Chapter Text
December 2012 (Prologue)
But nothing happened. And that’s probably the worst thing that could have happened to us: nothing. If the end of the world had actually come to pass, there would have at least been something to do, to fight against. Without a purpose, we unraveled. I guess there were important questions we hadn’t been facing all of those years as we discussed super soldiers, government conspiracies, and alien colonization: why did we need these things in our lives to make sense of ourselves? Why would we need the world to fall apart to be able to find each other?
February 2013
“Bye, Mulder!” Scully’s voice floated across the house as she stood in the doorway. Although I was in my office with the door closed, I could imagine her in a perfectly-pressed blouse and blazer with a pencil-line skirt and heels. I had no way of knowing, but I pictured her wearing a gray suit to match my own mood. She would be holding a travel mug of coffee in one hand with her other on the doorknob, waiting for me to acknowledge that she was leaving.
“Have a nice day,” I mumbled in reply. As soon as I heard the door shut, I reached over to grab one of the many binders that littered my desk and sighed. Another day. It was now two months past the date the Mayans had predicted as the end of the world, and not for the first time in my life, I was finding it hard to reconcile the fact that I was alive.
For the past four years, ever since the FBI had absolved me of the crime of murder and I felt safer to resume my work, I had been filling those binders with everything I could get my hands on that was related to the Mayan prophecies, the super soldier alien hybrids, and of course, the impending colonization. But now I had to find other ways to fill my time, find other ways to keep my mind busy. It was, I admitted, overwhelming to figure out a new direction for my life. At least if the world had ended, I would be released from the responsibility of saving the world, released from the responsibility of living itself.
I automatically stopped those thoughts as soon as they brushed through my mind. Doctor Scully wouldn’t approve, I knew. At the thought of Scully, I let out an involuntary groan, remembering that she was working at least sixteen hours at the hospital today, maybe twenty-four. At least she had found a real purpose in her life, one that couldn’t be snuffed out just because the alien takeover had turned out to be a hoax. I was proud of her, sure, but it was still awfully lonely in my office all day, and it had only become lonelier still during these last couple months.
I flipped open the binder, shut it again, and then tossed it gently across my desk. My thoughts slid back to the night it was all supposed to happen, back in December. As the clock had ticked closer to midnight, Scully and I had sat on the porch, huddled under a blanket, where we’d held each other, waiting. She hadn’t been completely convinced that anything was going to happen, but I was a bit exhilarated as I wondered what the end would feel like. Would the world end in fire or ice or alien invasion? I hadn’t been able to uncover anything that would have allowed me to stop it, one way or another. The super soldiers seemed to have gone underground, or hell, they might have flown away to their alien planet. Whatever had happened, they vanished as surely as the Mayans themselves had.
But in those last moments (or what I had assumed were our last moments) things had been felt normal again between Scully and me. Her arms had wrapped around me and I had stroked her hair, and it seemed like the last few years that we had been working together as unofficial partners had brought us together again, if only for the end. But once it became clear that nothing was, in fact, occurring, the spell was broken. We reverted immediately back into the patterns we had established for ourselves, acting like planets that orbit around each other but never come into contact because of universal laws that can never be broken.
And now I was left to sit here day after day, feeling increasingly stupid that I had believed the Smoking Man when I should have known the devil to be a liar.
*****
I heard the key turn in the lock and raised my head off the pillow to glance at the time. 6:20AM. Scully would be tired, so I forced myself to get up and pull on some clothes. I walked through the house to the kitchen where she stood at the counter, reading through the mail. “Bed’s all ready for you, Doc,” I said casually, as if it were perfectly normal for a couple living in the same house to share a bed yet not really share it.
She looked up and me with a tired smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. I wondered briefly if that was because of me or if she’d just had a rough day at work. She moved as if she were going to leave the kitchen but then turned back around suddenly. “Mulder,” she said, and as always, my name sounded like music on her lips. I looked at her intently to let her know she had my full attention. It seemed as though she had something to say, but after a moment she dropped her eyes and asked, “How was your day?”
I wasn’t sure what she wanted to hear. Did she want to know that while I ran my requisite ten miles it really felt like I was running away? Did she want to know that I had stared at my computer screen for three hours before finding the will to actually turn it on? “It was fine,” I said at last.
That seemed to satisfy her, and she walked to the bedroom to sleep off whatever it was that she hadn’t wanted to tell me. I laced up my sneakers and prepared for a run.
