TITLE: Reflections of a Rainy Night
AUTHOR: D. Lynn
EMAIL: dlynn1550@my-deja.com
CATEGORY: Vignette,UST,DAL
DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT: "Anywhere, as long as these headers
stay attached."
FEEDBACK: I've never written anything before so be gentle.
SPOILERS: Red and Black, Christmas Carol, Emily
SUMMARY: An innocent question leads Mulder into contemplation.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Not only is this my first foray into fan
fiction, this is my first attempt at creative writing since
high school english class. I won't even tell you how long ago
that was.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Mulder and Scully or anything pertaining
to the X-FILES. I realize that all things X belong to Fox , Chris
Carter and 1013.



Mulder stood quietly at the hotel window. He had pushed back
the stiff, beige drapes  the few inches needed to peer out into
the parking lot of the small hotel. He could see the cars and
trucks lined up in neat little rows, each with signs in varying
degrees that signified the driving habits  of their occupants.
The rain still drizzled down in a fine mist that he could really
only see when he looked into the harsh glare of the outdoor
floodlights.  The rain droplets were spattered on the hood of the
car directly in front of his window.  It was there that his eyes
settled. He had noticed the vehicle earlier  in the day and  now
with the darkness nestled around him, he had been drawn back to
look more closely .It was a midnight blue minivan, streaked and
dirty with the mud of the highway but well cared for as attested
by the new wax job where the droplets gathered in neat little
spherical blobs on the hood.

Bringing his hand back to the hotel window, he noticed that the
large glass pane appeared to be sweating. There was that streaky
condensation that always exists when the humidity outside clashes
with the cool air-conditioned air from the inside. He trailed his
hand slowly over its cold, hard surface feeling the moisture
beneath the calluses of his palm. He gently turned his hand over,
flexing the fingers and examining the moisture that collected at
their tips, almost mesmerized as if he had never seen such a thing
before.After staring for several seconds at his hand like it was
some new mystery yet to be discovered, he laid it gently back down
on the window glass and brought his eyes back up again to the
drearyparking lot in front of him.

The blue minivan was still there, still glistening with the fine
rain sheen. He let his eyes travel over the vehicle. Even when he
wasn't consciously making the effort, he still used the eyes of an
investigator as he examined the van in front of him. He noticed
the large plastic shell of the car top carrier strapped to the top;
he saw that in either haste or weariness, the driver hadn't
completely latched the lid. The dashboard of the van was
strewn with little pieces of slick, yellow paper, probably
candy wrappers that  hadn't made it into the trash. There was
change, and bobby pins and some little piece of ribbon with a
nipple attached. Oh... one of those pacifier things with the
little clips to clamp to baby's shirt to help expedite matters
when one needed to put " a cork in it".

The car seat was visible, attached snuggly to the middle seat
and had an orange stuffed animal in it.  He was perched on his
head with his furry little orange legs sticking up under the
shoulder harness of the safety seat.  He appeared to have been
unceremoniously dropped and assuredly someone would need to
fetch him before too long if his less than pristine condition
was any testament to how well loved the little Muppet  was ---
"Elmo" that was it!  A small smile tugged at the corners of his
mouth as he remembered how Scully had wanted to just  "check out"
the local  Wal-Mart several weeks ago in search of some elusive
tickle monster that her whole family was on the trail of in order
to fulfill young Mathew's Christmas list. Never mind that her
nephew was currently less than a year old and probably didn't
know an Elmo from a Big Bird but that was beside the point...
the chase was on and he understood probably better than most
the thrill of the chase.

He glanced down at the small round wooden table beside where he
stood at the window. On top of it were the tell tale signs of his
less than perfect housekeeping habits. There were jumbled papers
that had been rifled through way too many times; Styrofoam cups,
some empty and tipped over and others with dark, noxious looking
liquid residue that he'd hate to run by any lab. There were
pencils with little teeth marks that looked like they'd been
gnawed by tiny mice and a pile of sunflower seed hulls that
had gotten interspersed with the papers and cups and even trailed
off the edge of the table where they scattered throughout the
shag fibers of the dingy carpet. There were corners of  pictures
ticking out beneath the stacks of papers. Glossies of
"crime scene" photos that were too abhorrent to leave out where
one had to see them all the time.

He gently reached under the precarious pile and pulled one of the
photos out. In the dim light from the parking lot he could just
barely see the badly burned form of a mother and child. Another
one of  those group human bonfires like the one at Ruskin Dam
where he had almost lost Scully. This was  black and white proof
of the world coming to an end in  such small increments that
society at large was still ignorant to the potential horrors that
lay ahead. Even with as much as he and Scully knew, there were
still so many questions, so many truths to uncover and an over
whelming feeling that time was speeding up to break neck speed
and heading toward a cataclysmic ending and that there was no
way to slow it down. No way to say "hey wait a minute. I've got
to catch up here!".

