Tough Comfort by Ginevra

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Tough Comfort by Ginevra

From: ginevra <[email protected]> Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1998 16:41:47 -0400 Subject: Completed! “Tough Comfort” NC-17 parts 1-5/5

You asked for it, you got it. I hope this makes everyone a happy camper. Some details have been changed in parts 1-4, and part 5 has been added. I apologize if you already got this-I never received it back, so I don’t know if it arrived properly…somone please tell me if this is arriving multiple times!

Title: Tough Comfort
Author: ginevra
E-mail address: [email protected]
Archival: anytime, anywhere, just ask me first if you ain’t gossamer, ‘kay?
Rating: NC-17, for strong language, sex and candy
Category: UST, ScullyAngst, X-File, MSR, a little bit of everything
Spoilers: FTF, and some season 6 stuff.
Keywords: ScullyAngst
Summary: Scully tries to get it together while Mulder drags her off to investigate strange goings-on in a small Virginia mountain town.

# ginevra’s note #: Hey wow-my story fits quite smoothly into a spoiler I saw for a new episode called “Rain King.” Hurrah! I did a lot more research on the Ogam language. Please feel free to email me if you’d like to know more. The “::” marks are either Scully’s thoughts or Ogam, “::-ed” for effect. I make no money, it all belongs to the Silver Surfer, Counting Crows, and the little green men. Feedback cherished dearly at [email protected]. For Grandma Jessie and Nana Sarah, true flowers of coal country. Love, ginevra

Part 1

3:08 a.m., Georgetown

::Jesus Christ, girl, why can’t you just get some sleep!::

I only wish. I’ve been awake for hours, lying above the sheets, beneath the comforter, twisting and untwisting, tossing and flopping like a damned dying goldfish. I’m so irritated I can hardly think about anything else, except how little sleep I’m getting. And the other thing I’m not getting any of.

Shit. Shit shit shit.

He incites me to actions in my mind I would never consider in reality, slow, deep-moving subconscious misdeeds. The products of an overactive mind.

Medical journals say that children who daydream are often the most intelligent.

Too bad I’m not in kindergarten anymore, thought the government sure feels like it these days.

Maybe what I need is a dog. Something that loves me simply and unconditionally.

Yeah, right, and that would go over great with the landlord, I’m sure.

“And the worse things stand around the bed looking worse and worse and worse.” Where have I heard that before?

We haven’t sat down and talked about it. Capital “I” It. Never acknowledged that moment where his mouth was so close to mine I could sense the saltiness left on his lower lip from too many sunflower seeds.

He has been so strange to me since we returned to the newly painted basement. The usual banter remains, but no conversation has run deeper than that. Where did it go?

God, please say I didn’t dream it all. Say they didn’t plant this desire in me too, without him ever having done a thing to provoke it.

ᚬ ᚾ ᚯ

I wake up in the same position I fell asleep in, covers fitfully thrown and tangled around the bedpost, the floor, and me. Arghhh. Somehow, I can’t help thinking this too is all his fault.

ᚬ ᚾ ᚯ

7:59 a.m.

I walk into the office, determined not to let a Friday start off on the wrong foot, no matter how little sleep I’ve had. Head high, shoulders back, chin up in near-defiance.

He’s not here.

My posture sags a bit as I settle into my chair, carefully looking over the report I left here yesterday. Scanning the pages, without really comprehending. His presence is always my brain’s alarm clock in the morning, jarring me into action and reaction.

He walks in, sunglasses still on, jacket over one arm. He wears a dark gray sweater and khakis. I sit up a little straighter, watching him swing effortlessly into the room.

::how Scully got her groove back:: I think, allowing a small glance at him without giving away the reason for it. He looks amazing.

“Taking a casual Friday, I suppose?” I ask lightly, still pretending to be deeply drawn into my report.

“Yep,” he says, his usual loquacious self. He settles in his chair and kicks those big, lumbering feet up on his desk.

“What do you have in mind for the weekend, Scully? Any big plans that can’t be cancelled?” he says, peering over the rims of his sunglasses.

