Taming The Unicorn 4: The Sundering

He awoke to the dull light of near-dawn, and the growl and whine of traffic speeding past on the highway; the cold had seeped into his bones, and his joints ached as he struggled to his feet. He had no memory of having fallen asleep, but the last time he'd been aware of his surroundings it had been dark, so sleep was the only explanation... either that, or he'd blacked out. Whatever. Unconsciousness was unconsciousness, after all, and at least he hadn't dreamed.

His eyes hurt; it was an effort to blink them open, and keep them that way long enough to get a picture of his surroundings.

It was the same highway he'd hiked along for hours last night, until fatigue and stress had finally taken their toll; until he could no longer shut out the voices in his head, the echoes of what had transpired earlier that evening. He had become an expert at repressing his pain, but this was a pain beyond endurance.

Mulder, we need to talk...

His car was totaled, a ruined wreck overturned on the shoulder, several miles back; "And they say gas tanks only go up like that in the movies," he'd said aloud, to nobody in particular, as he'd watched it burn. "Guess there was no point in locking the door behind me." His insurance rates were going to skyrocket, and he couldn't bring himself to care... the 'good samaritan' who'd ostensibly stopped to help had instead taken his wallet at knifepoint, and he couldn't bring himself to care about that, either.

I've been thinking about this... about us.

He'd walked down the side of the highway for miles, with no particular destination, nothing except the vague compulsion to keep going, as if by doing so he could somehow escape the truth of what had happened. It was no use: he kept hearing her voice in his head, over and over, saying the same awful things.

I think we're making a terrible mistake...

He hadn't understood, at first; it had been incomprehensible. Lying in bed beside her, his body wrapped around hers, lazy and satiated -- worse, somehow, that she'd waited until afterwards to tell him. Had she allowed him that one last time out of pity?

We're friends... good friends. I think we should keep it that way.

And then it had begun to sink in, like a lead weight, settling in the pit of his stomach: the heavy, sick feeling that he knew too, too well. The sensation of loss: it was an old companion, one that had been with him for as long as he could remember.

How masterful his Scully was with an autopsy, that she could rip out a man's intestines without so much as a scalpel in her hand.

You understand, don't you, Mulder?

Of course. It was the same old story, after all, wasn't it? Just another betrayal of trust. Except that this one was the worst of all.

Mulder? Listen to me...

But what else had there been to say, really?

"Stop it," he muttered, through clenched teeth, "stop it, stop it..." His old mantra, from childhood on: repeated over and over in his head, a nonstop litany of mindless thought to keep the painful ones away. He recognized that it was a sign of how far gone he was, that he was actually speaking the words aloud, but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered, now.

I don't want our partnership to suffer... How could he ever work beside her again? Hard enough to be with her and not touch her, not reach out to her, when they'd been almost-lovers. Now... how could he ever look at her, hear her voice, without feeling that terrible, suffocating ache? Mulder, wait a minute, don't go... Had she expected him to stay? Had she expected him to simply agree with her verdict, and spend the rest of the night on the couch?

For him, it had been magic; how could she not feel the same way?

He didn't understand.

He couldn't understand.

His eyes hurt.

His head hurt, too, the mother of all headaches; it had begun while he was dressing, throwing on clothes so hastily he'd nearly gotten his underwear caught in his zipper. It had gotten worse after his collision with and pole-vault over the guardrail: seatbelt or no, the bruise on his head was a clear indication that he'd made at least superficial contact with the windshield. The hours he'd spent crouched at the side of the highway hadn't helped... Concussion, he estimated, judging from his dizziness and double-vision; for a moment, he had a brief, clear, tactile memory of Scully's small hand on his forehead, and that made the pain even worse.

He wanted to be home, so badly he could taste it: home, in his rathole of an apartment, among the clutter and mess, lying on the couch with the lumpy pillows and the broken spring that always caught him in the hip, eating leftover pizza and watching some second-rate porno flick... no, scratch that last. But something safe and familiar and comfortable, something that had existed in his life before Scully had torn his heart to shreds, something in which he could bury himself and perhaps forget, for a little while, the agony of her last words to him.

Mulder, this is for the best... trust me?

Trust. Yeah.