*****
Nine hours later, I heard the shower turn on, and I made an impulsive decision to start dinner. I figured it might help her open up to tell me whatever was on her mind. Over the years, I hadn’t become quite as good of a cook as Scully, but I could make some pretty good chicken dishes. She had been a good teacher, very patient as I ruined a lot of dinners that she gamely ate anyway. I pushed away those memories as I carefully constructed a more than passable meal. This time, there would be no disaster, nor any good-natured laughter at my failure.
Scully entered the dining room an hour later just as I was placing the chicken casserole and green beans on the table. Now she gave me a real smile, a grateful smile. We sat down to eat together, at first in a companionable silence. Then Scully said simply, “I was offered a job at a hospital in Seattle.”
The chicken suddenly turned to sawdust in my mouth. “I—wha—Seattle?” I spluttered after a moment.
She was calm. “I sent in my résumé and a few letters of recommendation about three weeks ago. It’s for a senior surgical position, which I’m not really qualified for, so I was almost sure I wouldn’t get it.”
“But you didn’t tell me that you were looking for a new job,” I said, hating the desperation in my voice.
“No. Like I said, it was a long shot. But they were really excited about my work when I talked to them during the phone interview. I’m thinking about taking it,” she said as she spooned more green beans on to her plate.
A thousand questions flew into my mind, none of which I felt I could ask Scully. Was she leaving me? Did she want me to come too? Was I allowed to have a say in this? Would we be selling the house? As always, she read my mind and said slowly, “This isn’t a decision I’m making lightly, Mulder. I know that taking the job in Seattle would mean a lot of changes. For both of us.”
“I know,” I said and left it at that. I didn’t want to have the conversation that ended with her packing her bags and moving across the country without me. I had to admit that we had been edging toward this moment for years, but I had still clung to the idea that it was always somewhere off in the future. Well, the future was apparently today.
We absurdly continued eating in silence after that as if a bomb hadn’t just exploded in the middle of the table. After we finished and cleared the table, we moved into the living room and I flipped on the TV to a random basketball game. Scully was perched on the edge of the other side of the couch reading, but after a few moments, she put her book down and said, “Mulder.”
I sighed and turned off the TV. “What?”
“What do you want to do?”
“What do you mean?” I asked warily.
“Well, obviously your work—our work—has revealed that there is no more imminent threat to us or to the rest of the world. Cancer Man is dead, the super soldiers are gone, and nobody has tried to kill us in a very long time. What will you focus on after I’m gone?”
So she was planning to leave me, after all. Until that moment, I hadn’t known how fervently I had been hoping that somehow this could be a new chance for us, a new location in the dense green forests of the Pacific Northwest where we could possibly start over and save our relationship. But she wanted to do this by herself. It really shouldn’t have come as a shock to me. We had been dying by degrees for a long time.
“Worried about how I’ll support myself once you move across the country, Doctor Scully?” I asked bitterly. At the look on her face, I immediately wished I could take it back. She had been worried about me. She always worried about me.
“Scully, I—“
“Mulder, listen,” she said wearily. “For the last few years, I’ve devoted what little spare time I had to helping you find your answers. I helped you not only because I’ve always believed in you but because I know that searching for answers is your way of making sense of the world. But it’s over now, and you’ve got to let it go. You should try to find something that gets you out of the house and allows you to fulfill your life’s purpose in some other more mundane way.”
“The way you have, you mean.”
“Yes, the way most people do.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, and she didn’t press any further. Picking up her book, she pretended to read for several minutes without turning a single page, and I pretended not to notice. Finally, without looking up from her book, she asked, “Are you happy?” Her voice quivered on the last syllable.
I knew she wanted me to admit that I wasn’t so I could justify her decision to go. But I’d long learned not to measure my life in terms of the happiness I could expect to achieve. It was different for her, though, I knew. She still believed that we could somehow outrun our monsters.
The growing silence between us answered her question, and her eyes filled with tears, making them even more beautiful if that were possible. “Why are we doing this?” she whispered, turning her head away so I was left to guess whether tears had spilled over on to her cheeks.
There was only one reason I could think of, but it wasn’t enough to tell her now, not after she’d decided to leave. I’d have to find a way to show her. To remind her. After a few moments of awkwardness, I stood up. “Well, I think I’ll head to bed now,” I said, turning to leave. “Good night, Scully.” She nodded without looking at me. Neither one of us pointed out the fact that it was only 7:00PM.