy? Sometimes. But spooky? No. Not after all we’ve seen.”
“Is that an admission from Dana Katherine Scully that I was right about Tooms being a long-lived, liver-eating mutant?” he asks softly, teasingly.
Scully smiles and he feels the soft jab of her elbow against his side. “Let’s not get carried away.”
They both chuckle, but the light mood quickly lapses into an awkward silence. This is what he’s been dreading, why he questioned coming here. Scully rotates her empty Coke can contemplatively. He watches her, taking in her features. The color has returned to her cheeks, he’s pleased to see, and she’s gained back much of the weight she’d lost while comatose. She’s still not cleared for duty for another week at least, but the swiftness of her physical recovery is remarkable. As for her emotional state, that’s something he’s refrained from inquiring about, at least out loud. Dana Scully is the most resilient person he knows, but he also knows that trauma doesn’t discriminate and that its wounds are often invisible.
“You know, Mulder, I told you when I was in the hospital that I had the strengths of your beliefs to get me through. And that was certainly true. But I had something… someone else alongside me as well.”
He remains silent, looking at her, waiting for her to continue.
“It was a nurse. She introduced herself to me as Nurse Owens. She took care of me, watched over me. She told me she was there to help me find my way home.” Scully sighs and looks down at her lap. “When I woke up, I asked another nurse about her. She told me that no one by that name had ever worked at the hospital.” Her eyes take on a distant look. “I had… many dreams, of many people, when I was in my coma. I saw my father, my mother, my sister, and you. Nurse Owens, though… Mulder, I could’ve sworn she was right there, at my bedside, taking care of me.”
Mulder nods, his eyes intent on her, waiting for her to continue.
“What was strange, though, was that towards the end, the voice I heard beside me wasn’t hers, but yours.” She looks at him. “And it was as clear as a bell.”
A pause, then she asks, “You were there, weren’t you?” It’s almost a whisper, as if she’s afraid of voicing the question aloud.
He swallows hard at the lump that has suddenly risen in his throat. He hadn’t expected this from her. Or maybe he had. Maybe this is why he has stayed away since she was discharged from the hospital. He came so close to losing her, it had nearly broken him. Now he’s here in her apartment, listening to her admit to seeing what - a spirit guide? An angel? Something not of this world, certainly. And she’s not trying to explain it away or rationalize it, like she would have done before her abduction. No, she’s opening up to him, allowing herself to be vulnerable and intimate with him in her own way, and it terrifies him. Terrifies him because he knows how easily he could lose her again. It’s almost too much.
“Yeah, I was there,” he says finally, his tongue thick in his mouth. He knows what she’s insinuating, that it was he who brought her back from the brink of death. If she only knew that it was her sister, Melissa, who had dragged him out of his miserable spiral of self-hate and self-pity. Another reason he’s held off on seeing her: he’s ashamed of having given up on her. He remembers another line from the movie, when Father Merrin tells Damien that the reason the Devil possesses innocent people is to make those they love despair. That’s what happened to him, he thinks. He’d given into despair.
“I tried, but I failed, Scully,” he says, doing all he can to keep his voice from breaking. “I’d all but given up hope that you’d survive. I was ready to let you go.”
He feels her hand squeeze his. It’s warm and soft, pulsing with life. “But you didn’t give up, Mulder,” she says. “It was your voice, your presence that brought me back. I knew that I still had work to do… that we had work to do.”
Her words are an absolution, a cleansing of his guilt-ridden conscience. He releases a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. She’s still gripping his hand. He wants to pull her to him, to envelop and hold her against the maelstrom of dark forces that even now threaten to pull them apart. Instead, he reaches out with his free hand to wipe a tear that’s sliding down her cheek, and is surprised to feel her cheek pressing against his palm. Wordlessly, he wraps his arms around her.
“I’m here, Scully,” he murmurs into the top of her head. “And so are you. That’s all that matters.” He says the words to himself as much as he says them to her.
Once more, they fall into silence but this time, it feels natural, effortless, normal. He can feel the slight rise and fall of her chest against his as she breathes and can hear a soft sigh of what he hopes is contentment from her. He allows himself a sigh of his own as he continues to hold her.
He notices the tape he gave her while she was in the hospital sitting on top of the bookcase next to the TV. “Have you watched ‘Superstars of the Super Bowl’ yet?” he asks.
“Not yet,” she says. “I thought… I was hoping I could watch it with you.”
He smiles. “No time like the present, Scully.” He detects a slight slowing of her breathing, as if she’s about to drop off to sleep. “Are you sure you’re up for another round?” he asks quietly.
“Only if we can have popcorn,” she murmurs against his chest. “There’s a box in the pantry.”
“Your wish is my command,” he says, rising from the couch and heading towards the kitchen.
He emerges a few minutes later, a large bowl of buttery popcorn in hand. “I hope you’ve been practicing your end zone dance, Scully,” he says. “Because mine definitely leaves something to be desired.”
He stops just short of the couch. Scully is curled up in the warm spot he’s vacated, her eyes closed, her mouth open slightly. A few strands of auburn hair cover her face. He sets the bowl on the coffee table and bends down to brush them away, gently tucking them behind her ear. He takes the afghan lying on the arm of the sofa and spreads it over her.
As quietly as he can, he gathers the remains of their meal and disposes of it in the trash. Then, moving slowly so as not to disturb her, he settles in next to her on the couch. He picks up a recent copy of National Geographic lying on the side table. This time, he’ll be there when she wakes.