3AN: This little one shot can stand alone or it can go in something of a series with my other stories "A Light in the Darkness" and "Stay" (in that order). It's just a story for me to explore my growing love of Mulder and Scully now that I've started watch the X-Files. This is set after "One Breath," and it does play quite fast and loose with canon.
I own nothing from The X-Files.
If you read, I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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Fox Mulder rubbed the gold cross in his hand. He moved it around in his pocket. He felt the chain that he'd untangled and unknotted nearly every night before he placed the cross in a safe place to wait for his waking.
Many people carried talismans. There were cultures and religions that were built around the sacred objects. The cross, itself, was a sort of talisman for many people who liked a tangible symbol of their beliefs.
The dainty gold cross was, for Mulder, a sort of talisman, though not exactly in the traditional sense. It had brought him hope. It had brought him comfort. He'd held onto it for months, and he'd believed in what it represented—or, at the very least, he'd believed in what it represented to him.
Dana Scully was his partner at the bureau. Over the time they'd worked together, she'd become his best friend and, arguably, his only real friend. She'd become the person that he trusted when he didn't really dare to trust anyone. She'd become something of an anchor for him and, unlike other anchors that sometimes threatened to drag him down and choke everything out of him that made him who he was, Scully had managed to help him keep his feet on the ground while still allowing his heart and his mind to soar.
Scully was the yin to his yang, and he knew that without her, life seemed empty and hollow. He knew that, when she wasn't there, it was as though he could hear an echo in the world. He missed her presence at all times.
He'd only recently realized, and admitted to himself, that Scully had become far more to him than he'd ever imagined she would be. She'd become the woman he loved.
When Scully had gone missing, it had felt to Mulder like the whole world was too quick to give her up. He expected that the authorities and the bureau would abandon the search as quickly as they did. They accepted—or at least pretended to accept—that Duane Barry had done something with her. He'd kidnapped her, which they'd known he had, and he'd probably killed her and dumped her body somewhere. When the body didn't turn up after a few quick searches of the surrounding area, they closed the file with the answer that she was just another person whose body was simply never recovered—too well hidden to be located.
Mulder had worked with the FBI long enough to expect nothing less from them—especially not once he'd found out, from sources that were even somewhat secret to him—that they'd been involved in Scully's disappearance. They wanted her disappearance kept quiet, and they wanted her forgotten as quickly, and as completely, as possible.
Mulder had been disappointed in her mother, though, and her sister. They'd held out hope for a while, but then they'd ordered a tombstone, and they'd accepted that she was gone. Maybe it was Mulder that was wrong. Maybe he'd held out too long. Maybe Mulder simply couldn't accept a world where Dana Scully no longer existed.
When she'd been returned to them in a seemingly mysterious manner— though Mulder knew who was behind all of it and couldn't tell anyone—those responsible for returning her did so with the hope that she would die. Her body was being returned. Her brain, it seemed, had failed, or would shortly fail to function. Again, her mother and her sister had been, in Mulder's opinion, too quick to abandon hope for her.
Mulder had to admit, though, that maybe he was just too determined to hold onto hope. Maybe he was willing to hope, beyond all reason, that Scully would come back to them—to him.
And she had.
It was a modern medical miracle. There was no other obvious explanation for Scully managing to escape death. Her heart had been failing. Her brain was damaged, it seemed, beyond repair. Her respiratory system was failing. She'd been unplugged from the machines and left to die—weakening as the hours ticked by.
Mulder, holding the dainty golden cross that she'd always worn—a cross that he'd snatched from the trunk of the car where he'd found evidence of her kidnapping—had begged her to stay. He'd begged her to come back.
He was willing to accept her return to health, and her return to the world—and to him, by extension—as a miracle. He was willing to accept any explanation that he had to accept to simply have her back.
The cross had been his talisman through all those months. As other people lost hope that she'd ever be found, Mulder had held the cross and believed that she'd be back. She had to be back. That little golden cross couldn't be all that he had left of her. As other people lost hope that she'd recover, and had accepted her death before it had come, Mulder had rubbed the cross between his fingers and believed that she would wake. She would come back. She'd been through too much, and survived it, for it all to end with nothing more than the howling of machines, dropping into silence, and a doctor scribbling a time of death on a clipboard while he stood next to a useless crash cart.
Now, Scully was recovering. She rested, at this moment, in her bedroom. She was growing stronger with each passing day—each hour, even. She was eating and drinking regularly. She was reading and watching television. She was giving Mulder a hard time and doing her best to convince him that he didn't need to camp out on her couch and keep an almost constant vigil over her to make sure that every miracle that he'd been granted, so far, wasn't somehow snatched away from him.
Mulder wasn't leaving, though, and he wouldn't leave until he was sure that she was strong enough, and recovered enough, to take care of herself—especially since he never knew if someone might come back, looking to finish what their covert departments had started.
It was time to return the cross to its rightful owner.
Mulder picked up the bag of delivery food that had just recently been dropped off by a teenager who had been happy to get a twenty percent tip for making sure that the food got there, this time, before Scully's barbecue sandwich and fries had time to get so cold that she found it unappetizing. Mulder carried the bag of food and tucked a bottle of soda under his arm. The glasses, plates, utensils, and napkins, he'd already taken into Scully's room earlier in preparation for the feast.
