Chapter Text
“I’m sorry,” the nurse at the front desk of the oncology ward says. She’s blond, looks to be half his age, and barely keeping her eyes off her gossip magazine. “But it’s family only until three tomorrow.”
And it’s this he can’t handle anymore.
He’s been Fox the orphan, Fox the forgotten, Fox the one who makes no decisions, who has no tie, no ring to belong in. He can sign papers and watch from the sidelines. He can chase backs of the women he loves, his sister— that elusive red string that now passes into the light with her.
Lost.
And he will be lost with them.
Holding cold hands in soulless hospital wards, sitting accompanied by Thanatos himself, until someone with more say, someone who is family, comes along and he is Fox the orphan again.
“Can’t you make an exception?”
Four gifts burn a hole in Mulder’s pocket and now he produces one of them, the least important.
He pops the highly polished mahogany box open, and shows the inside.
The nurse drops her magazine and gapes at the diamond presented to her. It is a princess cut in pink, a remnant of a shady Mulder deal with the Burmese government during the Cold War, which his father had appropriately passed off as a family heirloom, but now it only waters the eyes of the woman in front of her and pales her skin.
He knows it could buy this whole damn hospital and then some, and that maybe he should never have taken it out of its security deposit box.
But this is about Scully.
And so nothing else matters.
“Oh, my god,” she whispers in awe. Her eyes flying from the ring to his face and back again so quickly her hair bobs. “You’re going to propose?”
“If you’ll let me through.”
“Well, t-then of course, sir,” she says, gesturing for him to do just that. “It’s room 108.”
Mulder can’t quite find a smile for her. Or for the gossips that flurry to her side the minute his back is turned, whispering about the tragic fairy tale unfolding before their very eyes.
The part of him capable of masking anything with humor is long gone, has crawled into the darkest recesses of his soul and is waiting to die with Dana Scully. What is left is just a rumpled man with fluffy hair and a rushed shave, dark circles under his eyes and a black suit in the shape of a turtleneck and a leather jacket.
He belongs here, walking these floors of the dying, towards the room that holds all sources of suffering.
And yet his face lights up as he is allowed through the doors, and he sees her, tired, thin, a shell of herself. Alive. Still alive.
Scully.
He’s walked through tunnels and tunnels of darkness, searching for answers that became more cruel and ugly than he could ever imagine, weighed down by truths about her body that he has no idea how he will ever share with her, and yet coming into her presence is like coming back into the light. There is no death here, not really. She is warmth and sunlight and colour, and he could kneel at her side, grow roots and flourish in the power of her presence.
“Hey.”
He doesn’t hear Bill’s grumbling complaints, and only just greets Maggie with a squeeze at the shoulder, as he makes his way to Scully’s side.
Like his sense of humour, the doctor’s mask she used to wear has crumbled, and she can’t keep the relief of seeing him out of her blue eyes.
“Welcome back.”
It’s a good day, today. He can see it in her posture, the fact she’s sitting up. There’s a core of steel at the centre of Dana Scully, and today it is keeping her upright with dignity.
He crowds her knees and seats himself so he’s facing her, grasping for her hand and pressing her precious fingers to his lips.
“I have news,” he tells her. “Can we talk?”
Before he can see the hesitancy in her expression, the vulnerability of all the potential horrors that he has uncovered been unveiled in front of her family, all of it too much, he turns to apologetically meet Maggie’s gaze.
He doesn’t have to plead with the Scully matriarch. She gets up, dusts herself off and declares she could use some lunch.
“What?” Bill complains, finally catching up. “No. Mom, you can’t just—“
“We all need our sustenance, Bill Jr. And Dana won’t be alone.”
With the greatest patience in the world, she drags the much larger man out of the door as if he were nothing but a wailing toddler, inconvenient and loud.
“I didn’t think you were going to share with me anymore,” Scully says, drawing him back. Her voice is soft and there is a broken edge to her now that she doesn’t have to be strong for her mother and brother anymore.
