TITLE: Almost Home (13/?)
AUTHOR: Shoshana
EMAIL ADDRESS: [email protected]
DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT: Gossamer, Spookys site, Xemplary,
etc.
SPOILER WARNING: Seventh season episodes through Requiem.
RATING: NC-17 (Most of the story is rated R, NC-17 parts will be
clearly marked)
CONTENT STATEMENT: MSR
CLASSIFICATION: SRA
KEYWORDS: Mulder/Scully Romance
SUMMARY: Post ep for Requiem. Mulder comes back... but he's
missing something.
DISCLAIMER: These characters do not belong to me.
NOTE: Thanks to my great beta readers Keleka, Lisa, Sallie and
Teresa!

Almost Home (13/?)
By Shoshana

February 23nd, 2001
Friday
8 a.m.
The Mulder Summer Home, Quonochontaug, Rhode Island

The aromatic smell of good coffee wafted over from the bedside
table. Scully crinkled her nose, but didn't open her eyes. She was
enjoying this too much. Mulder was patiently waiting for her to
stir, seated in the upholstered chair in the corner.

She'd heard him tiptoe in thirty seconds ago, but she didn't want to
break the spell immediately. It was so nice to have him around to
take care of her like this. She was at the point in her pregnancy
when she needed him most and he'd reappeared in her life.

He hadn't even complained about drinking decaffeinated coffee once,
though she suspected he was spiking it with something stronger from a
well-hidden source. She'd finally found a better grade grind from a
Georgetown cafe; one could hardly tell the difference after awhile.
Giving up caffeine had been one of the most difficult things she'd
had to do the last few months, but the deprivation had paled next
to the loss of Mulder. Now that she had him back, every sip of java,
every single morsel of food tasted rich again.

Scully decided to put him out of his misery. She opened her eyes,
refreshed by nearly eight hours restful sleep. Mulder had been
watching her like a hawk, finding nothing more sublime than Scully in
slumber.

He smiled sweetly at her and chirped, "Morning, sunshine."

"Oh, Mulder. You used to tease with that greeting all the time."

He got up out of the chair and sat close to her on the bed, taking
one of her hands in his own. "Cruel, cruel man," he joked, bending
over slightly to kiss her fingers one by one.

"Positively heartless," she replied.

She tugged at him until he fell off balance and into her arms. They
shared a long kiss before she released him. Mulder played with her
mussed up hair, coiling her recalcitrant curls around his slim
forefinger.

He hadn't gained much weight back this week. He seemed to burn more
calories than he took in and Scully was still worried about his
overall health. She hoped he was going to eat breakfast too, if
only to excuse her ever-increasing appetite for anything and
everything on the menu.

She smiled up at him and asked, "Is that my breakfast?"

The ordinary dinner plate was covered with a pot lid. It smelled
like eggs and toast as she gradually separated out all the delicious
odors beside her.

"Yes. And I've already had mine, so I suggest you dig in. We have
a busy schedule today," he told her, a hint of mystery in his voice.

"Oh, yeah? I thought we were going to take it easy this weekend,
get some rest. Why the change in plans?"

"Well... it's really not an arduous schedule, Scully. Just a busy
one." He smiled at her, delighting in her confusion.

She narrowed her eyes, trying to decipher his doublespeak. "I'm
feeling a little thick-headed this early in the morning, Mulder.
What the hell do you mean?" Her lips pursed together impatiently,
awaiting an explanation.

Mulder grinned, then got up from the bed and left the bedroom before
she could utter another word. He returned ten seconds later, hands
hidden behind his back. With a flourish, he presented Scully with a
dozen perfect red roses.

"Happy birthday, Scully," he said, almost demurely.

She put her hand over her mouth, astonished he'd remembered her
birthday. He *never* did, so much so she'd teased him about it every
year. Last year had been the only time she hadn't given him grief
about it. His mother had just died and he'd found out the truth
about Samantha shortly thereafter. Her birthday had passed
unremarkably for a good reason.

"How did you know what day?" she asked.

Mulder laid the flowers next to her on the bed, then helped her sit
up straight against the headboard. He presented the flowers to her
with endearing formality, like it meant the world to him. She pulled
at his forearm until he leaned over and gave her another lasting
kiss.

"I thought you read my diary, Scully. Don't you remember our
baseball lesson?"

She looked at him, befuddled by his remark. How could he find out
when her birthday was from that? He'd taken her out to the ballpark
in April.

"You--that wasn't the right day. It was a very early or very late
birthday present," she asserted.

