Perfect 
by Anjou

Title:  Perfect

Author:  Anjou  (Anjou@rocketmail.com)

Posting Date: May 1999

Rating:  R for sexual situations 

Classification:  MSR, Angst

Keywords:  None

Archive: Gossamer, Ephemeral, Xemplary; Others please do ask

Spoilers:  slots into the US6 timeline post-One Son, assumes a general level of 
knowledge of all preceding action.

Summary: To live the lie, you have to believe it; to live the truth, you have to 
speak it.  This story is the second in a series. "Speechless" is story one.   
"Perfect" does not pick up directly after "Speechless," but assumes that the 
estrangement we saw between Mulder and Scully onscreen has been compounded by 
the events of "Speechless." 

Disclaimer:  Mulder and Scully belong to 1013 and Fox.  My desire to have them 
say and do things that resonated with emotional truth compelled me to write 
this.

I wrote this story for my sister Suzanne.  Extra special thanks to Moe.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~


Perfect

  In the courtyard of one of the many federal buildings near the Hoover 
Building, there is a small, enclosed playground on the grounds of a nearby 
daycare center.  In the dark days and weeks following the Murrah Building 
bombing, it stood empty and haunted.  In a way, Scully reflected on those days 
of silence with a kind of longing, because there were days when the high voices 
and the shrieks of joy would reach her blistering ears from a distance as she 
crossed a nearby courtyard or entered the parking garage.  If Mulder noticed 
that she steeled herself and tried not to turn in the direction of the voices, 
he never said anything.  But he noticed, didn't he?  Didn't he always notice 
what she thought, what she felt?  Didn't he? 

  She used to be sure of that.

  She was wandering alongside the fence of the playground, trying not to look at 
the children cavorting inside it but inexorably drawn to them.  Safe.  They were 
safe and happy and innocent.  That was what hurt the most, really.  Not the fact 
that she couldn't have children.  The fact that this innocence would be 
blemished, would be scarred, would end and there was little she could do to stop 
it.  If only they could stay this young, this pure ... they'd be safe, wouldn't 
they?

  Her eyes were drawn to a small, brown-haired boy running in circles in the 
corner of the playground near her, alone.  He was spinning as he ran, like his 
very own planet in some irregular orbit around a star she could not see.  His 
hair stood out at all angles from the centrifugal force of his turning and he 
was smiling, dizzy with excitement of his own making.  She could hear the sounds 
of the other children as they played, the thudding noise of the seesaw as it
creaked and banged, slamming first one and then the other child down on the 
unforgiving macadam.  Gravity proven over and over, but still the children 
reached vainly for the sky, always hoping.  

  Over it all somehow, over the cacophony and the creaking of the chains on the 
swing set, the cries and the shrieks and the scolding voice of a teacher as yet 
unseen, she heard the sound of a small sigh and her blood ran cold.  She didn't 
want to stop watching the beautiful boy, but she turned.  Even as she told 
herself not to, she turned.  Even as she screamed soundlessly, she turned and 
... 

  Emily stood in the middle of the playground.  

  Her expression was grave, her small body rigid and stiff.  She was staring at 
Scully, her small round eyes serious.  Had they ever laughed?  Mulder had made 
her laugh, hadn't he?

  'No.' She felt the shudder run through her body as she stared at her 
misbegotten child.  'You don't belong here.'

  'Never meant to be, never meant to be...' Mulder's voice rang in her ears, the 
warmth of it reaching her even amidst her horror.

  Yet, there was Emily.  

  Emily, lifting her arms from her sides, her hollow eyes never leaving 
Scully's, her arms a grisly, deadened mockery of the sweet boy spinning, 
spinning at Scully's feet, her intent suddenly becoming clear.  And that was 
Scully's voice screaming in her own ears 'No!' as the black film covered Emily's 
eyes, swirling over and disappearing in an instant, and her mouth opened and the 
bees, the bees, the bees swarmed out of it and streamed toward the children.  

  'No!' Scully screamed, but no one heard her, no one.  The children played on 
as it all happened in slow motion and Scully screamed, 'No!,'  helpless behind 
the fence, unheard as they began to fall. And the boy at the fence stopped 
spinning and turned to look at her as if seeing her there for the first time.  
His eyes were green and innocent and he stared at her wonderingly, 
disbelievingly, as if she were insane and the bees, the bees, the bees were 
streaming toward his head.

