Title: Moments of Joy
Author: Georgia
Email: Moonrock66@aol.com
Rating: PG
Spoilers: into season 9 (if you know Duchovny's gone, you're good
to go)
Summary: Living between moments of joy.

Author's Notes: I didn't want to write anymore. Honestly I don't
want to do much of anything. But Jon Stewart nailed it when he
said there were no openings for hiding under the desk in fetal
position. So I write...

Mulder's gone in this story (a la season 9). I don't know where he
is. Doesn't matter much to me. Because there are some things that
will never be taken from me. Mulder and Scully are one of them.

----------

After the first year I learned to accept it. From that point on, there
would only be moments of joy. 

Mulder and I had seen too many things, were tortured, hurt,
exposed in too many ways to ever again know the purity that comes
with peace of mind. I'd thought myself educated, a realist, a
scientist. But I'd found that the knowledge I gained in school did
little to shape my mind for the experiences that would follow.
Experiences where science and reason, laws and expectations
played no part, no longer held true.

Our first case shook me, turned my ordered world upside down.
He'd asked me to believe there was something out there. Something
unimaginable. 

And I could have. Part of me would like to have believed him. To
have pledged my faith right there in that Oregon hotel room. He
was so passionate, so certain. I wanted a taste of that certainty. But
believing came with a price. 

As long as I held Mulder off, fought the doubt in my head, clung to
the science that was my own certainty, nothing he said could be
real. I could fool myself, fool my eyes. It may've been a lie, but the
alternative was worse. 

I had no idea how he went on living in a world where his theories
were real. Where everything else was trivial. I wasn't sure how he
cared about baseball. How a stupid movie even echoed in a world
that held the horrors he supposed. 

I resisted it to a physical level. Knowing that if he touched my
body, he'd also touch my mind. That loving Mulder would open me
to the burden of knowledge, to shared pain. It took me a long time
to realize the two-sided coin we were constantly flipping. The pain
alongside of the joy in a give and take, neither possible without the
other. The joy, magnified a thousand times against the bad. And the
struggles only manageable in the belief that another instant of pure
happiness was waiting for us somewhere.

I learned to live with it. 

The night we came together I gave into the inevitable. We'd been
waiting for the other shoe to drop for too long. He'd spread a
blanket across my chest to keep me warm. But the claim he'd long
before wrapped around my heart burned from the inside, radiating
down my arms and legs as I woke on the couch that night.

Moonlight flashed across his face, the tree branches raining a
pattern of light through the open window and down the bedroom
wall. I sank silently onto the bed beside him. Mulder didn't even stir
in his jetlagged state, and for a few seconds, I just watched him. I
thought back to that night in Bellefleur, another bedroom, another
turning point. I'd remembered the passion, his determination to find
his sister. But what I'd hidden from myself was the need. How he
spoke of what was out there and in the same breath shook
underneath.

I'd fought the urge to comfort him then. I'd fought it for too long.
And in that moment I decided, no matter what the pain, they
wouldn't keep this from us any longer.

The stroke of my fingers met his cheek lightly, slipping into his hair
when he turned into my touch. My approach had been gentle, not
wanting to startle him. But Mulder's eyes opened with a quietness
that could only be relief. He'd known it was me. After all, he'd gone
to sleep knowing I was in his apartment. But his look said more
than that. This was a scene he'd lived before. And maybe he hadn't
expected it to become a reality that night, but the possibility was
certainly not a new one.

Neither of us spoke for a time, seeming to want to stretch the
moment, bathe in the infinite depths of a split second when our
entire world changed. He spoke first.

"Scully?"

I simply smiled. It was all that he needed.

----------

He's been gone for six months now. 
 
You'd think they'd learn that separation only makes us more
determined, makes us fight harder. 

The sight of his son brings me comfort and inexpressible gratitude.
I promise myself I will not also let it bring sadness and longing. 

Mulder will come back to us. That much I am sure of. In the
meantime, I continue for myself, for our son. I tell him stories about
his father. I play back tapes with Mulder's voice, recordings from
cases, interrogations, stakeouts. It's not exactly Mother Goose, but
I want my son to feel his father nearby.

And in my mind, I relive our best days together. I've seen so
much of his pain, but there was also joy. So much joy. Some of the
moments don't even count. They're too precious to me to resound
as common memory. I bring them out like fine china, only rarely
letting myself glimpse the smile on his face the first time he kissed
me. Or the contentment washed in awe the first time we made love.
Or the pride beamed back at me the first time he held our son.

