TITLE: Arcades II:  (Look homeward angel now, and melt with ruth) 1/2
AUTHOR: Sarah Ellen Parsons
E-MAIL ADDRESS: se_parsons@yahoo.com
DISTRIBUTION: Archive wherever you want, just keep my name attached.
SPOILER WARNING: Everything, 6th season, Arcadia, Alpha, Trevor.
RATING: Hard R for references to real life.
CLASSIFICATION: Story, Mulder/Scully, Mulder-angst, UST, and H.
KEYWORDS: Angst?
SUMMARY:  Arcades is Latin for "people who live in Arcadia".  I'm
sticking with Milton for the subtitle and "Lycidas", a dandy little
poem about a young man from Cambridge (Edward King) who was lost at
sea.  It fits the mood of Season 6: Mulder and Scully, lost at sea.

And yeah, I know Thomas Wolfe already stole the line for a title.  But
this ain't no "Look Homeward, Angel" believe me.  The LAST word is your
clue.

DISCLAIMER:  Oh, Mighty Fox, please do not sue me.  You will make my
cats homeless and I shall have to go to debtor's prison.  Alas.  

I don't own 'em.  I just abuse 'em.



Arcades II:  (Look homeward angel now, and melt with ruth)

     	Mulder had finally figured out that she still didn't get it.
Any normal person would have realized what was really going on in that
house in The Falls at Arcadia, but Scully was being more than usually
dense.  Stubbornly and unusually dense.  And Mulder was just really
fucking tired of catering to this poser skepticism.  He could take the
real skepticism, the scientific skepticism, the skepticism that worked
for them instead of against them.  But this was just bullshit and he
was through with it.  It was time for her to wake up and smell the
coffee.
He'd even brought her coffee, in bed, the next morning.  After they'd
made love again and she'd screamed his name like a madwoman when she
came.  
Yeah, it had been early.  Yeah, the contractor was coming with the
bobcat.  So there'd only been time for a quick one before they'd had to
hit the shower and get the hell out to supervise.  
But he'd brought her the coffee.  With cream and sugar.  Just the way
she liked it.
You'd think that would mean something, wouldn't you?  It would have to
someone who didn't have so much invested in doubting him and suspecting
everything he did.
Mulder had no idea how it had come to this.
It was making him feel desperate.  Desperate like he had felt only once
before, when he'd realized Phoebe was bored with him and was thinking
about moving on.  Really moving on and leaving him.
He'd gotten used to her casual infidelity; he'd even justified it to
himself.  But it was when Phoebe's eyes had actually begun glazing over
when he spoke, when he'd seen her scoping out other guys while he was
there with her- sometimes holding her hand.
Scully was becoming like that.  She was drifting out of his orbit
somehow.  And he hadn't the slightest idea why.
And he was angry.  And he was taking it out on her.  And he knew it. 
But somehow he couldn't stop himself.  Because it was all so fucking
stupid. 
	He'd told her how he felt.  More than once.  He'd hung himself out
there and actually said it.  Said it after proving it for five years
with everything he did and every breath he took.  And she'd fucking
blown him off.  Like it was nothing.  Like he'd done nothing, risked
nothing, exposed himself to nothing by telling her.
	He'd bared his fucking throat to her fangs and she'd dug right in with
the death-grip just like he'd feared.
	But now she seemed content to hold him there, rolled over on his back,
tail between his legs, ears hopefully forward while she debated whether
or not to rip his throat out and kill him.
	What a bitch.
	The fact that they'd just finished working on the case of the Killer
Doggie of Doom, didn't hurt the dog analogies bouncing around his head,
either.
	It was probably why he'd done what he'd done the night they'd wrapped
up the case.  And he wasn't really sure that he was sorry, either,
despite Scully's prissy coldness and haughty demeanor since.
	Maybe biting the back of her neck like that had been a little over the
top, but from the way she'd been thrusting that gorgeous ass back at
him and growling sort of low in her chest, he didn't think she'd
actually minded.  It wasn't like she didn't want him.  That was the
part that pissed him off the most.
