TITLE:  Winter Stars 
AUTHOR:  Bonetree 
RATING:  PG 
CATEGORIES:  Post-Ep, V, A, 
SPOILERS:  Again, I'm not sure how much spoilage there is
left in the world, but this is a post-ep for "Closure," so if you
haven't seen that by now, this is going to ruin that pesky question
of what happened to Samantha for you. 
DISCLAIMER:  The following is a work of fiction about characters
from "The X-Files."  I know it's a huge surprise, but someone who
owned the characters most likely would not be writing fanfiction for
free on the Internet.  Therefore, no infringement is intended on
Chris Carter, Fox, or 1013 Productions, and no profit is being made. 
SUMMARY:  "I wanted to believe."

AUTHOR'S NOTES:  Thanks to Dani, Gwinne and Shari for the betas
while I get the Fic Machine oiled up and ready to run again.  

Happy Birthday.  You're free.

:::evil laugh:::



********

WASHINGTON, D.C. 
8:34 p.m.


Orion was tilting in the night sky, a March night over the city like
a blue-black shroud shot with starlight.  Scully watched the
constellation overhead, the great body of it seeming to lead her into
the heart of the nation's capital.  A Saturday and she was driving
in, the drive so familiar at this point that she knew the way better
than she knew her way home.  

She passed the Old Post Office, entered the parking deck, the stars
gone as she descended into the artificial light.  The deck was all
but empty, only a few cars huddled up closest to the elevators, and
she moved slowly toward them, the radio off in her Bureau Ford, her
hands, in black gloves, tightening on the steering wheel.  

For days she'd felt the dread.  It had built over the month since
Teena Mulder's death as she'd watched her partner move through his
days beside her, since he'd stood beneath the stars and announced,
calmly, that he was free. 

She should have believed him, she knew.  She reminded herself of
this again as she pulled in two spaces from Mulder's blue Taurus, his
car partially askew in its space. 

But if she knew anything about Fox Mulder at this point it was this:
he would never be free.  

And because of the things that tied her to him, neither would she.

Knowing this, she'd watched him.  Walking beside her on cases when
he'd look away, his lip caught between his teeth.  Sitting across
from her in diners in a half a dozen states, a cup of coffee in his
hands as if he meant to warm himself with it, her knowing he wouldn't
be sleeping again this night, tucked in his motel room alone, watched
by nothing but the distant eyes of starlight.

She'd somehow sensed it cresting in him yesterday when he'd left her
at the office at three in the afternoon, his only words upon leaving
to wish her goodnight.

Scully climbed from the car feeling weary, her coat buttoned tight
around her, a scarf around her throat.  She walked to the elevator
and began to rise up through the building, past the basement, onto
the first floor, her cardkey in her hand.  

"Where are you?" she'd asked into the cell a little while before. 
She heard the sound of a basketball rapping a wooden floor, a hollow
sound.

"Guess," was all he'd said in reply.  Two more pounds on the floor.

"I'm coming," she'd said after a beat, the book in her hands closing.

"Sure."  And he hung up.

Down the empty corridor, she recalled again that she should have
believed him.  Easier for them both, she'd thought, riding back in
the car in his perfect quiet.  

She knew he could feel that she didn't believe, had felt it all the
way through the case, through his visits with Cathy Lee, through
Harold Pillar's assertions about creatures who lived in starlight.  

And the one thing he could never sit with was her disbelief.

So here she was, down a dark hallway heading for light, the open
doors of the gymnasium, yellow splashed across the shining floor. 
The sound of tennis shoes on wood and a ball hitting a rim.  He was
alone.  Lonely sounds.

Here she was, coming to him like a priest to a condemned man. She
would hear it, what he could no longer stop from saying.  What his
eyes, in those faraway moments, wished to say.  

She began unwrapping herself as she entered the gym, the scarf
unwound and stuffed in a deep coat pocket, her hands from the gloves.
He was there at the foul line, two rolling silver racks of
basketballs beside him, one of them empty, him in a gray tank top and
blue shorts, a dark stain of sweat in a line down his back.  

Her heels beat a high counter rhythm to the bouncing of a ball, the
flick of fingers on rubber and the ball was sailing toward the basket
-- no backboard, nothing but net.  The ball dribbled itself down
toward the back wall and joined five or six others, tapping itself
into silence.

"Hey Scully," he said when she was even with them.  One section of
wooden bleachers was pulled from the wall and she sat on the lowest
seat, opened her coat.  She tried to smile. 

"Hi," she said, and the smile did not reach her face.

He looked at her, his expression somewhere between weary and afraid,
reached for another ball and pounded in, crouched.  When he released
it into the air toward the basket, it came up short and missed.  

"Mulder," she began, and her gaze fell to the floor as she said it.