“Well, I was thinking about looking for a dog, actually, ” I say before thinking. He drops his glasses from his face and gives me The Look.

“What sort of dog, Scully?” he asks, voice dripping with condescension.

“A?um?German Shepherd, actually,” I say, trying to maintain my digni ty. He shakes his head in that “I just don’t know what the hell to do with you” gesture both of us have perfected.

“Maybe you’ll find one where we’re going,” he says, holding up a tourist brochure. “There’s bound to be a hound dawg or two sitting on a porch on the way the way through rural Virginia.” He laughs, and I groan.

ᚬ ᚾ ᚯ

1:17 p.m. Roanoke County, VA

Another weekend of discontented searching in the hope of finding who-knows what. Often to find nothing, turn around, sleep in a fleabag motel, and go home. Glamorous is not the name of this job.

This fact reiterates itself with each thunk of my hiking boots as I struggle to keep up with Mulder’s long strides. Rainy, windy, wet—yes. Chic, no. My hair lays plastered in rings to my head as we trudge further up the hill to look at stones with prehistoric writings on them someone found in their granny’s springhouse.

However, I am reasonably cheered at the sheer normal-ness of the case. Mr. and Mrs. Spooky, chasing bogeymen (bogeystones?) in the backcountry. Wish the sun would come out, though I have my doubts as to my luck on that one.

“They’re called Ogam stones, Scully—have you heard of them?” he asks, showing no signs of strain as we ascend.

“The appearance of what seems to be runic writings on stones found in West Virginia. The prevalent theory is that it is Irish in origin. However, Marija Gimbutas described a script she believes Ogam was derived from and dates it at 5300 BC. Most likely these striations we are about to look at, being found east of the traditional sites, are just weathering.” I take a breath. This is hard going for a ScullyExplanation and trying to stay on the trail at the same time. “Also likely is the chance that someone has carved on them in recent times, attempting to pass them off as genuine artifacts,” I rattle off, trying to sound dispassionate, but I am actually interested to see what lays on the other side of this hill. If we ever find the top of it. I pause to catch my breath.

“Exactly Scully, but who! Some people now claim that humans have been around much longer than we previously theorized, even millions of years before the accepted date of the beginning of humanoid creatures. And there are some that theorize that extraterrestrial life might have left these stones as a message of sorts. We are looking for a Rosetta Stone to find out what these particular stones say, some sort of dictionary for us to get started,” he says, voice speeding up as he gets more excited.

A raindrop runs from the crown of my head to what seems like the sole of my left shoe. A cold raindrop, at that. I sneeze. He nearly glares at me, as though an involuntary reaction to being cold, damp and allergic to all things woodland is a personal insult to him.

“Well, let’s get a move on, then,” I concede, pushing my wet hair behind my ears. Never let it be said that I can’t keep up with him. Somehow the ponderings of last night seem further and further away. I suppose that is the secret to our working relationship—I’m usually too busy following his rear end to want it.

ᚬ ᚾ ᚯ

Part 2

We trudge up the dirt path into the town. We were scheduled to arrive at noon, but the condition of the soggy dirt road forced us to leave the Taurus at the bottom of the hill and hike the rest. In the wind. And the cold. And the rain. Ugh.

As we come around the bend in the road, the town appears, slowly. It isn’t at all what I had anticipated. Quiet, yes, but not at all like what my mind had stereotyped, no mountain hovel filled with toothless old men and livestock. I had pictured something that would remind me eerily of Clarice Starling’s hometown in “The Silence of the Lambs.”

The small collection of buildings are either bare wood or white-painted. The hollow is a rain-streaked brown of late autumn, with mums blooming in gardens alongside small patches of tasseled corn, orange pumpkins, and huge squashes I would pay a ransom to see in my grocery store.=

We approach what seems to be the biggest house in the group and Mulder knocks twice on the door. An elderly woman appears, dusting her hands off, shushing a baying dog. He wags his eyebrows at me and then turns with a high-wattage smile to the woman behind the screen.

