Title: Past Resolution's Power 1/?
Author: Mary Parker
Rating: PG?
Spoilers: For the Scully!abduction arc, but then veers 
sharply AU.
Disclaimer: Not mine, not mine.  Chris Carter's, Fox's,
1013's.  No profit for me.
Summary: What if Scully never came back to Mulder?  What if
he found her anyway?
Author's Notes: Work in progress.  Um.  Will progress someday.


 It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would. 
- Edna St. Vincent Millay

It started at a long stoplight in some anonymous town: Mulder 
had the windows rolled down, soaking in the warm greasy air 
like some sort of penance.  He felt unpleasantly grimy but the air 
conditioner made him feel numb and aware of an uncomfortable 
level of privilege.  He remembered vaguely that he had been 
fond of summers once, but that seemed like a long time ago 
now.  The car in the lane next to him was a convertible with 
some barely-20-something in it blasting the Beatles.  Mulder 
snorted, half appreciative and half feeling like his childhood 
had been plundered, though perhaps the immortality of the 
songs he and Sam had loved should be comforting.  The last 
strains of �Hey Jude� faded into the intro of �Norwegian 
Wood� as the 20-something hummed along and tapped 
rhythm idly on the steering wheel. 

�I once had a girl, or should I say: she once had me.�

That was all it took.  Scully was there in the car with him, 
fuck-me heels rattling in the floorboards as she flexed her 
little toes, giving him that look: turn on the air conditioner 
and stop putting sunflower shells in the ashtrays, Mulder, 
this is a rental.  The light turned green and the convertible 
sped away.  Mulder choked on a sudden rush of longing 
and grief and put his head down on the steering wheel.  It 
was a small town; he wasn�t sure how many redgreenyellow 
cycles he�d sat through before someone began to lean on 
their horn behind him.  He had been heading out to the
morgue; instead he made a tight awkward left and went 
back to the cheap motel.

A shower.  A clean t-shirt and jeans instead of the wilted
dress shirt he'd been wearing for the benefit of the local PD.
He paced the length of his room.  One room.  One name on
the expense reports.  One driver for the long lonely miles.

Scully.

She was still gone.  It had been three years now and he 
still couldn't process it.  One day he would hear the office
door open and she would be there.  He had filled 
notebooks with the things he wanted to say to her, not
pleased with the melodrama of it but desperate to talk to
her, to communicate in some way even if she wasn't going
to listen or respond.  The books were nondescript cheap
things with the marbled covers that reminded him of grade 
school.  He kept them in the safe with his father's blood
money bonds and the relics his grandparents had left for
him.  

They had never talked much - really talked- when she
was there.  It was only when she was gone that he 
realized he ached to know her favourite colour, the movie
that always made her cry, her preference of dogs or cats.
He knew ridiculous small things about her instead: that
she liked her coffee with only cream.  He knew which side
she preferred to sleep on.  He had no idea what her 
positions on life, love, or politics were.  That didn't seem
right or possible, but he couldn't remember anymore.

They had taken her.  He had lost her.  Her family would
never forgive him, although he got a stiffly-worded card
every Christmas from her mother to set next to the nearly
identical Hannukah card from his aunt.

Scully.  He couldn't remember her face as a whole these
days, just eyes here, mouth there: perfect recall but only
in pieces.  He kept a photo of her in his wallet, some 
crime scene candid he'd stolen from the lab: his shoulder
was in the frame, and the back of his head, but most of the
photo was Scully, chin tilted up in skeptical defiance and
arms crossed.

"Zat cher girlfriend?"  The question of a thousand seedy
motel clerks.  Mulder never answered.  Yes wasn't the 
right answer but he couldn't seem to say no.

In some of the notebooks in the safe there were pages filled
with "I love you" - just the single phrase centered near the 
top of the page, but the words demanded so much space.
After that there was nothing left to say.  Other pages had lists
of things he missed.  The too-bright autumn flash of her hair.
The morning squint of her sleepy eyes.  The soft sounds of
her breathing as she slept.  The taste of her lips on the rim of
his coffee cup.  The easy way she rolled those multisyllabic
medical words off her nimble tongue.  The tiny mole above
her lip that only showed up post-shower to drive him 
crazy.

