The Choice V: Memory
by Leigh Alexander
leigh_xf@geocities.com

First posted: April 6, 1996

RATING: PG
CATEGORY: SA
SPOILERS: None
KEYWORDS: Mulder/Scully UST
SUMMARY: Mulder tells Scully what happened to him while he
was gone.

DISCLAIMERS:
1) Dana and Fox belong to Chris and Ten Thirteen Productions
and the other Fox. Absolutely *no* copyright infringement is
intended - I'm not doing this for money, I'm doing it for
love. I *love* these characters, I wouldn't want to hurt
them! :)
2) OK to archive, but if it's going anywhere other than
Gossamer, please drop me a line just so I can keep track.
3) Feel free to distribute and discuss this, as long as my
name and addy remain attached.

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The Choice V: Memory
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She watched him sleeping.

Even though this was exactly what she'd been doing for the
past four weeks, she could feel the difference this time. It
wasn't just that she knew that he was going to wake up from
this slumber, it was also because suddenly everything felt
right again.

Suddenly all the doubts she'd been having, all the feelings
of despair that she'd been wallowing in, all the grief and
hatred she'd been feeling had disappeared. Mulder was back
and everything in the world was right again.

She knew she was being silly. There were obviously going to
be repercussions from all of this - she didn't know what
Mulder was going to do about a job, if he was going to return
to the Bureau or not, he was also going to have to adapt to
all the changes that had occurred since his disappearance -
it wasn't going to be easy for him. And yet all those worries
seemed trite and unimportant for the moment. Right now, she
couldn't stop herself from feeling absurdly happy.

It was four hours now since Mulder had first woken up, and
the feeling of unreality that she had been having had now
almost completely disappeared. While the medical staff had
been tending to Mulder, she had gone for a walk; venturing
outside for the first time in days. She had noticed with
delight that spring had well and truly sprung since she had
been sequestered in the hospital. The appropriateness of
nature's reawakening did not escape her, and she had sighed
contentedly, breathing in deeply and suppressing a sudden
foolish desire to do cartwheels across the neat hospital
garden.

After an hour's stroll, she had ventured back into the
hospital, and headed straight for the line of payphones near
the entrance.

"Mom? It's me."

Her mother had been instantly anxious, "What is it? What's
wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong mom. It's Mulder." Her face had broken into
a grin, the news of Mulder's return finally sinking in as she
said the words, "He's back mom... he woke up about an hour
ago!" She hadn't been able to keep the excitement out of her
normally reserved voice.

She had heard her mother gasp, and then there had been
silence for a few moments. Just when Scully was starting to
get worried, Maggie had spoken, her voice trembling,

"Oh, I'm so glad, honey."

They hadn't chatted for long. Scully had been eager to return
to Mulder's bedside.

And now here she was. Watching him sleep. As she'd been doing
for the past three hours.

It almost pained her to see his innocence in sleep. Sleep was
one of the great equalisers, in her opinion. No matter who
you were, no matter what you'd experienced, all that would be
obliterated once you fell into a deep, slumberous state. And
Mulder was no exception. His face was relaxed, the years of
worry and heartache had dissolved as they never would when he
was awake. And yet, underneath the peaceful mask, she knew
that there was a well of pain. Some of which, she had yet to
find out...

He stirred, and she sat up stiffly, watching him attentively.
His eyes flickered, and then opened. They blinked shut again
briefly, and then reopened, slowly doing a tour of his
surroundings until eventually they landed on Scully.

"How're you feeling?" She asked as his eyes gradually focused
on her.

"Better." His voice was still raspy, although she could
detect its growing strength.

They sat in silence for some time, Scully waiting for Mulder
to fully wake up before she asked him any questions.

Mulder tried to pull himself into a sitting position, but his
body rebelled, his arms buckling under the pressure. At first
he refused Scully's help, and then eventually gave in,
allowing her to pull his body up with a strength that
surprised him. For such a small person, she never ceased to
amaze him with her physical capabilities. She had proven to
him time and time again, just how little she needed his aid,
both psychologically and physically, and it was yet another
aspect of her personality that he admired and respected.

Finally he was comfortable - his back resting against two
pillows. He leaned his head back and let it press against the
wall for a few short moments, as he closed his eyes and
gathered his thoughts.

He brought his head back down and faced Scully. He could see
the questions in her eyes, and he knew that he couldn't
prolong the moment any longer, and yet he waited...