"I know why you're here, Scully," he said softly, his voice echoing
slightly in the open, empty space.  "I know what you want me to
say."  

Now her head came back up.  "I don't want you to say anything,
Mulder," she corrected gently, her voice tired.  "But I know what you
need to say."

He looked down, ran a hand through his mussed, slick hair.  He
reached for the edge of his shirt and brought it up, pressed his face
into it.  When he smoothed it down again there was a rough outline of
his features on his front.  

He reached for a ball, palmed it, dropped it, and palmed it again.  

"I..." he trailed off.  The room fell into silence like a cathedral as
the word vanished like smoke.  

"Tell me, Mulder," she said softly. 

He looked at her, eyes dark as the sky outside, his face fallen. 
"I...wanted to believe, Scully."  

She let the words settle in the room as she leaned forward, her
elbows on her knees.  She folded her hands in front of her and
pressed her thumbs against her lips.  

"I know you did, Mulder," she said, drawing them away long enough to
say it.  "I know."

He held the ball against him, mussed his hair again.  "But I can't
keep going like this," he said.  "I can't...lie to myself anymore.  I
know what I saw, but I can't keep fooling myself about what it
means."  He looked at her.  "And I can't lie to you, Scully.  I owe
you that in all this."

"You don't owe me anything, Mulder," she said quietly, shaking her
head and dropping her hands to her lap.  "I know what you said all
those years ago, but you don't."

"I owe you the truth," he replied, an edge in his voice.  He
dribbled the ball once, hard, as if to punctuate, and the sound made
her wince.

"Then tell me," she said, sitting up straight.  "Tell me the truth."

He took a few steps toward the basket, pacing, came back, the ball
against his side beneath his arm.  His gaze was down until he spoke.  

"I saw her," he began.  "I saw Samantha.  She came running toward me
and I held her...I held her against me.  She felt so real..."

Scully swallowed.  "Then why can't you believe?"

He looked at away.  "For the same reasons you can't, Scully. 
Because I think both of us know how much we can see what we want when
we want to.  I think we both know that in my desire to believe what
Harold Pillar told me, what Cathy Lee told me, I could have seen
anything.  After my mother's death, I could have made anything real." 

She felt a knot rise in her throat, and cleared her throat. 
"Mulder..."

"I think more than that," he pressed, his voice gaining speed. 
"More than that.  I think there was something about Harold Pillar
himself.  I think that with the abilities he had, with what he wanted
to believe about his son and Amber Lynn and all the others – that
they were safe, safe in the starlight – that he could make anyone who
had the same pain as he did believe that.  I think he could somehow
make me believe it.  Make me see what I saw."

"But," Scully ventured.  "He didn't believe it himself.  When you
told him what you'd seen."

Mulder looked down again, swiped at his brow.  "He could believe
everything but that his son was gone," he said.  "He could believe in
starlight, Scully.  He just couldn't believe in death."  

"But you do," she said after a moment.  

He looked at her, their gazes hanging.  "Yes," he said.  His jaw was
set.  She could see the muscles of it pulsing.  

"You believe she's dead," Scully said, pushing forward.  She put her
hands out beside her, her palms flat on the wood as if to steady
herself.

Mulder nodded, his eyes going down.  "I believe she's dead," he
said, biting the words out, his voice rising in anger.  "And I
believed she suffered.  I believe she was afraid and I believe she
knew everything that was going to happen to her.  She knew
EVERYTHING!"

The ball was out of his hand, his whole body behind the throw.  It
was an orange blur hurtling toward the far wall, and didn't strike
ground until it had slammed into the cinderblock, the sound like an
explosion in the room.  Scully jumped as she heard it, her hands
clenching to fists against the wood.  

"And my mother, Goddamn her!" he shouted.  "God DAMN her!"

He kicked out, catching first the empty rack, sending it flying in a
clatter of metal on wood.  Scully was on her feet as the second rack
filled with balls end-over-ended off to her right, the balls bouncing
like running feet across the floor, one of them knocking against the
front of her calves.

"Mulder," she said as the heels of his hands dug into his eyes, his
mouth a grimace below them.  She could hear his breath hissing in and
out as she went to him, her hands going for his upper arms, her
fingers sinking in.

"It's okay," she murmured.   "It's all right, Mulder.  Shhh..."

He fell to his knees and she went with him, his elbows jutting
against her belly as he hunched over, his forehead against her
shoulder.  He did not cry, but it was caught in him.  She could hear
it caught in his chest.  

"Let it go," she said, as she'd said to him before.  "You know the
truth, Mulder.  Now let it go..."

They stayed like that, her arms around him, both on their knees
beneath the high windows, for a long time into the night.   

Outside, Orion arched up, the city heavy with the sky's weight, and
the stars – nothing but stars – looking down with their white light,
round and open as eyes.  


******

END