Nevermind.  This was accomplishing nothing.  He was
already crazy - reflecting on the million things she was
wouldn't help.  And he was hungry, suddenly.  He would
go to the grocery store, he decided, not in the mood for
limp hamburgers or pallid burritos.  He'd pick up one of
those damn tv dinners made for a hungrier man on his way
to a heart attack.  At least the portioned tray of potatoes
and pot roast might give him the illusion someone cared
for him.  It was pathetic, but that was a comfort these days
He grabbed his keys but left the rental car - it was only a 
block or two to walk, and the afternoon was cooling.

At the store he prowled restlessly up and down the aisles,
feeling lean and sinister next to all the cart pushing
housewives who had probably left their husbands home
with the dog and the three kids.  They looked at him
curiously, flinched and smiled if he caught their eye.  He
automatically looked twice at small women, three times at
redheads.  But none of these women were going to be her.
He should give up and surrender to the false comfort of tv
dinners, except that he had somehow ended up in the snack
aisle instead of the frozen foods.  He picked up a bag of 
potato chips, stared blankly at it, and put it down again.

Up ahead in the area with the healthy snacks there was a 
blonde woman bent over her cart looking at something.
Mulder evaluated her critically with a practiced eye, aware
that he was falling victim to the just-one-more excuse 
beloved by five year olds everywhere.  Fine.  After this he'd
stop looking for her.  Scully was gone.  He wouldn't find her in 
this woman, though she was the right height and had Scully's
efficient curves - he assumed, given that Scully's suits had 
never been quite as revealing as this t-shirt and jeans were.
She had Scully's lovely fair skin as far as he could tell, and 
Scully's elegant nape.  But this woman was blonde, with her
hair piled on her head in that effortless fashionable way that
he didn't think Scully was capable of, and this woman had
an angry red scar where her beautiful neck met her pale
shoulders.  She was the kind of woman that Mulder could
forget himself with, but not the one he was looking for.  It 
was time to move on.

And then she turned, pivoted up on sneakered tiptoe to 
grab a bag of pretzels, and Mulder froze.  Scully's nose, 
Scully's eyelashes, Scully's lip bitten lightly with the effort
of stretching.  He started forward, stumbled, almost broke
into a run, and then walked quickly toward her, afraid to call
her name in case she vanished or ran away.  He reached over 
her for the pretzels, hand hovering automatically at the small
of her back, and handed the bag to her.  She didn't flinch
when he looked at her: those were the eyes he remembered,
infinite and autumn sky blue.

"Scully," he said.  The word grated out of his throat.

"Hi," she said.  Her face was sculptured nonchalance, but her
eyes were sad.  Mulder was astounded by how mundane this 
all was, meeting in a grocery store in a nowhere town, and 
Scully not even pretending not to know him.  He mouthed 
feeble phrases, flabbergasted and fishlike, imagining all his
words in soundless bubbles floating away.

"Why don't you come to dinner?" she asked gently, putting her
small hand on his arm.  Mulder stared mutely at the fingers
with their clear polished nails, and the ring on one finger.  "Come
on, Mulder.  I have bread in the oven."

He followed, docile as a puppy, too astounded to speak.  Scully
steered the cart toward the front of the store, pausing to add a 
carton of ice cream as an afterthough.  Mulder evaluated the
contents of her cart as Scully chatted comfortably with the clerk:
salad makings, extra extra lean ground beef enough for several,
a packet of chicken breasts, pretzels, some frozen veggies, and
the ice cream.  Nothing premade.  An ambiguous amount of 
food, given that he didn't know the condition of her pantry.  
Enough to one or two, certainly, but not more.  But it was the 
"or two" he was concerned about.

"Mulder."  She handed him one of the plastic sacks and he 
carried it to the car, aware of the curious eyes of the clerk.  
Scully was well-known here, it seemed, and well-liked.  Of 
course.  What was there not to like about Scully?

Her car was a neat little sedan twin to their thousand 
anonymous rentals, except that Joni Mitchell trickled
quietly from the speakers, and the glove compartment was
filled with typical Scully detritus when Mulder flipped it
open: lipstick, a small bottle of hand lotion, all those maps
he always scoffed at, neat and tidy insurance forms in a 
plastic sleeve, the user's manual without even a corner bent.