Surprisingly, it wasn't the "weight of the world" kind of burden
that was keeping him awake tonight. It was a burden of a more
personal nature.  His was not the grieving for those poor souls
caught up like lemmings in the upcoming holocaust, in a battle
for which they had no control over their actions or their lives.
He was grieving the loss of control in his own life.

It wasn't like he had a lot of choice anymore. In fact, ever
since that fateful night over 25 years ago when a young boys'
innocence was yanked from him as surely as the younger sister
"he lost", he'd really had no choice. Oh sure, he could have
given into the darkness, dropped deep into the alluring comfort
of depression or worse yet succumbed to mind numbing indifference
and placed Samantha in a box with barely recognizable memories
of song fragments, fairy tales or ghost stories..... a specter
that only haunted him in the darkest hours of dreaming.

But he chose. He made a conscious choice to survive, however
dysfunctional his life may seem to those who think they know him.
He had his intellect, his education, and his tenure with the
bureau. He had his memories, fragmented and suspect though they
might be. He had the x-files, his quest for the truth, his
railings against the shadows and he had Scully. In a world so
totally out of control, where order was only an illusion, Mulder
had felt that he had been holding his own.

The grainy photo fell gently from his hand to the floor where it
landed midst the empty seed shells. He hardly noticed its absence
as he turned once more toward the window.  He could hear
frustrated voices over the din of a crying baby, as the outer
door next to his slammed open. The piercing glare of that room's
overhead lights escaped out into the blackness in front of his
window perch. A harried, young man sprinted out into the drizzle
and hastily unlocked the sliding door on the mini van. He reached
inside, grabbing the Elmo doll by his foot and eased back out of
the van. He held it over his head like a trophy as he grinned and
yelled back toward the room, " Hey, I found
it!"  He trotted back to the open door, back into the warmth of
the room , triumphantly returning with his treasure. As the door
softly closed behind him, the small amount of light that had
permeated the gloom disappeared and left the dreariness behind.

His thoughts focused once again on the rain outside. It was
picking up. The droplets were beginning to bounce off the metal,
glass and concrete of the objects in front of him. No longer a
fine mist but spattering, stinging  precipitation much like the
showers that had soaked he and Scully earlier in the day. It had
been a cold, piercing rain that had pelted them out at the crime
site, one of those dismal afternoons where you were chilled to the
bone and nothing  you did seemed to warm  you up. Ruefully he noted
that it could have been 75 degrees and  blissfully sunny and they
still would have suffered from the aches of a frozen spirit. Not
only did they have to deal with the horror of another mass burning
but also it was the anniversary of Emily's death. It had been one
year ago that Scully had found and lost a daughter in only the
space of a week. A daughter that never should have been and a
daughter  that would probably be her one and only chance at
biological motherhood.

He knew the day was difficult for her. She didn't let on in
such a way that the casual observer would have seen anything
other than the professional agent that she was. But the casual
observer didn't know what to look for, didn't know that the
extra tightness around the mouth, the haunted sadness in the
eyes was far more than just empathy for so many whom had
horrifically died. The tragedy of the day was profound on
so many levels. It was another vicious reminder of her
vulnerability, their vulnerability. Another reminder of
the gray area they traversed.  Nothing was black and white
anymore. Consequences for actions, choosing the lesser of two
evils was becoming so much of who they were. Daily they were
reminded of the gradual ways that controlhad begun to disappear.
Such subtle small instances that in hindsight foreshadowed the
increasingly painful decisions that had to be made.

Her decision to join him in the basement and subsequent
abduction at the hands of a shadow government, her cancer
miraculously cured but at the expense of her free will as
she worried about being "called" again by the chip in her neck.
The fine line he walked between informants, the syndicate,
the FBI, conspiracies, the resistance and his own conscience.
Ethics and morality were getting so muddled up with expediency
and fear that ignorance would not only be the death of he and
Scully but also of their world as well.

And in the middle of all of that; in the middle of dealing with
global issues there was also the intimate personal tragedies
that colored their lives.  But there never seemed to be time
to dwell on these. Sometimes he wondered how much they could
continue to handle before they lost it. How much could two
lives endure, how much betrayal  and pain could they suffer
without collapsing from the weight.  To work through the
nightmares  might be psychologically  beneficial but who had
the time to afford to this self-healing.

So they shoved it all down. Pushed every monster, every betrayal
and tragedy deep into the inner recesses of their minds. So deep
that all it added was one more layer of distrust, one more
emotional wall that separated them  from the rest of the world.