Mulder looks at her, his guilt, his love—
He wishes he could be kinder, less selfish. Give her what she wants without it causing her pain. Keep her in his life and know she would be safe.
“I wasn’t,” he admits. “If it were bad news.”
He can’t have anything both ways.
“But I decided not to keep the truth from you,” he says, adjusting his hold on her hand so they are tightly bound in her lap. “We made a deal once upon a time, after all.”
Her lips wobble at the centre of her smile, and her eyes are rain-grey and watery, surrounded by smudges of red that look brown only to his eyes. Damage from chemo hiding bruises from too much crying.
They are a pair, the two of them. Dishevelled, broken and weak at the threshold of death’s door.
“I have something for you,” he says. “Some things that belong to you.”
He’d walked away from his smoking enemy that morning, realising that Scully had been right all along; this can’t be about him. If it is about him, he will break and shatter, turn to ash across the Atlantic and never find his place at her feet again. This has to be about Scully.
If he doesn’t push aside his self-hatred, his self-destructive inclination will draw her in and force the last breath from her lungs in a violent fit of denial.
He doesn’t deserve her.
He would almost see her destroyed in his bid to keep her from his side sometimes. If she didn’t exist he won’t be able to hurt her.
But he can’t be that person. Nothing else matters than Dana Scully’s life and existence. She is the only thing that is real, the only truth in his life. A constant that makes everything else make sense in this universe.
And no matter how she has been hurt because of him, no matter how her body has been violated and harmed, Mulder cannot just let her go to her place of peace. He has to hold her back.
That is the only way he knows how to stop being a coward.
“This,” he says, placing the mahogany box into her hand. “I’m sorry I didn’t ask you that morning.”
“Mulder.” Her voice is nothing but a whisper, trembling across her lips. “No.”
She shakes her head in denial, as he gently presses the lid open to reveal the ring, a tie with the colour he cannot see. And he knows— He knows, as painful as this is, it is not for lack of love.
She would spare him this too, because she loves him.
“You’ve always been the one to protect me,” he murmurs, stubborn selfish prick that he is, and leans forwards.
His fingers dig gently into the small ball of her shoulder, touching bone under thin skin and vanishing muscle. Heart so full of aching love, gracing the strength of her, as he leans on her one final time. His shadow passes over the ring resting between her hands, taints the virgin white of her gown, green finding blue in the darkness between them.
“Let me fight for you now,” Mulder begs as he kisses her for the first time.
They don’t talk about the important things, it is another pact of theirs. If they did, they would’ve ended up on this bed, grasping at each other, within weeks of their first meeting. They don’t talk about the important things because what matters most is their ability to work together, to search for new truths together, to unravel the mysteries of the universe together.
But there is no work anymore. There are no x files beyond this. If Scully dies, there will be no fight left in him.
So at the edge of the shadow between life and death, they are free to say and act on what they have sworn not to speak of.
Here, where everything changes, he is free to pour his soul into this kiss and place his heart in her hands where it has always belonged.
And he does, pressing firmly into her, a quiet argument against lips that have never lost their passion, grasping, begging, imploring with every ounce of his intellect and emotion, his devotion to her, for her life — for her permission to do whatever it takes to keep her alive.
Scully keeps him close, even as she pulls away to catch her breath. Her fingers dig into his black shirt, and she leans on him, her head pitched forwards as she fights for air.
And Mulder, still hungry for her skin, runs both his hands up, along the column of her throat. His fingers tangle in her short hair, and his palms hold her cheekbones like an offering to the sky.
He nudges her up, far enough to press his lips to her forehead, and then his own face in close to hers.
“I love you.”
He smiles for her.
He is tired and overcome with sadness, and not so long ago he had attempted to take his own life out of guilt. Not once, but twice. Now there is no time left for guilt, not anymore. These things die first, or not at all. And there is no space for it on this small hospital bed.
There is only her sorrow for herself— for him.
“Mulder,” she says when she has caught her breath. “We don’t need this. It isn’t necessary. Go ahead and share your theory. I’ll always listen to you, ring or not. You know I will.”
