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A force rushes through the desert air with a foreboding finality, kicking up sand and dust that stings Scully’s eyes. Instinctively, she brings her arms up to shield her head, as if the threat is to her body itself and not the consciousness that inhabits it; as if she could stop her soul from being snatched and shoved into a soldier or a grandmother or a stone. Wind whips around her for a moment longer and then is suddenly still.
“Sir?”
She lowers her arms. The military men are cautiously regarding Fletcher, who stands blinking in their midst. Scully glances to Mulder—is it Mulder? Has it even worked?—next to her, but his gaze, too, is turned to Fletcher. They briefly make eye contact, and Morris nods.
“At ease.” Fletcher— actually Fletcher, the horrible old man standing ten feet away—gives the order, and the soldiers lower their weapons, whispering in hushed tones amongst themselves about whatever the hell has just happened.
Next to her, Mulder starts towards her, but Scully finds herself flinching away, leaning back. Even knowing that it really was another man walking around in Mulder’s body, she can’t bring herself to believe she’s just witnessed its reversal at nothing more than a gust of wind.
“Scully?” he says, inquisitive, tinged with hurt. Two tones she has not heard in his voice over the last several days.
“Show me it’s really you,” and she doesn’t mean to sound this wary, but eight hours ago the man with this face had morphed into a stranger, and if she believes it’s him in there and it’s not—
“Scully, come on… it is , it finally is.”
She gives a wide-eyed, infinitesimal shake of her head. Fool me once, she thinks somewhat manically.
Mulder wets his lips, casts his eyes around. “Okay,” he says quietly. “Okay. Your name is Dana Katherine Scully—”
She scoffs, starting to turn away, we’ve already covered that, I need something more, but he moves with her to keep himself in her field of view, sand crunching underfoot.
“No, let me finish. Your name is Dana Katherine Scully, but I only call you Dana when I’m scared. The last time I called you Dana—hell, you weren’t even there, it was on my way to Antarctica.” His face falls in frustration and lights back up in the span of a second. “Antarctica! Last summer you were taken to Antarctica as a test subject for an alien virus and I came and got you and it was the coldest I’ve ever been. I passed out in the snow and you had to wake me up so we could get back to the snow tractor and both of us could barely walk, but you were definitely doing more of the work than me.”
His words tumble out in that rapid fire way of his, and this more than anything starts to let it permeate that god, yes, it’s really him, but he’s still going, voice rushed and low.
“Last month you were officially a year in remission from your cancer. Scully, did I ever tell you that was the best day of my life, the day you went into remission? We were in your hospital room and your mom hugged me and even your brother hugged me—he does hate me, Scully, I swear–”
It’s Mulder, it’s Mulder it’s Mulder, and she pulls him into her arms where he goes blessedly silent, his own wrapping around her in a tight hug. It’s him, it’s him him, not some smarmy bastard wearing his face, not just his body. If she wasn’t sure from his recount of her Antarctic abduction or the familiar lilt of his voice, she’s sure in the way that he touches her: steady, comforting, all-encompassing, not at all the careless way Fletcher had used those hands. In the three days since she’d left with his imposter, Scully hadn’t realized how much she’d missed Mulder’s casual affection, and she lets herself bask in it now, pressing herself closer to him. She can feel ashamed when the euphoria of having him back where he belongs has worn off, but for now, let his hands on her back ground her, let his breath in her hair soothe her; let it, let it, let it.
But there’s a shift in the environment around them, some minute change in the atmosphere, and she reluctantly pulls away to face the soldiers and other Area 51 officials. Mulder leaves a hand on her back.
The men’s singular focus is now on herself and Mulder. Several of them have casually drawn their guns.
Mulder clears his throat. “Hey fellas, why don’t we call this even and get out of your hair. We’ll never come back, scout’s honor. That sound good?”
Scully closes her eyes. Yes, this is Mulder, talking his way into another stint in military prison.
“You’ve stolen and tampered with classified data,” one of the men says, starting forward. It is one of whom has his gun drawn. “You’ve been in contact with a mole within our organization, you’ve been exposed to the work that we do—”
“Let them go.” Fletcher.
The other men turn towards him incredulously. “Sir?”
“Let them go!” His voice is gruff and definitive, eyes trained directly on Mulder. Scully glances up at him, and some understanding seems to pass between himself and Fletcher. Scully draws closer to him; she does not want to understand one iota more about the head of Morris Fletcher.
The raised guns are lowered, and one of the ununiformed men steps forward. “Only the people present at the exact occurrence of the event will remember it. You’re on your own.”
What does that mean, Scully wants to demand, but Mulder is already pushing her towards the passenger side of the car, eyes still fixed on the group before them.
“Mulder—”
“Let’s take the win, Scully, and get out of here while we can.” He clambers into the car and she does the same, shutting the doors on the rest of the world. He waits for the click of her seatbelt before pulling a sharp U-turn, and they’re off, speeding into the black Nevada night.