  "No!"  Scully sat upright in her bed, chest heaving.  She had said it aloud 
this time, at least.  Her cheeks were wet with tears or sweat or both.  The 
bedclothes were heavy and confining around her legs and she was hot, burning 
from her dream.  She had become aware of his presence immediately as she came to 
consciousness, but she chose to ignore him.  She wiped a stray tear off her 
face, flipping back the covers and swinging her legs to the side of the bed as 
she did so.  Her back was to him as she spoke.  "Get out of my house, Mulder."  
Her voice was resolute and cold, her tone deadly.

  She pushed the bedclothes completely down to try and let the nightmare out of 
her bed and pulled the thick wool socks off her feet.  This was one of her 
nightly rituals.  Her feet were always cold when she went to sleep, but when she 
woke at 4:00 a.m. they were as overheated as the rest of her.  Mulder sat 
unmoving and silent in the chair on the other side of her room.  Typical.  He 
was not asleep.

  "Get out of my house, Mulder."  She emphasized each word quite clearly as she 
got up from the bed.  Her water glass was empty on her nightstand and she picked 
it up, glancing over her shoulder at him despite herself.  He sat unmoving, 
slung low in the chair on the other side of her room, head resting on the back 
of it, arms hanging listlessly to the floor, legs splayed out in front of him.  
She had a thought for his poor spine, going on forty years of this sort of 
abuse, as she left the room and entered the bathroom.  She wondered if his spine 
wanted out of the body it had been thrust into.  Early morning whimsy was not 
her forte she decided, as she washed her hands.  His eyes had been fixed 
absently on her in the darkness.  She assumed.  His face had been in the shadows 
and closed off to her.  He was, of course, ignoring her repeated command, a 
hallmark of the current state of their partnership.  She left the bathroom and 
entered the kitchen, turning on no lights as she moved through the known quiet 
of her apartment.  The creature of the darkness that was her partner remained 
silent and unmoving in her room, irritating her.  She decided to ignore him 
right back.

  'Maybe my womb hates me,' she thought as she poured water from the pitcher she 
kept in her refrigerator.  It was clean and cold against her tongue, slicing 
though the fog and fear of her dream.  She wasn't using her womb for its 
intended purpose, would never.  She replaced the pitcher and closed the door.  
More than likely her heart hated her, divided as it was from the rest of 
herself, loving this man who was a cipher, who didn't love her back.  'Anymore.  
He doesn't love me anymore.  If he ever did.'  Once, she had been sure of it, 
but she had done nothing about it, content to wait until the time was right, 
until she was ready.  She had wanted it to be perfect.  Maybe she had killed it, 
the love.  It didn't matter anymore.  It was dead, dead as Emily, dead as 
Melissa.  Dead as they would all soon be, probably. Or maybe only the lucky 
would be dead.  

  Scully was not lucky.  If only she could feel so dead.  If only she could feel 
nothing, like the dead.  She would never have considered that anger could feel 
so cold, so void, but not dead enough.  She re-entered her room and glanced over 
at his length in her chair.  He seemed not to have moved.  She let out a little 
chuff of irritation that could have been mistaken for a sigh and stalked to her 
bed.  She was still too hot.  Ignoring him, she undid the button on her silk 
pajama bottoms and let the material fall to the ground. Now it was his breath 
that filled the room in a gasp at the sight of her white legs in the half-light.  
She didn't care.  She held onto her irritation as she gathered the pooled silk 
from the floor and draped it over the end of her bed.  She should be able to put 
her clothes on her damned chair, but he was sitting in it like a stupid, passive 
statue.   'Where's Mulder?  What have you done with Mulder?'  The urge to shout 
it aloud almost overcame her as her eyes sought him out briefly in the shadows.  
Was he watching her?  Why?   

  The urge passed unspoken, like so many things between Scully and her partner 
and not just in their current situation.  She lay down on the bed, determined to 
ignore the ghost of Fox Mulder in her room and sleep.  Resolutely, she closed 
her eyes.  Her back was to him, ready for him to stab it again.