She is small and fierce. Scully. And his heart overflows with adoration.
“I know,” he says, surges forwards to press his lips to the corner of her mouth in appreciation.
When he doesn’t answer her, she looks at him solemnly and answers the question his silence poses.
“I’m afraid,” she admits, pressing her palm over his heart and pushing gently. In the space she creates between them, she cradles the ring with her free hand. “If I let you have this now, what will become of you when I’m gone? You’re so wild and impulsive, and you’ve hurt yourself because of this before, to give meaning to it.”
She closes her eyes with the pain of the memory, and her breathing is a trembling ghost between them.
And Mulder, he—
He would like to ask her angrily why she denies him the chance to take her hand and walk with her across the threshold, why she insists on leaving him behind when the world is so bleak and pointless without her. A month ago he would’ve shaken her and scolded her, and they would’ve fought like you can only fight when death is still far enough away to be an abstract thing.
Now he knows better.
Now there is hope.
But he has no right to suggest it to her, if he is not family.
“I won’t hurt myself,” he promises. “No matter your answer I will live diligently so you won’t have to look back over your shoulder with worry. You always knew the truth, and I will always live by that legacy, Scully. You saved me.”
The last comes out, choked somewhere between a sob and a disbelieving laugh, and they look at each other, faces swimming beyond the tears, smiles watery with tragedy.
“But this is the proof of me,” he adds, giving the hand of hers that is still holding the ring a squeeze. “That you will never have a need to question. A bloody diamond, rich with a history of conspiracy and government violence. A vow heavy and grand enough that you can’t discredit it, even with your eloquence and beautiful mind, Dana Scully.”
This time it’s Scully that chokes back a laugh.
She lets go of his heart to touch his cheek. “You and your purple prose.”
He gasps and closes his eyes against the touch of her, too overwhelmed with pain and hope and despair.
The urge to reach forwards and grasp her around the middle, to bury his face in the crook of her neck and hold her close, to never let her go, is overpowering. He would shield her against the cancer with his very body if he were able, and they would find their skeletons here, dressed in the black of a groom and the white of a bride, and have to dig a grave big enough for two.
But he fights it, as he had said he would. He fights to keep himself on the edge of life so that he will be able to tug her over on the right side when the time comes and he has her permission.
“If you say yes,” he says, his throat knotting and turning his voice to a whisper. “You can write me a will, and I will follow it as I have never followed any set of rules before.”
She quirks her eyebrow sceptically and, ah yes, there she is. Scully. Hollowed cheeks and bruises under her eyes, and a fire of wisdom and defiance that radiates out of her. Precious and beautiful, the best the universe has to offer.
And he is the fool with a stupid gift in his hand, asking the princess to believe him.
“I mean it,” he insists with the kind of madness he only saves for his really extreme theories.
And Scully—
She laughs. Not the laugh of the one doomed to tragedy, not the laugh of the sorrowful not yet ready to let go. No, she laughs like the living, surprised by something joyful and incredible. It is deep and quiet, weakened in voice by the cancer, but never in spirit.
“I trust you, Mulder,” she says, repeating an old vow. “I choose to believe you.”
He loves her.
Like the tide he surges naturally into her gravity and kisses her again.
This time, gentler. This time, knowing she’s coming around. Say yes, he asks her more calmly, more deliberately. Say yes, he thinks, as she pulls back with a pretty giggle and the most beautiful blush on her cheeks. Scully.
“This is crazy,” she declares, lifting her head. Her hand over his racing heart. Her body within the circle of his arm. Closer than she has ever been in a moment of joy. “Yes.”
And Mulder is standing in the wild Oregon summer rains again, in a forest at night, in their den, in his apartment, at a hundred crime scenes across the continent. Where her hand touches him, joy blooms. Where her presence is he will always feel this exhilarating source of happiness.
“Yes?”
This is where they belong, caught in each other’s madness, in the impulsivity that comes from like minds.
And like the ouroboros on her back, like a prophecy, she had made it all come full circle. Given it meaning and purpose, beyond the will of others.