	Scully wanted him.  He knew it.  She knew it.  There was no fooling
around about it any more, but she was going out of her way to distance
herself from him nonetheless.  To make it seem like it was all about
getting off and not about getting together.
	And the worst of it was the way that Scully let him know that it was
because she believed it was about getting off for him, that she was
being that way, herself.  When he looked at her now, there was nothing
in her eyes.  And her eyes had always been so full before.  Full of
something, anyway-- amusement, irritation, pain, concern, interest,
barely contained exasperation, and love.  He knew that he'd seen love
there, or he never could have summoned the courage to open his own
heart to her.  He would have taken it to his grave. He could never have
spoken it, no matter how much he'd felt it, if he hadn't seen it
reflected in those huge, blue eyes more than once.
	And he'd said it.  He'd taken the plunge.  And she still didn't
believe him.  What more could he do?
He was doing the only thing he knew how to do, show her.  He couldn't
help but hope that if he just took her to bed enough and showed her how
he felt about her, how she made him feel, she would finally get it. 
She would open that tightly barricaded heart of hers just a tiny crack
and let him in.  Like a camel through the fucking eye of a needle.
	Surprisingly enough, after all her good-girl prissiness, it turned out
it was a lot easier to get into Dana Scully's pants than it was into
her heart.  Except that he knew he already had been in that heart for
some time.  It's just that she'd kicked him out.  Kicked him out of his
rightful place there and was making him beat against its doors, with
his cock, it turned out.  Because bed was the only place that she was
remotely honest with him these days.
	He could just begin to see it in her eyes when she lay gasping and
sweating underneath him, her arms locked tight around his back.  When
the distrust was momentarily forgotten and the woman he loved was back
and truly with him as she had been on that ice pack in the Antarctic
vastness, just after he'd almost lost her - again.
	And now he was more in danger of losing her than ever, and he knew
that he was doing everything wrong.  But it was like some mad
compulsion, like demon possession.  He was just so angry.  Every time
he said something, and instead of listening to him as she used to do,
she just brought up some knee-jerk reason why it was wrong or why he
was a nitwit for believing it.  
	He actually wanted to smack her.  Or shake her.  Or throw her down
across the desk or morgue slab or car seat, or whatever inappropriate
place they were in and fuck her until she forgot how to disagree with
him.  Until what they were achieving together became more important
than her pose as "skeptic" or "scientist" or "sane partner" or
"Mulder-bane" or whatever role it was she was playing these days. 
Because she wasn't being Scully.
	Scully knew what partnership was, what it all meant.  She knew that
they were ALWAYS working together for a common goal.  Now it was like
that connection was severed, and he had no idea what had severed it.
	It hadn't been the shit assignments, though that, and his own
disinterest in the work, had strained it.  But every ass chewing they'd
taken from Kersh, they were in collusion, just as they always had been.
 It had been the look sideways from under lashes, the little twitch at
the corner of her mouth.  The defensive arms-crossed posture while she
leaned toward him with her hip.  THAT was Scully.  His Scully.
	And he'd had her freeze on him before, too, but that was merely Scully
trying to protect herself from feeling too much.  This was something
else entirely.  This was Scully trying to protect herself from him. 
Like he was the enemy.  Like he wanted to hurt her.
	And in a strange sort of way he DID want to hurt her.  He wanted to
punish her for the mistake of not falling into his arms when he'd come
back from the Bermuda Triangle and finally blurted out his true
feelings for her.  For denying him that moment - that relief - after
all the years of trying to hide it.  For fucking blowing it off like it
meant nothing, or like he was lying, or worse, didn't know his own
mind, his own heart.
	Yeah, he might be out of touch with some things, like procedure,
decorum sometimes, official rules, crap, but he DID know how he felt
about things.  And how he felt about Scully was one of the most
important things of all.  He'd spent hours enough in the office, in
cars, at his apartment, at the gym, in hotel rooms in the middle of
strange cities, on planes and in hospital rooms, especially in hospital
rooms, thinking about it to know what he felt.  His was a totally
fucking examined life.  But right now it didn't feel that much worth
living, not if Scully was going to ditch him.
