by Livia Balaban
Rated PG-13 = V, A, MSR
Spoilers: Swoony "all things" Post-Ep
Summary: Mulder was alone. Her voice on his machine revealed nothing.
She said she'd sent a letter.
It was a horrible day. At first, tension rippled like waves of heat above desert road. Later, the air condensed, collapsed, until it was too oppressive to breathe. She was gone. She had left.
Again.
She said she'd sent a letter.
The night, when night finally deigned to come, was worse. Endless, formless, aching night. This spot too soft, that spot too hard. Twisting, turning, thrashing. She was gone.
At four he rose and showered, chilling his skin with water too cold to cleanse. Warm water would have been worse. Some piece of him knew that had he begun to perspire, he would have never stopped. The life would have poured out of his taut form, draining him. Stress was better than emptiness.
At five, the edge of the sky glowing cold with growing light, he went to the office. He would drown his fear in work. At first, menial tasks. Clearing away the detritus, the wreckage on his desk. Bent paper clips, bent staples shared crowded space with broken pencils and gnawed pens.
In her crisp recorded voice, she said she'd sent a letter, and it would explain why she'd left, why she'd leapt at the task force assignment Skinner had offered. Why she'd left again.
More tedious tasks. Expense reports, summaries for unsolvable cases. The pile barely dwindled, the morning reluctant to commit itself to arrival.
She'd left.
Time stretching, breaths shaky and unstable, hands cold and unsteady.
"I can do this." His own admonishment was unconvincing, his voice brittle from disuse and dread.
It had not been enough for her to leave while it was dark. She'd had to walk, run, halfway across the country under the pretense of work. Even Skinner had detected her hurried assent and uncharacteristically tremulous voice. She'd preferred to act as bait for a railway killer than face her own partner.
She said she'd sent a letter.
When the mail finally arrived, he put the express envelope aside, and placed his coffee cup on it. He reached for the cup a few minutes later, but withdrew his hand at once. He never took another sip.
His stomach relaxed, his shoulders loosened, his pace slowed. He was tired. He researched a case, two cases, scheduled road trips, submitted 302s. He worked.
At six, he took the cup with its milky, oily film, and emptied it into the sink. He rinsed it, and set it out to dry. He left the cup-ringed envelope on the desk.
He packed his briefcase with files and his reading glasses, and left his office.
At ten thirty the words in the files doubled, blurred and faded. At eleven fifteen he woke with a start. At eleven twenty he walked out the door with only his keys and his weapon. He left his phone on the hall stand.
At eleven fifty, he stood in front of his desk, a visitor in his own office at that hour, staring at the stained envelope which lay leagues away, untouchable, untouched. His heart slipped downward, he was certain of it, bumping painfully past each rib, finally displacing his stomach. It hurt.
He reached for the envelope. The mail person, the courier, the sorter, the pick-up man, Scully. Their touch mingled together on the light, glossy cardboard. She'd touched it with her exquisitely manicured hands, simply and professionally, he was certain. She'd leaped at the assignment. She'd wanted to leave.
He pulled the tab and looked inside. Four plain lined sheets, torn from a spiral-bound book, micro-perforated to be neat and tidy. Her writing was neat and tidy. There was nothing else in the envelope.
He brought it, opened, to his nose and for a moment she was there with him, swirling in a scented cloud of familiarity and comfort. Then she was gone.
Again.
He removed the sheets from the envelope, careful to prevent them from touching the outside of the envelope. Only her hands had touched these pages. They were not to be defiled.
He stood, paper trembling in icy hands, in front of his desk and read.
A soft voice jolted him back from the quiet place he was inhabiting, eyes closed, hands steady, fingers warm.
"Agent Mulder, are you all right?"
He turned and opened his eyes, and felt like he was spinning, spinning on his boyhood lawn. "I'm fine, Kimberly. You're here awfully late." His voice was kind, drenched with life.
"Audits," she groaned, handing him a thick stack of files. "The A.D. needs responses on all the flagged items by five o'clock tomorrow."
"No problem."
As she turned to leave, he spoke again. "Kimberly? Could you pencil me in for five minutes with him some time tomorrow?"
"He's beyond busy, Agent Mulder," she sighed.
"We all are. It'll be quick and painless, I promise."
"Okay, I'll see what I can do. Stay by your phone. I'll call when he has a minute and is in a mood to do something other than commit acts of bodily harm."
"I'm sorry," he told her. When her brow furrowed in confusion, he clarified. "I haven't made your job any easier."
"No," she replied with a weary chuckle, "but you have made it colorful. Stay by your phone tomorrow."
"Yes Ma'am," he replied in a jaunty whisper.
She left, and Mulder stood for a moment in her tense wake, blissfully relaxed. Placing the files on the surface of his desk, he picked up the empty overnight envelope, and slid the four lined pages back inside.
Scully said she'd sent a letter.
She'd sent her joy in that glossy envelope, and he smiled, holding it in his elegant hands.
=====
End.
Acknowledgements: Alicia and Ripley for the beta. Cofax, Perelandra, Jodi, Jess, Kari & wen for the warm fuzzies. SEP for the slap I ignored. YesVirginia for the support. Lionheart for the roses.