Only what Scully wants matters.
“Don’t make me repeat myself, Mulder,” she says.
And kisses him to give him proof it is real.
“Oh, god,” she continues when they part, wrinkling her nose in mild disgust. “Will I have to call you Fox now?”
He laughs for the fun of it for the first time in months. “Not even when you’re mad at me,” he promises, nuzzling her cheek.
Mulder is so caught up in the moment, so distracted by the novelty of smiling against her skin, his fingers digging into her hip, he doesn’t really want to face reality. He could sit here forever with Scully at his side, relishing in a moment of real honesty between them. He could press his cheek to her shoulder in slight bashfulness as she slides the ring on her bony finger, watching it happen with bated breath.
“This will have to go back in whatever safety deposit box you took it from,” she announces primly. “You shouldn’t have taken it out in the first place.”
“And what would you have me do instead? Propose with a keychain?”
“The only thing better would be an alien implant,” she says sarcastically. And adds, holding up her left hand to watch the sunlight reflect in the diamond, “Or this.”
He pouts. “You don’t like my family legacy?”
Scully narrows her eyes at him. “Let’s just say I’m glad I get to rebrand it a little from here on out,” she says, tugging on a strand of his hair.
“Don’t worry,” he says and catches her hand to hide his grin in her palm. “I already got you a replacement for the ring.”
He feels her relax under him and knows she’s thinking of the simple gold bands he’d shown her months before, when he’d first broached the idea. It’s what’d made her feel comfortable, he knows; simple, understatement, the perfect gift for an army wife. But Mulder isn’t in the army, and Scully deserves whatever he can give her.
He’ll spoil her, now she’s given him permission.
He produces a different box, this one plastic-y and black, and Scully, not recognising it, takes it with apprehension.
“Mulder,” she says when she unveils what seems to be an empty glass vial. “What is this?”
He looks at her with all the solemn innocence he can muster. “An alien implant, of course.”
They’re almost back to normal by the time Maggie and Bill return, accompanied by Father McCue.
“—Can’t just go with him like that, Mulder,” Scully is saying. “He’s dangerous!”
“And what else was I supposed to do? Let him loiter here in the oncology ward?” Mulder retaliates. “It’s not like I can ask the FBI for a guard against someone like that.”
He shouldn’t be this thrilled to be arguing this point with her. But she lifts herself up, off her mattress, her hair flying out and her blue eyes sparking lightning, and for a moment she is herself again, Scully, furious and ready to tear apart his reasoning. So very alive.
“Is that why--“ she begins, but can’t finish the question. “To play guard dog?”
Mulder grins and leans teasingly closer. “You know it’s about access.’
Scully flushes.
And it would’ve been an endearing moment, if Bill Jr hadn’t butted in dismissively. “What is this? You’re not making her work, are you, Mr Mulder?”
Mulder’s just close enough to see the moment all the mischief of a good argument dies in Scully, and real fury replaces it.
She whips around so fast Mulder has to lean back to give her space, and levels her older brother with a look of pure rage.
“That is none of your business, Bill,” she snaps.
“It is, though,” he says, towering over the bed, all older brother dominance. “You’re sick, Dana. He shouldn’t be upsetting you.”
“Why is it you always think that my work is harmful to me, Bill? This isn’t the 18th century,” Scully counters, cool and scornful. “What next? Are you going to assume too much knowledge is going to hurt my womb?”
And Mulder, he—
He winces at her tendency to have psychic moments where it is most hurtful to herself, her striving for truths she’s entitled to reaching out even subconsciously beyond what she should be able to know.
It makes for living with several ticking timers, and he needs to navigate these delicately.
“Look,” he says, settling his hand down in between Scully and Bill in a dangerous attempt at playing referee. “In this case our investigation has turned up some information that will be beneficial to— to Dana, and—“
“Mom,” comes the irritated exclamation from his partner, little sister mode completely activated. “What is Father McCue even doing here? I didn’t ask—“
She stops, exhales with the kind of exasperation that belies just how tired and upset she really is, and it draws Mulder’s attention like a string directly to his heart.
