DISCLAIMER:  The characters in this piece of fiction that are
recognizable from Chris Carter's insane piece of work known as the X-
Files belong to him, his company Ten-Thirteen Productions and Fox
Broadcasting.  Anything else, characters, situations or otherwise,
belong to this very insane author.
RATING: PG-13
CLASSIFICATION: SA
KEYWORDS: Mulder/Scully relationship
SPOILERS: Everything through Three Words?  Something like that
URL: http://troublexf.digitalrice.com/dalexander/distantstrange.txt
FEEDBACK: always welcome at dalexander@fastmail.fm
THANKS TO: Christina, my beta-reader, and my partner in trouble who
lent an perspective on me trying to relearn how to write ;-)
ARCHIVE:  Anywhere's fine... just let me know
SUMMARY: "I can't explain it, but the memories between here and there
are distant and strange, and I'm can't tell the difference between
reality and the fantasy my mind made up to placate me."
AUTHOR'S NOTES:  This is a follow-up story to one that I wrote post-
Requiem, entitled "A Binding Between Worlds".  It involves thoughts
and such that have been running round about since DeadAlive aired.
It's just now that I'm able to put fingers to keyboard and pen them
out in full.
 
***************************
Distant and Strange
(Part 1 of 1)
By: Diana Alexander
dalexander@fastmail.fm
***************************
 
Since his return from his abduction, as well as the death he'd
thwarted for the thousandth time this lifetime, Mulder found himself
putting more and more distance between himself and whatever had meant
everything to him.  He had pushed Scully away more than once, and each
time he had done so, a hurt expression crossed her face before
settling into a worried yet understanding expression.  It was that
part that bothered him the most, he thought, the fact that she
understood.
 
But did she?  Did she really understand this?
 
He had lost count of the number of times that he had reached for the
phone from the depths of his own nightmares to call her.  To call out
for her, as he had the vague memory that he had done.
 
Yet at the same time, it seemed that he was with her the entire time.
He watched her as she discovered that she was pregnant, as well as
talking with her a hundred times or more about the worries involved in
her pregnancy and what it could mean.
 
They were both far too aware of the possibilities.
 
He had also been with her even as she searched for him, and cautioned
her against doing too much.  In those moments, she would begin by
rebelling against even, but after long moments of railing against him
and his caution, she would end it by breaking down crying in his arms.
She would pound her fists against his chest in anger, fear, and a
mixture of other emotions that he couldn't decipher, before telling
him she *had* to find him.  There was no other option for her, and he
of all people should know that.
 
While he knew that he wasn't okay, that he wouldn't be okay until they
found out what had happened to him, they felt like little more than
nightmares to him, so he had told her to take the time *she* needed.
He would find a way to hold on until then.  After all, if she had
pushed herself too far and ended up in the hospital because of her
actions, it would delay her finding him all that much more.  She
finally gave in to his request and slowed down, but it had taken a
long time for him to wear down her resistance to the idea.
 
When she finally did slow down, however, the gossip started.  They
would gossip about how she no longer cared, and used as their evidence
how easily she had given up the search.  Hearing that would send her
into a rage for days.  Eventually that vein of gossip had gone dry, at
which point it shifted onto the question of who the father of the
child that she carried was.
 
Her opinion was that it shouldn't even matter to them, and they should
shut their mouths about it.  That was one thing among many they
talked about in regards to the gossip.  There was her opinions, her
rage, her frustration at the situation as it was.  The gossip had
never bothered her before then, but now it seemed almost to emphasize
her failings, and drove her to push herself beyond the tenuous limits
she had created for herself.
 
However, even that frustration, as well as the anger often accompanied
it, seemed to cover up the source.  She was afraid.  She was afraid
that all had been lost, and that all hope of ever finding him, ever
really seeing him again beyond this, had been long lost.
 
When they chose to bring John Doggett onto the X-Files, her fury had
known no bounds.
 
After that, Scully's transformation had been remarkable, and there had
been many times when she had silenced his laughter with a look.  She
managed to turn into him when he was younger, more foolish, less
willing to trust her, and longing to protect her from the realities of
the X-Files that she couldn't accept. Whenever she had the
opportunity, Scully had left Doggett behind to follow a lead that she
had, no matter how slim it was.
 
As Krycek had once told him, she kept ditching her partner like a bad
date.  If ever there was proof that they had become more alike than
not, that was it.  When he confronted her about it, Scully had claimed
that it was all his fault, since she wouldn't have done it if he
hadn't put the idea into her head in the first place.
 