They sat like that, staring at each other, for an eternity.
Finally Scully spoke, realising that Mulder was waiting for
her to make the first move. She repeated the question that
she had asked him over four hours ago - had it really been
that long ago? Time had started playing tricks on her, she
had spent too much of it in isolation and now any sense of
passing time that she had was vague and distorted.

Her voice was low, "Mulder... what happened?"

He let out an audible breath, and squeezed his eyes shut
momentarily. When he finally returned his gaze to her, his
eyes were full of sorrow.

"I don't remember." At her questioning glance, he added, "Not
much, at least..."

"Just tell me what you do remember Mulder." She spoke gently,
soothingly.

He lifted his hand to his throat, and fingered the cross in
an unconscious, yet obviously accustomed gesture. Scully
noted the
action without a word, although it suddenly made her feel
warm inside. After a few moments, Mulder started to recount
his story.

"After I left your place," he paused, coughing slightly,
while Scully lowered her head for a brief moment - both of
their thoughts resting momentarily on that final moment, "I..
uh... I went back to my place. The man was still there,
waiting for me, and we left about ten minutes later." He
stopped again, this time needing the break to collect his
thoughts, and remember long-ago events.

"Go on." Scully murmured.

"I don't know where he took me - he blindfolded me on the
drive there. It took about forty minutes, and we were
definitely out of the city by the time we arrived at the
final destination. It was an old warehouse of some sort, no
defining features, no machinery, no smell, no visual clues as
to what it was used for. Anyway, he pushed me inside, and I
could see that the place was empty. I started to turn around,
and then someone hit me - knocked me out."

He stopped speaking abruptly, and Scully looked at him,
surprised.

"What? What happened after that?"

"That's what I can't remember Scully. After that it's all
hazy, until I woke up in this bed."

"Hold on, when you say hazy - does that mean that you can
remember something??"

"Oh yeah sure, I can remember things like a bright white
light, some sort of hospital room, faces, noises... nothing
concrete..."

She sighed in frustration - Mulder's return was supposed to
*answer* questions, not pose more.

There was one more question that she had to ask him, although
she knew it was going to cause him pain.

"Mulder - what about Samantha? Did you see her? Did you find
out what happened to her?"

The reaction was intense. He turned his head away from her
sharply, letting his breath out with a hiss. His face was an
expression of pure agony, alerting her immediately to the
fact that she had sliced open a painful wound.

When he spoke his voice was full of bitterness, and anger,
"Yeah, I saw her."

He didn't continue. Scully lifted her eyebrow and leaned
forward, desperate to know what he had seen.

He spoke without looking at her,  "She was dead, Scully.
Dead." The words fell from his lips like dead weights.

Scully felt her world collapse around her. No... not after
all he'd been through, not after losing everything else.
Samantha couldn't be dead. It wasn't fair...

Mulder's face was still averted from hers and she gazed on
him with a look of pure anguish. She felt a stabbing pain
pierce through her: her chest tightened, and her hands
clenched into fists almost of their own accord. Mulder's pain
was like an aura, it clung to him without cease, and infected
all those who drew near to him. She could feel it permeating
her spirit... as everything else about him had already done.
And yet, she could find no words to express how she felt. She
had to rely on the same ones she had used upon his father's
death... the same ones that she had murmured time and time
again to victims of crime: there was nothing else she could
say.

"Mulder, I'm so sorry." The words sounded empty and hollow to
her ears - their meaning seemed to fade as soon as they had
left her mouth. What good was her pity going to do for him?
In what way could her sorrow atone for everything he had
lost, for the one thing in the world that he had been
searching for? How could she expect those words to comfort
him - instead their ineffectualness goaded her mercilessly.

He felt himself grow cold. The tears burned his eyes, but he
refused to let them spill. Saying the words brought the
reality home to him - clearer than ever before. He remembered
that moment with the type of clarity that he usually reserved
for cases, serial murderers, facts and theories. His sister,
lying there, the life sapped out of her body - her young
body.

"She was only twelve."

Scully looked at him, puzzled - she didn't understand. "What
do you mean?"

He turned his face to hers; its previous alertness and
happiness had been replaced by a cold, aching pain. She could
barely stand looking at him like this - so cold, so distant,
so hurt.

"When I saw her - her dead body, she wouldn't have been more
than twelve, maybe even younger..."

Oh God.

Scully grasped the significance immediately, and yet she
fought it - needing to ask more questions,

"But Mulder, you had reasons to hope that she was still
alive... That bounty hunter - he told you she was still
alive; and that dream you had of your father, you told me
that he said she wasn't there - you had proof..." In her
desperate need to deny the truth of what he was saying, she
clutched at straws that would normally be grasped by Mulder.
For once, she played the role of the believer - in this
instance, she truly *wanted* to believe.