Mulder gently reached down and picked up the discarded picture
from the floor and laid it face down on  top of the table. The
visage of the mother , even in death, bent protectively over her
child  haunting him.

"How long have you been standing there?," he sighed as he rose
and faced the window again. He could hear her soft breaths coming
from the doorway between their adjoining rooms. He had on a
subconscious level been aware of her presence for some time,
whether it had been a "feeling" or his brain's awareness of
her delicate perfume, he had known she was there. He just hadn't
been ready to recognize it yet.

"Awhile," she replied as she moved farther into the room, far
enough for her to be seen  in the diffused light of the window
but still distanced from him as if she were afraid of getting
too close.

"What do you see out there, Mulder," Scully queried. "What holds
you tonight and keeps you from sleep?"

"Ah, Scully", he chuckled. "You know me. Since when do I need an
excuse not to visit with the sandman. He and I haven't been on
speaking terms in quite some time. How do you spell insomnia?
..M..U..L."

"Mulder you're avoiding."

"Scully you're "mothering......he trailed off, letting the words
just hang out there.

"I'm sorry Scully.," he apologized as he slowly turned from the
window to face his partner. He could kick himself for inflicting
the hurt she quickly tried to cover up by beginning to organize
his haphazard mess on the table. "That was another example of me
having the sensitivity of a turnip where your feelings are
concerned."

"Well maybe Mr. Potato head", she affectionately recalled,
alluding to the potato faces he had made for Emily just last year.
"Mulder, don't beat yourself up. I'm ...

"fine", he finished for her with a smirk.

She chuckled as she pushed a strand of auburn hair behind her ear.
"Yes , Mulder, I'm fine. I won't say that the last few days
haven't been difficult.. but Mulder, thoughts of Emily are always
with me. Today isn't any different from any other day with regards
 to that."

"Yes, but it's not every day you have to deal with those memories
as well as confronting  the possible consequences of having that
thing," ... Mulder walked toward her and put his hand gently over
the back of her neck, briefly touching the spot where her implant
was imbedded before resignedly dropping his hand to his side.....
 "a part of your body."

"No, Mulder, it's been a hell of a day. You're right," Scully
countered.  She reached down to the table and picked up the photo
that had so fascinated him. "I won't lie to you. Seeing all this
again just makes me feel sick and scared and vulnerable and so
many other emotions that I can't begin to quantify them all. And
yes, my feelings about Emily are all jumbled up in there somewhere
but you know that...," she finished.

"This," she gestured at the window and the thunderous downpour
that was wreaking havoc outside, "is not about all that though.
This is about you, Mulder. There's more going on tonight than
your usual guilt trip where I'm concerned. You've been this way
since this afternoon."

Scully tentatively reached out and placed her hand on his forearm,
touching the soft fleece of his sweatshirt. She raised her face
to his forcing him to meet her eyes, to stare into their
compassionate blue countenance.

"What did the coroner say to you this afternoon?" Scully felt the
tremor in his arm as he pulled away from her and walked back over
to the window just as a lightening flash illuminated the room and
his face just enough that she saw his pained expression.

"I know there was something," she pressed. "I was coming to talk
with you just as you were finishing up with her and you blew right
by me as though I weren't there. And I know damn well you saw me."

Mulder continued to gaze out the window, not really with any
cognizance as to what he was seeing. The silence from her
unanswered questions filled the room but Scully waited. She
seated herself on the edge of his bed trying to get comfortable.
As the quiet loomed between them, she scooted herself farther
up pulling one of the pillows  out from beneath the spread.
She lay down on her stomach situating the pillow up under her
crossed arms where she rested her head while she watched and
waited for him.

He knew that he would eventually have to give in. She was going
to lay there and wait. More times than not they avoided the
emotional minefields of their lives,  knowing that each time
they revealed a little more of themselves that it only made it
harder to deny the strength of their feelings toward one
another. And for reasons that he couldn't even remember, he knew
that he should keep that distance from her, not allow himself to
sink into the comfort that she could offer.

Mulder turned abruptly ; he pulled the curtains tightly closed,
effectively blocking out any light save for the narrow glowing
band that spilled over the edges of the drapes where they came
together less than perfectly. The sliver of light was no more
than a night light but it was sufficient for him to at least
dimly view her face. He slid his long body down the wall
to rest with his back against the door facing the bed where she
patiently reclined. He dangled his hands over his bent knees
and looked up at
her.

"Hey Scully?"

"Yes Mulder."

"Do you remember," he started and was quickly interrupted.

"It was our first case, the night I careened into your hotel
room in the middle of a storm scared to death that I was going
to be the next victim to be abducted," she finished for him.