“Better hello the other houses if you want to keep your heads, dear ones,” she says without preamble. “Most folks here are nice enough, but a little distrustful of you-all. Mr. Mulder, Miss Scully, welcome to Yellow Knob.” She looks us both up and down. “Glad you could make it.” The rain stops behind us. Now that we are dry and on the porch, of course.

“You been sick, child?” she asks me, eyeing me critically. “You look a bit peaked.”

I can barely register an answer before she is shooing us inside and settling us into what appears to be a Victorian parlor. I haven’t been called a child in so long I can scarcely argue. She serves us tea sweet enough to kill all known viruses and warm biscuits with apple butter, clucking over us like a mother hen.

“I knew y’all were coming,” she said, “so I fixed a little dinner up, but you’re late, so the boys ate most all of it.” She nods over her shoulder to the four boys of varying ages chasing a football around the backyard.

“My grandbabies are here to visit old Nana. Live down in Roanoke with their daddy, they do. But sometimes they come back, praise Him. Joy of my heart, they are,” she says, her face alight. Mulder and I exchange a glance. He winks at me almost imperceptibly, and my heart rotates in my chest.

“Well, you’re here to look at those stones they found, are you? Can’t understand why they think they might be worth something to you. Do-ooo Jesus!” she says throwing up her hands. “No sense in worrying about it now. You were interested enough to come all the way out here, weren’t you?” She leads us out the back door.

“Au-gust! Come on over here, child!” I realize now that this was the person who called us, a lanky young man in his late teens, a fierce look of intelligence evident on his face. He slings the two smallest brothers one over each shoulder and strides across the well-trimmed grass to meet us.

“August Longerbeam,” he says, dumping the bigger of the two boys to the ground. “Pleased to meet you, Agents Mulder and Scully.” He tosses the other boy into the air briefly, then sets him down with a swat on his backside.

“Tie your shoes!” he yells after the younger boy, who is about to be overcome by his high-tops.

“I heard about some things you had done with extraordinary phenomena, and I called the Bureau to see if you could look at this. We appreciate you taking the time to come out here,” he says, a little stiffly.

“Where are these stones?” asks Mulder..

“I’ll take you out there now,” August says. “No sense in waiting.”

We follow the lanky youth down a stream to what appears to be a small circular stone house. We go within the cool darkness of the wooden door. There is barely room to stand, even for me. Mulder’s head cranes comically to investigate.

“It’s a springhouse. Nana used to use it to keep perishables in before we rewired the Homeplace for her this summer. I went looking in here to see if we could find anything useful, pots or dishes or something. My little sister Grace saw the stones before I did.” August points out one stone. It seems to be covered in up-and-down lines that could be interpreted as Ogam inscriptions of some sort, I suppose. My brain starts analyzing a thousand things it could be and couldn’t be. I know Mulder’s is whirring away as well, though probably in a very different direction. I lean over and touch the stone gently. Somehow, it is warmer to the touch than I thought it would be but only by a few degrees. It must be a different sort of rock than the others, one that holds more resistance to cold by being less porous. Perhaps just sheltered better from the outside elements somehow.

A small pigtailed girl, about ten or eleven years old, pokes her head in.

“Hey-y, Gracie Girl. What are you doing outside?” August asks her.

She stares up at him solemnly.

“Heard the stones talkin’. Thought these people might need help knowing what’s going on,” she nods in our direction. August makes an apologetic gesture.

“Gracie, stones can’t talk, you know that. She’s got a real active imagination, you know? Smart as a whip, though,” he says proudly. “Those rocks just have some caveman writings on them, honey.”

“That’s what the scientist said,” she murmurs, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. I had thought only Mulder could do that.

“What do you think?” Mulder asks her, crouching down to get at eye level with her. ::Samantha:: an iinner voice tells me. I shake my head to clear it.

“I know-” she stares at him pointedly, “that they know something we don’t. And that they are and aren’t what you think.” She ticks her head over at him like a curious animal, then skips out of the springhouse into the clearing afternoon.

Mulder slowly straightens, dusting off his khakis.