"What are you expecting to find?" she asked, in a voice 
tinged with amusement.  He couldn't say, just closed the 
glove compartment and sat back in his seat.  Scully clicked
on her turn signal despite the fact that the quiet residential 
street was empty and executed a neat left into the driveway
of a small tidy house.  At least this was no surprise - the 
house looked vaguely like Mrs. Scully's.  He carried the 
groceries in, not wanting to look utterly useless.  Scully's
house was clean.  He didn't recognize the furniture.  Then
again, if he ever moved, he probably wouldn't take much 
with him.  Maybe the couch.  And the fish.  He'd miss the
fish.

Scully beckoned him into the kitchen and debagged the 
food.  She considered him, took off a ring and put in on
a shelf above the wide double sink, washed her hands carefully,
and put a double handful of the beef into a skillet.  Mulder
poked around the cupboards and managed to put the 
chicken away before Scully, having washed her hands again,
took the rest of the items from him and put them away with
clinical precision.

"You can set the table while I make a salad," she said over 
her shoulder, turning brown loaves of bread onto cooling
racks and getting out a jar of pasta sauce.  It sat next to the 
sizzling skillet like a tomato Buddha.  "Talk to me, Mulder.  I
won't disappear."

"Again."  It was more of a croak than a comeback, but he 
supposed anything was a start.  "Plates?"

There were the compassionate eyes again, and the wry hint
of a smile.  "There."  She pointed as she rounded up the so
recently put away salad things - at least his presence had
ruffled her a bit if she was misplacing things in their proper
locations.  "And silverware by the sink."

"So how long have you been living here?"  He tried to make
his tone light but couldn't look at her anymore.  Her plates
were nice.  Blue.  A pattern he would have picked if he cared.

"Two years."  She ripped lettuce studiously and put it in a 
spinner. 

"So They brought you back when?"  That ring by the sink.

"Just a little before I moved here.  A few weeks.  I wanted to
talk to you, Mulder.  Mom and Skinner put me in the witness
protection program, in a manner of speaking, and it all moved
too fast."

"And you couldn't pick up the phone?"  Mulder made a mental
note to kill that bald son of a bitch the next time he saw him.  At
least it explained the Christmas cards.  He put the forks down at
careful angles and tried to breathe evenly.  

"Mulder."  She made his name a vessel and poured her grief and
pain into it.  Sorry, Scully, he thought.  But then she said, "So what
brings you to town?" as if they'd only just met, more casual than
the first time in the basement.  He wanted to look at her, to drop 
the knives and spoons in an untidy heap on the table and look at 
her until one of them surrendered.  He didn't know what the war
was about or what a victory would look like, but the tension was
drawing tight cords through the room that splintered the air.  He
chanced a glance.  She was wrist-deep in greens and pretending
to concentrate hard.

"A case.  I don't just wander the country looking for you."  
Anymore, he amended silently.  

"I wouldn't imagine."  Her tone was inscrutable.  He liked to think
he heard a thread of sadness in with all that enigmatic inflection. He
was still defensive.  "Old man Haverford?" she asked.  "The ghosts
that he talked about before he died?"

"How do you know?"

"Nothing interesting goes on here."  A little wistful there, he thought,
but he knew how she had loved DC.  "I did the autopsy.  It's not an
X-File, Mulder.  He died of lead poisoning.  It's an old house and he
refused to have it refurbished, in deference to his mother's memory.
Old pipes.  Old stories."

"So you're a doctor still?"  He didn't know what else he expected.

"Mostly family practice.  Fewer orangutans."  He almost smiled.

"When's the wedding?"

"Couple of months," she said quietly.  

"Do you love him?"  Scully.  Don't, he wanted to say.

She paused, straightened, looked him in the eye, and turned to 
pour the sauce over the meat and put water on to boil.  She 
shook small containers of spices over the skillet.  Mulder 
marvelled at how good she was at this home life, and how 
good she still was at avoiding anything she didn't want to
answer.

"He loves me," she said at last.  "Or he thinks he does."

Mulder waited.

"Yes, it's too easy," she said, turning to face him, "but 
Mulder, I can't be the best of myself every minute for you.  I 
wanted to be.  I fought to go back to you.  But this was better, 
wasn't it?  No one holding you back."