And seeing her face, he knows it is too much. There are too many people in the room, too many disagreements, and Scully is too tired for everyone’s opinions. Even for Mulder this feels like too much, unused to having to handle this many people in a crisis situation, and he zeroes in on her, grabbing her hand and touching her neck in comfort.
Scully sighs and closes her eyes, calmly re-centering herself.
When she opens them again, Maggie is at her other side.
“I’m sorry, Dana,” she’s saying. “I didn’t mean— I thought you might want—“
“It’s okay, mom,” she finds a tired smile and then looks past them both to address the priest. “Thank you for coming, Father. There’s something I do need to discuss with you, but I have something to share with my family first.”
The old man nods solemnly. “Thank you for having me, Dana,” he replies with the respect only a priest can have for the dying. “I’ll be right outside when you need me.”
Bill holds the door open for him and directs his expectant gaze towards Mulder, who does not budge.
“Mulder stays,” Scully declares with a finality that could be carved into stone.
She lets go of his hand only to ping the doctor, who arrives for an unexpected lecture on what Mulder has found of treatment. Mostly Scully relates it with calm, cool detachment, relaying what Mulder has discovered about her abduction, the tests that they had performed her, and the role her chip played. She recounts more of her history to them than he knows she is comfortable with, and when Bill begins to interrupt in defence of the military, she and Maggie both level him with a single, chilling patented Scully stare that shuts him up for the rest of the lecture.
“What do you think, doctor?” Maggie asks at the end of it.
“Unfortunately, there isn’t much more conventional medicine can do for your daughter,” he says with real sorrow in his voice. “The only thing we can try at this point is the unconventional.”
Silence falls at this statement, and only Scully nods in response to this, as if it is what she had always known.
Her fingers curl into Mulder’s for support, and he waits quietly for her to make the decision.
“Mulder, I think you’re—“
“This is ridiculous,” Bill Jr cuts his sister off again. “Dana, you can’t possibly listen to this man. He’s not even family. He’s your co-worker. A co-worker that believes in little green men, and—“
“Grey.”
Mulder is about to push himself off of the mattress — this is the last time he’s going to tolerate Bill’s disrespect of her— but Scully’s words, and the left hand she uses to grab his arm possessively, stops him dead in his tracks.
“What?”
“They’re grey, Bill,” she elaborates. “Not green. And Mulder isn’t just my co-worker.”
It’s then, the set-up of the room seems to come into clear relief to everyone present. Mulder has placed himself at the edge of her mattress, ahead of Bill, ahead of Maggie, firmly placed at Scully’s side as if they’re a unit. He has been allowed at her side, been given permission to have a say in this life or death situation. She has treated him to the power of a husband.
And the red stone that now ties them sits glaringly in the black and white cut where their shoulders press together, impossible to ignore.
Maggie looks like she’s about to cry.
“Dana,” she whispers, her hand lifting in a weak gesture towards the engagement ring. “Is that—“
Scully’s fingers dig into Mulder’s shoulder, tightening around his shirt and the ring, as if she is afraid it might be stolen from her. She is a deer in the headlights, a flight risk waiting to happen, until Mulder places his hand gently over her wrist and brushes his thumb gently over her pinky finger.
Then she nods stiffly in confirmation.
And Maggie seems to fall apart in relief.
“Congratulations,” she says, beaming at the both of them.
Mulder opens his mouth to thank her. It’s such a surreal conversation to be having, to be congratulated and scolded all at once, as if he isn’t sitting on Scully’s death bed, as if they won’t have such a short time together if his smoking enemy is lying as he always does. For a moment, they are caught in an illusion of conventionality where the death that will part them is far from them, rejected by a tradition, a ceremony of gestures and words that politeness demands shall never be broken or discarded.
For a moment they are protected in this ancient circle.
And then Bill Scully loses his temper in earnest.