“I’m sorry about that, Agent Mulder. I try not to let her talk thataways too much, folks don’t like it. She’s a queer one, just like Nana. Seeing spooks in the shadows and nonsense,” August says.

Mulder shoots me a grin.

ᚬ ᚾ ᚯ

Part 3

All disclaimers and such in part one. I owe thanks to both Madeline L’Engle and Sharyn McCrumb for being such wonderful authors and inspiring the storylines.

12:08 a.m.

Mulder lies on his back on the bed. Mrs. Longerbeam has lent us a room for the evening, at least, since it appears we will be here a while. One room. One bed. Better not to think about that now, there are far too many other questions rolling though both our minds.

“Well, do-ooo Jesus, Scully,” he says. “It appears as though we have walked right into a Halloween tale of our own.”

“It’s only the thirteenth, Mulder, and not even a Friday at that anymore,” I say glancing at my watch. “There is no reason to think we have come across anything other than an abandoned archeological find.”

“Not all that rare, apparently, if no one has evicted Nana and dug up the springhouse. Ogam stones are a controversial discovery, but not one glamorous enough to merit any sort of notoriety.” It’s like a dance we do—contradicting and compromising until we reach an agreement, if not a conclusive one.

“I like them. The Longerbeams, I mean,” I say slowly. I don’t want to do anything rash?nothing that would upset the balance of their lives.”

“Then where do we go from here?” he asks. I look down at him.

“I think we should find out why this house appears to have psychic power attached to it. Why both Nana and Gracie seem to be local oddities. What the Ogam stones mean to them.”

“And what they are saying to Gracie,” he finishes for me. I nod.

Mrs. Longerbeam is on the back porch, sanding a chair free of a coat of paint. We stand in the doorway.

“Mrs. Longerbeam?” I ask, not wanting to interrupt her concentration.

“You just call me Sarah or Nana, child. Nobody to put on airs for round here!” she laughs.

“Call me Dana, then,” I say, impulsively. Mulder elbows me, putting on a mock-hurt face. “And call him Fox.” She lets out a peal of laughter and pinches Mulder’s cheek. He blushes. Actually blushes. Hah.

“Now what is it you want to know, sugar? You want to know why I’msuch a strange woman, I reckon. Why I ain’t setting on the side of the road telling fortunes and selling potions and whatnot.” She hoots with laughter. “Like I say, I ain’t much for putting on airs. People don’t want to know the future, and they don’t want nobody else to know their past. Too strange for a stranger to know too much.“She wipes her hands clean, then sits in the porch swing, gesturing for us to sit as well. “My Gracie and I, and most Longerbeam women, we can tell a few things. Most all of us are considered?eccentric. Lord Jesus sees fit to let us see. Don’t know how, don’t know why. Sensitive to the Sight, some of us are. Some folks can write poems, some can say math equations like August. We See the same way-no reason except it’s a gift from the Almighty. I don’t intend to misuse His trust or let others do so.” She sits back with a sigh. “Now those stones—they are a gift, too. Only Grace won’t say why or what or nigh on anything except that she hears them talking, and that they are older than the hills themselves.”

“Do you believe they talk to her, Sarah?” Mulder asks, leaning forward in his chair. She meets his eyes without blinking.

“Who is to say what is a child’s imagination and what is real? I know she isn’t a hateful child, and wasn’t brought up to lie. You’ll have to ask her the rest. That’s all I know.” I begin to get the feeling that this will take a little more than just the weekend to puzzle out.

ᚬ ᚾ ᚯ

Mulder is pacing the bedroom again in the late evening. I stretch out on the bed, not about to surrender its comfort to him after the hike we took that day.

“Well, Nancy Drew, have you solved the mystery of the talking outdoor refrigerator?” he asks me.

“I think it is likely that the Ogam stones are prehistoric writings, and we may have found the genuine article. Evidence of genealogical and geological spiritual sensitivity? I’m not sure,” I say carefully.