He went to her, almost reluctantly, and cupped his hand over 
her cheek.  She leaned into his palm but didn't cry, didn't take
her eyes from his.  Blue.  He'd never seen so much blue, never
been so grateful he could see it.  All the words he had ever 
known seemed to drain into the blue of her eyes, except the
one, the weighed and balanced syllables of her name.

"Scully," he said, and felt tears rising.  Her skin felt exactly the
way it had when her father had died.  Mulder dropped his 
hand as if she had burned him and fell into a chair.  He buried
his face in his hand.  Scully made clanking noises with the stove.
He heard her go out, come back, and put something small on
the table in front of him.  Through the lattice of his fingers he 
saw the glass vial and the fragment of metal inside.

"I don't remember anything," she said, "but that was in my
neck when I went in for a physical last week.  Add it to your 
collection."  She paused; he waited for her to tell him it was 
all she could give.

"I'm not asking for your help, Mulder.  In your place, I would
be mad as hell."

He had been mad.  Now he was empty.  

"I thought my leaving was my gift to you, Mulder.  All the 
mysteries in the world to hunt down and I thought I was tying
you down with all my scientific skepticism.  Even when I wanted
to believe, how could I?  I couldn't see that I was good for you.
If I was wrong, I'm sorry.  I didn't want you to keep killing 
yourself over me.  Over this.  There are bigger things than that
for you.  Life goes on."

"Don't," he said to the heels of his hands.  He could hear her
pouring pasta into boiling water and then the scuff of chair legs
as she scooted up beside him.  

"Mulder."  Her voice was a caress.  "Look at me."

He did, reluctantly.  She put one hand over his on the table.

"Try to understand," she said.  "If I love you it doesn't change 
anything."

Yes, he wanted to say, but instead: "Do you?"

She just looked at him.  

"Do you?" he pressed, turning his palm over to catch her 
fingers.  Her hand was warm and soft and trembled a little.

"You know I do."

He stared at her, desperate with the shock and joy of the 
day, afraid he was going to wake up.

"If I marry you, does it make life better?" she asked, nearly
tranquil.

"Yes," he said, fiercely, immediately, trying to counter her 
inevitable questions.

"How?  Does it bring your sister back?  What about the
men that took her, and me, and all those others, does it 
bring them to justice?  The love of two people isn't bright
enough to light all the darkness of the world, Mulder.  Your
mutants, your killers, your vampires will still exist."

"But it's true, Scully, and it's right."

"And then we all end up dead, by crime or by time.  Either 
we're paid too much attention or we pay too much attention to
each other - either way your work suffers, and you suffer, and 
I suffer."  

"I'll quit," he said recklessly.  "I'm about to be fired anyway.  As
much as ever," he hedged, unable to lie under her blue gaze.  "It's
a matter of time and it always was."

"Yes," she said soberly, "for everyone.  That's what you believe, isn't
it?  You tame behind a desk is not what I wanted, Mulder, which is
why I left.  I believe in you.  I'm not willing to compromise you."

"It doesn't work without you, Scully.  Let them have the damn planet.
The Smoking Man must have enough bad karma by now to doom
any Project.  You know we couldn't win."

"Sometimes it's the fight that matters.  You know that.  And I know
you, Mulder.  You've got that hero complex and that wanderlust and
you want to be good but you'd be miserable here.  And I'm happy."
Almost, he thought he heard her say.

"I could freelance," he said.  "VCS work.  Still making the world a 
better place, hunting down aliens on the weekends.  I make decent
pancakes."

"In the microwave?" she asked, with one of those rare and brilliant
smiles, and he fell in love again.

"Didn't you want to save the world, Scully?"

"Not at the cost of our lives, or at least not at the cost of yours. 
I wouldn't know how to go on with the work without you, and 
what if you never found what you were looking for?  I wouldn't
find it.  I thought being with you would be too dangerous.  Skinner
said They would probably be looking for me."

What's dangerous is how I am when you aren't there, he wanted 
to say.  "I found you," he said instead.  "There are days when that
is enough."  

"But the other days?"  She didn't ask enough for what.