Truthfully, he couldn't deny it, so he didn't even try.  It was those
things that he remembered.  He had nightmares, both then and now, of
what had been happening to him while he was away.  Away.  It still
didn't seem real, but the scars on his body that hadn't been there
before told the story clearer than any memory his mind called upon.
 
Sometimes those nightmares even crept into his everyday awareness in
the form of flashbacks.  It confused him, and sent him further into
hiding from himself.  The memories he was so certain of before became
distant and strange, which left him feeling unable to relate to anyone
now that he had returned.  Not even Scully, which hurt the most.
 
He hadn't talked to her in about a week, if not more, despite the
numerous times that he had picked up the phone to call her.  He would
let the speed-dial get halfway through her number before he dropped it
back onto the base again.
 
Why was it so hard to talk to her?  She was his best friend even
before she had become his lover and the mother of his child.  Why
couldn't he just pick up the phone and *talk* to her like he had more
than a hundred times before?
 
Even as he lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, wondering the
reasons why, the phone rang.  Without hesitation, he reached for it,
"Mulder."
 
"Mulder, it's me."
 
Ah, Scully.  It was nice to know that the fact that sometimes thinking
of each other was enough to bring the other to the telephone hadn't
changed, even though it seemed like the rest of his world was upside
down and he no longer knew quite where he fit in.  It seemed like an
all too twisted thing that he no longer knew where he fit into his own
life.  However, with all other things taken into consideration, it
made perfect sense.
 
"Mulder?"
 
"I'm here, Scully."
 
"Well, it certainly doesn't seem like you are," her tone was more than
slightly defensive, and he closed his eyes in a silent apology to her
as she continued in a tone somewhat softer, though with no less the
edge.  "You don't talk to me anymore, Mulder, and I know this has been
bothering you.  I can see it when you're around me.  Or is that why
you haven't been?  Because I know you so well."
 
He took a deep breath before he started to speak to her. "Partially,
Scully.  I think somewhere along this path we've started on, I forgot
how to talk to you.  Either that or I was afraid to."
 
"Were you afraid of me, then?"
 
"No, Scully, not you.  It's more these memories I have.  I can't
explain it, but the memories between here and there are distant and
strange, and I'm can't tell the difference between reality and the
fantasy my mind made up to placate me."
 
"Which memories?"
 
"Memories of us together during the time in which I was missing
overlap with memories of their tortures and the things they did.  I
have the scars to prove those memories, as if I need that proof, but
those memories aren't clear. It's more like that my body remembers
something my mind wasn't there for."
 
"There is a reason for that, Mulder."
 
"What is it, then?"
 
"Because your mind *wasn't* there for it," she sounded absolutely
certain of her words as she spoke them. "Would you like me to come
over for a while?  It might be uncomfortable, but maybe we can talk
this out until we're both satisfied with the result."
 
"It's worked before," he remembered with a smile. "I'll be waiting."
 
She disconnected without another word, and he was left alone with his
thoughts once again.  Scully had sounded so certain of herself when
she said that it was because his mind wasn't there, and he wasn't
entirely certain what to think about the Scully that confronted him
here.  It was consistant with the changes in her that he had thought
he'd witnessed, but...
 
When he realised where his train of thought was leading him, Mulder
just started to laugh.  Before Scully, his need for proof was
something that was vague and unformed.  What he would have considered
proof before that would not have met her scutiny, and before the end
of their first case together she proved that in full.
 
Over the past eight years, they had become a part of each other.  He
had realised it before, but hadn't admitted it to himself.  That was
part of the reason why he had such a strong reaction to that new agent
in the X-Files, that Agent Doggett.  He had to admit that he was
intensely jealous and afraid of whatever sort of relationship that
Scully had developed with the man past her initial anger and distrust
would have on the relationship that he had with her.
 
If he had been told eight years ago that he would be as protective
and possessive as he was of her now, he would have thought the idea
insane and preposterous besides.  Somehow over the years, it had
slowly started happening, so that now he couldn't imagine being any
other way in regards to her.
 
At about that time, he was startled out of his own thoughts by a
gentle knock on the door before it was pushed open by an extremely
pregnant Dana Scully.  She was dressed in a button-down blue shirt
that he recognised as one of his own over a white shirt and a pair of
jeans.  By her smile, he could tell that she had noticed his
recognition and came over to sit beside him in the space on the couch
that he had cleared for her.
 
She leaned her head into his shoulder, and when it came, her voice was
muffled by the fabric of his shirt, "Where do you want to start?"
 