“I want to look at them again,” he says simply, and turns on his heel, walking down the stairs. I sigh and follow, just as I have done countless times for five years. Looking for “spooks in the shadows,” that sums it up perfectly.

Mulder crosses the damp grass with his flashlight beam bobbing ahead of him. An owl calls in the night.

“Happy early Halloween, Scully,” he says, ducking inside the darkness of the springhouse. I circle the outside, languidly touching the individual stones lightly with the tips of my fingers. :: ekurutasun—be at peace::

I startle and jerk my hand away as though it were burned. I look at the tip of my fingers. They seem all right. I reach my hand out again to a different stone. ::amodio—you are loved::

The warmth I felt earlier that day when I touched the inner walls is multiplied, and seems to pulse quickly into my hand. I release my hand again. The warmth flows and ebbs from one side of my body to the other. I touch another stone, then another. Nothing, and then the third from the last. ::you have always been loved, and always will be::

The stars seem to turn more quickly. My fear is overcome by my curiosity. I circle to the third next stone. ::a heart cannot bear false witness::

I almost want to cry and laugh and scream for Mulder all at once. The stones seem to hold me to them, moving me in a clockwise direction around the house. ::your soul is never untrue to itself::

A rock is reading me a poem. A stone house is trying to recite self-help. I’ve finally lost it.

Mulder emerges from the confines of the house.

“Scully—what-” I make a quieting motion. I hold up one hand while still keeping my fingertips on the stones. I take his hand and move to the next stone. Then the next. Then the third— ::once love is spoken, the stars cannot hold it out::

Mulder looks at me, questioning me with his eyes. He feels it too. At least we are going crazy together, I think.

His jaw slackens, eyes widening. I grip his hand tighter. I move to the third stone, the last in the circle. ::that love that is of twin souls cannot be destroyed::

I slowly release the stones, hoping that pure pulsing comfort will not leave me. I look up at Mulder and his eyes are dark and moist. I realize I am still holding his hand and almost drop it when he sweeps me into a tight embrace. I nestle into the hollow of his chest, listening to him breathe. The golden light still whispers back and forth between us. Love, twin souls, and truth. Was there ever a more eloquent way to summarize the complexity of my heart? I look up at him. If ever there was a moment, this is it. We are pulled together by a force outside ourselves.

He peels off his ever-present overcoat and spreads it on the ground, then pulls me down to lay on it with him.

“If this happens—there will never be a more momentous change, Scully. It will make the world stand on its ear.” He whispers, mouth almost touching mine.

“God, I hope so,” I reply. The last thing I see is his half-moon smile. Then he kisses me, a tenderly yielding kiss that nearly makes me weep for every second of my life I have lived without this passion.

ᚬ ᚾ ᚯ

Part 4

Rating: NC-17. You may skip it and get back to the story in Part 5, I promise you won’t miss storylines…

I open my eyes dizzily. He looks down at me, a sea of stars spinning behind him. I will bite my lip raw if he doesn’t kiss me again.

“Scully-are you sure?” Mulder asks, voice trembling just a bit. He is beautiful with pain, tortured by the insane thought that I might reject him, even now, even with all this. There is no guile in those wide eyes, just pleading for the last piece he does not have of me. I blink once, then pull his head down to mine, blotting out the sky.

His tongue is long and somehow fires every nerve in my body into incandescence. I think I am blushing to the ends of my hair. We drink each other like hummingbirds in the honeysuckle. ::once love is spoken, the stars cannot hold it out::

He bends his head to kiss the hollow of my throat where the gold cross rests still, thanks to him. My life itself exists only because of him. The enormity of our debt to each other has never left my mind.