As if to complete the balance of the weird symmetry that had
developed, Mulder suddenly assumed the position of the die-
hard sceptic.

"Lies, Scully. All lies. She's been dead for twenty years.
And all the time, I just kept looking for her - like the fool
I was. And they were all laughing at me. Those bastards."

The words flew out of his mouth, his anger overriding his
grief. Whenever he closed his eyes, even for the briefest
moment, he was greeted with the ever-present image of his
sister's tiny body, lying on some sort of stainless steel
autopsy bay... her flesh still warm, her skin still flushed
with colour. He remembered all too clearly the leap his heart
had made when he had been ushered into the room and had seen
her prone form. And then, as he had drawn closer, he had
noticed that her chest remained still, that not a single
sound emerged from her tiny mouth... And when he had finally
been standing next to her, he had realised that she was dead;
that whoever it was who had brought her there had managed to
somehow preserve her looking exactly as she would have for
the first few minutes after her death. For once, he cursed
the photographic memory that had always served him so well
before. He knew that this image would stay with him for the
rest of his life - tormenting him, just as her photo had done
in the past.

Scully couldn't think of what to say. She had no way of
relieving his anger - everything he'd said was true. Mulder
had been pursuing a hope that had been dead for twenty years.
She could feel his pain as if it were her own - her closeness
to Mulder had bound them together in so many ways, and his
pain had become her pain.

She was sick of the pain.

Was it never going to end? Would they ever be able to lead
normal lives? Lives that weren't dogged by tragedy and
disaster? Lives that were full of pleasure and happiness
rather than agony and grief?

As soon as one wound had started to heal, another would be
sliced open. First Samantha's abduction, then her father's
death, then the murder of Mulder's father, and the shooting
of Melissa - and now this: the final tragedy - the holy grail
that Mulder had been seeking his entire life was nothing more
than an illusion - a tin cup, destroyed long ago.

She had started to think of her and Mulder's lives as being
inextricably linked by their mutual pain. It was almost as if
someone had taken a huge needle and thread and pierced
through his skin, pulling the thread through his flesh, and
then stabbing through her own skin with the same needle and
thread. Throughout the years, this action had been repeated
over and over again, and with every jab of pain, there was an
accompanying closeness between the two of them - they were
being sewn together, becoming one...

And still her mind was filled with questions.

"But.... but... if you can't remember anything, how can you
remember this? Maybe it's just a dream?"

He almost smiled at the irony. Here was Dana Scully - the
most sceptical person he'd ever known - trying to convince
him that the reality he'd seen was just a dream, or a figment
of his imagination.

But he couldn't smile. It was too painful.

His voice was dull, lifeless - the fire that she had come to
cherish was gone. "I don't know, Scully. I think they've
played with my memory, or something - they've made sure that
I remember the sight of her dead body, and yet there's
nothing else that I can recall..."

Scully bit her lower lip. She couldn't bear to see him like
this, couldn't stand hearing the lack of emotion in his
voice. She knew that this was his way of coping, it was his
shield, his protector, but the calm rationality of this idea,
did nothing to reassure her.

There was silence between them once more. Mulder's eyes were
downcast, whilst Scully's were focused on the door. They each
needed time - Scully to absorb the things that Mulder was
telling her, the things that he had already processed and
reacted to at some point during his absence; and Mulder
needed to contemplate his surroundings, the events of the
past few hours - his return... his absence...

Suddenly he lifted his head and fixed Scully with a piercing
gaze. A thought had just occurred to him, "Scully, how long
have I been gone?"

She looked at him, fear shining out of her eyes. She had to
tell him the truth, but she knew that it was going to be hard
for him to hear. She breathed in deeply, and then replied,

"Over two years."

The emotion coursed back into his face - he was stunned.

He repeated the words in horror, "Two years?"

She avoided his eyes, and mumbled, "Actually, two and a
half."

He stared at her, "My God..."

He remained silent for a long time, occasionally shaking his
head, and echoing Scully's words.

She watched him intensely. She remembered how hard she had
taken it when she had heard that over three months of her
life had gone missing - she could only imagine what Mulder
must be going through.

Two and a half years... two and a half years... The words
circled around his head like some demonic nursery rhyme. How
could this have happened? How could they have done this?
Where had he been? Where had they taken him? His mind was
overwhelmed with questions.

He tried to make a joke about it, "Well, looks like I've got
a bit of catching up to do..." But the words came out bitter
and angry.