  When he spoke, she was surprised for a moment.  Had she actually convinced 
herself that he was a ghost?  

  "What were you dreaming about, Scully?"  His voice, quiet and bled of life, 
filled the room.  

  She thought for a second and then surprised herself by answering him 
truthfully, if curtly.  "Colonisation."

  His breath sucked in and held.  

  'Score one for Scully,' she thought. 'I actually astonished him.' Crowded 
closely behind that triumphant thought came a less pleasant one that she tried, 
but failed to push away.  'Do I not tell him the truth that much of the time?'

  "I'm sorry, Scully," his voice was a ragged whisper, full of pain.
 
  She bit back the response that came immediately to mind, 'You certainly are, 
Mulder.'  There was a silence that elongated while she said nothing.  Mulder was 
always sorry about something.  What, exactly, was it this time?  She waited for 
his next statement, burning in the darkness.

  "I wanted it all to mean something.  And I never thought..." he trailed off 
for a moment.  "I never once thought that when I found the truth, that I 
wouldn't be able to do anything about it.  That I would be powerless to stop it 
from happening."  

  His words cut her like knives, the pain in them obvious despite the 
frighteningly flat affect of his voice.  Scully turned over onto her back, 
looking for him.  Mulder sounded defeated in a way that she had never imagined 
possible.  "Mulder?"  Her voice was shaking and it held a plea in it that was 
left unarticulated, 'Talk to me.'

  He stretched a hand up from the floor to the curtains at the window, lazily 
fingering the gauzy material before pushing it aside to gaze out into the pre-
dawn streets.  It was the first time he had moved since she had become aware of 
his presence.  His voice, flat as before, slid from out of the darkness.  "Did 
you know that I was married once, Scully?"

  On her side of the void between them, Dana Scully's jaw dropped open.  She 
seemed to have lost her capacity to breathe suddenly. 'Please,' she begged a God 
she was somedays very uncertain of, 'please don't let it have been Diana.'  

  He continued speaking after tense seconds of her silence, still staring at the 
curtains, his voice almost droning, seeming very removed, very remote from this 
whole conversation.  "Not that you could find any proof of that fact anywhere.  
I have the only evidence of it and it's circumstantial at best.  You would never 
accept it as proof, Scully."

  Scully sat up in bed hugging her knees, her mouth now closed.  She stared at 
this man, this stranger in her bedroom.  

  "Did you know that, Scully?"  His tone was curious, but still remote.

  'Is this some sort of delayed shock?' she thought, while answering,  "No, 
Mulder."  Her own voice sounded flat and heavy to her ears.  'I'm dreaming this.  
Why am I dreaming this?'

  "She left me."  Mulder ran his finger over the hem of the curtain, tracing the 
stitches.  "I could say that I was young, but I wasn't that young.  I was 28.  
Old enough to know better.  But I did it anyway."  He paused.

  "Did you," Scully cleared her throat, "did you love her?" Thinking as she said 
it, 'Is that my voice, so choked sounding, I hear?'

  A silence.  "I didn't know anything about love then."  A longer pause and 
Mulder sat up, arching his bent spine straight.  Scully could hear the vertebrae 
pop from across the room where she sat in the middle of her bed.  She turned and 
pushed all the pillows into a pile behind her, propping herself up as Mulder 
leaned his elbows on his knees, fingers dangling bonelessly between his thighs, 
pointing at the floor.  "I didn't even really know her. I was in the VCS, she
was a lawyer at the DOJ.  I met her on a case and then I saw her at a bar again 
after Reggie and I had closed a serial case.  She was nice. Ambitious. I was on 
my way up.  She liked me.  She was pretty." His fingers waved at the floor.  "It 
was easy to fall into bed with her, easy to tell myself that this was what other 
people did.  Everyone told me she was perfect for me.  Perfect.  I asked her to 
marry me a month later."

  "What was her name?"  Scully wished she hadn't taken her pants and socks off 
now.  She was so cold, cold all the way inside herself. 'Unlucky,' the word rang 
senselessly in her head.

  "Hmmm....?" Mulder asked, head turning slightly toward her.  He was kicking 
his shoes off, arching his big feet as if they hurt him. "What?"

  "Her name?" Scully asked, trying not to care.