	And it felt more and more like she was every day.
	Oh, it wasn't like he didn't have his little victories.
	Every time he woke up with her on a morning after, he chalked one up
for the Mulder hometeam.  Every time he touched her and she didn't
flinch, but leaned into it like she used to.  Every time she put her
arms around him right away, as soon as he started anything, that was a
big victory.  A huge victory.  That first time-.he'd almost chickened
out.  There was just something so horrible about touching her and
having her not touch him back.  It was like making love to the corpse
of Scully, or her ghost.
	And they'd come so close to that so many times already.
	But she was getting better about the physical stuff.  In fact, the
more often they went to bed together, the better it got, instead of
wearing itself out.  Scully seemed less self-conscious, less inhibited.
 But that worried him in some ways more than the other would have. 
Because he had the feeling she was comfortable because she'd just
stopped caring what he thought of her.  That it was JUST fucking for
her, bodies making one another feel good.
It was all too apparent that it was the emotional side of things where
the real absence was.
And it wasn't like he didn't have his victories there, either.
He seemed especially lucky first thing in the morning - when she was
still sleepy.
Something most people didn't know about Dana Scully was that she was
rotten at waking up in the morning.  Oh, she could spring out of her
bed and rush off after paranormal phenomena at a moment's notice, but
when there was nothing really pressing or urgent, she really resented
getting up.  Her snooze alarm was well worn and she was downright evil
before her first cup of coffee.  But if you caught her at the right
second, just between sleep and waking-
Then she'd smile and put her arms around you because she'd momentarily
forgotten all about the fact that she didn't love you any more and that
you were the enemy.  And then you could hold her as much as you wanted
and kiss her and tell her how glad you were to be in her bed and how
much she made you feel.  And she wouldn't interrupt and she wouldn't
tell you you were crazy or drugged.  She'd just listen and let you kiss
her beautiful sleepy face as much as you wanted.  And sometimes she'd
make little sleep/waking sounds and snuggle her little nose into your
collarbone while she hugged you like mad.  And she'd just stay there
for the longest time, feeling great, smelling all warm and great, and
it would be all you wanted and, well, great.
And then sometimes you'd make love and she'd kiss you back and hold
onto you, just like you always wanted.  But you'd know it was only
because she was pretending to still be dreaming, pretending that she
didn't really know what she was doing.  So that she could pretend it
hadn't happened later.  So she could pretend she didn't love you, even
though she did and you both knew it.
Mulder was really sick of that shit.
That was probably why he was being such a bastard to her, all defensive
about his e-mail "relationship" with Karin, even though that
unfortunate woman was now on a slab in the morgue with her killer,
Fido.  Crap, Scully had been the cause of that in the first place.  The
amazing nexus of insane boredom and 110 pounds of pure sex locked in a
basement for several hours together causing him to establish a bizarre
connection with a woman who had more in common with canids than she did
with human beings.  Of course, he hadn't told Scully about it.  Maybe
if he came clean she'd have stopped being so defensive and suspicious
about his "trust" of Karin.  
Karin was-had been... utterly harmless.  And a good person, too.  He'd
eventually felt bad about the prurient nature of their relationship and
had come clean about who he was.  They had made a real connection on
issues a lot more substantial than sexual position.  But he had
absolutely no real interest in her.  How Scully could possibly be
threatened, he had no idea.  He was absolutely hers.  How could she
still question his commitment?
He knew how.  He was doing it.  It seemed he was doing everything
possible to make her doubt him.  It was as though he had some sort of
pathological need to sabotage his one grab at happiness.
Like yesterday.  He didn't know what sort of evil demon had actually
possessed him and had forced him to mock her outright, mock her, when
she'd suggested spontaneous human combustion as a possible means of
death on their latest case.  She was reaching.  She was trying.  She
was actually trying to believe and he'd thrown it back at her like it
was another pose. 
It hadn't been.  He wasn't stupid.
But still he managed to sabotage every good thing that came his way. 
