"The Name of Someday"

A certain degree of Sc/Kry is implied; you can choose to see it there or not.

*

When a man you have been told to regard as evil--when a man you have come to regard as evil, when he leaves a message on your answering machine asking you to dinner, you accept.

After all, it's at an obscenely expensive restaurant you've been hankering to go to ever since you moved into the DC area, and you'll never get another invitation--Mulder's nevergoing to ask you, and putting it on your Bureau tab would get you an audit. Therefore, you go, but you go in full business suit, extra gun and all.

The place is, of course, just as expensive and pretentiontious as reputation makes it out to be, so you run down the menu, ordering an appetizer, a soup, a salad, and an entree with something with a lot of French in the name and a forty six dollar price tag to match--it's something about sea urchins, cream, and endives.

He just orders the appropriate wine.

"If you're trying to get me drunk, forget it." you say, after the waiter has served the wine and left.

His smiles, and he says with humor in his voice and eyes, "I'd never think of it."

For the next hour and a half, the two of you discuss the weather, the traffic on the Beltway, the price of gas, politics (surprisingly, he thinks Clinton should have been impeached), sushi, and whatever comes to hand, including Maryland crab cakes, good bars in the area, and why air conditioning is one of the greatest inventions humankind has ever come up with.

He's a surprisingly charming conversationalist, and you think that no one should be able to be able to carry off a purple silk shirt that well, especially not with his complexion and not with those remarkable, remarkable green eyes. It's like you wearing red: he should be clashing six ways to Sunday, yet he looks--charming. If he hadn't shot your sister and orchestrated your abduction, you'd be seriously thinking about taking him to your apartment and having the sex of your life.

Even now, you're vaguely tempted, and you've got the nasty feeling that if you did proposition him, he wouldn't be entirely unwilling.

It's over dessert, though, that he makes you the offer. Two hundred fifty thousand US in the account of your choosing, a first-class plane ticket anywhere in the world, and passports and documents in another name. He can even arrange a death for you, if you'd like.

You doesn't need to ask the price; it's assumed, and it only takes you a second before you make your decision.

"I don't need another name." After all, you've got enough to balance--there's Dana, for you, there's Scully, for work, and there Katherine for God. It isn't as if you could handle having yet another apellation.

He's surprised by this, you can tell. His eyes open just a hairwidths wider for a second, and then he smiles.

You reach over, take a sip of the excellent wine in your glass, and smile back at him.

*

Afterwards, you pack less, much less than you expected to. You take two business suits, all of your (three) pairs of shorts, most of your t-shirts, your one sad little non-business suit tank top, your sandals, and your sneakers. All of it fits into your little carry-on that you used on your cases, and the packing takes all of fifteen minutes. Writing your resignation letter takes longer simply because the printer keeps messing up, but dropping it off on Skinner's secretary's in-box is surprisingly easy and painless.

It's only as you slide the key into your car's ignition again, you remember that you ought to visit the office one more time, just to say goodbye to Mulder.

*

You been living by the sea for three, three and a half weeks now, and the rumor going around town is that you're a wife running from a child and a broken marriage. It's a rumor you've tacitly encouraged, simply because it's so much more convenient than explaining how things really stand.

And it's true, in it's own way, but your husband was drunk on truth, rather than ethanol.

You've spent a lot of time thinking about why you left, why it was so easy to leave, and the only conclusion that you can come up with is that you had long ago tired of searching for the truth, and after that, the only things that had been holding you to the X-Files had been Emily and Mulder, and now--

Mulder.

Afterwards, after you left the hospital that final time, a brief romance sprang up between the two of you. Whether you responded to his overtures, it was as an instinctively life affirming action, and partially out of gratitude, and later, at some point, you realized that while you were beginning to distance yourself from the quest, you fell in love with the man, in love with Mulder, but not the Mulder in the office, not the one with the missing sister and the quest, but rather, the Mulder in your bed, the who quoted Browning and Keats, could play Chopsticks with his knuckles on your kitchen table, and insisted on eating crackers in bed. *That* Mulder you could easily fall in love with, that Mulder, you could imagine a future with.

But he had proven himself incapable of separating the two, and you found it impossible to maintain a sexual or platonic relationship with the blend, simply because both Mulders remembered the affair, and a bitterness and suppressed anger sprang up that had never been there before. Then, there was only the quest, and none of the man. You could see the stiffness and the formality and the only anger at his unfairness, at his immaturity; you suppose that his anger came from your

Your mother had been right; the sex had ruined everything. You will, however, remember the sex to the end of your days.