He passed a pay phone, and had no thoughts of calling anyone for assistance; who was there? Only her. She'd helped him enough, thanks very much; she'd given him a brief taste of bliss, of the most incredible happiness he'd ever known, then snatched it away so cruelly... Does she know? he wondered. How could she not know? And he didn't know which was worse: the possibility that she hadn't known how deeply he cared for her, how much her decree would hurt him -- or the concept that she'd known, but hadn't cared.

Either way, the results were the same. She'd ended their relationship, and by extension their partnership, no matter how strenuously she might object against the latter, because there was just no way he could continue to deal with her after this.

And he would miss her, oh god, would he miss her: backing him up in dangerous situations, being the voice of reason in the face of his flights of fancy, or the sole dissenting spark of faith against his relentless cynicism, the one factor that he could rely on completely... he missed her already, mourned for their partnership. As he walked, he alternated between mentally composing his request for reassignment, and his resignation; he wasn't sure yet which he would write.

His vision blurred again, and he cursed under his breath and reached up to rub at his sore, swollen eyes.

Enough, he thought, last night was enough, and cringed inwardly at the memory of his own loss of control. Of the moment when it had all become more than he could tolerate, when the tears had begun to flow, had become sobs, had become howls. Of the moment when his legs had crumpled beneath him, when he'd fallen to the ground, screaming unheard over the roar of the cars on the highway, crying helplessly, unable to stop. No relief, no release, only the endless pain -- until, finally, the numb darkness of unconsciousness had overcome him.

Awareness had brought back the pain: he struggled to hang on to the last vestiges of numbness.

Somehow, he managed to keep his feet moving, one step after another... after an eternity, the off-ramp loomed ahead, signifying that he was finally almost home; trudging steadily, he managed to make it to his destination.

As dawn moved into morning, the traffic had steadily increased... that's right, it was Monday morning, wasn't it? Guess who's not going to work today... Scully would be there, though, he was sure, securely swaddled in her confidence that she was 'doing the right thing' by shutting him out of her heart. Even if he had been in any shape to consider making an appearance, he couldn't have faced her. He could just picture her, pretending that nothing had ever happened between them...

He'd thought that losing her had been bad. Having her walk away was worse than he ever could have imagined.

He was all the way upstairs before it dawned on him that he'd lost his door key, along with his wallet and badge and everything else; he didn't feel like hunting down the super, so he kicked the door in. Not as if it hasn't happened before, he thought distantly -- his security deposit was four times the size of anyone else's, for just that reason -- and it felt good to lash out at something, to release some of the emotion that lurked, simmering, just beneath the thin veneer of sanity.

"Hold it right there," said a voice, that voice, and he turned to find Scully standing there, her gun trained on him.

It hurt to look at her, it hurt to listen to her; her presence hurt, and it was more than he could bear. "What are you doing here?" he demanded angrily.

She shook her head slightly, as if not understanding. "Tell me who you are," she said, "prove to me that it's really you."

"What the hell are you talking about?" It dawned on him, slowly, that she was trembling; that her mascara was streaked over her face in raccoon-bands; that her eyes were wide with shock. He supposed that this should matter to him, but just enough of the blessed numbness remained: everything seemed to be occurring at arm's length, as if he weren't really there at all. Even the pain of Scully's presence was somehow remote... Concussion, came to mind, or else I caught cold or something, but either way, it didn't make a difference.

He had the distinct feeling that if it had felt truly real, if her presence had been more vivid to him, he would have been crying again -- and was glad of the sensation of distance that prevented it from happening. Bad enough that she had the power to destroy him with a few words; she didn't need to know it.

"Fox Mulder is missing, presumed dead," said Scully, her voice shaking, "his car was found on the side of Route 36, along with a body burned beyond recognition, now tell me who you are!" The last was nearly a scream; it vaguely startled him that she should be screaming, for it was a sound he'd rarely heard.

Then it sank in, what she was saying; and he heard himself laugh.

"Go ahead," he said, "finish the job. You're already halfway there."

She blinked at him, lowered the weapon fractionally. "Mulder," she whispered.

"Go on," he remarked. "Shoot me. You know how," and he moved past her, toward the couch, disregarding the gun entirely.

The safety clicked into place, and he experienced a pang of regret that she wasn't going to follow through, even though he'd known she wouldn't. "What happened?" she cried out.

"You mean, after you knifed me in the gut?" Couch, blessed couch; his knees buckled under him and he fell -- something hard and solid smacked him in the side, oops, missed, he thought blurrily.