"Yeah, but I was determined to find out when it was after reading
about that. I didn't want to go through your things and I really
didn't think about it until we went to the grocery store yesterday.
You wrote a check and I realized today was the day. You don't know
how difficult it is to conceal even one measly phone call from you,
Scully."

She reached out and touched his cheek with her fingers, stroking his
rough morning stubble. She was genuinely affected by his unassuming
manner. It seemed like she had the best of both Mulders all the
time now: the indefatigable, idealistic man she'd met in 1993, and
the loving, physically demonstrative man she'd lost five months ago.

Not that he'd never touched her all those early years they were
together. He'd always invaded her space, brushed up against her with
an audacity she'd accepted from the very beginning. The deeper
meaning, the love, associated with those not so subtle territorial
invasions grew exponentially every year they spent together.

In less than a week, she and Mulder had rekindled their passion for
one another. Naturally, it had required little effort on her part.
She remembered every day she'd spent with him, every kind and
generous act she'd seen him do onto others as well as herself.

She recalled in vivid detail how flirtatious they'd become after the
spring of 1999. Even though they'd waited a whole year to come
together physically, she'd known what his intentions were. He was
prepared to wait her out, until she decided to advance the
relationship further.

Thank God I finally came to my senses, she thought. You never know
what will happen. Thank God he's finally back with me.

"Scully? Don't cry, please--"

He brought his hands to her face and gathered her tears, gently
wiping them away.

She sniffled and protested, "Not crying," even though she clearly
was. All that cursed self-examination, she mused to herself. "The
roses are beautiful, Mulder. They're perfect. You have so much on
your mind. To go out of your way for me..."

"Of course I'd go out of the way for you." He placed his hands on
either side of her tear-streaked face, stroking his thumbs over her
flushed cheeks. "I love you."

She closed her eyes, embarrassed by her loss of control. She knew
he loved her in a certain way now, but she still held some
apprehension about the future. She wanted to be confident, wanted to
believe things would never change.

Mulder's mental health had not always been stellar. She didn't
want to discuss this with him yet, but she felt he should start
seeing a therapist right away. Losing all those years of memories,
becoming a father so abruptly, plus all the stress and strain of
dealing with threats against his family--it could unhinge the best of
us.

Mulder was the best and the brightest of all the people she'd
ever known. Their reunion had been going so well, in spite of his
amnesia, in spite of his instant fatherhood. She was waiting for the
other shoe to drop.

"I'm worried about you," she blurted out.

"What? How so?" he asked, placing his hands on her shoulders.

"Oh, Mulder. I don't know. This is all so much. For you, for me.
I'm happy, so happy. But I'm just waiting for the inevitable, for
whatever price I have to pay for this happiness."

He dropped his hands from her shoulders and sat quietly for a
minute, thinking over what she'd just said. Running his hand through
his hair thoughtfully, he responded, "I know what you're getting at.
I have doubts, too--but everything's been going so well the last couple
days. Well, everything except for Krycek. I don't know what to say.
We just have to stick it out together, Scully. All of us," he said,
stroking the curve of her belly affectionately.

She covered his hand and stilled it, looking up at him earnestly,
"Promise me you'll tell me if you have any more vertigo. Promise me
you'll tell me if you feel uneasy about anything, anything at all. I
can't imagine what you're going through."

He leaned down and kissed her hand, resting his chin lightly on her
stomach. "It's all easier with you around, Scully," he said softly,
looking up at her. "I've never had anyone like you. Someone I could
rely on completely... Knowing you need me just as much, especially
now... it makes me happy. Don't you know that?"

He sat up, then moved next to her on the bed so he could pillow her
head on his chest. She nestled into him, her shorter arms wrapping
around his waist.

"Anything you think I should do, Scully, just tell me about it. I
know you're holding back, not wanting to criticize every move I make.
If there's something on your mind, and I *know* there is, I want to
know about it," he whispered softly.

She snuffled a little, clearing away the effects of her brief crying
jag. One hand made tiny circles in the fabric of his henley shirt as
she spoke, "Well, uh. Mulder."

"Yes," he replied gently, one hand smoothing her hair behind her ear.

"Maybe you should see someone. To deal with the consequences of the
amnesia," she said, cringing as she did so.

He pulled back a little so he could meet her eyes. "Is that what
you're worried about? You thought I wouldn't go see a counselor?
Don't worry, Scully." He leaned down to kiss her cheek tenderly.
"I'd already planned to. I might not want to go for more hypnosis
if it's going to bring on severe headaches or vertigo, but I can see
the value in talking to someone."

She blinked her eyes several times, as if clearing her vision would
similarly clear her mind. "I'll come along if you want me to," she
offered.