Managed to turn away every gesture of reconciliation she made, and
spent all his energy nailing her to the mattress instead of trying to
work out their problems vertically, where they'd all been made in the
first place.
He knew he was tired, and he had a right to be.  But she was tired,
too.  He could see it in the stiffness of her posture, the strain
around her eyes.  Even her hair looked tired these days, just hanging
limply down instead of springing up in little wavelets and curls that
she couldn't contain.
And he knew what a lot of it was coming from.  It had started with
their demoralization and humilation after being taken off the X-Files,
but they could have lived through a lot longer of that without
cracking.  No the cracks had begun to break through the surface and
cause damage on the day he'd confronted CGB Spender in Diana Fowley's
apartment and had learned the truth about the conspiracy they'd spent
so long trying to break.
The old men who were trying to save the world.
It was awfully hard, and irksome to think of them like that.  The Evil
Bastards, seemed so much a better way.  But did you call FDR an Evil
Bastard for dropping the bomb on Hiroshima to try to end the war years
sooner?  When he sincerely believed that that was the purpose of what
he was doing? Would the people that would have died fighting in those
extra years of war have called him that and gladly given their lives to
save the people of Hiroshima?  Mulder thought not.  Would the people of
Hiroshima have gladly given their lives to save the lives of extra
millions?  Possibly.
But the people of Hiroshima like all of those touched by the Old Men
and their Plan had had one thing in common.  They'd all lacked the
choice.  None of them had known.  It was all done behind closed doors
and in secret.  Secrecy alone meant the plan was evil, didn't it?
Well, Mulder didn't know any more.  It sounded plausible, but he didn't
know deep down in his soul that it was evil.  That evil was all they
had meant.  Listening to him, the Smoking Man, CGB Spender, whoever he
was- he'd sounded so convinced.  He was so certain he was doing the
right thing.  So certain he'd made sacrifices to save others.  How did
you argue with a man who believed?
Scully had never been able to.
And now Mulder couldn't either.
And it had left him feeling lost, rootless.  The foundations of his
universe had been split and rent apart.  And then put back together
again, but not in the same relation.  Everything was slightly askew. 
Things that had been comfortable were not.  Things he had been certain
of either no longer existed, or were changed.  And it had all happened
at once.
Mulder had counted on Scully to be the one thing he could always be
certain of.
But somehow, that had changed as well.
It had all become personal.  She'd even said so.  And that was not a
normal sort of thing for Scully to admit.  But with her admission, the
personal portion of their partnership had seemed to disappear
overnight.  She'd been cold to him.  Downright mean.  And when he'd
tried to place his hand in the small of her back, or touch her shoulder
as they walked up the sidewalk to the FBI Building, she'd hurried
forward, so she wouldn't have to feel his touch.
And she'd done it not once, but every day.  
He'd seen his salvation staring at him in the face when the Arcadia
assignment had come across his desk.
A bullshit assignment.  Frivolous.  The sort of thing he wouldn't have
expected of Skinner.  But it had had one quality redeeming enough to
make him take it up and pretend that he believed it was something.
The chance to pretend to be Scully's husband for the duration of the
assignment.
And he had made as much use of the proximity that afforded as he
possibly could.  Even if he hadn't been really nice to her while he was
doing it.  That made it almost authentic, didn't it?  And god knew,
they'd been close enough and had built up enough frustrations and
resentments in the course of their partnership that marriage was almost
moot.  In every important way, they were married already.
They were the only significant person of the opposite sex in one
another's lives; they spent most of their waking hours together; they
knew one another's likes, dislikes, pet peeves, quirks and, in some
cases, more than quirks.  They'd stood by one another in sickness and
in health, for better or for worse, richer and poorer after Kersh had
started fining them, and Mulder knew that the only thing that could
part them would be Death.  And they'd managed to cheat her once or
twice already.
Yes, what had happened at that house in Arcadia had simply been him
finally exercising his husbandly privilege.  Because she was his. 
There was no question about it. 
