TITLE: Scarred AUTHOR: Gwinne E-MAIL: gwinne@yahoo.com ARCHIVE: Ephemeral, Gossamer, Spookys ok; otherwise, ask RATING: R KEYWORDS: MSR SPOILERS: through Season Eight SUMMARY: He's ba-ack! DISCLAIMER: I imagine Mulder and Scully will have a lot to work out at the end of Season Eight, but Chris Carter and 1013 productions, who decide what Mulder and Scully can say and do, probably won't let us see it. Note: This story came out of a Scullyfic improv; elements listed at the end. **Warning: This story includes spoilers for "DeadAlive"; of course, you'd only know that if you've read the spoilers yourself. Read at your own risk.** SCARRED * * * As for me. . . I'm fine. I have bad dreams, but I never saw Mister Duck again. I play video games. I smoke a little dope. I got my thousand-yard stare. I carry a lot of scars. I like the way that sounds. I carry a lot of scars. --Alex Garland * * * When he got back, his apartment smelled different. There was the same musty scent of used books and unaired rooms--Scully called it "eau de bachelor pad" in one of her goofier moods. And, as opened the bedroom door, there was a familiar hint of laundered sheets and her perfume. Still, there was something different, and it wasn't a bouquet of the paranormal kind. Pinesol, Lemon Scented Pledge, and lots of bleach. She'd cleaned. Not just a quick once-over with a mop, but really cleaned, the kind of cleaning that you only give your apartment when you're ready to move out, making sure to get the last trace of mildew in the tub so you don't lose your security deposit. Oh. He didn't really want to think about that now. He didn't really want to think about that ever. He was home, Scully was asleep in his bed, and their kid was asleep inside her. Nothing else mattered. Mulder set the Dunkin Donuts box on the foot of the bed, took a sip of coffee--vaguely burnt, but still the best thing he'd tasted in ages--and then held the cup under Scully's nose. "Morning sunshine," he said, when her eyes opened. She grunted something unintelligible as a response and shut her eyes again. He decided to try a more direct approach. He broke one of the six chocolate donuts in half and spread custard on Scully's lips. Then he kissed it off. "Mmmm," she said and kissed him back. This was more like it. "I thought you might be hungry." "Donuts, Mulder?" Her voice cracked with disuse. "Half a dozen custard-filled, two raspberry-filled, one with multicolored sprinkles, a twisty tiger striped one, one cinnamon and sugar thingy, and your classic chocolate cake with white icing." An eyebrow raised suspiciously. "You got a dozen?" "I wasn't sure what kind you'd want." He shrugged. "Coffee? I got you a large." "Mulder, I . . ." "Don't worry," he interrupted. "It's decaf." * * * "Looking for cases already?" Scully snuck up behind him and kissed the back of his neck. "You're supposed to be resting." "Just doing a little research. I was thinking maybe we could go away for a little while. There's this walking tour called 'A Ghostly Experience' down in St. Augustine, Florida." Mulder turned from the computer screen to look at her, still wearing his t-shirt and pajama bottoms in the middle of the afternoon. "The highlight of the trip, of course, would be staying in the St. Francis Inn," he said in his slide-show voice. "Built in 1791, it's a charming Bed and Breakfast which functions as home to Lilly, one of the many local ghosts or, if you prefer, spirits." She rolled her eyes and he continued. "And perhaps after dining at one of St. Augustine's finest restaurants we might take a stroll to Ripley's Believe It Or Not, featuring Beauregard, a six-legged cow." "Well, Mulder, if the FBI doesn't pan out you might have a career as a tour guide. Or a dairymaid. What is it with you and cows anyway?" "Really, Scully, it sounds like a cool little town. We could go down there, eat some sea food, you could get soak up some rays, lie around on the beach in one of those cute maternity bathing suits." "Now that's a lovely image." "No?" "It's a nice idea, Mulder, really it is. But I'm on leave soon anyway and there's not much chance an airline would let me on a plane, no matter how many badges you wave in their face. How about something a little closer to home?" Scully loved water, the baby wasn't due for nine weeks, and Skinner had told her to take as much time as she wanted during Mulder's own unspecified medical leave. What was she not telling him? He'd read "What to Expect When You're Expecting" in the hospital and was working his way through "My Wife Is Having a Baby and I'm Having a Nervous Breakdown," courtesy of Langly. Inexperienced as he was at this whole father-to-be thing, his Scully radar told him that there was something spooky hiding behind door number two. He pulled her down onto his lap. "Mulder, I'm too heavy." "Relax, Scully. I'm not going to break. What's wrong?" She paled and headed back toward the bedroom. "I don't think I should have eaten all those donuts." Not exactly the answer he was looking for, but definitely better than "I'm fine." "Do you have any Pepto Bismol?" Deflect and redirect; she