He stroked her hand gently with his thumb. "I'd like that.
Eventually. I think I need to go by myself the first few times.
It's not like marriage counseling, you know," he said, smiling.

She smiled back and said, "I know. Speaking of marriage..."
Mulder's eyebrows shot up in response and she laughed. "No not yet,
Mulder. I still think we ought to wait a little while. What I was
going to say is... are you sure you'll be all right at my Mom's on
Sunday? She'll bring it up. And Bill won't be silent either."

"I don't see any problem. I just have to keep in mind they don't
know what's wrong with me. I'll leave the explanations to you. Hey,
Scully!" he said, pointing to the bedside table. "You have to eat
breakfast! It'll only stay warm so long under that lid!"

"Okay, okay. Let me run to the john and I'll come right back," she
said, accepting his assistance as she struggled to stand. She kissed
him once on the forehead and promised in a low voice, "I have a good
appetite."

"Oh, I know you do, Scully. I found that out last night," he said,
ducking down as she playfully punched at his arm.

"*Just* last night?" she queried, one eyebrow ascending toward her
hairline.

"Okay, I guess that would be *Wednesday* night too, if you'd like to
be technical about it," he offered.

Scully smiled over her shoulder, then slipped into the bathroom. It
was going to be a fine thirty-seventh birthday; Mulder was home to
share it with her.

*******
11:00 a.m.
Quonochontaug, Rhode Island

"Are you sure this is what you want to do all day?" Mulder asked
over the sound of the roiling surf.

"Sure. This is what we came here for, isn't it? The smell of salt
in the air, the view from this precipice--this is exactly what I want
to do today. It's not even cold today."

"Oh, no. Forty degrees fahrenheit. Not cold at all. I should have
my head examined for letting you sit out here for even an hour," he
replied.

He hugged her tightly within the circle of his arms, anxiously
transferring all the body heat he could spare.

"I'm not cold," she stated, belying her words by snuggling closer to
his large, warm chest.

"I appreciate your honesty, Scully," he answered with sarcasm.

"All right, we'll leave soon. Just a few minutes more." She turned
her face toward his, eyes pleading her case.

"Okay, fair enough," he said, kissing her cheek lightly. "Scully,
do you want to keep the summer home?"

"Well, whatever you want to do with it is fine with me. You
have lots of memories there, don't you?"

"Some good ones. Some very bad ones, too. At least that's what I
gathered when I read journal entries from April '97."

"I don't want you to dwell on that incident, Mulder," she said,
turning in his arms so she could look him in the eye. "You weren't
yourself. You were drugged--" she sputtered out.

"Scully, I allowed some quack to drill a hole in my head and
administer a strong hallucinogen. Yeah, really hard to believe I'd
do something like that," he replied dryly.

"You just wanted to find out about Samantha! Yes it was stupid,
very stupid. But it doesn't have to influence your opinion on the
summer house," she argued.

"I thought it might influence yours," he said quietly.

"No, Mulder. It's your decision. It doesn't bother me either way.
These things happened a long time ago, long enough to be forgotten--
by both of us! I wasn't planning on bringing it up this weekend and
I thought we were going to avoid a conversation about this. But
since you brought--"

"Scully, you don't understand... it's your decision, too.
Everything I have is yours--your vote counts. I didn't start
thinking about those journal entries concerning Providence,
concerning the summer house, until this morning. I managed to block
them out completely when we arrived yesterday. I seem to have a
selective memory when it serves my purpose--especially when it's
about incidents I've only read about." His eyes veered downward,
studying the ground with interest. "I'm not proud of what happened
here."

"Oh, Mulder! That was four years ago. You've done enough penance
for what happened here. The end result is all that matters, Mulder.
You trusted me, you didn't harm me."

"It could have ended differently," he posited.

"Yes, but it didn't!" She caught his face between her hands and
forced him to observe her. "You fought the drugs, you came to your
senses... before you could do harm to anyone. You've every reason to
question memories you had during those days--of your family, of what
happened to those MUFON members. You'd been injected with
psychoactive drugs, Mulder--"

He drew her hands down from his cheeks and grasped them tightly.
"Exactly. I *let* myself be injected. I still bear responsibility
for my actions, even though it's been four years since everything
went down. I started thinking about it this morning... I should
have asked you how you felt before we came here. When I suggested
we come here, my mind wasn't on what was nearly a tragedy... it was
occupied with memories--vivid, childhood memories, not ones
transcribed in a journal. Apparently, reading about coming
perilously close to shooting my partner wasn't enough to dissuade
me from vacationing here," he explained, visibly downcast.