As for Emily, you'll always mourn her, but with your eggs in storage at an egg bank in Norfolk, you can have her half-sisters. That particular realization rocked your world, and you remember starting out of your sleep at the sheer, obviousness of it; you went around for weeks afterwards, in a daze because all your whining and bitching about being barren.

So, the two things that held you to the X-Files--you've gotten over both of them, and now, you're temporarily living in your family's old beach house down on the North Carolina shore.

Your family has no idea you're living here, and you know your mother's went ballistic when Mulder told her that her baby girl was missing again. She's called here, but with the default message from the factory, she hung up, and you've ignored the letters. You've decided that you'll call her someday. After all, you're a busy woman.

No-one's been here since your father died, and the last time that someone lived here was--you don't remember when was the last time that someone lived here. The place would probably have fallen apart if a caretaker didn't come around twice a year to make sure that the roof hadn't caved in; your mother probably doesn't remember that Daddy willed you the place, and you're fairly certain that you never told Mulder.

Starbuck. That's another name, another reason why you don't want a more names--there isn't room in your body for any more.

The house is falling apart. The electricians were in to fix the circuits, and a construction team put a new roof on the place. They're coming back next week in order to put insulation in and tomake sure the propane tank doesn't blow up when you turn the heat on this winter.

It's emptied out your savings, which were never that substantial anyway, but the two hundred fifty thousand has arrived, so you're not worried. When you went to the bank to check, the teller looked up from your account with huge eyes. She'd never seen an account that large, probably, and undoubtedly, the rumor is going around that the money was the settlement from the divorce.

It's sitting in the bank. You'll call your broker--you've acquired one, you're not into the day trading thing--and discuss just what it is you want to do with it, but you'll do that someday.

Someday.

*

You're pouring yourself your afternoon tea when Mulder shows up.

Today, it's a bitter, acrid blend that's mixed by a local woman and smells like the sea, and, indeed, the sea's everywhere. When you open your windows in the morning, the dark, almost black, stripe across the horizon is the first thing you see, and at night, it's the last thing you hear. You can taste it on the air, it flavors your food, and the light coming off of it colors your walls a rich pearl grey over the cheap whitewash.

And the sand's everywhere, too. It sneaks in whenever you open the door, creeps into your shoes whenever you take a walk, and sticks to your drying clothes. The good part is that since you've got hardwood floors, it keeps the wood scoured clean.

You've settled into a routine: get up at first light, morning on the beach, afternoons in town, wrangling with contractors and buying supplies, and reading at night by goosenecked lamp. The local library is curiously well stocked, and you're surprised by the change in your tastes. You thought you'd like _Gödel, Escher and Bach_, but it turned out to be an interminable bore, while Rilke, who you vaguely remember as an excurciating college German translation excercise, stunned you with his angels and 'denn da ist keine Stelle // die dich nicht sieht. '

Regardless:

Mulder shows up, and you watch him from the window.

You've forgotten how beautiful he is, and it hits you somewhere below the stomach and left, a physical blow that makes your breath catch and your eyes water. Those long legs, the outswung hips, that smooth, confident stride, the wind snapping his tie over his shoulder, and when he turns to look at the sea, his face is outlined on the grey-blue sky.

When he knocks on the door, you ask him if he'd like some tea. He looks surprised, but comes in and takes the rustic mess of your house in with calm face and eyes that are constantly changing colors.

You seat him by the window. The light brings out the grey in his eyes, and the sight of him, sitting on your stool, stoneware cup in his hands, listening to you blather on about construction works and metal vs shingle roofing--the sight stirs your heart. In the words of some of those trashy paper-backed romance novels you've read out of curiousity, he stirs your yearnings. You yearn to touch him. When he stretches his cup out for some more tea, your fingers brush across his wrist, and he looks surprised but says nothing.

And then, when you're done filling his cup and talking his ear off, there's a silence, and all of a sudden, he asks if you're coming back.

You blink at him. He doesn't fidget, but looks you straight in the eye, and you realize he's here as a co-worker, as the quest.

You keep your sigh to yourself.

"Why should I?" You say, and smile at him and watch the muscles in his jaws tense. He leaves soon after that, as quickly as he can without being rude, and you stand at the door watching him go.

He'll be back someday.

You take a sip of your tea.

END