Until now. There are better things to have my mind on. My back arches as he peels the damp clothes from my body, dropping them like leaves next to us. He sits back on his heels and looks down at me, stripping off his damp tee-shirt. ::waited so long::

He kisses every inch of me, skipping teasingly over the parts that cry the most loudly to be touched. Instead, he kisses ticklish knees, insides of my elbows, each fingertip in succession. He turns me over, kissing each vertebrae, circling each slowly with his tongue. His eyes soften, turning down at the corners as he turns me over again and looks at me, then bends to breathe a warm puff of air softly on the indentation between my thighs. I shudder in expectation. ::the music of the spheres::

He gazes up at me for a long moment, my trembling knees framing his face. Then he grins wickedly and sets his tongue flickering on the center of my sex. I draw in a cautious breath. It has been so long?oh damn, wha t in the world is he doing down there! My entire body liquefies as his mouth shivers me along. One long-fingered hand dips inside me as the other rolls my left nipple between his fingers. My hips raise up, struggling for yet something more. I take his hands and pull him up.

“Not just for me— need you—inside,” I mumble incoherently. He nods his assent and pulls himself on top of me, kissing me roughly.

“No more waiting, Scully,” he says, poised above me. “Not this time.” ::darkest seraph::

He glides inside me with one slick stroke, letting out a soft sigh of desire. I rake his back with my fingernails, trying to draw him deeper still.

“Scully. Open your eyes. Look at me,” he demands, the rocking of our hips becoming quicker now.

I meet his eyes, unashamed. This is meant to be. No one in the universe can deny us now.

He does something with those narrow hips of his and suddenly, I am free-falling, clenching to him, adhering every part of our sweat-smoothed bodies. I whisper into his ear as I descend-

“Now, Mulder?” and he comes behind me like the roll and pitch of the ocean. This moment distills itself into my memory—his eyes squeezed shut, hair slicked into a black nimbus around his head, arms around me, Milky Way stretching far beyond us.

We lay still for a minute, dew collecting on our chilling skin.

“G-woman,” he mumbles, “can we go back inside now?”

I laugh.

ᚬ ᚾ ᚯ

Part 5

We walk quietly back into the house, hand-in-hand, conspiratorial as teenagers sneaking in after curfew. I stifle a yawn, glancing at a hallway clock. 1:47.

We wend our way back upstairs and somehow, into bed. Chilly, tired, but together. We are wound around each other for warmth, two puppies in a pile. He brushes my hair back with one sleepy hand.

“G’night.”

“Happy birthday,” I whisper. He opens one eye hazily.

“I’ll say.”

ᚬ ᚾ ᚯ

My internal clock rouses me at seven, just as it always has. I squint at the ceiling, then look at the sleeping man beside me. My body aches in wonderful places. I prop my head on my hands and look down at him for a moment. Objectively, he is a handsome man, angular enough so that you know he must have been a late bloomer before he grew into those features. There’s probably a homecoming queen or two kicking themselves at their high-school reunions. If Mulder was the type to go, which I’m certain he’s not. Wouldn’t that be very “Grosse Pointe Blank.” I giggle at the thought. He opens one eye.

“Watching me sleep, Scully?”

“Maybe,” I say, then roll out of bed with a yawn. “Let’s get going, pokey. I think we have a few more discoveries to make before we have to be back in the office Monday.” He smirks at me, and I roll my eyes.

“Work, Mulder, remember? Get going,” I say, tossing him a pair of jeans from the small bag we brought up. “We’ve got lots of ground to cover?miles to go before we sleep and all.”

He buries his head underneath the pillow. I sigh and get dressed, quickly. It’s almost as though nothing has changed. Almost.

ᚬ ᚾ ᚯ

Town Library, 1:58 p.m.

I sneeze as Mulder snaps shut another dusty volume of linguistics. I pore over a topographical map.

“This area has been around forever, geologically speaking,” I say. “the mountains are millions of years older than the Rockies, which is why they aren’t as impressively high.”

Mulder is digging through another book, this one about local folklore.

“Look here, Scully. It says according to some local legends, crystalline formations in the shape of crosses were left in the woods in ancient times by woodland spirits.” He turns the page. “They’re called fairy crosses, go figure. What if what we saw last night is some variation of that?”

I shrug, and look up to see Gracie standing in the doorway.

“You’re close,” she says slowly. He beckons to her to come closer.

“What is it they tell you, Gracie?” he asks, quietly.