"It doesn't matter now, Mulder. It just doesn't matter anymore.
You're reading your journal for enlightenment, not self-reproach. It's
hard to deal with all this; I'm amazed you've absorbed as much as
you have. You've always been a speed reader," she teased,
caressing his cheek with her hand.

"Here's the thing, Scully. The flashbacks I had of my family, here,
at the summer house... the ones in which my parents had a loud
argument with the Smoking Man about Samantha... those are false
memories, right?" he questioned, tilting his head to one side.

"I don't know, Mulder. We know what happened to Samantha now, so
there's no reason to dredge up these things."

"I'm not bringing them up to torture you, or myself, Scully. I'm
relating their unreliability to the ones I had during my hypnotic
regression on Wednesday."

Scully looked confused. She'd thought his recollections during the
session with Dr. Werber were authentic. "You don't think they're
reliable memories?"

"No. Not at all. How could I remember *anything* that's happened to
me in the last five months? It's inconceivable. If I truly have
amnesia... then I should remember zero, zilch, nada from the last
eight years. Why would I remember just one five minute period out
of all that time?"

"Oh, God... Oh, no, Mulder... That's why there weren't any signs of
weightlessness... you were never on an alien ship. You were
incarcerated somewhere on good old earth... they drugged you and
brainwashed you. Human beings are responsible for this," she
concluded bitterly.

He bit at his bottom lip thoughtfully, then replied, "Maybe. Maybe
not. I could have been abducted by aliens--no really, listen to me,
Scully." He held his hand up, pleading with her to let him finish.

"There's no reason the aliens kept me all five months. They might
have required me for a few months, then handed me over to their human
contacts here. Who knows where I was all that time?"

"But it doesn't explain your lack of injuries, Mulder. Abductees
usually come back with marks or scars when testing has been done,"
she argued.

"I don't think they were interested in anything but my mind, Scully.
They're only interested in one thing now, studying anomalous brain
wave activity. If they can control our minds... they can conquer the
planet without destroying humans or any other species."

"You think you're a living testament to mind control? Just because
they took your memories?" she asked incredulously.

"Why not? They've tried to develop a way to enslave us with
disease. Why not delve into our psyches and discover all the right
buttons to push?"

"But why you? Are you a warning to us? That they can do anything
they please to the human mind? Or are they trying to destroy your
ability to launch a defense against such a plan?"

"I don't know, Scully. But I think Krycek is half-right. The
baby's in danger because of its special qualities, but not
necessarily the ones that immediately come to mind, such as immunity
to the alien virus. If the colonizers intend to control human beings
via their brain waves, then they'd be very interested in our child.
It's possible he'll inherit the telepathic abilities I had before my
brain surgery."

"But why return you, Mulder? Why let you come back to me? I just
don't get it."

Scully's brow furrowed in thought, weighing all the possibilities in
her mind. Her pensive mood was soon interrupted by tremors
throughout her body, brought on by the chill wind off the sea. The
previously moderate breeze was harsher now; it had been picking up
speed gradually. Mulder drew her closer, rubbing his hands up and
down her back to promote warmth.

"I don't get it either, and I'm not sure if we'll ever know," he
pondered.

He pulled away from her slightly, his thumbs warming her ice-cold
cheeks. "What I do know... is we ought to get back to the car and
drive back to town. There's a hot cocoa with your name on it at the
corner drugstore I used to go to as a kid. This time I'm sure it's
still around. I called this morning and asked them if they kept
their soda fountain."

"Did they?" she asked, smiling at the thought of going to an old-
fashioned watering place.

"Yeah. They call it a cafe now, but I'm sure it's about the same.
I talked to the owner's daughter for a few minutes. We knew each
other before Samantha--"

He cast his eyes downward, studying their tightly joined hands. It
was still difficult to discuss Samantha, even though he knew the
truth about her death. He wasn't enjoying this moment of weakness;
sometimes things hit him like a ton of bricks.

"You don't have to explain, Mulder," Scully soothed, squeezing his
hand. "It's never going to be easy to talk about. It shouldn't be.
It's what keeps us from giving up when everything seems so
hopeless."

She stroked his chin with her fingers, raising his gaze to her own.
"We have to keep fighting the Project, no matter what form it
takes today. Not just for revenge--but for all the lives we can save
in the future, including our own. Including the life of our growing
child. We're going to get to the bottom of this. You know that,
don't you?" she asked, peering deep into his clear hazel eyes.

He leaned forward and kissed her blush-colored lips, then whispered
against them, "With you, everything is possible, Scully. With you, I
can do it all."

fin

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