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ghostbustermelanieking · 5 years

Text

a dozen different lives

summary: Five lives Mulder and Scully shared.

written for a fic prompt by @o6666666 and an anon from a soulmate au prompt list: 19. the one where soulmates are reincarnated and keep finding each other throughout their different lives. it got a lot longer than i expected, so i decided to make it a separate post.

i borrowed a couple of scenarios from my tfwid rewrite, but they don’t necessarily exist in the same universe, and you do not have to read that fic to understand this one. there are also references to tfwid and triangle. in researching the historical portion of triangle, i discovered that the OSS didn’t exist until 1942, but in the TXF universe it existed in 1939, so let’s say that it does here, too.

---

The match is made by their parents. An arrangement that will be beneficial to their families and all of their neighbors. He is skeptical, initially, of the idea of an arranged marriage—although he has been told by his mother and many other people that love is a luxury—and he can tell, as soon as he sees her, that she is, too. But still, skepticism is not necessarily a way out, and they are married that day.

That night, together inside their new home, he offers to let her have the bed to herself. “I do not want you to be uncomfortable,” he says, “since we are strangers despite our new connection.”

Relief washes over her face, and she smiles. She has a beautiful, face-splitting smile. “You are quite kind,” she says, sitting in the edge of the bed. “I believe I will accept your offer, although I do not know if it can last forever. I know that children are expected from this union.”

“It can last as long as we like,” he says. “I would prefer to get to know you, if that is all right.”

She nods, her hands folded primly in her lap. “I would like that very much,” she says.

And so she takes the bed and he sleeps in another room.

When he came up with the idea the day before, he had expected the distance to remain, perhaps for the entirety of their lives together. But that does not seem to be the case. When she shares breakfast with him in the morning, they have a lively conversation, and hope blooms within his heart.

---

Throughout his life, he has seen many unhappy marriages that he knows were arranged. That he knows there is no love in. His parents are an example. He had expected the same thing out of his own marriage. But that does not seem to be the case. He has been getting to know his new wife, and he has begun to care for her. Maybe even to love her. She is incredibly intelligent, maybe even moreso than him, and they often stay up late nights talking and telling stories. She can make him laugh, harder than he's ever laughed before. She is beautiful, radiantly so. She still sleeps alone, and he would never suggest that she does otherwise unless she wanted to, but the way she smiles at him when she says good night makes him melt.

He is not sure that she feels the same way until one night when they fall asleep by the fire. They fall asleep lying next to each other on the ground, and when he awakens, she is curled up next to him with her head on his shoulder, her hair loose and waving. He lays there for longer than she should, waiting until she starts to stir beside him to move. Her face grows red when she sees him looking at her, and she murmurs an apology, avoiding his eyes. He feels ashamed, as if he has overstepped, until that night after dinner. She covers his hand with hers and says in a soft voice, “Perhaps… you could join me in the bedroom tonight, if you would like. It is your bed, after all.”

His heart leaps in his throat, almost involuntarily. He says, “It would be my honor to do so.”

Later that night, she falls asleep curled in his arms. He thinks to himself that it may be the most blissful moment of his life.

---

They spend much time together. Perhaps more (as people like to comment) than a husband and wife should. They go for long walks each day and spend their nights chatting by the fire. She will often accompany him when he is partaking in his duties, and will often offer her own opinions on the matter. They find excuses to spend more time together. He is tempted to explain to people that it is because they are in love, and that is the simple truth of it. He wants to spend time with her, as he should, since she is his wife.

He muses, sometimes, on how fortunate he is. How he could've connected so strongly with a woman who was strange to him not two years ago—how he could've gotten as lucky as to be paired with her. It feels as if it is a miracle.

After three years of marriage, their first child comes. It comes with a bit of a scare, as all births do—he fears, of course, that he will lose her, or the baby, or both—but it is fortunately an easy birth. His wife lives, although she is weak for a few weeks afterwards, and so does the baby. He is so grateful that he nearly weeps at her bedside, kissing her sweaty temple and repeating his thankful mantra: that he is so happy that she is okay, that he does not know what he would have done if he had lost her. He feels as if he is the most fortunate man in the world.