  "Laura," Mulder answered.  His voice held no inflection on that name.  "She 
was from Massachusetts, too.  From a very prominent family.  Catholic.  We were 
married three months after we met.  Big wedding.  Lots of details.  She talked 
about it all the time.  I didn't really listen.  I didn't really care about any 
of that.  I just wanted the ring."  He stopped again.

  "The ring?"  Scully was well and truly puzzled.

  "The ring," Mulder repeated, standing up and turning to look out the window, 
running his sock clad feet against the floor one after another as if they had 
been asleep.  "I never understood why some men object to wearing a wedding ring.  
To me, that ring was my proof. I'd put that ring on and everyone would know.  
Someone wanted me.  I belonged to somebody forever.  I wanted that ring."

  Scully sat back against the pile of pillows hard, her chest tight and tears in 
her eyes, astonished and aching against her will for the loneliness revealed by 
that statement.

  "That's what I remember about that day, my wedding day.  It was the feeling I 
had when she put that ring on my finger."  Mulder drew the curtains aside, 
looking at something Scully couldn't see.  His eyes were haunted in the 
reflection on the glass.	

  "What did you feel?"  Scully asked, compelled to know despite herself.

  "I felt relieved.  I thought, 'Finally, finally.' I wanted to go back to the 
Vineyard, back to England, back to every place I'd ever been and wave that ring 
around like proof.  I felt like I was finally real."  Mulder stopped talking and 
laid his forehead against the glass.

  "What happened?"  Scully asked, believing she already knew the answer.

  "I did," Mulder said flatly.  He turned around, shrugging out of his jacket 
and tossing it across the back of the chair carelessly. He sat down again, 
"Laura wanted to have children right away.  We had talked about it, a little, 
but the idea.... "  He shook his head. "The idea was an abstract, a someday.  
Not now.  Not right then.  But she was adamant.  She was older than I.  Maybe 
her desires were stronger.  Maybe that was what she needed to become real.  I 
don't know."  His head traveled to his hands briefly and he gripped it tightly 
before raising it again.  "At first, I thought it was because of what I was 
doing, everything I was seeing."  He spread his hands helplessly.

  "Roche?"  Scully asked, shivering in the increasing cold.

  "Roche," he said the name, involuntarily swallowing.  "And all the others." 
His eyes were fixed on a point across the room.  "You know this, Scully.  You 
know this.  There are predators out there, predators with human faces.  At 
first, I told myself that's what it was.  How could I keep a child safe in the 
world I knew existed? Monsters are real."  His voice had dropped to a whisper.   
He paused. "Then I started dreaming."  

  "About Samantha," Scully whispered.  The air in the room was full of 
confession.  Mulder the penitent, Scully the unwilling priest.  'Ever thus,' she 
thought ruefully.  'Only because you never tell him anything,' a voice in her 
head chided her.  'Neither does he,' she contradicted.  'Usually.'

  "Yes," his voice was a sigh.  "I started to remember.  It's so hard to explain 
it and make it sound rational.  How is it possible to forget something so 
seminal in your life?  But it is."

  Scully said nothing, afraid to speak, afraid of the unsaid end of that 
sentence.  'You know it is, Scully.  You know exactly how it feels not to want 
to remember, to be more afraid of the remembering than the forgetting.'  She 
broke out in a cold sweat.

  "Laura was terrified of my dreams and angry that I wouldn't give her the child 
she wanted.  Sex became this battlefield in our relationship.  She stopped using 
birth control.  I started sleeping on the couch."  He paused again and his hands 
clenched together on each other painfully.  "I spent more and more time at work.  
Anything not to go home.  I found the X-Files."  He stopped again.  He dropped 
his head to his hands, covering his face.  "I broke my vows."

  'Here she comes,' Scully thought, but she said nothing.

  "I had become friends of a sort with Diana at work.  She was interested in 
what I thought, what I felt.  I was married.  I felt safe.  I belonged to 
someone else.  But when it started to fall apart, I got drunk one night and 
talked to Diana about it.  About the dreams, about my fears, about what might 
have happened.  She listened to me."  He lifted his head up.  "She didn't run 
away.   She suggested I go see Dr. Werber.  And because she had listened to me, 
I trusted her the way I should have trusted only my wife.  I didn't understand 
anything about commitment really, just my own confusion, my own need.  I don't 
think I've ever understood it quite the way I should have."  He stopped again 
and looked at Scully quite deliberately.  His eyes were searching her face and 
she realized that she couldn't remember the last time he had really looked at 
her.