And the fact that there had actually turned out to be an X-File there,
too, had been an added benefit and just more proof as far as he was
concerned that they just had to get back to normal. He'd thought they'd
made some kind of progress in the rented bed in the house at the Falls.
 He'd got them communicating after a fashion, anyway.  But now Scully
seemed absolutely determined to shut him back down, to shut him out.
Despite the fact that she was practically fucking him in half on a
regular basis and she'd been insanely jealous over someone as harmless
as Karin Berquist. He just didn't understand it.
In fact, he was growing increasingly desperate, and it was showing. 
And not attractively, either.
Again, it was something he'd realized during the Arcadia assignment. 
He didn't need to just be fucking her on the sly.  No, he needed a hell
of a lot more than that.  He needed the acknowledgement - the public
acknowledgement from Scully and everyone else - that she belonged to
him.  That they were Together.
He was like a new Heroin addict.  Never knowing what he was craving
until he'd got that first hit.  That first incredible hit of
acknowledgement from everyone, that she was his.  That he had the right
to her.  That he wasn't just her loser partner from the FBI that was
wrecking her life and her career.
Oh, he could remember other times when people had thought they were
married.  In fact, when he thought back on it, people had assumed they
were married from the first year they'd worked together.  It had
probably been written all over them back then, the belonging to one
another.  Hell, a bunch of redneck kids outside a barbecue place in
rural Wisconsin had been able to see it.  But now, he needed more. 
More than that.  He needed what he'd gotten in Arcadia, Scully in his
bed and other people who knew that she belonged there.  Who accepted it
as a given.
Because if he got that, then maybe Scully would begin to believe it
too.  If she wouldn't believe him, maybe she'd believe it from
non-partisans, outsiders who knew neither of them.  Maybe if she just
heard it often enough, she'd be able to believe it was really all
right.


Arcades II: (Look homeward angel now, and melt with ruth.) 2/2

Disclaimer in part 1


He knew it was pathetic, but he'd even gone so far as to attempt to
force it out of her in public.  Like the day before yesterday, or maybe
it was yesterday, it was so late now and they'd been up so long that he
couldn't really be sure what day it was any more at all.  He just knew
it was very late, and he was driving toward a Mississippi hotel with
Scully staring glassy-eyed and zombie-like at the passing mile markers
shining in the headlights.
They'd been fairly fresh then, when he'd still had the energy to push
her.  Fresh after a night of sleep and lovemaking in the hotel they
were returning to tonight, or this morning, seeing it was now 3:03 a.m.
 That meant they'd been up for around forty hours straight.  No wonder
he felt like shit.  No wonder Scully was the walking dead.  But then
they were rested, fresh, and ready for the case of the Cat Who Walks
Through Walls, escaped convict Wilson Pinker Rawls.
And he'd gotten his opportunity to push early on, too.  As they'd
arrived at the prison farm and had begun their investigation of the
Warden's murder.  He'd pulled out the roll of condoms from Pinker's
personal effects and had held it up to Scully in some perverse attempt
to try to force from her an acknowledgement of some portion of their
union at least.  "Oooouuuuch" he'd said, drawing it out like E.T.
asking for the phone.
She'd just looked at him.  No reaction.  Nothing.  Just like it was a
rather tasteless and unprofessional joke, as it surely was.  And the
guard had actually shaken his head at him.  Southern boys just didn't
make comments like that around ladies, no matter what their profession.
 And Scully was obviously a lady.
That was the problem.
She was a lady.  Like all the ones you read about in Victorian novels. 
A lady waiting there until some man came along and showed her he was
worthy of her affection, and which point she would put her dainty hand
in his and submit to his vile lusts while she thought about the future
of the Empire.
	He knew that that was part of it somewhere.  Somewhere back in the
recesses of her brain.  That stupid-ass Cinderella complex that
demanded that she didn't have feelings of her own and just waited
around until some man came along to make her realize that it actually
was ok to want things.  That being good wasn't the only thing there
was.
	And he had tried to show her, but he was just so tired.
	He just hated being the one to always have to put himself out there. 