“Congratulations? How can you congratulate him, Mom?” He snaps, rising to his feet. “Dana, he’s manipulating you. How can you have lost yourself so much to let him place that thing back in your neck, when he claims in the same breath it was originally injected as part of an experiment? This fraud of an engagement only exists to use you as a lab rat one last time before you die.”
And it’s enough.
Mulder is on his feet, out of Scully’s grasp before she can stop him.
It’s enough that these men have violated her body and violently bypassed her consent. It is enough that she has been hurt and damaged beyond repair. It is enough now. But that Bill Scully, her own brother, would question her intellect, her ability to make her own decisions, that he would disrespect her and degrade her and try to take away her independence so crudely in a moment where her life is so at stake, is the last straw.
Mulder doesn’t know what he’ll do when he crosses the distance to Bill Scully. He knows this isn’t the time or place for violence. But he just needs the man to shut up, and—
“Fine,” Scully says behind her. “You’re right, Bill. And you’re right, mom.”
For a moment all Mulder can see is the smug look of victory on Bill’s face. For a moment he is frozen in fear that Scully’s natural tendency of defiance against authority has been curbed by her exhaustion or her love for her family, or her faith in conventional science.
But then he turns around to find her smiling serenely.
“This engagement is a bit of a sham” she says, glowing. “So let’s end it now, shall we? Mom, why don’t you call Father McCue back in and ask if he’ll perform a wedding ceremony here?”
“Dana—“
“Scully, the—“ Mulder begins, taking a step back towards her.
“Don’t worry, Mulder,” she reassures him, a twinkle of humour in her eyes. “It’s standard practice that Father McCue will want to speak with each of us privately to make sure we’re not being completely impulsive. While he’s talking to you, we’ll re-insert the chip into the back of my neck.”
Mulder gapes at her a moment too long.
And then he grins.
Christmas coming early this year.
“Thank you,” he says, crossing the room to kiss her just one more time. And then, to really spite her brother; “Thank you, darling.”
Scully wrinkles her nose up at him at the endearment, and Mulder chuffs.
“We’ll work on it.”
“You better.”
Mulder holds the door open for Bill Scully, already searching the hallway for the catholic priest, when a pair of hands grab him by the front of his shirt and hauls him out of sight.
His back hits the wall with a thump.
And he stares across the distance at just one more furious military man, who huffs and puffs and finds he cannot destroy anything.
“You are a privileged little twat, Mr Mulder,” Bill declares furiously.
The thing about Mulder: he’d been intimidated by Bill the last time they’d met. Bill had been the personification of a gatekeeper who didn’t want him near Scully. And he’d been entitled to that opinion, to enforce it even, being her family.
He’d reminded Mulder of a time when he had been powerless in the face of family; when all he could do was watch as two Scully women closed the door on him and refused to let him fight to keep his most precious person alive. When he’d been told time and again to simply accept her demise without a fight. When he had been informed that his belief in her was the most useless belief of them all.
Now all that has changed because Scully has given him permission to stay. She’s given it all meaning, has given him purpose. She’s decided to make him family in a way no one can dispute.
Mulder believes in Scully, and in return she has allowed him to fight for her.
Bill Scully has lost all his authority.
And so Mulder merely shrugs.
“I’m very privileged to be allowed to care for your sister,” he says glibly. “Whatever other privilege I do have, at least I know to use it, all of it, to keep her alive instead of pushing her towards death.”
That’s the one thing he cannot forgive.
And so he stares coolly back as Bill Scully grows dark with fury.
Don’t wave anything red in the face of a bull, people always used to say. But Fox could never see red.
At this very moment he doesn’t give a shit.
“Bill? Mr Mulder?” Father McCue, as if called, pops up. “Is everything alright?”
Bill clenches his fingers into Mulder’s shirt, lifts him a fair few inches off the floor and then hauls him back against the wall with a harrumph.
This time it hurts when his head is knocked against the wall.
But when he cracks an eye open, he finds that Bill is retreating towards the elevator, and Father McCue is his much improved company.
“Everything’s fine, Father,” he says, smiling. “You’re just the person I was meant to come find. In fact, you’re in great demand right now.”