  "Laura left me after I went to see Dr. Werber.  I came home one day and she 
was just gone.  She left me her rings."  He smiled sadly. "I guess she 
understood me a little bit more than I thought she did. I went to Diana that 
night.  I was still married.  I broke my vows." He paused, his eyes not breaking 
their contact with hers.  "It had to mean something for me to do that, to become 
the kind of man who would break my word.  I wanted to believe that.  It had to 
be important."  He slid out of the chair onto his knees and came across the 
small expanse of floor between them in the posture of the supplicant.  He 
stretched his arms out toward her on the comforter, his hands coming close to 
where her feet lay.  Unconsciously, Scully crossed her legs Indian style under 
the comforter, tucking them close to her own body.  Mulder winced and she 
regretted her action, but she didn't move them back.  She didn't want him to 
touch her right now. His hands plucked at the comforter where her feet had been.  

  "When Diana left me a few months later, it was for a better opportunity, a 
better job.  I understood that.  I told myself that I was sure of her 
motivations.  I was on this quest and I was better off alone.  It was better 
that she left me while we were still friends."  He ran his fingers over the 
comforter near her knees.  Scully tried to ignore the heat that his hands were 
generating so close to her, so close to where she lay cold and contained, alone 
under the blankets pinned down now by the weight of his upper body as he leaned 
against the bed, still kneeling.

  "I mean, I wanted to believe that we were still friends. Although, I never 
heard from her after she left."  His fingers smoothed the covers near her shins, 
moving in lazy circles.  Scully was mesmerized watching them.  "I decided 
though, that this was how things were for me.  I was meant to be alone, because 
eventually everyone figured out how weird I was and I ended up that way.  It was 
better if I was alone, because if I weren't, I'd turn out to be just like my 
father, hurting and alienating those people that had loved and trusted me.  I 
couldn't blame Diana for her desire for self-preservation.  My career was 
sinking fast.  Laura had had our marriage annulled, not just by the church, but 
by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.  In the eyes of the law, it had never 
happened."  He stopped again.  "I decided then that it would all have to mean 
something.  I would figure out what had happened to Samantha and then all the 
pain, all the loss, everything would mean something.  I made a vow to myself.  I 
wanted to believe that I could make everything mean something."

  "Did you love her?" Her voice was coldly quiet in the room.  She hoped he 
hadn't heard the small tremor in it as she asked the question.  'And why,' she 
thought, 'do I have to know the answer to that question?  I know the answer to 
that question.  That's not fair, Dana.  He's allowed to have loved other women.'  
She steeled herself for the blow.  

  Mulder regarded her steadily from his awkward position.  His eyes were green 
and gold in the morning light, his expression impassive, but his eyes were 
searching hers.  She could not bear the directness of his gaze, so she fixed her 
eyes on her hands as she clenched them into balls in her lap.  She was trying to 
force her hands to relax when she felt the mattress bend underneath her.  Mulder 
stretched himself out across the middle of her bed, curling loosely around her, 
head on one side, knees on the other.  Scully opened her mouth to protest, but 
Mulder spoke first.

  "I didn't know what love was then." His voice was quiet, calm, but more full 
of feeling than it had been so far this strange night.  

  That was not the answer that Scully had been expecting and her brows drew down 
over her puzzled eyes, squinting at him.  "What are you talking about?" she 
asked, and Mulder shifted on the bed, placing his head on her right knee, his 
warmth reaching out for her under the covers.  He began to twine his body around 
her, winding around her like the world's largest house cat.
  
  "You know."  His left arm came around her back and his right arm came across 
her body as he moved himself into the center of her lap, pulling her closer, 
wrapping her lower body in his embrace.  He tightened around her, curling in on 
her inexorably.  His knees came around the back of her body, replacing the 
pillows she had been propped up on with the sinewy muscles of his thighs.   Her 
protest froze in her mouth at the feeling of his warm breath against her skin
between the buttons of her pajamas.  