---

Later—years later, when their children are nearly grown and they have been living together for what seems like an eternity—she will take his hands and tell him, “I must admit something to you; I was not at all sure about this union prior to meeting you.”

He laughs with ease. “I will admit the same thing,” he tells her. “It feels so foolish now, to view it in this manner.”

She narrows her eyes at him in a jovial warning. “I was afraid you would be cruel, or quite different from myself. I hated that I had to marry a man I had never met.”

He had felt the same way. He clasps her hand close and listens attentively.

“But you are right,” she continues, looking up at him with the same loving look in his eyes that always brings him to his knees. “Those thoughts seem foolish now. I cannot imagine ever having married anyone else but you. I…” She falters a bit, looking back down. “I find it hard to express, sometimes, the depth of my love for you.”

His chest swells with the same care he has felt for her since that first night they spent together, and he takes her hand and kisses the back of it. “You should not find it difficult,” he tells her. “You make it known. I feel as if the two of us have always understood the other's feelings… and I do understand yours. You need not feel as if there is something lacking in the way you express yourself to me… truthfully, you do not even have to say anything out loud. I know. I would always know.”

She smiles at that, and moves forward until she is leaning against him. He winds his arm around her and leans down to whisper into her hair. “And I love you,” he says, “more than words can say.”

ii.

She has seen the woman before, the one with the fiery hair: at the river when they gather to wash clothes. She has not spoken to her before tonight, but sometimes, when she begins to tell the stories she makes up at night, stories she tells her cousin of fairies and goblins and spirits, she sees the bright-haired woman rolling her eyes, almost playfully.

Now, now their village is ablaze, and she is certain that her family is dead. They were inside the house; the only reason she was not was because she was mending the laundry outside. Her father angers when they burn the lanterns too long, and so she had been mending by the moonlight, and she'd fallen asleep, and woken up with heat on her face and to her little cottage on fire. She had screamed her family's names and they had not answered. The fire spread to the dry grass at the edge of the house, flaring up dangerously close to the edge of her skirt, and God help her, she had ran. She had not known what else to do, where else to go; she did not want to go alone.

And so it was. She had run through the heat, through the burning houses and fields, firelight flickering in her eyes and her skirt clutched in her hands so she would not trip. Until she ran directly into the bright-haired girl from the river. She was her nightclothes, the white of the shift stained with soot, her face smeared with soot and tears, her sunshine hair streaming down her back. She regretted, then, ever describing the girl's hair as fiery.

Neither of them had said anything. They had both been crying, and they were both terrified. The girl had wordlessly reached for her hand, and she had taken it. They both began to run together.

And now, with the inferno far behind them, their pace has slowed to a walk. The girl's hand is cold, as is the night, the freezing wind whipping around them and pushing at their hair. They have never spoken before tonight, but now they whisper to each other in the night as they walk together up the lonely road. The girl speaks of how she escaped, how she had smelled the smoke and felt the heat and slipped out of the window before thinking of her mother, her widowed mother who was the only one inside their small house. The girl cries, and she cries with her, wiping her tears and leaving smudges of ash along her cheeks. She tells the girl of her lost parents and her cousin, a ward of their family who had become like a sister to her. They walk through the moonlight, shivering in the cold.

---

They reach the next village by morning. When they walk into the marketplace, they see the whispers of the men and women at their informality: two peasant girls, one in her dressing gown with her hair loose and uncovered, their faces smeared with soot. When they tell their story, the villagers demand to know why they are the only survivors. They send a rider to go and examine the village, to find whether or not they are telling the truth. There are whispers of witches in the crowd, and she begins to feel for her life all over again. Until an employee of the lord of this manor system spots them and takes pity on them.

They are taken to the manor, being warned repeatedly that they must pray that the lord has much pity as the servant has, that orphans such as them would be fortunate to give such an honor as to work for the lord. There are things she wants to say in response to this, but she bites her tongue and stays at the bright-haired girl's side. Her tongue has gotten her in trouble many times. She does not know what she would do if they were turned away.

But they are not. The pity does indeed extend to two poor orphan girls. The lord remarks that they may start as scullery maids, and that they should learn their duties quickly, and that they should be grateful for the opportunity given to them. They both thank him meekly, heads bowed, although she notes a spark of defiance in the other girl's eyes.