: :
Mulder drives in silence for a bit as the stars begin to fade in the sky. It’s a different silence than the first time they left Nevada; companionable instead of tense, yes, but also with the thrum of their unspoken communication restored. Scully knows exhaustion is beginning to catch up to him by the way he restlessly fidgets his hand on the wheel, and he knows to turn the A/C off before she even registers that she’s getting too cold.
This is also how she knows that he wants to talk about it.
They pass four mile markers before she’s proven right.
“So when did you know?”
“Hm?”
“When did you believe,” he amends. “That he wasn’t really me.”
Scully exhales heavily, watching her own reflection in the window. “Well… I knew something was wrong from the start, just not what. But it was your—his—utter apathy towards the X files that ultimately convinced me. Even if you were experiencing the onset of schizophrenia, you wouldn’t give up a source or kiss up to Kersch like that.”
“From the start, huh?” She can hear the smile in his voice.
“Well, yes. You were acting like– like a completely different person. You asked for cigarettes. You called me a nazi.”
A startled laugh bursts out of him. “What? God, Scully, I’m sorry you had to put up with me.”
She smiles and shakes her head, turning back to look at him. The lights from the dash are enough to distinguish his guilt-ridden features. “It wasn’t you, Mulder.”
“Yeah, but you thought it was.” He glances in her direction, expression pained. “Is there anyone else I need to apologize to?”
“No one else is going to remember. Otherwise I’d be worrying about my job right now.”
“Oh, right. Small miracles, huh?”
“If they were, though…” Scully considers her next words carefully. She thinks of his voice calling her Danes and decides she has earned it. “Probably Kersch’s secretary.”
His brow furrows. “Kersch’s secretary?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“What did I do?”
“Well, Mulder, I think you slept with her.”
His head whips around and the car jerks in the same direction. “You’re joking,” he says, voice strangled, not putting his eyes back on the road.
She shakes her head, biting back a smile. It had been—relieving isn’t strong enough a word—to realize those had not been Mulder’s own actions, but it is still cathartic to watch him squirm now. It is actually downright enjoyable to see him so uncomfortable at the thought of touching another woman, and it’s becoming easier and easier to banish the man of the last few days from her mind.
His hands have stopped fidgeting and he is now gripping the wheel very tightly. “Well, I’m. I’m glad this whole thing is our secret then. Please tell me that’s the worst thing I have to apologize for.”
“Oh, it’s definitely up there,” she teases. “Probably number three, maybe number two.”
“Scully, you’re killing me,” he groans, tipping his head back against the seat.
Scully can’t help it, she laughs a little at his misery, but ultimately takes pity on him. “Mulder, nothing that he did was your fault. I don’t blame you for any of it.” She reaches over to squeeze his arm. “I’m done torturing you.”
“Oh, that’s good, because I think I was gonna crash the car at whatever’s number one on that list.”
“...For now.”
He turns his smile on her, genuine and adoring. “Business as usual, then?”
She feels her own face match his expression. “Business as usual.”
: :
Morning slowly begins to arrive around them as they approach Las Vegas, a dewy yellow horizon replacing periwinkle replacing black. Rachel to Vegas is far from the longest drive they’ve undertaken together—it can take longer to go half as far on the beltway at rush hour—but Scully has spent so much of the last week sitting in a plane or a car that her tolerance is low and her back is aching. She can see past her own reflection in the window now, the pale dawn light enough to expose the vast, sandy expanse of their surroundings that slope up into distant rocky outcrops on either side of them. It’s beautiful, but she’s had enough of Nevada for a lifetime, and the gritty feeling of sand in her shoes only sours the association.
Next to her, Mulder yawns, pulling at the knot of his tie. He’s still wearing the suit that Fletcher had dressed him in yesterday morning, a more straight-laced version of his usual ensemble, everything tucked and buttoned and tied where it’s supposed to be. Is he tired because he hadn’t gotten enough sleep in Fletcher’s body? Or because Fletcher hadn’t gotten enough sleep in his? Now that she has no choice but to accept that, yes, the two really had swapped places, Scully is frustrated that she can’t study the experience more thoroughly. There’s so much she’ll never know.
She soothes her frustrations by letting her gaze shift to Mulder’s profile. Tie loosened in his undone collar, jaw darker than she usually gets to see it, hair somehow still managing to flop over his forehead. He must feel her eyes on him, because he breaks the silence to ask,
“So what would I have had to say for you to believe it was me?”
She blinks her thoughts back into focus. “Believe when?”
“Here in Nevada, at Fletcher’s house. When I tried to convince you out in the driveway. What would it have taken for you to believe me then?” His tone isn’t accusatory, just curious, and Scully considers for a moment.