“They are stones that were brought millions of years ago to this place. They are sort of…a gift for the people they knew would come later. The gift was a common language that everyone could understand. “

“They?” I ask. She shrugs.

“The stones say they are not from this time, or of this earth.” Mulder’s eyes light up in his near-rabidity to know.

“Sort of like a pre-Babylonian time capsule,” Mulder suggests. She nods. “Don’t we send time capsules into space, hoping they will land somewhere and be discovered, Scully? Gracie, do these stones always say the same thing to you?”

She shakes her head. “But they never say anything bad. Sometimes they warn about danger, but most often, they don’t talk at all, they just seem to…I don’t know. They make things you already think become easier.” She shakes her head as though to clear it. “I don’t know where they came from, just that they have been here, buried and brought up and buried again, until someone built the springhouse, and that was a long time ago.”

Not really, in the scheme of things, I think. To be buried and unearthed, over and again, buy nature? Could they have been here for millennia, patient letters from some distant civilization? I look across the table at Mulder. He glows with excitement. Which means he looks about the same as he always does to everyone, except me.

“What happened to the scientists who came to look at them?” I ask her. Gracie shakes her head.

“They left. They could see, but they couldn’t hear. They didn’t ask the right questions.” She flounces to the door, pigtails bobbing. “And you did.” She disappears out the door.

Mulder shakes his head and I shoot him a quizzical look.

“I think we should leave the Ogam stones just as we found them, Scully,” he says.

“The archeologists here before apparently thought these were not good enough specimens to merit taking away to a museum,” I agree slowly.

“They have a purpose here. I would hate to take the chance that they might not be anything more than old rocks if we moved them out of here.” He moves slowly around the table.

“They do seem to have a specific reason for being here,” I acknowledge slowly. “It does make an interesting story.” Mulder snaps the book shut and reaches behind me to put it away, pausing as he comes within a breath of me.

“If that’s the way you want to think of it,” he says, “but I think it’s because you are starting to believe.” He puts the book on its place on the shelf and flashes a smug look at me.

ᚬ ᚾ ᚯ

5:30 p.m.

Mulder puts on hand briefly on my shoulder as we get ready to leave the library. He hands me a slip of paper with the call numbers of the books written on the folded outside.

“Hey, Scully,” he says, “I want you to read this when you get a chance.” I glance down at the pleated paper in my hands.

“What is this, Mulder?” I ask. He touches one finger to my lips in a shushing gesture. I put the paper in my jacket pocket as we walk out into the cold. The sky here is an impossibly clear blue, the clouds closer to our heads, the air tinged with woodsmoke and cinnamon. Maybe it was little green men who carved the stones. Maybe it was wandering tribes. I toy with the golden crucifix at the base of my neck. ::ahalguztidun—maybe it was God::

I inhale slowly, the crispness sharply drawing into my lungs. It’s so impossibly tranquil, everything swathed in the amber light of the late-afternoon sun. As always, it is truth from him and faith from me, intertwining serpents, mixing up until we both have a bit of both. We walk in companionable silence up Maple Street to Sarah’s house. My shoelace comes untied, and I kneel to retie it. Mulder keeps walking.

“If you’d learn how to tie your shoes right in the first place, Scully, that wouldn’t happen,” he says teasingly, without looking at me, and keeps meandering on down the street. The piece of paper he gave me earlier slips from my pocket and scuds end over end in front of me. I jump up to grab it as it lands in a puddle. I look up. Mulder is a good ten yards down the street, hands shoved deep in his pockets, face actually turned up towards the sky instead of slouched forward in his regular shoe-gazing pose. I unfold the sodden scrap of paper carefully, trying not to rip the delicate page apart.

I blink twice and swallow to displace the knot from my throat. I look up, shading my eyes. He is kicking a soccer ball around Sarah’s front yard with Gracie, whose laughter carries down the street, light and high as a robin’s song. His hair is wind-tossed, his face red from the chill, his trenchcoat still crumpled. They both wave, that rare toothy grin on his face visible from here. I smile and wave back.

::amodio::

It is just the beginning.

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