They are shown to a small room with no window, with an even smaller bed that they are to share. And then they are put straight to work.

---

The work is often larger than the work that she used to do in her father's home, alongside her mother and cousin, but it is not that different. Still, she does not take to it quickly, and is often scolded or struck for mistakes. The other girl takes to it quicker and sometimes helps her, offers suggestions in the dark of their shared room. They rise at dawn and to to sleep late at night. Often, she falls asleep with enough space between the two of them that would be considered respectable and wakes up curled up at the other girl's back. Sometimes, she will find the other girl curled up against her as well, her bright hair falling across their faces. It is strangely comforting in a way that initially makes her feel guilty, but she reminds herself that she and her cousin used to sleep close to conserve warmth.

Often, she will have violent nightmares and wake up crying out for her mother, her cousin. The other girl will often press a hand over her mouth, simply to prevent her from crying out too loud—the first time she had woken up screaming, the cook had come into the room and slapped them both, warned them not to wake her again, lest they wake the lord and his family—but then she will calm her. She strokes her hair, wipes her tears away, and whispers, Shush. Shush. You are all right. It is enough to calm her, to lull her back to sleep. The other girl holds her hand as she drifts off.

When the bright-haired girl wakes up crying out, she will do the same for her.

---

As the years pass, the work becomes easier. The punishments and scoffs and cruel words lessen. She grows closer to the other servants, finds a companionable nature in some of them. But the bright-haired girl from her former village remains the most companionable, her truest friend. They often stay up much later than they should, whispering together in the dark. Her friend often urges her to tell her ghost stories, despite not believing any of them. She urges her friend to tell her own stories. They whisper together when mending clothes, when doing the laundry, when drawing the water or changing the bedclothes. They occasionally braid each other's hair in the morning, pick up the slack on each other's chores, share their rations when necessary.

They still sleep curled close together. It is often too cold to do otherwise. Her friend will often reach for her hand and clasp it in hers. Sometimes they will sleep with their arms around each other. Sometimes her friend freezing feet will press against hers. Sometimes she'll wake up with her face in her friend's sunshine hair.

---

The first time that the girl kisses her, in secret in the dark of their room, it feels like they have done something wrong. They both feel guilty the next morning; they avoid each other's eyes, work in silence, slip into bed in silence. She feels guilty, yes, but she also feels embarrassed for her avoidance of her friend.

But she finds she cannot stop thinking about it throughout the days, when she does her chores, in the quiet moments where there is no one to talk to. She keeps thinking of the softness of her friend's lips, of the way she whispered her name just before. She is remembering once when her cousin told her of a kiss with a boy by the river, the way it made her feel. Her cousin said that she was in love. She always said that she had not understood.

The truth of it is that she has lost everyone else she loves in the world, and her friend is all she has left. She loves her dearly; she has known that for years. There is no question of that. (The truth of it is that the two of them go rather unseen. Even their other friends among the servants do not seem to notice them. They do not cry out in their sleep anymore, and so no one comes into their room at night.)

She kisses her friend next, secretly in the dark of their room once again, her fingers tangled in her hair. (Her friend makes a small, surprised sound in the back of her throat, her mouth parting, her fingers clutching tightly at the shoulders of her shift.) It happens again and again, night after night. The guilt lessens each and every time she does it.

---

When the stable boy, the one she has often had conversations with when drawing water, proposes marriage if their lord permits it, she immediately declines.

iii.

She meets him when they are children. Her family lives next to his, and their mothers often do the chores together: hang the laundry, care for the livestock. And so they are often herded along with their mothers to be watched while they work. They begin to play together at a young age, for almost as long as she can remember. The first time he convinces her to run off into the woods while their mothers are distracted, she thinks a part of her knows she has found the right person to spend time with. They come back hours later to their furious mothers and a spanking, both covered in dirt and her dress torn, but she doesn't care at all.

From then on, they are always spending time together, getting into trouble together. She's always afraid he's going to want to play with someone else, but her older sisters have no interest in playing, and his brother is still just a baby. So it's always just the two of them. They get into so much trouble that her mother says, daily, that he is a bad influence, that it's unladylike to run around so and she should sit down quietly like her sisters. But there are no other children around for them to play with, and she refuses to be discouraged. Eventually, their mothers mostly give up.