"Here you go," Mulder said, coming into the bedroom—a place where, a couple of years ago, he never would have imagined he'd feel so comfortable. "A big pig sandwich and curly fries—and you can hear the grease still sizzling."
"Geez, Mulder," Scully said, "could you make it sound less appetizing?"
Mulder smiled at her.
"Only if I try," he said. "Here—eat up. Before your fries have a chance to get cold."
To make sure Scully was comfortable, Mulder had the cable company do the extra work of wiring up the television in her room. She was watching some kind of animal documentary. It wasn't his first choice for entertainment, but he was determined to let her have what she wanted, at almost all times, these days. He'd give her a hard time about being spoiled someday, but not until he was fully convinced that she was out of the woods and had left the forest far enough behind that it couldn't be seen in the rearview mirror.
Mulder arranged the food on the trays he'd bought for their lounging and dining needs. He refilled the soda glass from which Scully had already been sipping, and he ignored her somewhat spat protest as he tucked a napkin in the top of the t-shirt that she was wearing as loungewear.
He smiled to himself, settling in beside her, as he watched her eat with gusto. As she'd been recovering, watching Scully eat had become something of a fetish that Mulder had never even known he had. Arguably, though, everything about Scully had become something of a fetish to Mulder, but he wouldn't dare to tell her that. She wasn't ready for it yet. They'd exchanged some quiet declarations of love, brought on by Mulder's inability to hold back his emotions any longer, and strengthened by Scully's admission of the same affection for him, but their relationship was lingering there—just at the point of quiet declarations of love, for now.
The warmest advances, so far, had been a few sweet kisses—each of which Mulder could remember in great detail—and simple things like gentle caresses and a few innocent hand-holding sessions while their food digested and they reclined together, chastely, in Scully's bed.
It didn't matter, though. Not to Mulder. He was happy with the junior high worthy shows of affection. He was happy with anything as long as he was close to Scully. She wasn't physically ready for more, and he wouldn't push her. Not after what she'd been through.
"Hey—I've got something for you," Mulder said.
Scully turned her attention away from her documentary and looked at him. There was the smallest hint of a smile on her lips. Mulder didn't know if it came from the obvious pleasure brought to her by the sandwich, or if it was because she was already deciding that whatever he was going to give her would either amuse her or make her happy.
He smiled at her, in return, because he couldn't help himself. He reached his finger out, wiped away the barbecue sauce on the corner of her mouth, and licked it off the tip of his own finger.
"You haven't touched your sandwich, Mulder," Scully said, her mouth still partially full of a bite of her own food.
"I'll eat it," he assured her. "I just—wanted to give you this first."
"It better not be a diamond, Mulder," Scully warned. Her eyebrows rose, letting him know that she was serious. He laughed to himself.
"You really think it would be a diamond, Scully?"
"Well, you have to admit, you've been acting a little—intense."
"Is that your way of telling me you want me to back off?" Mulder asked.
Scully's expression softened and she shook her head.
"No," she said sincerely. "Just—I like this. Us. Whatever it is."
"I like it, too," Mulder offered.
"And I'd like to just like it for a while," Scully said. "I'd like to just—enjoy it. Do you understand what I'm trying to say, Mulder?"
"No diamonds," Mulder said. "At least—not tonight. I'm kidding," he added quickly. "I'll give at least a week. Kidding, Scully. I'm kidding. This isn't about a diamond."
Mulder pulled the gold cross from his pocket and offered it out to Scully.
"My necklace," Scully mused, turning it over in her hand.
"I found it in the trunk," Mulder said.
"You kept it all this time?" Scully asked.
"I've been carrying it around," Mulder admitted. "I hope that doesn't make you want to—take back everything you just said about liking this, whatever it is."
Scully smiled gently to herself, her brow furrowed.
"You've just been carrying it around?" She asked.
"It gave me hope," Mulder admitted. "I knew that we'd find you. And then, I knew that you'd live. It gave me hope to have it there. It was a piece of you, Scully."
"Mulder, that's sweet," she said. There was some teasing to her tone. Mulder didn't mind. In the months that she'd been gone, he'd missed her teasing as much as anything else. He'd accept an almost constant stream of teasing if that's what she wanted to give him.
"I wanted to give it back to you," Mulder said. "Your mother said it was important to you. You've worn it all these years."
"I almost want you to keep it," Scully said. "A little piece of me?"
The arch of her eyebrow went well with the teasing tone. Mulder found both endearing.
"I've got you now," Mulder said. "And that's better than any trinket or piece of jewelry. I don't need a talisman when I've got you."
"Still," Scully mused. She didn't argue with him, though. She simply rested the gold chain on the bed next to her like she wasn't done talking about—like they might revisit it. "You know, it kind of makes me think, Mulder…I don't have anything of yours to keep with me. Maybe I'd benefit from some kind talisman. Something—quintessentially Mulder."
"That's what the diamond's for, Scully," Mulder teased. She looked at him, open-mouthed, like she was trying to judge if he was being serious or not. He smiled at her, but he didn't say anything to confirm or deny whatever she might be thinking.
"Eat your sandwich, Scully," Mulder directed. "You hate it when the sauce gets cold."