had denial down to a science. He followed her as she walked, captivated by the way her back curved to accommodate the added weight of pregnancy. "Check the medicine cabinet. I'm not sure what I have anymore. Doggett certainly did a number on this place when I was gone. What the hell was he looking for anyway?" He leaned in the bathroom door while Scully stood on her tiptoes until she saw pink. Her cotton shirt stretched up as she reached for the bottle, and Mulder stared at the tattoo on her lower back. In the week he'd been out of the hospital, he still hadn't seen her naked, and curiosity was getting the better of him. "This expired three years ago, Mulder." She tossed it casually into the garbage and turned to face him. "You want me to go to the store?" All those pregnancy for dummies books were very clear about volunteering to do household chores and generally being solicitous, even when the mother-to-be carried a gun and could probably out-lift him at the gym. She laughed, just a smile and a quick puff of air, but it was enough to lighten the mood. "What?" he asked. "It's just," she started and stopped, running her finger over some droplets of water on the sink. "It's just that I've waited a long time to hear you say that." Her eyes turned dark as a mood-ring. He took her hand and tugged her along until they were back on the couch. "Tell me." "Tell you what, Mulder?" "Tell me what I missed." "Well, there was a case with a butt-genie that you would have found absolutely hilarious and another that was straight out of Terminator." "That's not what I meant and you know it. Tell me about this." He put his hand on her belly. "Was it hard for you? What were you doing the first time you felt her move?" "I was getting dressed to go to your funeral." * * * It had been like this since he'd been home; they would banter and flirt as easily as during the best days of their partnership and then, bam, she'd hit him with a statement that hurt worse than anything they'd done to him on that spaceship. Metaphorically, anyway. Actually, he had few memories of what had been done to him; there were small scars around the outer edges of his face, large ones down his chest, and rings around his ankles and wrists. Compared to the autopsy photos of a kid named Gary that he'd found stashed in Scully's briefcase, he was amazingly healthy and whole. Still, he knew he'd been in bad shape. On his first night home from the hospital he woke to screaming. Scully was sitting in bed beside him gasping for air. She was out of bed and in the kitchen warming milk before he could reach out to touch her. "You okay?" "I'm fine, Mulder. Go back to bed." "You've been having nightmares again?" They'd been routine after her abduction and after Emily. By the time they became lovers, she was sleeping better; so was he. "Yeah, since the fall. They say pregnant women have vivid dreams." "So these dreams are about the baby?" "Sometimes," she said deliberately. "Mostly, they're about what they did to you." * * * Her mood generally lightened after a nap. She shuffled out of the bedroom and rested her head on Mulder's shoulder. He was watching a movie that featured an actress who looked remarkably like her, only her hair was brown. He shifted and she lay down with her head on his thigh. It amazed him how well they fit together, even with the baby. "I had the weirdest dream," she said. "You know I took a class on dream interpretation at Oxford?" "Do you read Tarot cards, too?" "Freud says that a dream is the fulfillment of a wish." "Mulder says that a dream is a question we haven't learned how to ask yet." "So, was this a bad dream or a good dream, Dr. Scully?" The muscles in her back tightened beneath his hand. She sighed. "I don't really wanna talk about it." "You're the one who brought it up. If you didn't want to talk about it, then why?" He felt her jaw clench against his thigh. "Fine, Mulder. I dreamed I was at your funeral and Doggett and Skinner were singing 'Amazing Grace.' I mean, it was exactly like the funeral in Raleigh, complete with me throwing up in the car, except for the singing." "Oh." "Does that sound like a wish fulfilled?" "No, Scully. It sounds like a question you don't want to ask." "Can we not do this? I'm so tired, Mulder. I just wanna sleep." "Okay, Scully. Just sleep." His warm hand worked its way under her t-shirt and rubbed at the small of her back. "Mmmmm." "Scully, what's this?" He was fingering her newest scar, a two-inch circle on her spine. Then he tugged the t-shirt out of the way and saw the jagged red line just below the collar. "Jesus, what the fuck happened to you?" "Jesus. No kidding." "Excuse me?" "Nothing, Mulder. Forget I said anything. If you'll excuse me, I think I'm going to lie down." * * * It wasn't difficult to figure out. Since the fire almost three years ago, she'd kept copies of every case file on her hard drive, as well as their office computer. After some vague report, written by Doggett, about a man-bat, he found a vaguer discussion, written by Scully, about an encounter with a cult who worshipped a slug. Although she hadn't been able