---

“I want to go places,” he tells her at age ten. They've snuck away from their chores (they usually end up doing chores together; she has no brothers, and since she's always been a bit of a tomboy, her father encourages her to do the chores normally intended for a boy), and they're sitting by the river. He's throwing stones into the river, trying to skip them; she's reading a book from her father's library. “I want to travel the world, and fight pirates, and have adventures.”

“That sounds quite interesting,” she says absently, turning a page.

He throws a pebble; it hits the back of her book, and she looks up at him. “You could come with me,” he says. “You could be my first mate.”

She laughs, rolling her eyes at him. “First mates are not girls,” she tells him. “And besides that, why should you be in charge?”

“Captains aren't girls, either,” he says stubbornly, “but perhaps you could be the first.”

“Aye, perhaps I could be,” she says absently, going back to her book.

He reaches out to tweak her left braid, and she looks up. “I do not want to travel with anyone else,” he says seriously. “Please come with me. You can be the captain, if you want.”

She blinks in surprise, smoothing her mud-stained skirt. “Perhaps I shall,” she says, smiling teasingly at him. “Someday, when we are older.”

He smiles right back. He throws a handful of pebbles into the flowing water, splashes her with a kick of his foot, and she squeals indignantly and splashes him right back.

---

When they get older, talks of marriage begin, of course. Their two small farms have grown into a slightly larger settlement, and there are suddenly more young people around them. Her oldest sister is betrothed, and will be married in the fall, and her other sister begins to whisper. “Are you not betrothed as well?” she asks her with a giggle.

She doesn't want to speak of such things, she tells her sister. She's being incredibly silly. But the older they get, the more she begins to think about it. It is almost involuntarily, but she begins to think about it. When they're mucking stalls together, or hunting, or caring for the cows and pigs. When he's giving back the books she gave him, or telling her stories, or climbing up onto the back of her horse (that she rides bareback despite her mother's horror at how unladylike it is), holding onto her waist and laughing wildly in her ear as she drives the horse into a gallop. They still spend too much time together; her mother tells her again and again that it isn't proper. They are nearly adults, nearly at the age of marriage. They should not be spending so much time alone. But it doesn't matter to her. She's never been much of a listener.

One night when they are seventeen, she wakes to a flurry of pebbles at her window. He's standing in her yard with a lantern flickering across his face, squinting up at her. She's downstairs in a minute, the two of them slipping together into the stables.

They sit together in the loft, brushing aside the hay in case the lantern falls. He hands her half a piece of bread, fresh-baked by his mother, and she inhales deeply, smiling. They chew for a few moments in silence before he bumps his shoulder against hers. “I have learned some news that I wanted to share with you,” he says.

She looks over at him, raising her eyebrows at him. His tone suggests that it is not good news. “All right,” she says.

He takes a deep breath. In, out. He reaches out as if he is going to touch her knee but pauses, pulling his hand back. “I—” he begins before pausing abruptly, clearing his throat several times. “My parents,” he says, “have made a match for me.”

She freezes, her shoulders tensing. The bread, unnoticed, falls out of her hand and below to the floor. “Oh,” she says. “That… that is fortunate.”

“Yes.” His feet are swinging in the air. He isn't looking at her. “It… it is to that girl we often see at the well. They believe her family will be advantageous to have a link to.”

“Indeed.” She swallows, almost painfully. “I… I should offer my congratulations.”

“Thank you,” he says quietly. He reaches out gingerly, again, and does touch her knee with soft fingers. “I… Do you remember when we were young? The things we wanted to do?”

“I do,” she whispers, her eyes half-shut. She swings her own feet. She feels foolish, scrubbed raw, although she could not explain why if she was to be asked. “You wanted to travel the world.”

“I wanted you to come with me,” he says. He taps her knee through her nightgown with one finger. “I… I think about that sometimes. It's tempting to hold onto those childhood dreams.”