  "Mulder," she said.  Her voice was a warning.  He sighed against her skin and 
she was reminded suddenly of the tattoo on her back, the snake curling around 
itself, never ending.  Mulder was circling her just as sinuously, his arms and 
legs around her.  He was not going to let go.

  "I used to think that I knew everything, Scully.  I wanted to believe that 
when I found all the pieces of the puzzle, that I would be able to make it 
right.  And then everything could be perfect.  For once, everything would be 
perfect.  I would be able to stop searching and just be...perfect."  His eyes 
were closed, his face against her skin and the silk of her pajamas.  Scully felt 
the trickle of something warm and wet, sliding through and under the fabric 
insidiously.  A tear.  His voice was hushed against her body, but she could feel 
it vibrating in his throat, in the expanse of his chest pressed against her 
legs.  "I had plans to make it all right, everything that had happened.  I made 
a vow to myself." 

  "About Diana?"  When had her hands gone to his hair?  Why was her voice so 
kind?

  "What?"  Mulder said querulously.  "No."  His voice was sharp, dismissive.  
"No.  Don't you see?  Don't you understand, Scully?"  

  She looked down and his face was staring up at her, his left cheek rubbing 
against the flesh exposed to him in the spaces between her buttons.  She could 
feel the sharp expanse of beard and the tender skin at the top of his cheeks 
rolling against her and she shivered. She was not cold this time.  "No," she 
whispered, looking down at him, her hands in his hair. "I don't understand."

  Mulder closed his eyes.  He pushed his nose into her flesh and inhaled.  A 
small groan escaped him as a new wave of tears crossed his cheeks, wetting her 
skin and making the pale blue of her pajamas translucent.  "Don't you love me 
anymore, Scully?"  His voice was despairing.

  Scully sat straight up in Mulder's embrace, astonished.  He tightened his grip 
on her.

  "I know you did," he said in a fierce whisper.  "It was the one thing I was 
sure of, through all of this.  You loved me, even when you were so mad at me 
that you couldn't see straight.  It took me a long time to really comprehend 
that."  He was watching her closely, as she stared down at him in wide-eyed 
shock.  He pressed his face into her belly, rolling his head back and forth near 
her still tender scar.  The beleaguered button he was worrying popped open of 
its own accord and Mulder pressed his lips to the ridged flesh of her healed 
gunshot wound in an open-mouthed caress, moving the silk away with his nose.  
"In my experience, when people get mad enough, they leave you and they never 
come back.  But you don't.  You keep staying."  

  Scully could feel the flush rising in her cheeks, feel the response of her own 
traitorous body.  She could feel the vibrations of Mulder's lips against her 
skin as he spoke.  His hands were stroking her back gently through the warming 
silk.  He sighed, a pleased warm wash of air on her belly, as he exposed more of 
it with his nose.  She shivered.  She felt his hands move under the fabric to 
her skin, one splayed hand running up and down her spine, the other's
fingertips exploring the elastic edge at the top of her underwear. She gasped 
and looked down at him, ready to put a stop to this.  

  "You still love me, don't you, Scully?" his honeyed voice rolled out from his 
throat.  He pressed his mouth against her again, sliding his lips over her skin, 
green eyes turning up to her.

  She opened her mouth to speak and then closed it.  She would not answer him.  
It was not that simple.  He couldn't just walk in here after everything that had 
happened between them and challenge her with these statements, tell her these 
things, touch her with his hands and his mouth and be forgiven.  He had told her 
nothing of his own feelings and was demanding that she state hers.  She would 
not answer him.  She stopped looking at him and looked away across the room, 
where she saw her own reflection in the mirror.  Mulder was wound around her 
like a lover, her hands still in his hair.  She removed them, staring at 
herself.  Her color was high, her breasts rising and falling rapidly.  He began 
to speak again and as his words reached her unwilling ears she had the urge to 
stop them childishly with her fingers.

  "You still love me," he said firmly, but she would not look down at him.  He 
rose up against her, untwisting his legs from behind her and pressing his face 
into the valley between her breasts.  His hands circled out from behind her, 
entwining around her waist and coming back to rest on his own elbows, capturing 
her against his face.  She tried to will her heart to stop pounding so against 
him.  "Even though I make you so mad you hate me.  You still love me."  He 
kissed her where her heart beat beneath her skin.  "And I always thought that I 
would have the time to make it all up to you.  I believed that."  He was 
speaking against her while she trembled, flushed with anger and desire.  "I told 
myself that when this was all over, I would pay for my many sins.  That was my 
vow.  I would have the time and it would be perfect.  I would be able to get it 
right for once. It would be perfect."  

