Making of a Family – X-Files Style

Sara B. 05/06

Part 1

Mulder watched the lone figure walk along the shore, he couldn’t see her face but he’d know her anywhere.  It may have been three years since he’d last seen her but she was still Scully and she still caused that pang in his chest.

How could he have been so foolish as to let her leave?  How could he have been so blind to what she was, no, is to him?

~

It had been a rainy day when he last saw her.  They’d just had the bitterest argument they’d ever had and it had gotten personal.  She accused him of letting his little head do the thinking for him.  It was cruel and low, but it came after he’d let loose with even crueler and lower attacks that culminated with ‘it’s too bad you don’t have a dick to go with those balls, Scully.’

It was all about Angie, Angelica Harrison; she wasn’t worth the price he paid because of her.

Mulder met Angie at a bar that he’d stopped at on his way home after a particularly grueling day that culminated with a fight with Scully.  The fact that Scully had been right made it all the worse. 

Angie was beautiful and, with all the men vying for her attention, she chose him.  They struck up a conversation and he soon realized she was not the sharpest person but her obvious beauty and complete sexiness won him over.  Two hours later they were in bed and he was having the first sex with another person since Kristen too many years earlier.

That was the start and soon they were together nearly every night and every weekend.  Mulder knew Angie was a temporary diversion, a substitute really.  His relationship with Angie was all about the sex, nothing more, they both knew it. 

Still, he’d let it interfere with the rest of his life: he let it consume him.  Soon he’d started to reject out of town investigations or he sent Scully alone just because he didn’t want to leave Angie behind.   

The fissures in his other relationships happened almost immediately.  Skinner never had a word to say to him unless it was work related and the Gunmen stopped calling after he introduced Angie to them. 

He’d taken Angie to meet the Gunmen expecting that they would welcome her.  He was greatly disappointed.  Only Byers was able to maintain even the slightest level of civility.  Langly ran out saying he had an appointment and Frohike just walked out of the room and didn’t come back.  Mulder went looking for him and found him in the back room reading.  There was a confrontation and Frohike ended it with, “my Mom once told me you never find anything in a bar that won’t end up giving you a headache.” 

Mulder wished he’d listened to his friend; his headache has lasted three lonely, bitter years.

The worst part was how he’d treated Scully.  He’d just about written her out of his life yet expected her to continue to be there and support him.  Mulder was spending nearly all of his free time with Angie but after leaving her he always called Scully needing to talk; his body was sated while his mind starved.  After a couple months Scully told him to stop calling her at night and she no longer answered his calls.  Angie fulfilled his baser physical needs but it was Scully who provided everything else; emotional, intellectual and nurturing needs all came from Scully.  She was his lifeline and she cut him adrift.    

If only he’d not been so shallow and let himself be blinded by Angie’s physical charms he might have avoided the disaster his life became.

The final fight happened about two months after Scully stopped taking his phone calls.  He missed her off hours but he was still able to dip into Scully’s intellectual wellspring at work and he did it often.  Many times he’d start an argument just so he could play against her.  Needing the adrenaline burst and endorphin high a good solid disagreement with Scully always gave him.

That last day there was a case he wanted investigated so he arranged to send Scully out alone; she refused.  She told him that he could write her up; that if it wasn’t enough for him to investigate it was too trivial for her to care either.  It was her first act of out and out defiance to him.  The argument escalated to a fight quickly.  Mulder didn’t remember all that was said but he’d never be able to forget the emotions dredged up.

It had remained fairly civil but suddenly he turned it from professional to personal.  He made all sorts of disgusting demeaning comments about her personal life.  One, particularly cruel one, he recalled expanded on her ‘Ice Queen’ nom de plume, comparing parts of her anatomy to glacier caverns. He’d thought for a Moment that he’d rendered her speechless then she made the thinking with his dickhead comment.  That ignited the fireworks and he attacked with every hurtful thing he could think to say.  Words like dried up, sexless and frigid were just the high roads; he got really down and dirty after that.   Scully responded to each accusation like a blow to her body.  He stormed out but not before his final rant; the last words he ever spoke to Dana Katherine Scully were, ‘if you could even find anyone willing, you would break a hip trying to spread your legs.’ 

Those were the last memories they had of each other.

The fight happened on a Friday, by Monday Dana Katherine Scully had resigned from the FBI and with the help of her Mom, Skinner and the Gunmen, she’d moved out of her apartment and out of his life.

Once the shock had worn off he paraded around touting off about how much better it was not to have to fight for everything.  He fooled no one, not even himself.  Scully had finally walked away and she took every good thing in his life with her. 

It wasn’t long before Mulder realized that his relationship with Angie had nothing more than sex to offer and usually the sex was not even all that good.  It is widely known that the most important sexual organ in the human body is the brain, and Angie was severely stunted in that area. Their relationship didn’t last two weeks after Scully’s departure.

The years between then and now had been hard.  Mulder thought he knew loneliness before.  He thought he could never experience pain worse than losing Samantha.  He was wrong, so incredibly wrong.  Losing Scully surmounted anything he’d ever felt before.  The knowledge that after every hurt and injustice she’d been subjected to, it was his cruelty and stupidity that pushed her over the edge and made her leave burned at him. 

~

The figure at the water’s edge turned and headed back the way it had come, Mulder followed.  It had only been a happy happenstance that he’d found her.  Oh, he’d tried repeatedly over the years but Skinner, the guys and Mrs. Scully road blocked him.  Mrs. Scully went so far as to have Bill Scully call Mulder and tell him to layoff.  No, he hadn’t found her because of any action on his part, it was just luck.

Mulder was in the area on a case.  He was back in the FBI mainstream now since his inattention had caused him to lose the X-Files.  He was profiling and had gone full circle, from VCU’s fair-haired boy to basement pariah and back.  The X-Files had not been closed, just turned over to two new agents. 

He’d solved the case a day earlier and he’d completed the follow-up with the locals earlier in the day.  The suspect was denied bail and three young women were still alive who wouldn’t have been if Mulder had not been able to make the right connections. 

His flight out was scheduled for the next day so he decided to play tourist for the afternoon so he could try and unwind.  Mulder checked out of his motel and started to drive.

Two hundred miles later he was leisurely eating dinner at a local diner when the door opened and he heard the clerk say, “here ya go, Dr. Scully.” 

Mulder turned to see the young man hand Scully a take out sack.  He quickly paid his bill and followed her to her home.  Mulder wanted to run to her and envelope her in a never ending hug but somehow he’d been able to reign himself in.  He tore himself away and checked into the nearest motel, called Skinner and arranged some much overdue time off. 

The next morning, after a fitful night, Mulder started to do a little checking.  Scully arrived in town about three years earlier and took over a small medical clinic.  She moved into, what the locals called, the old Donaldson place at the outskirts by the lake. She was active in the community, extremely well liked and, maybe the thing he was most interested in, she was single.  She’d caught the eye of every unattached man in the area but she’d shunned all romantic overtures; to everyone’s knowledge, Dr. Scully was not interested in seeing anyone.  Mulder sorted through the bits and pieces that he’d collected and made a decision.  She may send him on his way but he needed to take the chance. 

~

Continued in Part 2