Her face goes red-hot, and she shuts her eyes all the way. She feels so foolish, so childish. Like maybe she should have listened when her mother told her that she should not be spending so much time with him anymore. Or when her sister asked if they were betrothed. She wonders if he's ever seen her as anything more than a sister, or a childhood memory. “Yes,” she says, rubbing a hand over her face. She will not cry. There is no reason to cry. Someday she will be married and he will be married and all of this will just be memories. She scoots across the edge of the loft, puts her feet into the rungs and swings herself around so she can descend. “I am very happy for you and your engagement,” she says, swallowing hard. “I'm sure the two of you will be very happy together.”

He sits up a little straighter in the flickering lantern light. “Wait,” he's saying, “wait, don't go…” But she's already gone. She reaches the bottom of the ladder and slips out of the stables, back into the house. She wipes her eyes as she creeps up into her bedroom. She lets herself cry.

---

There is a distance between them following this revelation. They still spend time together, still work together, but there is a distance between them. She feels insecure now, like she has revealed too much, pushed the boundaries. He is as quiet and respectful as she may have expected. They do not discuss the impending wedding, where he will live, if it will be far. They do not discuss it at all.

Her mother begins to speak of a match for her, and she always grimaces at the prospect. She's tempted to say that she'll never be married, but that feels too silly and unbelievable. She had never really considered marriage until recently, and never with anyone besides him. Thinking of it now just leaves her embarrassed, and so she refuses to speak of it. She does the same things she has always done, throws herself into her work and pretends that nothing is wrong.

She must do a bad job of hiding things because he begins to ask, nearly daily, if she is all right. After weeks of replying with a simple, “I am fine,” she loses her resolve and snaps, “And what do you presume is wrong, exactly? Why do you care for my feelings so deeply?”

The way he draws back from her with hurt in his eyes, as if she has slapped him, tells her she may have gone too far, after months of long silences and irritable responses. He mumbles a quick apology and turns away, is gone before she can offer an apology of her own.

They begin to avoid each other. She arranges her chores so that she does not have to work with him. She begins hiding in her room with her father's books (another unladylike habit her mother often comments on, reading) instead of venturing out. Her second sister, now betrothed herself, tells her that she is being silly and she should simply tell him how she feels. She tells her sister that this is ridiculous. She knows he does not feel the same way about her. If she is going to make amends, than she will have to work to preserve their friendship and nothing more. (And even their friendship will ultimately fall through, because it will not be appropriate, once he is married, for him to retain a friendship with a young, unmarried woman.) She tries to tell herself, once again, that she is growing up and a natural part of growing up is losing your childhood. And he is everything she can think of when she thinks of her childhood.

She does not know what else to do. She reads the books he lent her years ago, and greets his fiance as politely as she can muster at the well, and she tries not to think about attending his wedding someday.

---

One day, weeks after their last encounter, his father comes to their house. She foolishly thinks it is about the rift in their friendship, but of course, it is not; he has come to tell her that his son has gone on an extended hunting trip with some of the other men in town, and he wonders if she would mind taking over some of his duties. She's immediately shocked; she had no idea that he was even gone. He has gone hunting plenty of times before, although it's usually with her and they've never gone overnight; her mother would have died with shame. She is a little hurt, but she has no right to be; she reminds herself that she has initiated the distance with him. She tells his father she'll do his chores.

There has been talks of the war; she has heard whispers of them when merchants come through. A few of the valiant men in the growing settlement have volunteered to enlist in the army. But it is largely limited to the coast, and they are far from the ghost. They have not seen any battles, any deaths. It is so far off that they can nearly forget it is happening. And she has forgotten that it is happening, until she gets the news.

A lone member of the hunting party scrambles into town several days later, frantic and terrified. He tells them that the enemy came across their party when they stumbled across a fort. That they took everyone in the hunting party (aside from him; he escaped into the woods) hostage. That they are taking them to the coast, and there were discussions of whether or not they should be killed.

She is instantly horrified, as is the rest of this town. The men gather to discuss negotiations to get the party back, but the general consensus seems to be that they have no power in this situation. The most they can do is try to get in touch with their country's army, to see if they can organize some sort of rescue, but the best thing to do, they tell the families, might be to give their sons up for dead.