  He loosened his grip and slid slowly back down to her lap, stopping to kiss 
the skin peeking out from between the two buttons that remained fastened.  
Somehow, her traitor hands had found their way back to him and cradled his head 
as he painted her skin with his heat.  He stopped when he reached the place 
where her womb lay under her skin.  One of his hands came around from her back 
and caressed the skin there, then he kissed her, just below her navel.  He 
whispered to her.  "Did you know that I've spent years trying to find Their 
research facilities so that I can get your ova back, Scully?" 

  Her breath caught in her throat.  Tears burned in her eyes.  "I found one lab.   
I took a vial and stored it, but I know you want everything that They stole from 
you back."  He kissed her again, his lips following the trail of his fingers' 
gentle touch, then hugged the middle of her body hard.  "They stole our 
children."  She gasped. "I was going to get them back for you, so that after ... 
we could have as many children as we wanted.  We would be able to keep them 
safe, safe from all of the monsters, because we'd be together."  He lifted his 
head to look at her and his hand returned to stroke her skin dreamily, moving 
across the curves of her stomach, dancing on her skin.  The tips of his fingers 
were achingly close to the bottom of her breast. 

  'Am I dreaming?'  Scully thought hazily to herself as she stared down at him.  
'Is this Mulder?'  

  "Even though I wouldn't be able to give you our children the way I wanted to, 
the way a man should, it wouldn't matter, because they would be ours.  They 
would be part of our perfect new world."  His hand moved up to the next button 
on her pajamas and he opened it, kissing the flesh he uncovered.  

  "Mulder."  Scully meant her voice to be a warning but it sounded weak and 
slurred to her own ears.

  "I had it all planned, Scully."  He rose up again, kissing her underneath her 
chin just where her throat began.  "I had all the time in the world and it would 
be perfect."  He ran a line of slow kisses from her ear down her jawline, his 
hands coming up to cup her head as he pressed himself against her.  "It would be 
perfect, because I have always loved you, even when you hated me and I hated 
you."  

  Scully shuddered at his words and felt herself moving as Mulder picked her up 
out of the bedclothes and pulled her against him, kissing her hard.  He pulled 
her down onto the bed with him, falling backwards, holding the length of her 
body atop his.  She was drowning in his kisses, drowning as her arms came up 
around his neck.  She was drowning and she rolled away from him, pushing against 
his shoulders, gasping for breath, rolling onto her back.  "Mulder, stop."  Her 
voice was a plea.

  "Why, Scully?"  He rolled with her and pressed his body against hers, all need 
and want along her.  He kissed her eyes, his tongue catching tears she had not 
realized she was shedding.

  "I didn't want it to be like this." Scully could not stop the tears from 
choking her voice.  "I didn't want it to be desperate.  I wanted..." Mulder was 
kissing her face slowly, fiercely, covering her skin with kisses that made all 
thought flee from her.  She turned her face into the comforter and he stopped.

  "What did you want, Scully?"  Mulder's voice was begging her to tell him, a 
naked plea in his tone.  It made her arms tighten around him as if they had 
minds of their own.  "Talk to me, Scully."  He was crying, too, she realized.  
Her heart broke anew.

  She turned and pressed her forehead against his.  Her voice was a whisper, 
jagged in the rising light of her room. "I wanted it to be perfect."  

  Mulder's eyes opened and she stared at the depth of the love and pain she saw 
in them.  "You are perfect, Scully."  He covered her mouth with his hand, 
stopping her protest, and then kissed her to beg forgiveness for the insult.  
"For me.  You're perfect for me," he whispered against her mouth.  "And as 
pathetic as I can be, I'm perfect for you.  I can't leave this life without 
being perfect with you even if it's just once, Scully."  His hand traveled down 
her body, trailing over her leg and he bent, finding her foot where it dangled 
near the top of his calf.  He pressed the arch of her foot into his hand, easing 
her leg up and backwards as he pressed the warmth and heat of his crotch full 
against her.  Scully started at the feeling of him as her own need surged 
through her in a wave.  As he rocked against her, Mulder kissed her softly, 
teasing glances that whispered to her of tenderness.  "Scully," he sighed, 
calling her back to him.