"Ah, you were so cute Scully," he said with an infuriating smirk
on his face.
"I was naïve Mulder. I had no idea of the "real life monsters"
that exist. I let your passion for your work inspire ghost stories
in my mind never really giving them anymore credence than a
footnote in my field journal of the ravings of my "brilliant,
albeit crackpot" partner. I had no idea that the man who was
yelling "the sky is falling, the sky is falling" was a prophet.

" Ewhh! Scully I always hated that story, Foxy Loxy, remember?"
Mulder said with a disgusted look on his face.

Scully scrunched her pillow up a little more trying to get more
comfortable as she peered at Mulder in the darkness.

"Quit stalling, Mulder. Just talk to me. I know that it's a
new concept between us but I think it's about time that the
two reasonably intelligent people that we are practice a
little verbal communication. The way we suppress and repress
everything of importance in our lives would keep
the mental health community rolling in dough for years to come.

"You  know I love you don't you," Mulder began with hesitation
in his voice. "I mean I may be verbally challenged when it comes
to conveying it but you do know , right?"

"Yes," Scully replied with equal deliberation. "But it is nice
to hear it anyway."

Mulder rubbed his hand over his face, rubbing the grime of the
day into his pores. He pinched the bridge of his nose and
squinted like he was trying to avoid a bright light but there
was  nothing but the muted darkness.

"Well, hell, while I'm playing true confessions, maybe I should
enumerate on your various attributes," Mulder playfully leered
as if he had just noticed the presence of his partner decked out
in her green silk pajamas lying across from him.

"Mulder", Scully admonished. "Behave."

He looked up, dejavu from that first case where they had
settled down to talk for the first time, he sitting on
the floor, she stretched out above him on the hotel bed.
He remembered how he had told her about Samantha,
trying to shock her, see if she'd react as most people did
with patronizing disbelief.

"Mulder", Scully said pulling him out of his reverie. "Give."

Resignedly, he began. Not quite sure if he could make it
all come out right but willing to risk it to take a chance
for once. For a man who faced monsters and aliens on a daily
basis, facing Scully and his  inner most emotions was
downright terrifying.

"The coroner came up to me as I was examining the bodies of
 the mother and child from that photo you were looking at.
I guess I had been staring at them for awhile. She noticed
my reflection and asked me if I had children," he began
looking Scully fullyin the eye for perhaps the first time
since she walked in the room.

"With the life that I lead, with the dysfunctional family
that I come from, and my search for Sam, I guess I really
haven't allowed myself to dwell on the fact that I might
someday have a life past all this," he paused, moving his
arm around the room to encompass it in all its
tacky Motel 6 glory.

"It's not as though I've felt pulled to procreate, Scully,
let's face it the only connection I feel with salmon is
having them grilled with a little butter and lemon. No I
haven't felt drawn to pass on the Mulder gene pool.
God, what a joke."

Scully reached her hand down off the bed dangling it
within Mulder's reach. He slid over slightly so that
he could reach it, grasping firmly on to its cool,
smoothness as though it were a lifeline. She held on tightly,
saying nothing, allowing him to continue at his own pace. She
wanted to assure him that she was o.k. that this conversation
was not too much for her. Actually it was long overdue. She knew
where he was headed , she had already been there. She had dealt
with all of this during the last year as she grieved
for Emily and mourned the future children she would never have
-not only her future but...

"We'll never be able to have children Scully," he whispered
looking up at her with glistening eyes.

"No, Mulder, we won't," she answered. It never occurred to
her to play dumb about what he was intimating, to pretend that
she didn't understand that he wanted to give her children,
his children.

" I guess..ah.. I just hadn't processed the fact that you're
being....that you not being able to have," he stumbled until
she interrupted. Scully smiled wistfully at his discomfort,
twisting her body until she was sitting up on
the end of the bed. She pulled him gently up beside her wrapping
her arms around him and holding on as if for dear life.

She pressed her face into his shoulder. "You can say it Mulder.
I'm sterile. The bastards have made me barren and you have just
come to realize..."

"I'm barren too." Mulder finished pushing away slightly so that
he could look down into her eyes. "They've stolen our children."

"Yes, Mulder, our children," she said as she pulled him back
with her onto the bed. She kept him wrapped in her arms as
she pulled the blankets over them and settled them down within
their soft cocoon. The rain outside was beginning to diminish.
She could just barely make out the spatters in the night. She
heard the faint sounds of a baby crying through the wall from the
room behind their headboard and she felt the tired presence of
Mulder as he lay comforted in her arms.

They needed to talk, it was past time. Conspiracies and global
apocalypse be damned. But not tonight...

The End