She won't accept that. She refuses to accept that. She sees people who are distressed, his fiance distressedly twisting her handkerchief in her hands, almost theatrically, and she doesn't understand it because he isn't necessarily even dead yet. How can they give up on him when he is still alive somewhere, and he needs help? She cannot understand it. She tells her father that they need to go to find him and the other men, that they can't just leave them for dead and rely on an army of people they have never met to save him, and her father tells her sternly that there is nothing that they can do and she should let it go. That she should not think of these things, especially about another man's fiance. Her mother tells her that she needs to forget it, and she should take this as a sign to stop this unladylike behavior that has been going on too long. She can't understand their dismissal, after so many years with him. She's grown up alongside him, he's as much a part of her life as any of her family, and she doesn't understand how her family, his family can just dismiss it. She saw his little brother at the meeting, and he was as angry as she is, protesting the abandonment of his brother, but his parents and his fiance seemed to have dismissed him as dead. She cannot understand it. She needs him to be safe, she needs him to come home.

Her sister whispers to her, “If you truly love him, you could go for him.” And as much as it is her instinct to deny it, she cannot get the suggestion out of her head.

She slips downstairs that night, steals some food from the kitchen, her father's gun she used for hunting, and slips out the door. She takes her horse from the stable, climbing onto its back, and rides off into the woods without another thought. She is going to get him back.

---

She rides for days, her hair flying out behind her and tangling in the wind, her cloak flapping around her. She is headed towards the coast, towards where the man said they were taking the hostages. She doesn't exactly have a plan, which worries her a bit, but she doesn't know that there's a feasible one. She just knows she has to try.

She stops through many towns on her way, and they all have no information, until she reaches one nearly fifty miles from home. There, she finds a unit of soldiers, and finds one who knows of the hostages. She gets information by lying and telling him that she is his fiance; shame rises in her throat, but she pushes it back, tells herself that she is doing it for him and no one ever has to know.

The soldier tells her that there is an attack planned on the fort where they are being held, and that they may be released during the attack, if they are still alive. He directs her to the area where the fort is and advises her to steer clear of the battle.

She rides in the direction he advises, thinking as she goes about all the things he's done for her and she for him, about all of the promises they made and the adventures they planned that seem childish now. She tells herself that whatever happens after this doesn't matter, as long as he gets out alive. She doesn't care if he gets married or doesn't get married or goes off to travel the world; she just wants him to be okay.

---

She gets there in the midst of the battle, which is almost a relief; she would be willing to charge into the midst of a fort to rescue him, but she feels as if doing so would just get them both killed. She can't get anywhere near the front lines, to her frustration, so she stays at an inn nearby, waiting in the pub to hear news. As soon as she hears that the fort has been captured, that their army is victorious, she slips out to the stables, takes her horse from its stall, and rides straight to the front.

The edge of the fort is crawling with soldiers, enemy prisoners, bodies that have not been moved. She picks through, ignoring the questions and jeers of soldiers, until she sees a cluster of men she recognizes, sitting along a log with blankets around their shoulders. She sees men she recognizes, men she's talked to, and then she sees him—the back of his head, overgrown and shaggy, the slump of his shoulders, and she calls his name. She pulls her horse to a stop as he turns towards her, slides to the ground and begins to run towards him. Shock dances over his face as he stumbles to his feet, the rough blanket slipping from his shoulders, a beard beginning along his jaws and his eyes wide. She calls his name again, running to his side, touching his jaw with gentle fingers. There's a bruise along his face, his eye swelling, and rope burns around his wrists, and he looks so small and whole and she's so happy to see him. She resists the urge to wrap her arms around him. “Are you all right?” she whispers.

He nods, his jaw clenched. “Those bastards were plenty rough, but I'm all right… What are you doing here?” He touches the side of her face with the rough palm of his hand; he almost looks as if he's going to cry.

“I’ve come to find you,” she says firmly, not leaving room for questions. She reaches up to touch the spot beside his blackening eye, and he winces. “What did they do?” she whispers.

“What anyone would do with any hostages… You traveled all this way?” He is staring at her in astonishment. “You have come so far… for me? After everything?”

Her nose stings, her eyes burn; she feels as if she's going to cry. “Of course I came,” she whispers, and smiles. “I am your traveling companion, remember? Your first mate?”

