TITLE:  At Least We Have. . . 
AUTHOR:  Bluesea567
Timeline: Post-The Truth
Rating:  PG
Classification:  Post-EP Vignette, Angst
Distribution:  Anywhere
Spoilers:  William and The Truth
Disclaimer:  Property of 1013

SUMMARY:  Three months into the fugitive life, Scully is 
depressed.

Feedback welcome!

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In Scully's new journal:

"At least we have... what, money?  Yes, Mulder's paranoia 
paid off big there.  He'd sold his parents' properties, 
converted the proceeds to bearer bonds.  Years ago, he had the 
foresight to get the Lone Gun guys, bless their souls, to make 
various pieces of fake ID for both of us.  So the big news is 
that we're not starving.  Other than being outrageously 
solvent, though, we don't have much.

A romantic might say we have each other.  Well, in a way we've 
always had each other, although things did get pretty tense 
during those last months.  Then, too, a realist might say we 
never did or will have each other, that we're too different, 
private, cut off, varied in our goals.  I don't know.  We've 
been out here for three months, and I know less every day.

Where is 'here'?  It varies all the time.  WE vary quite a 
bit, for that matter.  I've realized that I'm not made for the 
life of a fugitive.  I don't know about Mulder.  This may be 
his dream come true.  I wish we could communicate more.  Or 
better.  Or something.

Where was I?  Busy bemoaning my fate.  How different from the 
night in the Roswell motel, when I was Miss Mary Sunshine, 
picking up the pieces of our lives, firing us up for the 
fight.  Already, I'm tired.  Tired of not being myself.  Tired 
of having a different name and history.  Longing for identity, 
my identity.

Today, I have short black hair cut in a gamin style.  It's not 
bad.  As we're in the Southwest, I've taken to wearing long, 
hippie-style colorful clothes, long skirts with sandals, the 
very opposite of what any self-respecting fugitive would 
choose.  My wardrobe is much more flamboyant than at any time 
since I was an undergrad.  I am Sandy.  Cute name, cute 
clothes, cute haircut, lots and lots of smiles.  Gag.

Mulder?  Or Martin?  (Cleverly, we've kept our first letters 
so that by the time the name emerges, we have time to make 
corrections).  He's also dyed his hair black with a nice trim 
black beard and contact lenses that give him bright blue Paul 
Newman eyes.  He's abandoned his jeans and tee-shirts in favor 
of non-Mulder styles.  He either goes J Crew prep or standard 
American tourist, with baggy shorts and Langley-style rock-
band tee.

We keep on the move.  The trouble is, we pretty much have to.  
Unless we're vacationers, what the hell is our excuse for 
being in these dinky little towns?  Even tourists don't stay 
too long, and we don't want to call attention to ourselves.  
We did stay in one place for almost a month.  It was hell.  
Since we were staying, we had to give the impression of 
earning our living, rent a cheap apartment, the whole routine.  
I wound up working behind the counter at a dry cleaner's, and 
it was hot as hell in there.  Mulder/Martin (or was he Matty 
then?) worked in a pizza shop.  He enjoyed the role playing, I 
think.

I think.  The truth is, and Jesus how I hate the word TRUTH,  
I don't know what the hell is on his mind half the time or 
maybe all the time.  I ask, but I'm not sure I get the "truth" 
in return.

Why, one might wonder, are we cruising through the least 
desirable towns in the Southwest?  Mulder is trying to work 
his way back, with excruciating subtlety, to the place where 
he was staying with Gibson.  He thinks that eventually Gibson, 
if the poor kid is still alive, may return, and he'd like to 
take him with us so that we'd KNOW when Super Soldiers are 
near us.  Otherwise, they look to us just like normal human 
beings.

Mulder has a disk with all the UFO-sighters and groups in the 
U.S., too, and wants us to hook up with these groups and get 
some kind of resistance going.  This is exceedingly dangerous, 
though, as most of those groups are bound to have been 
infiltrated from time to time.  All the more reason to locate 
Gibson, so that the kid could see if we were among sincere 
believers.

Yeah, it makes sense in its paranoid way.  I'm just tired.  
Three months into the long, long battle, the one I said I 
wouldn't give up, and I feel beaten down.  I have felt crushed 
not since learning the date of the invasion but since the last 
time I held William in my arms.  I can't get my son out of my 
mind, not for more than five minutes at a time.  I'd thought 
that getting Mulder back would be some sort of recompense---at 
least I hadn't lost EVERYTHING.  But I've lost more than I can 
bear, I'm afraid.