He looked away.  She picked up his hand and kissed the palm.
Mulder closed his eyes again and Scully went to drain the pasta.
She left it in the sink; neither of them were hungry anymore.

"I need you," he said hoarsely as she came back.  "I've been dying
for three years.  I run myself into the ground without you.  I found 
Them, Scully, and then they disappeared.  Not even the Gunmen
can find a trace of the Syndicate.  I think something happened.  
Maybe They're gone, something went wrong.  But I can't go back
knowing you're here.  I can't do my work on my own.  I go to 
the office and I work myself hollow and I go home and drink."
It was more honest than he'd intended to be.  "And I dream of you,
Scully.  I'm always running after you.  Maybe religion is trying to
find me.  I went to temple once, to see if it would help, but all
I could think about was the way he looked when he said you 
were gone.  Duane Barry.  He took you from me and he left me 
with this."  He touched the base of his throat, remembering the
cross he wore, so familiar he didn't even feel it.  He fumbled
with the clasp inside the collar of his t-shirt and handed the 
necklace back to her.

She let the delicate chain slide through her fingers.  Her 
expression was tender as she watched light glint off the bars
of the cross.  Then she handed it back to him and presented
him with the snowy nape of her neck, blonde wisps of hair 
caught up by the hand he'd so recently held.  He let his fingers
caress her lightly as he fastened the clasp of the necklace, 
surprised by his own boldness.  She was here.  She was real.
She shivered under his touch and turned to bury her face in
his shoulder.  He put his arms around her and exhaled 
slowly.  Automatically his hands stroked her back.

"Scully," he whispered, lips grazing the shell of her ear.  "You
can't marry him.  I love you."

She put her face against his neck.  "What good does it do?"
she asked, but the pain of her words was mitigated by the
soft movement of her lips against his throat like a series of
small kisses.

"Maybe it saves the world," he said.  "Maybe nothing."

"When do the odds make it worth it?"

He couldn't answer.  Love was changing his world but it 
didn't do anything to change anything else.  She was right
about that.  Love didn't heal his need to chase the impossible
nightmare things that Scully couldn't justify with science.  It 
didn't change Scully's desire for a home and a life and a family
like the one she was making here, or his own bad history with
love and marriage, or her family's distaste for him, or his family's
irreparable fragmentation.  Love is not all, he thought, some 
memory from college English.  Millay.  The rest was about all 
the things love couldn't do, about the impracticality of it all and
the way people kept falling in love anyway.  Love and honour
and courage, all twisted up together - it couldn't save a man's 
life, but it wasn't something he could live with giving up, either.

"I do not think I would," he said aloud.

"Don't make me a reason," she said softly.  "You'll resent me."

"Who's the psychologist here?" he teased, heart heavy.

"You look like you haven't slept in three years," she said, pulling
back to look at him.  "Mulder, no one else will do what you do.
That was why you wanted the X-Files.  There's no other justice
but you."

"It was an indulgence," he argued.  "You were the justice.  You
were the one with the proof.  It was just a game They let me play
because they had all the pieces.  And now how am I to know 
that the game isn't over?  It's like They vanished, Scully, all of them
out of the same airforce hangar.  I don't know what's going on.
It could be over."  

He got up and paced.  

"The problem is I don't know, and I won't know without you, 
and I want you back with me but I can't take the thought of you
in danger again."

"It's not your choice to make, Mulder.  It's mine."

He whirled.  "Do you want me to leave?"

"Of course not."  She rose to turn off the heat under the 
forgotten and probably well-scorched pasta sauce.  "Do you
really think that?  I spent three years thinking about the day
you'd find me, Mulder.  But I can't have you flitting in and out
of my life, and I can't live knowing I tie you down."

"Come back with me," he said feverishly, forgetting his previous
arguments.  "It doesn't have to be the X-Files.  Quantico.  Violent
Crimes.  Accounting.  Private practice.  Anything.  We'll find a way
to keep you safe."

She looked around her kitchen.  "Nowhere with you will be 
safe, Mulder.  Ever.  Not until you're sure They're all gone
and all of their plans are in ruins."

He slumped in a chair.  She rose, bent to kiss the top of his head,
and let him lean against her.

"Mulder...."  He looked up.

"I'll wait for you," she said.