  When she could focus again, his green eyes were languid with desire but still 
looking straight at her.  "I need to remember this so that when I get to the 
next life this will be burned into my soul. So that I'll know you, whoever you 
are, and we can get it perfect the next time."  His hand ran over her length 
from her foot to her breast as he bent his head to kiss her more deeply.  

  Scully cried out into his mouth as he rocked against her again. "I don't want 
you to give up," she whispered, her tears falling.  Her hands had found the 
broad muscles of his back under his shirt and she smoothed them as he kissed her 
breasts and then her neck.  "I don't want you to leave me while we're still 
here."  

  Mulder's face appeared in her line of vision, his eyes wild, skin flushed.  He 
broke away from her to tear at his shirt, then pulled her more firmly against 
himself, grasping her knee and drawing her in to him.  "I won't go willingly, 
Scully.  But I won't let them take everything from me, for the promise of 
something more perfect than this."  He undid the last button of her pajamas and 
unwrapped it from her, flinging it off the bed.  He pressed his skin to hers, 
warm and alive all around her.  He kissed her again, pulling her ever closer to 
him.  "Maybe this time, there isn't anything more perfect than this," he was 
whispering as his hands traveled downward, moving her underwear down her thighs, 
his lips and his hands moving across her body ceaselessly.   

  Scully stopped crying and she could feel herself nodding as she untangled her 
underwear from her legs.  Mulder jumped when she reached for the button of his 
jeans but then pressed himself into her palm before he drew her hand up and 
away, kissing it.  He picked her up swiftly and turned her around to lay her 
against the pillows.  His breath was coming in pants now, his eyes not leaving 
her as he drew his own clothes down and off his body.  He came back across the 
bed to her as she reached her arms up to him, pulling him down to her. "Scully."  
His voice was a groan even before she ran her hands over his skin, learning his 
body as a lover.  She covered him from face to hips with her fingertips, 
watching the longing and love roil in his eyes.  When her hands encountered the 
hardness of his flesh, they closed tightly and he stopped breathing.  His hand 
came down to caress her foot as he pushed her leg up against the bed, urging her 
wordlessly.   

  She kissed him languidly as she stroked him and he moaned into her mouth.  His 
hand left her foot and teased her warm, wet skin, opening her and she hissed at 
him as she voiced her demand.  "Tell me," she whispered at him urgently, as he 
poised to enter her body.   

  "I love you, Scully."  His voice was thick with desire and tears. 

  He was waiting for her answer.  She looked him in the eyes, seeing him clearly 
for the first time, this man who had insinuated his way into her life, her 
heart, her very soul.  He was completely vulnerable to her now, even though she 
was the one opening her body to him.  'I feel safe,' she thought paradoxically.  
She kissed him with her eyes open and whispered the words into his mouth.  "I 
love you, Mulder."   

  He was inside her before she finished uttering the second syllable of his 
name.  She could feel the pounding of his heart throughout her flesh. And the 
tears came again, from her, from both of them, but they were smiling at the same 
time.  As they moved together, she thought, 'This is perfect.'  She whispered it 
to him as the sun rose and blinded her to everything but the feeling of them 
joined and he called to her, a sob in his voice.  The sound of her pulse 
pounding in time with his rose and rose until it filled her ears and she flew 
outside of her body and through his very soul.  Just now, they were perfect.  

  She opened her eyes and watched him, kissing him where his clavicles met the 
notch of his throat as he trembled and shook convulsively above her and decided 
then; she was never letting go.  She would never let him let go.  When he had 
calmed and lay shivering slightly against her, she shifted so that his head was 
cradled on her breast as he lay next to her, their legs tangled together.  She 
kissed his passion-dampened skin tenderly until he raised his eyes and she could 
see the dazed joy in them.  And she smiled, as his arms circled inexorably 
around her and they fell into a dreamless sleep together, feeling the kiss he 
placed over her heart like a promise.  He would not let go.