He thought about trying again, but getting up was too much of an effort -- then her hand was touching his forehead, checking the pulse along the side of his neck, and he nearly strained a muscle trying to squirm away. "Spare me your damned medical concern!" It was too much to endure; her touch drove the numbness away and brought the emotions back to the surface, and he didn't have the strength to fight the demons, not this time.

"Mulder, you're sick," and the caring in her voice shattered the last of his restraint.

"What do you care? You don't care!" Backing away from her, his blindly questing hand found the couch, and he levered himself off the floor and onto the sofa, sinking into the lumpy cushions that felt feather-soft in his current state of fatigue. "You don't care how I feel. You don't even know how I feel. I trusted you, and you..." A wave of nausea washed over him; he fought it back, but the world was slipping further and further out of focus with every passing moment.

Why was everything so strange and fuzzy all of a sudden? In his disorientation, his first instinct was to reach out toward Scully; then the little voice popped up in the back of his mind and reminded him, you can't do that, she's not there anymore; no one's there, remember? "Get out," he mumbled instead. "Get outta here..." and the blackness overcame him, and the world winked out of existence.

Something cold and wet on his forehead. It felt good.

The rest of him didn't feel so bad either, as long as he didn't try to move. Moving felt like falling, the world tilting at crazy angles, and he knew he would slide right off the edge into oblivion if he actually tried going anywhere.

Darkness. A shadow. Her face, gazing down at him. Her voice, soft and clear against the pounding rhythm that seemed to permeate the world. "You're very sick," came the syllables, distinct and yet meaningless; he couldn't seem to make sense of them. "You need to rest. You can kick me out later," and the music of her voice changed, dropped into a minor key.

He set aside the puzzle of her words as a challenge too difficult to attempt. There was only one thought he was capable of thinking, more essential than even his awareness of his own physical discomfort. "You left me," he heard himself say faintly.

The shadow altered as her face changed; he couldn't see clearly enough to decipher the changes, nor could he think coherently enough to do so. "Mulder, no, I..."

"You did," he confirmed. "S'alright. I knew you would. They all do."

It seemed that she said something then, but he couldn't tell; the darkness had thickened, veiling the shadows of her face, veiling everything.

Consciousness returned abruptly, along with a desperate fiery clenching in his stomach; "Here," said Scully's voice, and her hand was on his shoulder guiding him, and he leaned over and vomited into the green plastic wastebasket she'd placed at the side of the couch.

She held his head as he threw up, brought him tissues and cold water when it was over; she had to help him to the bathroom afterwards, and he was just lucid enough to be embarrassed as hell about it. Grateful that she was there, because he couldn't have managed himself -- resentful that he should need her, and worse yet, that she should condescend to be there for him. Better if she hadn't been. Better that he should know where he stood. Better to be alone than to trust and be betrayed...

The hypodermic slid into his arm and out again, and it occurred to him belatedly that he didn't know what or why -- apparently, trusting Scully was too strong a habit to break. But he still didn't have his answer, and it bothered him. "Why?" he moaned. "How could you do that to me, Scully?"

And again he was denied the answer, as the darkness swept in again and dragged him under.

His next awakening was relatively mild, accompanied by headache and stomachache, but not that horrible pounding disorientation -- silently, she helped him to a sitting position, held the glass as he took a few sips of cold water.

"It was the sex," Scully said, very quietly; and he looked at her, and waited.

"It's always become the central issue," she continued, after a long moment, "every relationship I've ever had; in the end, it always comes down to sex, and something always goes wrong."

What little control he had was precarious at best; he would have preferred to postpone the conversation, but obviously that wasn't going to happen. "So you tried to preserve our relationship by ending our relationship," he said slowly.

She blinked, hard. "I was afraid," she murmured. "I was afraid, and I panicked," and this made a certain amount of sense to him, that Scully should panic in such a methodical manner, with such cool clean precision. Mulder, we need to talk...

"Aren't you afraid?" Her anxious query caught his attention, and he found himself suddenly immersed in her intent gaze.

There was only one possible answer. "The only thing that's ever scared me was losing you."

Her breath caught in her throat; she blinked again, and this time was unsuccessful in holding back the tears.

"It keeps happening, though." Some distant, vengeful part of him was pleased to see Scully cry; it suited him that she should feel some fraction of his own pain. Another part of him was heartsick over her distress, but that too seemed disconnected from the rest of his mind -- mostly, he just felt tired, so tired.