Scully. He looked at her suddenly - his mind suddenly
dominated by one sole question. But he didn't dare ask it.
Instead, he stole a furtive glance at her left hand - no
there was nothing there. Not that that was really a sign of
anything - for all he knew she could be living with someone,
engaged, or committed in some other way... He had to know.

He cleared his throat, and tried to sound casual as he asked,
"So... what about you, Scully? What's been happening with you
for the past--" He paused before saying the words, "--two and
a half years?"

She looked at him worriedly. She could see that the loss of
time was having a profound effect on him, and there was
nothing she could do to relieve him. She had no way of
bringing back those missing years - the best she could do was
to try and fill him in on what had been happening.

She told him about work, about her progress through the
ranks... she told him about world events, about changes that
had occurred in the last few years...

At first he listened to her words attentively, relieved to
hear no mention of a new person in her life, but then as she
continued to chronicle events, his mind began to wander.

His eyes were focused on her lips. Those beautiful lips. He
had always admired them, had always found his attention being
drawn to them, even when they were the most platonic of
partners. Full, desirable lips, that she would make even more
desirable with the deep shades lipstick that she favoured. He
could remember a number of occasions when he had only just
been able to resist the urge to kiss that generous mouth. And
he clearly remembered one occasion when he hadn't.

Mulder could recall that final meeting with Scully as if it
had only occurred yesterday. His recollection was most
precise when it came to the last few minutes - when she had
handed him her cross, and he had bent down and fulfilled the
desire that had burned within him for so long... He had
kissed her.

They had kissed.

Their lips had been joined for the briefest of moments - and
in that moment, he had experienced the purest joy he had ever
felt in his life.

He wondered what she had thought of that kiss, of him. He
hadn't been able to look at her reaction, he couldn't bear to
see the possible disgust or discomfort in her eyes. Of
course, he had hoped - had convinced himself - that she felt
the same way about him, that she had wanted the same thing
that he had... But he couldn't have coped with the
disappointment if she had reacted with anything other than
happiness.

And so he had slipped out of the room - while her eyes were
still closed. And he hadn't looked back...

He suddenly realised that Scully had stopped talking, that
she was looking at him curiously. She had evidently picked up
on his lack of interest, although he hoped that his actual
line of thought hadn't been *too* obvious.

His lips curved up slightly, and he deftly avoided her
unspoken question, saying, "Sorry. Guess I must still be a
little tired..."

Scully responded immediately - pushing her chair back and
getting to her feet. Anxiously she said, "You're right. I
should go, you must be exhausted - and I'm sure all my
questions aren't helping you."

Mulder was suddenly aware of a tiredness that he hadn't been
feeling unexpectedly wash over him, and he nodded weakly in
reply.

She started to turn away from the bed and then abruptly
changed her mind, deciding at the last minute to move closer
to the bed head. She felt the icy cold metal of the frame
pressing into her as she leaned in and placed her hand
lightly on Mulder's cheek.

There was so much she wanted to say to him, and yet... she
couldn't quite find the words. She'd never had to say
anything like this to Mulder before, and she felt
uncomfortable and shy. She bit her bottom lip and, gathering
her nerve, lifted her eyes so that they gazed directly and
unambiguously into Mulder's. Her thumb caressed his cheek
softly, and her voice, when she finally spoke, was rich with
emotion.

"Mulder... I.. I just want to say... I'm glad you're back..."
She felt so exposed - staring into those familiar eyes, and
saying such unfamiliar words. She tried to hold his gaze, but
couldn't - it was too powerful, too full of meaning. Her eyes
dropped, as did her hand - preferring  instead to squeeze his
hand which rested loosely beside his body.

After a moment's pause she continued to speak, the words
coming out slowly, with almost painful hesitation: "When you
were gone..." She swallowed, she could feel the words
struggling to escape and yet she couldn't make them flow any
easier. "My life felt... well, empty...". With a sudden rush
of courage, she lifted her face up once more and looked into
his gentle eyes, "It wasn't until you were gone that I
realised how much I needed you... how much I wanted you...
how much I missed you..."

She didn't allow him time to reply, lifting her hand from
his, and quickly exiting the room, before he had a chance to
open his mouth. If she had looked behind her before leaving
the room, she would have seen Mulder sitting in his bed with
a look of shock and delight gracing his features. As the door
clicked shut behind her, Mulder's face broke into a broad
grin.

~ THE END ~

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Thanks for reading. Comments are welcome.

leigh_xf@geocities.com