To lay himself bare to her, for her scrutiny, her denial, her pleasure
or her rejection.  He felt like a martyr staked out for the vultures. 
Or one of her John Does down in the autopsy bay, just something else to
be dissected and categorized until she finally disposed of him like all
the others.
	Despite her beauty, her intelligence, her integrity, it just wasn't
surprising that Dana Scully was alone.  Or viewed herself as being
alone.
	She wasn't a warm person.  Oh, she had feelings, he knew that. 
Feelings that ran as deep as anyone's and deeper than those who never
really thought about things ever could understand, but they really
weren't worth anything because she never shared them.
Feelings could do no one any good unless you let them out.  They were
like ideas that way.  It wasn't until you bounced your feelings off
someone else that their value could be known.  And that Scully refused
to do.
	And people just got tired of waiting outside the damn tower for
Rapunzel to finally decide to let down that hair.  Normal people, that
is.
	But Mulder knew he wasn't a normal person.  Just like she wasn't a
normal person.  That was one of the things that made them so suited for
each other.  
	She wouldn't talk about her feelings at all, and he splattered his
around over everyone like they were fingerpaints in the three year-old
room at the local preschool.  And in the end, the result was the same. 
Scully said nothing so it was easy to believe she didn't feel anything,
and he said so much that it was easy to write his feelings off as being
shallow.
	But neither of those things was true.  He knew it.  He just had to
find the way to convince her.  Before the attrition wore him down like
it had all the others in her past and he dropped from her back like a
dead flea or a lamprey that had lost its suction.
	Was that what had done it with Scully and the others?  With Jack, with
that Ethan guy she'd dated when he'd first met her?  Simple attrition? 
Exhaustion from beating themselves like the ocean against her rocks? 
He was so tired now.  And so was she.
	But he couldn't bring himself to give up.  Not yet.  He just needed a
push.  A push in the right direction, before they ended up estranged
like the sad sad people they'd met today.  Estranged and afraid of each
other like June Gurwich and Pinker Rawls.
	He knew he'd never forget what he'd seen that night.  Scully cowering
in the phone booth with that little dark-haired boy, Pinker standing
naked like a madman in the center of the road while the woman that he'd
loved barreled down at him like vengeance in a speeding car.
	She'd wanted to kill him.  She'd been frightened enough, had hated him
enough to do it.  The very same man she'd had her arm around in the
picture that he'd kept all those years.  The man that she'd hung on and
smiled.  The same man whose child she'd borne and had kept, even if
she'd had her sister raise him.
	Mulder had walked up to her in the car and had shut off the engine. 
The car spattered with the blood of her former lover.  The man she'd
hated.  The man she'd killed.
	It had all been so horribly sad.  They could have been a family if
they'd just been able to keep a handle on themselves.  If Pinker had
been able to control himself and do the right thing and if June hadn't
been so weak, so downtrodden.
	"What did he want?"  June Gurwich had asked, still sitting in the car
she'd used to run down her former lover, the father of her child.
"Maybe another chance," he'd told her.  God knew, he and Scully needed
one, too.
Mulder pulled into the parking lot of their motel and he and Scully
stumbled from their car so slowly it was like they were walking under
water.  It was 3:17 a.m. and he felt so old.  All he wanted was the
opportunity to fall asleep in her arms.  Every night, for the rest of
his life.
She unlocked her door and Mulder just followed her in.  He'd act like
he had the right.  All part of convincing her.
"Not tonight, Mulder," Scully said, her voice sounding as faded as she
looked, hair hanging straight and limp against her pale, exhausted
face. "Or this morning, or whatever the hell you call it after you've
gone two days without sleep.  I need some rest."
"I know," he said and took her in his arms, hoping she needed comfort
as much as he did right now.  You couldn't tell, of course, you never
could tell with Scully.  "So do I."
"Then what are you doing?"  she asked, deliberately not leaning into
it, not putting her arms around him.  "You need to go to your own room
and get some sleep."
Mulder just kept his mouth shut, rested his chin on the top of her head
and shut his eyes.  Maybe if he didn't say anything, he wouldn't say
anything he'd regret.