"I thought I was doing the right thing," she whispered. "I'd convinced myself that it was the right thing to do, and that you would agree with me. And then I saw your face, and I knew I'd made a terrible mistake... I tried to tell you, but you wouldn't listen." He could see her shudder, hear a sound like a sob wrenched from her tiny frame. "Then I got the call from the highway police, and I thought..." and the tears began in earnest; she covered her face with her hands.

"You thought I was dead." She was crying, his Scully, crying, and he was sitting an arm's length away from her, doing nothing -- but he couldn't reach out to her; he couldn't. Defenses developed over a lifetime had operated automatically, sealing over his wounds and his aching loneliness with a hard protective shell, separating him from the source of his pain.

"I thought I'd lost you. Again." With an effort, she managed to pull herself together; her tears slowed to a trickle.

"But you'd already left me," he said, pleased by how calm and reasonable his voice sounded to his own ears.

"Mulder, I love you!" It seemed to take her a minute to realize what she'd said; her cheeks flared red, and her eyes widened anxiously, awaiting his reply.

As he absorbed her words, he realized that he had known it all along -- and it saddened him to realize that it no longer mattered. "How can you love me if you don't want me anymore?"

She tried to answer, but instead began to cry again; she reached out to touch his face, but -- he couldn't help himself -- his instinctive reaction was to evade her hand.

"I'm sorry," she whispered through her tears, and he closed his eyes and let the darkness carry him away again.

"So basically, what, I wasn't good enough?" he heard himself saying, before awareness had really even set in; she jumped, startled, at the sound of his voice. "Did I not lick you the right way or something?"

"Mulder, you were wonderful. You were fantastic. That was never a problem." She was wiping his face with a cool, wet washcloth, and he didn't bother to fight the inevitable -- besides, it felt good. "You're the first man I've ever wanted to have intercourse with," she continued, very softly.

He considered this for a moment. "Scully, if you're going to use someone for sex, that's not how you go about it," and she almost smiled.

She had such beautiful eyes, and they were so unhappy... "You don't know, do you?" he wondered aloud. "You really have no idea what you did to me."

Her first impulse was to deny it, but she reconsidered. "Maybe I don't," she admitted, and he nodded; somehow, her acknowledgment eased the ache fractionally.

"I hope you never know," he told her. "I hope you never have to know the pain I feel." It was true, he discovered; he didn't want her ever to have to suffer the way he did, she didn't deserve it. And not for the first time, he wondered, does that mean I do deserve this? Samantha, Scully, everything and everyone I've lost -- I have a degree in psychology; I know better -- but sometimes I wonder...

"You're all I've got, Scully, you're the only one... but that's not fair to you, is it?" How had he come to depend on her so deeply? How could he have let himself be so vulnerable? "Why should you have to bear the burden of my trust?"

"It was never a burden..."

"Wasn't it? 'Mrs. Spooky'." The dim gleam of her ring caught his eye, and for a second, just an instant, he regretted it -- the payments on the ring hadn't been a problem before, but now, with the inevitable increase in his insurance, not to mention car payments... "Is that what this is about? You're afraid people will find out you're porking ol' Spooky Mulder -- oh, no, wait, you never actually 'porked' me, did you? So you don't have to worry about cooties." How mature, evaluated the psychologist in him dryly, while the rest of his mind lashed out blindly, the violent thrashing of a wounded animal, not caring about unfairness or childishness or anything else.

"Mulder..." She drew in a long, deep breath, steadying her voice, herself. "I made a mistake, a stupid, thoughtless, cruel mistake, and I'm sorry; can't you forgive me?"

Her words gave him pause, and he considered: there was undeniably a part of him that wanted to forgive and forget and go back to the way things had been, but mostly there was just a big chunk of ice occupying his soul, freezing him solid. "You don't understand," he said. "It's not about forgiveness. It's about trust."

It seemed that she had nothing to say to that, and the room grew quiet.

"How do I fix it?" she whispered finally.

He shrugged. "Maybe you shouldn't," and she didn't seem to have anything to say to that, either.

Darkness claimed him again, and he welcomed the oblivion.

He awoke, feeling normal. The drifting languor of illness had passed, leaving him with only the remnants of his emotional pain.