to examine the creature thoroughly, Doggett concurred that it had been several inches in length, at least one inch in diameter, and it had lodged in her spine for a period of several hours. She sustained significant blood loss after Doggett extracted the creature from her back using a pocketknife. If he hadn't done so, the report claimed, the creature would have attacked her brain and eventually killed her. Jesus. * * * When Mulder went into the bedroom to wake Scully for the second time, she was curled on her side, a pillow under her knee and a hand on her belly. He recognized the position from the books he'd been reading, a resting pose for labor. "Scully, you awake?" "Yeah, we both are." Mulder ran his hand through the strands of her newly-long hair and sighed deeply. She threaded her fingers through his and set it on her abdomen, right over the place the baby was kicking. "Kid's got rhythm," he said. Scully smiled. "You read the file, huh?" "Yeah. I'm sorry I pushed you. It's just. . . so much happened while I was gone." He kissed his way up her spine and nuzzled the scar at the nape of her neck. "I guess we both carry a lot of scars." Scully touched the fading scars on his face. "Yes, we do." "This baby, Scully, she's going to depend on us for everything." "What are you saying, Mulder?" "What if we're TOO scarred?" "Are you asking if we're too emotionally and psychologically damaged to raise a child?" She propped herself up against the pillows and pillowed his head with her breasts. "I'd like to think we'll be better parents because of what we've been through. It's okay, Mulder. We'll heal." "We're going to need some pretty big bandages," he said, absently scratching his chest. * * * "Are you sure you should be doing that?" he asked, spotting her. They were back at Scully's apartment and she was perched, awkwardly, on a small stepladder in the guest room. "You got my back?" "Always." "Then I'll be fine." "Seriously, Scully. Isn't there some rule about pregnant women not lifting more than 20 pounds?" "What are you, Dr. Spock?" "That's Mr. Spock, Scully. And what does he know about having babies?" She smiled a genuine smile, and he knew that she knew he was kidding. "Here, can you get this one?" She climbed down the ladder and pointed at a box in the far corner. Mulder shook his head. "What are you smiling at? I'm too short to reach it," she said. "Whatever." He set the box on the bed. "So what are you looking for, anyway?" "Unless it's in my mother's basement, which is a distinct possibility, I've got an old biology book in here from college. I wanted to look over a few things." "You've got old biology books taking up half the shelf space in the office." "When I was a sophomore, I took a class on fish, actually. I thought I'd read up on species indigenous to Florida--you know, before we go away." She opened the box and pulled out books one at a time. Mulder turned them over in his hand before he responded, picturing Scully hunched over her tattered copy of Gray's Anatomy in the library, glasses slipping off her nose. "I thought you said that was a bad idea." She shrugged. "Salt water has lots of healing properties. And I *really* like taffy. Ah, here we go: 'Species Profiles: Life Histories and Environmental Requirements of Coastal Fishes and Invertebrates.'" She opened it up and started thumbing through the index. Mulder smoothed his hands along her back and rubbed his knuckles against her belly. "You'll have time for that later," he said, taking the book from her hands and placing it back in the box. Pushing her down on the bed, he pulled up her blue sweater and traced the stretch marks below her navel. Then he kissed the old surgical scar above it. "Can you imagine what I'd look like if I need a c-section?" She ran her index finger down his nose and thumbed his lower lip. "It'll give you more character. And you'll get to say things like, 'do you know what I went through to have you?' when the kid's sixteen and we catch her smoking cigarettes in the backyard." He pulled her sweater back down and kissed her, then rested his chin on her abdomen. "So you're serious about this Florida thing?" "Sure. I want to see the look on Doggett's face when I tell him we're going ghostbusting on vacation." "Do I get to pick out your bathing suit?" "In your dreams, Mulder. In your dreams." FIN * * * Notes: This story came out of a Scullyfic improv. The elements are as follows: Doggett singing "Amazing Grace" (Jintian); Scully fighting back an upset tummy (pbear); M and S and six custard-filled, chocolate donuts and two large coffees from Dunkin Donuts (Shannon); M and S taking the Ghost Tour in St. Augustine Florida (KrisC); Scully looking up something in one of her old college textbooks (eb). I tried *really* hard to avoid the dream sequence cop-out; sorry Jintian, couldn't do it any other way. Information about the Ghost Tour is available at http://www.halifaxmagazine.com/oct99/haunts.htm I wasn't kidding about Beauregard; check out http://www.staugustine-ripleys.com/museum.html I'm as hungry as Scully in her seventh month; feed me at gwinne@yahoo.com