Instead my mind settles on simple things. His attempted
innuendoes, a night by a campfire in Florida or on a lake in Georgia,
the way he said my name. Yet three moments stand out. I guess
you'd call them my top three Mulder moments of joy. I value them
now more than ever. I live, knowing what I have to lose.

First, I see the look on his face in Antarctica. He'd saved my life,
held out as long as he could. And he'd never been closer to the
truth. But as he lay down to rest, he saw the ship rise and drifted
off in a childlike smile. It was later that I realized half of the joy 
of his expression was for me. That I'd finally see what he did. That 
I'd have my proof.

He closes his eyes in my second memory also. In that one we're
standing in his doorway. He's wearing a bandage and a hat. And I'm
telling him about Diana. He promises me things I've never before
believed. And I, without hesitation, make the same promise in
return. Then I kiss his forehead, touch his face, his lips. And as I
watch his eyes close, I'm swept with a wave of satisfaction, a tide of
knowing what will be between us.

In our third moment, Mulder holds me loosely, whispering
nonsense in my ear. Something about hips and hands. And all the
while I'm definitely thinking about hips and hands, but they've
nothing to do with the game of baseball. His soft tone in my ear
would be enough to unnerve me. But the added presence of his
body ever so innocently brushing against mine, leaves me heady, the
cool night air burning my sinuses. Yet despite the physicality, the
moment holds nothing of need or unfullfillment for me. We were
children on that night, shining light and carefree like the stars 
above us.

Usually by this point, I've managed to comfort myself into sleep. On 
the nights our son doesn't wake and I'm still tossing in a half-empty 
bed, I go farther. Yes, Mulder's happiness was often mine. But two 
instances fill me with a peace I like to claim as my own. 

There's sadness around the first memory. Often with us there is.
But it also marks a fork in the road, a turn from close friends and
partners down the path toward the undeniable place we now call
home. His eyes are dark as he steps into the room. I know he hasn't
slept, probably hasn't eaten. He stops dead in his tracks, and I can
feel it hit him. Something in the air is different. When I tell him, my
mother slips quietly from the hospital room. Remission. Mulder the
constant believer asks 'how?' I can only smile and shake my head.
His tears start then and he turns away. I call to him and finally, he
takes my hand, sinking onto the bed where I'm lying. He seems to
want to curl into my chest, so I wrap my arms around his neck and
pull him to me. Several minutes pass before he pulls back and I see
a look I hardly recognize on him. The expression of guilt I knew.
Relief I could make out. But underneath swam something of a man
tortured with loss. And not the loss of a friend or the loss of a
sister. This man feared losing part of his own soul. It was the first
time I knew for sure that Mulder loved me.

The second memory couldn't be more different. It rivals baseball for
playfulness. And in truth, it must be the most normal night we ever
spent together. I'd honestly never imagined Mulder and I popping
popcorn and knocking back a couple of beers over a movie. But
there was something more than domesticity to that night. It touched
me like an actual presence, the feeling. As Mulder's hand crept onto
my thigh, I wondered for a half-second about the protection we
hadn't been using. And I tried to dismiss it at silly, especially
considering the beer I was drinking, but a pleasant nausea rose over
me, a knowing. And I don't know if it happened before or after I
pushed Mulder back onto dark leather, whether I was pregnant
already or as a result of that night's activities, but for the first time
in a long time, right there during Caddyshack, I believed it was
possible.

I hold off on naming my third favorite moment with Mulder,
sometimes letting a possibility, a scenario or two dance into the
back of my mind. I hold off because I know how this will end. 

Mulder and I have come through worse things. We've beaten death.
We've given birth to miracles. And I know that this will not be the
last difficult day before us. 

But I no longer let the possibilities scare me. I can see it clearly,
looking back. I wouldn't trade one minute of happiness with
Mulder for all the horror, the uncertainty. Because it was for those
scattered moments of joy that we were living. And if I've learned
anything, I know that another such moment awaits.

And for that, I bear the pain.

end.
----------

This turned out a lot more optimistic than it started. Guess it
worked as therapy. I hope I haven't offended anyone by using a TV
show to express my feelings about recent events. I'd always
wondered how M&S carried on knowing what was out there. And
now, I really wish I didn't know.

Thanks to Marie for being a light. Your optimism is undying...even
if you don't always see it that way yourself.

moonrock66@aol.com