“I… don’t know, Mulder. You have to understand, you had the face and voice of a stranger and Fletcher hadn’t yet betrayed your source. It had more to do with how he acted than how you acted; your patterns and mannerisms are what I’m more familiar with compared to a total stranger, so rationally—”
“Yeah, but if you were going to believe me then , what would it have taken?”
Scully purses her lips, and annoyance prickles at the forefront of her mind. Why does he have to pick and pick and pick? Go back over every beat and make her turn her own psyche inside out for his amusement? Heaving a sigh, she acquiesces anyway.
“I don’t know, I guess– I guess it would have to be interpersonal rather than case-related, something that isn’t on record somewhere that anybody could find,” she begins, earnestly, obediently tracing her own thought processes. “But we’ve been bugged before, Mulder, I don’t– there’s nothing that could demonstrably prove that you were yourself, nothing I could say with certainty that only you know. Any number of people could see what I– what I eat for breakfast or how long I wash my hands; what I perceived to be a complete stranger, an insane complete stranger, could only make me suspicious of his intentions, his character.” Frustration has crept into her tone, and she says with some finality, “Without Fletcher’s behavior, I never could’ve made the leap.”
Her initial irritation at Mulder’s probing line of inquiry has turned inwards—God, could truly nothing have convinced her? Was this ordeal damned to drag as long as it did from the very beginning because of her own inability to believe?
But Mulder doesn’t push her further, instead lightly asks, “Well, what would you say, if it was me?”
“If…?”
“If you had to convince me you were really you, but you didn’t look like yourself.”
“Mulder, I wouldn’t have to say anything. You’d believe me immediately,” she replies flatly, but then there’s a flash in her mind’s eye: of bloodstained concrete, of his gun on her, his voice screamed raw.
Scully wets her lips. “Actually… I have had to do that.”
He takes his eyes off the road to look at her, holding eye contact for a beat. She knows he’s thinking of the same thing as sure as she knows her own thoughts.
She breaks the moment, continues on. “I suppose… I tried the same things you did. I said your name, I said your family’s names.”
“And I didn’t believe you.”
There’s a pause as the moment plays behind her eyelids—the desperation evident in the shake of his gun arm, the panic that had roared in her ears when she realized it wasn’t her he was seeing.
“There wasn’t exactly time to keep going.”
His voice is soft. “And if there was?”
She wants to argue, wants to dig her heels in and say no, nothing could ever be that convincing, or otherwise accost him for making her bare her throat to him in such a way, but, unbidden, her mind takes hold of the question and begins a slow trot away. To make Mulder believe… what would she say?
The car goes over a pothole, jostling her coffee from the night before in the cupholder where it rattles against some seed shells. At some point, Mulder had turned the A/C back on, and now it sucks in the dusty, diesel-tinged smell of the road outside. Wispy orange clouds reach towards the horizon ahead of them, waiting for the touch of the sun’s rays. Interpersonal , she had said.
“I’d have said… you take your coffee black, unless we’re working late, in which case you always add two cream. You never leave the office without sunflower seeds in your pocket, but if you do, you make us stop at that corner store on F street to get a new bag. You must have half a dozen half eaten bags in your desk drawer.”
Next to her, Mulder is looking dutifully ahead, corners of his mouth creeping upward. She keeps going.
“You talk to your fish when you feed them and– and you feed them three shakes once a day because more than that isn’t good for them. You tell me that every time I go to feed them for you. You organize our files by type of encounter even though I tell you we should do it alphabetically or chronologically. You… you hold my hand when there’s turbulence on planes and I’ve never said thank you.”
Why is her throat tight? It’s all coming out in a rush. He’s smiling earnestly now, skin tinted pink in the dawn glow.
“You had to give me CPR in Antarctica, and I-I never told you this, but it ended up giving me a bruised rib. In that forest in Florida, you made me sing Joy to the World three times until you fell asleep and by the end, I wasn’t hitting a single one of the notes. On—on our very first case, it rained and rained and rained and you dragged me out to a graveyard to try and convince me aliens had done it and all I could do was laugh, but you were laughing, too.”
Dazzling light fills the car as the sun breaks over the horizon, casting a golden halo around Mulder that makes the unabashed adoration on his face even harder to stare directly at. Scully suddenly feels like a prey animal, small and vulnerable with a soft underbelly on display, and something like panic or regret crawls up her esophagus.
She clears her throat and looks away. “So.” A pause. “Convinced it’s me?”
Her heart thumps wildly in her chest; she feels as if she just ran a marathon. All she’s done is list things he already knows, things that have objectively happened, so why does she feel flayed open, a cold cadaver with its chest cavity bared?
But then his hand extends palm up over the center console, face still shining in a way that she feels the need to squint her eyes against. “Always.”
Scully ducks her head, takes his hand. Lets him link their fingers together over her stale coffee. There’s no turbulence, no liftoff, but she holds on as the sun warms the desert sky, casting long shadows from the foothills of the mountains that don’t quite reach them.