"Look, Mulder,"  Scully said in the very rational voice she reserved
for the times she felt he was being unreasonable.  "I am exhausted. 
I'm just not in the mood for this right now, ok?"
"In the mood for what,"  he mumbled into her hair.
"This,"  she replied.
"And what's this?"  he asked.
"Oh Lord,"  Scully sighed.  "I am too tired to play psychology games
right now, Mulder.  I just want to sleep."
"Good," he said.  "Then let's sleep."
"You want to sleep here,"  she said flatly.
"Bingo, the lady wins the prize," he said.
"You have a perfectly adequate bed in the other room, Mulder,"  Scully
told him.  "Maybe even with fewer lumps in it than this one. Why stay
here?"
"Why don't we just cut to the chase here,"  Mulder said, letting her
go.  "I'll just go back outside and you can run me over with the car. 
We can skip all the middle part with the kid and the prison and all
that and you can just put me out of my misery right now.  Sound like a
plan?"
"What the hell are you talking about, Mulder?" she asked, her eyes
looking dull china blue in the dim light from the bad lamp on the
bedside table.
"Did the tragedy of tonight's events even register with you, Scully?" 
he asked.  "Or were you just so wrapped up in the threat to the boy,
who you know Pinker didn't want to hurt in the first place, that you
didn't notice?"
	"Again, what are you talking about, Mulder?"  Scully said, removing
her trenchcoat and stretching her tired shoulders and back.  "Maybe I'm
just too tired to follow you here, but all I saw out there was a
violent man who meant to force his will on a bunch of people who just
wanted him to leave them alone.  A bad man, a killer, hunting down
something he viewed as his possession.  Something that happened to be
another human being.  Last I knew, Mulder, slavery was illegal.  Human
beings don't own other human beings."
	"But they do, Scully,"  he said softly.  "Or they should.  And I don't
think it was about ownership, it was about belonging.  And human beings
do belong to other human beings, Scully.  We all belong to someone,
even Pinker knew that.
"I mean, there was a man equipped with totally inadequate tools
attempting to reconstruct the only thing that mattered to him - his
family.  Yeah, he was violent.  Yeah, he did it badly.  But if you
think it was about forcing others to his will, you're wrong.  Because
he knew.  He knew she could kill him with that car.  You'd just
demonstrated that he couldn't walk through glass, and when the
windshield hit him...  He knew, Scully.  And he let her do it anyway
because he saw it in their faces.  He saw what you said.  He saw what
you saw.  The reflection of himself as a violent man who could do
nothing but ruin everything for the people that he loved.  The
reflection of himself as someone they didn't love, as someone they
feared, someone they hated, someone they only wanted to go away and
leave them alone.  He was trying to go home, Scully.  And he did go
home.  And that's what he saw.  The reflection of himself in their
eyes, and he just couldn't live with it.  So he let her kill him
because he'd learned that there were no second chances with those who
aren't willing to forgive you for your mistakes."
Scully just stood there looking at him dully in the lamplight.
She still didn't get it.
Mulder sighed and felt in the pocket of his suitcoat for his room key. 
He waited for her to hit him with the car.
"You can sleep here if you want,"  Scully said, turning away from him
and taking off her long pantsuit jacket as she headed for the bathroom.
 She turned on the lights and the fluorescent glare made her squint,
bringing tears to her eyes. He could see them there, glittering in the
reflected brightness.
He waited for a long time to see if she was going to say anything else,
but she just commenced with her nightly routine as if he wasn't there
at all.
It was all he was going to get.
Mulder thought for another long moment about whether or not it was
enough.  And in the end he decided he was too tired to decide.  If he
tried to think now, he knew he'd end up like Pinker, trying to go home
to be met with nothing but hostility by someone who had moved on
without him and thought it was moving up.
Mulder took off his suitcoat and folded it neatly on the cheap motel
chair.  He'd let it be for now, let it stay as it was - in stasis.
Because in the end, stasis was a lot easier to take than regret.

-30-