Our son.  I carried him for nine months, and then I got to 
live with him, care for him, play with him, love him more than 
I've ever loved a living creature.  The tears drip down my 
cheeks as I write this sentence.  Maybe getting this journal 
was a good idea.  I don't know.  I just feel like I'm bursting 
with bad feelings, sadness, stuff that's going to start 
leaking out through my pores as it gathers and swells inside 
of me.  My misery is just. . . . growing all out of 
proportion.

Or maybe it's in the right proportion. After all, what is left 
to us, or maybe more accurately, to me?  My son is gone.  
What's more, unless we can do something, he's also doomed.  
But, damn it, he's dead to ME already.  I miss him every day, 
every hour.  If he's only to have ten more years on earth, I 
want them to be with me, where I can hold him, watch him grow.  
I need him so much.

Yeah, it's not practical.  Aside from not knowing where he is 
and having no means to locate him, our fugitive state would be 
even more dangerous with a young child.  But I want him, God 
damn it.  I need him.  Jesus, I CRAVE him.  

And as I long for William, I grieve the loss of everyone else 
that made up my former life.  The dead, of course.  Always.  
And the living I left behind.  Mom, my brothers, my other 
family, Skinner, the most loyal friend, Monica and John, who 
for all I know are dead because of their loyalty to us.  Our 
journey has been a long one and it's littered with corpses.  
Couldn't we at least have some gains and not just losses?

What a shitty day this is for me, all my ugly feelings pouring 
out onto the page.  I feel so weepy, so low, so hopeless."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"Scully?"

She looked up, closing the journal she'd just started.  She 
sat propped up against the pillows of the hard bed in the 
usual cheap motel.  The tears were still wet on her cheeks.

Mulder set the pizza box on the bottom of the bed, looked at 
the notebook, the pen, the tears.  "What's wrong?" He dropped 
down on the bed beside her.

Scully sighed.  "Everything.  At least, it's how I feel today.  
I'm tired of it all."

"What's that?"  He nodded toward the notebook.

"A journal.  I felt this great need to... to express my 
feelings."

Mulder stared into the warped mirror across the room, bit his 
lip, and turned back to her.  "I'd like to know how you feel."

Scully stared at her lap.  "Would you really?"

He nodded.

She stared at the journal, her new confidant.  Why did she 
need a journal, she wondered, when she was with Mulder?  That 
was the big question.  Maybe being with one person, even THAT 
one person, was not enough.  Two people can only be together, 
thrown on only each other, for so long.  They didn't fight, or 
even exchange angry words, but they also didn't talk about the 
kinds of feelings she put into her journal.

She handed him the journal.

He stretched out on his side of the bed, propped against the 
pillows, and read in silence.  His face remained immobile.  He 
finished, closed the journal, and sat staring at his hands, 
which still held it.

The silence continued.  Traffic zoomed by on the highway, 
horns blew, and two isolated people lay on a bed with only 
eight inches and a gulf of silence between them.

At last Mulder spoke.  "I didn't know you were this 
miserable."

Scully had no idea what to say.  "You thought I was happy?" 
she hazarded.

"Well, neither of us is," he allowed.  "This isn't the 
greatest situation, but from what I read, you don't seem to 
realize that I'm still down and out about this.  For the 
record, I DON'T like being a fugitive.  It doesn't play into 
ANY romantic fantasy I ever had.  I'd like my life back."

"Maybe you're just playing your role better, then."

"You don't have to play a role with me, Scully, here in our 
room.  I think, maybe,"  he hesitated, "that first night, I 
was so immersed in failure that you had to get really positive 
to drag me back.  And now, maybe you're afraid if you get 
down, it'll drag me along and we'll both feel like giving up.  
So you don't tell me how you feel."

She sighed.  "Neither do you, obviously.  If you read that, 
you'll see that I have no idea about your feelings."

"I'm sorry," he said.  He turned to her.  "I'm sorry that both 
of us haven't talked about the things that are on our minds.  
I'm sorry that after all those years we still have trouble 
communicating.  I'm sorry that I left right after William was 
born and didn't get a chance to know him.  I'm sorry I wasn't 
there all those times when you needed me and you had no choice 
but to give him up.  I'm sorry your heart is broken now."  
Suddenly, his voice turned into a sob.  "And I'd give anything 
to lay him in your arms right now and . . . I'd like nothing 
better than to put my arms around both of you 'cause you're my 
family."