Absently, as if it was a morning ritual (it was), he tucked the pain away into the box at the back of his mind where he kept all such things. It was a big box that shook and rattled and emitted odd noises as if something large and ominous were contained within; he'd developed the habit of making careful spot-checks, to ensure that the thing never slithered out of its cage. It had almost caught him -- for awhile, on the side of the highway, it had overcome him, but now it was restrained once more. For the time being.

Scully was asleep in a chair; he spared her only the briefest glance, enough to know that she was there, as he headed to the bathroom.

A shower cleared away the last of the cobwebs; unwillingly, he found himself reliving the events that had transpired during his illness, recalling what had been said and revealed. Scully... Everything was okay; she hadn't meant what she'd said, it had all been a mistake. She loved him -- she'd said so.

Yet all he could feel was the slow encroachment of the iceberg on his soul, no spark of warmth whatsoever.

Tears slipped from his eyes and mingled with the shower water, and he didn't even feel them. Scully... She loved him, and she wanted him -- wanted all of him, wanted him inside her, the very thing that had motivated and inspired his wet dreams and fantasies for years. It should have mattered to him, and it didn't -- and the fact that it didn't matter was somehow more hurtful than the pain itself.

He emerged from the shower, finally, toweled off and slipped into his bathrobe -- a quick flash of memory assailed him, of showering with Scully, sliding into the robe she'd bought him, her wet naked body against his, the sound of her merry laughter... the sheer power of the image nearly thawed his frozen heart.

Almost.

She was standing in the living room when he came out, waiting for him. "You're feeling better," she said.

"Yeah." He moved past her, wondering dimly if there was anything in the refrigerator that he might feel like eating; he was hungry.

"I had some Chinese food delivered," she called after him, "there's egg-drop soup, you should stick to liquids for awhile."

"I'll be fine." The concern in her voice was unsettling him, undermining him, in ways he didn't want to define.

"I guess... I should leave, then," she said hesitantly, following him into the kitchen, standing in the doorway watching him. "If you want me to..."

And there it was, the decision. His choice, whether to give in to the tiny voice that screamed silently to love and be loved, or let the indifference chill his soul completely. His choice, whether to dare to trust again.

There was only one choice he could make.

"I think you were right," he heard himself say, the words falling from his lips like knives, severing the last of the connection between them. "I think that it's a mistake for us to be too close."

She hadn't been expecting it; her eyes widened and filled with tears.

"We can try to maintain a working relationship," he added, "but anything more... just wouldn't be wise." It was the right thing to do, he knew, the safe thing to do. The walls slammed shut around him, sealing him in with the ice, numbing him so that he hardly noticed the emptiness.

Scully bit her lip and nodded; a tear slipped down her cheek, and where once he would have reached out to wipe it away, it didn't even occur to him to try to touch her.

"If you don't mind, I, um, I have some things to do... should call my insurance company, for starters..." It was a dismissal: out of sight, out of mind, or so the saying went -- he hoped that it was true.

"Yeah. Yeah, sure." She turned away quickly, hiding her face behind her hair, hiding her tears from him. Which was fine, because he really didn't want to know about her pain; he was too preoccupied with his own.

She retrieved her purse, her coat, and he wandered out to the living room while the soup was heating, to see her go... a lump formed in his throat, for he knew that it was the last time, the last separation; the final sundering of everything that had been precious to them. Sorrow washed over him, a grief so huge that it dwarfed him, crushed him, drove away the color and the life in the room and rendered everything dull and grey...

At the door, she paused. "'Bye, Mulder," she murmured, and the sound of it shattered what little was left of his broken heart -- he nearly called her back. Almost.

"'Bye, Scully," he said inaudibly, and watched the last spark of hope in her eyes die.

Then the door closed behind her, and she was gone.

Alone at last, he dug a clean spoon from the depths of the silverware drawer, fumbled with the remote until he'd found a college basketball game, settled down on the couch to watch. The silence in the apartment thickened around the low drone of the TV announcers and the vague sounds of his upstairs neighbors moving around, forming an additional barrier around him, like cotton wool to soften any blows that might still reach him. It was oddly reassuring, this silence, this aloneness: it was what he was most accustomed to. He'd allowed himself to become distracted for a little while, but he'd come to his senses; he was alone again, which meant that he was safe.

The pain would fade, and he would lock it away into the box, never again to be seen. That was the way it always happened. That was the way life worked. He'd survive.

He'd survive.

Alone.

On the screen, the underdog-team scored a point, and he dragged his attention back to the game, and tried to care who won.

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