"With you stopping that?  You know I can't concentrate when you do
that," he teased her before stopping to kiss her on top of the head.
 
"With how I look?" she let out a sound of mild disgust. "How could I
possibly distract you when I look like Ahab's beached whale?"
 
"Because you're beautiful.  I've told you that..." he stopped, and she
looked up at him.
 
"Mulder, what do you remember?"
 
"Being here with you, but knowing that nobody else could see me.  I
remember making love with you, arguing with you over where we were
going to make love, and watching the location change every time that
one of us got the upper hand in the argument.  It wasn't much of an
argument."
 
"No, it wasn't," she agreed with a smile.
 
"Did it happen, though?  You're the one who taught me to look for the
evidence of events.  This body of mine shows the evidence of what they
did to me aboard that alien craft, but I don't have any evidence of
the other.  I remember what they did only in dim flashes, and in
nightmares."
 
"Are you telling me, Mulder, that you don't trust your own memory?"
 
"Not right now I don't.  I remember two simultaneous versions of
events, and I'm not sure I can believe that they both happened.  I
only have proof of one version, and that's the one that I don't know
if I can believe in."
 
"When did we change places, Mulder?  I thought I was the one who was
supposed to have difficulty believing?"
 
"I'm not sure," he had to admit, "but I was thinking earlier that
somewhere along this path that we've walked together, these eight
years, we sort of became each other."
 
"It's very true, Mulder.  But as the believer to the skeptic, in this
at least, just tell me what you think you remember ever so clearly,
and then let me tell you what I do, and we'll see if we can find your
proof somewhere in between the two."
 
"And if we don't?"
 
"Well, we *could* always find you a nice therapist..."
 
He snorted, "Scully, you know almost as well as I do that no therapist
in his or her right mind would be able to take my story at face value.
They'd smile, nod, and write down on their little pad that I was
suffering from paranoid delusion and find a nice mental institution to
place me in for the remainder of my life.  I've had enough of that
already, I think.  Besides, any therapist who didn't, I'd suspect as
being involved with the Syndicate somehow."
 
"Let me be your therapist, then.  You wouldn't even have to pay me."
 
"Not in money, anyway."
 
"I'm sure we could find other forms of payment..."
 
"Mm, indeed," Mulder mumbled as he bent his head to kiss her.
 
"Later, lover," she told him after breaking the kiss. "I think you
probably need to talk this out more than you need to be intimate with
me."
 
"I need both, Scully."
 
"Well, get this out first, and we'll see about the other.  And we'll
have to talk about what kept you so distant from me if you felt this
way."
 
"Fear, I think."
 
"Fear?"
 
"I think I was afraid both that you would reject me as well as what I
was remembering."
 
"Oh, Mulder, I think I've gone so far past rejecting you that it can't
be described in words.  Were you worried about my relationship with
John?"
 
He nodded, and pointed out, "You even call him by his first name."
 
"Well, Mulder, if you'll recall, I tried to call a certain partner of
mine by his first name, and it didn't work too well.  As I recall, I
got some line about how he made his parents call him by his last name.
We wouldn't know who that would be, would we?"
 
"Oh no.  Never," he grinned at her.
 
"Mulder," she groaned at him. "I'm trying to be serious here."
 
"No, you're trying to tease me about mistakes I've made in the past.
I still don't like my name, Scully."
 
"Then change it," she suggested, almost flippantly.  He smiled, and at
that point, she continued. "That's not the topic of discussion here,
anyway.  It's my relationship with Agent Doggett."
 
"And what is your relationship with Agent Doggett?"
 
She paused for a moment, then, and smiled.  He worried until she
started to speak. "He's been a good friend to me, Mulder.  I often
needed a shoulder to lean on while you were... away," she faltered
before speaking the last word.
 
At the thought, he shuddered.  It was obvious that she was as
uncomfortable with his death, as it had been, as he had been with the
idea that he had died.  Yet, still, there was the memory of her
crying, and clinging to him with fingernails grown sharp and ragged
from lack of care, saying that he couldn't be dead, that there was no
way.  There was nothing that could be said, other than to try and
soothe her.
 
He might have soothed her, for the moment, but he hadn't managed to
soothe her deeper worries.  Or his own.
 
"Mulder..."
 
"Hm?"
 
"What was it like...?"
 
Ah, so she had picked up on his melancholy mood.
 
"Being dead, you mean?"
 