He curled up around her, burying his face in her neck.  His 
foot pushed the pizza box to the floor.  Neither cared.

Scully wrapped her arms around him.  "Do you want him back for 
me, or . . . because you miss him too?"

"Both," he murmured brokenly into her neck.  "I can't stand to 
think of you mourning him every hour of every day.  I never 
wanted you to lose what you love most.  I know you spent all 
that time with him.  I only had a couple of days with him."  
His voice cracked.  "But that kind of makes it worse.  That I 
never got to know him at all, I mean.  I don't love him any 
less."  He paused.  "But I know you miss him more, because you 
know what there is to miss, what he did during the day, during 
the night, all his expressions, his noises."

"I loved his baby babblings,"  she said, tears rolling down 
her face again.  "And his face, how he'd look when the birds 
sang outside the window, how his face lit up whenever I came 
home."  She paused.  " Every minute, he was so 
precious."

"I'm so sorry I wasn't there.  It's another failure on my 
part."

"Oh, let's not go through this.  Let's talk about what we can 
do to make things better,"  Scully begged.  "I hate these 
litanies of failures."

"Ok." Mulder pulled himself together, sat up, and thought for 
a bit.  "Two priorities.  One, find Gibson, if he's still 
here."

Scully nodded.  "Yeah, we need to know who our enemies are.  
We're sitting ducks, as it is."

"Two.  Start tracing William's adoption."

"We have no access," Scully pointed out.

Mulder thought that over, realizing that, as Scully had said 
in her journal, they didn't know which, if any, of their 
allies had survived.  He realized too that there'd be no safe 
way to make contact.  He bit his lip, frustrated.

"My brother,"  Scully murmured, sitting up and clasping her 
hands around her knees.

Mulder narrowed his eyes.

"Not Bill, Charlie," she qualified.

"The family ghost," he said, with a faint smile.  "Where is 
he?"

"I happen to know," Scully said, "but I'll bet the 
conspirators don't.  He almost never makes contact, so I'll 
bet they've never traced him at all.  But if we go to an e-
mail café, I might be able to find him."

He smiled at her.  "Good enough.  It's worth a shot, 
especially if you can manage some old family code that's not 
gonna bring them running to us."

She nodded.  "Three."

"I beg your pardon?"

"You said two priorities, finding Gibson and tracing William.  
I'm suggesting a third."

"Shoot."

"We've got to learn to talk to each other."

They stared into each other's eyes, and Mulder slowly nodded.  
"Do you think we're always in such damned weird disguises that 
we don't recognize each other any more," he wondered.

She shrugged.  "I just feel that after living with you for 
three months, I know you less well than I did two years ago.  
I don't know why.  Maybe because we DO change identities.  
Maybe it's me, feeling lost without my life, my job, my 
family, my everything that made me me.  I just don't know."

He put his arms around her and drew her into his beard.  "In 
your journal," he said, "you said the only thing we have is 
money.  You weren't sure we had each other.  Well, we DO.  Or 
we WILL, if I have anything to say about it."

She kissed him lightly.  "I'd like that, if we could really, 
really be together," she told him.  "It's an old habit, I 
think, our shielding each other.  And this could be a long, 
tough journey.  Even with the money, and that's just about all 
we have going for us.  If we were broke, it'd be impossible to 
do anything."

"Don't be afraid to tell me when you're fed up," he murmured, 
"or when you're sad and missing William the most."

"And you'll tell me what you're thinking?" she asked.

He nodded.  "You're all I have," he smiled. "And much as I 
enjoy being with you, I'd like to get to the point where we 
could build a group, a community."

"You mean an army."

He smiled again.  "You know me too well."

"You know what I want right now?" she asked, running her hand 
under his baggy shorts.

They collapsed back onto the bed.

"Pizza?" he suggested.

"Guess again," she said, rolling on top of him, looking at a 
man whose eyes and hair were the wrong color, who wore a beard 
and strange clothes, and who resembled in no way her Fox 
Mulder.  "Are you IN there, Mulder?" she asked.

"You have the nerve to ask, lying here with short black hair 
and wearing a blouse with ruffles?"

Staring into the other's eyes, they recognized each other and 
slowly, gently, began to make love.  For the moment, they had 
each other and were grateful.

END