She nodded, and he sighed softly, "To be honest, Scully, I can't tell
you.  I don't remember dying.  I don't remember a moment when I wasn't
here, around you, trying to help in whatever way I could, or just
trying to be there.  That's one of the things I've been trying to
reconcile, and I can't.  I have flashbacks to what they did, but it
feels new to me, like something I've never experienced and am being
forced to experience for the first time.  I remember the pain being so
intense that all I could do was call out for you, but that's all."
 
"They say that the body remembers," Scully said then on a musing tone,
and he listened to what she had to say with the utmost attention.
"That the body never forgets."
 
"But if I was never there in the first place..." he shook his head
against the confusing implications, then chuckled a little, "Oh, God,
Scully.  I think I've just become a living X-File."
 
"You mean you weren't before?" she returned.
 
At that, the chuckle changed into a genuine laugh.  It'd been far
too long since he'd laughed like that; a long, true laugh caused by
nothing but amusement.  She watched him, and a smile slowly started
tugging at her lips before she gave in and joined him in his laughter.
They laughed together for long moments, until they both ran out of
breath.  Afterwards, they just leaned against each other for a long
moment.
 
Mulder spoke again after a moment of silence between them, "God,
Scully... I've missed you."
 
"And I missed you.  More than you know, over these past few weeks."
 
"What do you mean?"
 
She was quiet for a long moment before she started trying to explain
it: "After you first regained consciousness, I thought all was going
to be okay.  At least after you asked me if anybody missed you.  I
did, so much, but there were others, too."
 
He nodded and waited for her to continue.
 
"However, once you were released, you started distancing yourself from
me, from everyone.  I was afraid for you, Mulder, that the things you
had lived through would prove too much and--" she stopped then,
pressing her lips tightly together. "I promised myself I would give
you the space you needed, and I was afraid I'd have to resort to
desperate measures in order to get you to even talk to me."
 
"What sort of desperate measures?"
 
She thought for a long moment before turning to him with a mischievous
look, "I might have had to tickle it out of you."
 
"Not that," he told her, wanting to start laughing again. "Anything
but that.  That's torture, Scully!"
 
"And you're saying I can't torture you?"
 
"But isn't it against the Geneva Convention?"
 
"Not if it's properly used..." she smirked.
 
There was a long moment of comfortable silence, before she placed her
head back upon his shoulder and asked him in a muffled voice, "Mulder,
are we okay?"
 
He thought for a moment on the answer, and ran his tongue over his dry
lips before answering her, "No, not yet.  But we're getting there.  So
I really was here?"
 
"You were.  Every step of the way," she said, the end of the statement
caught on a yawn.
 
"Tired?"
 
"A little.  It's been a long day."
 
"Long week," he corrected her, and she acknowledged it with nothing
more than a smile.  It was all that was needed.
 
"Want me to leave?" she asked in the awkward moment that followed.
 
"No.  Why would I?"
 
"Well, you did mention you were tired."
 
"Scully, would you stay with me tonight?" he asked, feeling nervous
the entire time.  It wasn't as though it was the first time they had
shared a bed, but right then, it could have been.
 
She smiled, "Yes, Mulder.  All you had to do was ask."
 
He smiled, and rose from the sofa.  Turning to her, he took her hands
in his, and pulled her from the sofa into his arms.  She wrapped her
arms around him, for balance at first before relaxing into a long
embrace.  They remained there, holding each other, until their unborn
child decided to have a say in the matter.
 
He looked at her in surprise as he felt the kick against him.
 
"I think he's telling us it's past his bedtime," she said with a
twinkle in her eye. "I'm not usually up this late if I can help it."
 
He grinned suddenly, and lifted her into his arms.  He stumbled
backwards a moment, and she grinned at him.  He looked down at her,
grinning back, "Let's see if I actually can make it to the bed."
 
"I told you I was heavy."
 
"No, you didn't.  You said you felt like you looked like Ahab's
beached whale.  There's a difference."
 
She swatted him, and he laughed, carrying her into the bedroom, and
kicking the door closed behind them.  After long moments of getting
ready to sleep for the night, they found themselves in each other's
arms in the middle of the bed.
 
Just as he was about to drift off, he heard himself ask her, "Meet me
halfway?"
 
"Always."
 
After he heard her response, Mulder closed his eyes, and fell into
darkness.  After long moments, the darkness began to shift into their
old office surroundings, and Scully was standing in the middle of the
office, looking amusedly impatient.  As he crossed the room to her,
and met her lips with his own, he knew for certain what the truth of
the past few months really was.
 
More importantly, though, he realised in that moment that he was truly
home.
 
***************************
 
~End~