“You are the captain,” he whispers, and smiles back at her. “You… I can't believe you…” He cups her cheek, stroking it with one thumb. He leans down and kisses her softly. She kisses him back, her mouth falling open under his; his hands are on her waist, holding her close, and she cannot believe it. They have never kissed before. When his lips touch hers, it feels as if the horrific scene and all the soldiers around them have fallen away.

When he pulls away, he seems a bit dazed. “I… thank you,” he murmurs.

“I would do it again,” she whispers, taking his hands. Her traveling companion. Her dearest friend.

He looks down down at their joined hands, their tangled fingers. “I… I know that I am betrothed,” he says hesitatingly, “but… I do not wish to be married. At least not to her.”

She sniffles. She squeezes his hands.

“I… I think I would prefer to be married to someone else,” he says.

She dips her head to rest her nose against his knuckles. She whispers, “I think that is very wise.”

He pulls one hand out of hers and lifts it, sliding his thumb under her chin and tipping it so that he meets her eyes. He is looking at her in that soft way he used to when they were children and she helped him to climb a tree, when she first came outside after a long, nasty illness that left her bedridden at age twelve, when they had accidentally fallen asleep in the stables at fifteen and had to sneak back into the house without getting caught, that way he'd looked at her when she first woke up. “Shall we go together?” he whispers. “You can still be the captain, the way I promised you.”

Her answer is her lips against his again, when she rises on her tiptoes and takes his face in her hands and kisses him. They will go together, wherever they go, and this is the way it was meant to be.

iv.

She meets him on accident. It's because of the dead-end job that her father got her, a secretary job for a government official that she's only working at to save money to attend college. A reporter apparently has an interest in interviewing her boss, and she's sent instead. He seems as annoyed as she is at the entire prospect, but after a few minutes, she figures out that he's not really annoyed with her. “I think that's pretty demeaning to the both of us, don't you think?” he asks, and that warms her to him considerably.

He doesn't end up interviewing her, but they end up talking for hours. She slips up and complains about her job, about the lapse in her education, about years of basically being ignored or overlooked, and he doesn't chide her or laugh in dismissive amusement. He listens. He offers stories of his own frustrations with reporting, with the dead-end assignments his boss gives him, and she laughs despite herself. She likes him, almost without having to think about it. When he asks her to dinner after the non-interview, against her better judgement, she accepts.

They take it slow, at her insistence. As much as she likes the guy, she doesn't want to rush into anything. She doesn't want to be duped by some guy who's not looking for anything serious. But that doesn't seem to be the case here. He seems to like her, genuinely like her. He doesn't talk down to her, he asks for her opinions on things. He starts wanting her to come along on his jobs, to do some investigative reporting. She should probably say no, but she's always been a sucker for an adventure.

She doesn't do it on purpose—she used to tell her mother as a child, rebellious and furious, that she would never get married—but she finds herself falling in love with him.

---

“You should quit,” he tells her one night in his apartment, nights that have started becoming more frequent now. She used to feel guilty about those nights, but she's a grown woman, and besides that, half the building has gotten real fed up with her late night phone calls. “You're better than that job, sweetheart. A million times better.”

She laughs, her head on his shoulder. Maybe a little bitterly, but it's hard to be bitter when he's touching her this way, his hand on her spine. “I don't know what else you think I could get,” she says. “You got any ideas, you let me know.” College is starting to look like a dimmer option, considering how little money she makes. She always wanted to go further than this, than being somebody's secretary, but she doesn't know if she really can.

“You could do it, hon,” he says, stroking her wild hair. His eyes are sparkling in the dark, and he's grinning at her like she's worth a million bucks. That's what he tells her all the time: You look like a million bucks. “You could change the world.”

---

In 1938, he proposes. He doesn't do it in the big, public way that she's heard about girlfriends getting proposed to—he does it in the doorway to her apartment, when she's groaning and pulling her heels off, swearing she's going to give up dancing, at least to swing music, and she turns around, and there he is with the ring. She says yes, of course, because what else is she going to do? She loves him, and she wants to, and she says yes, laughing and nearly crying. He scoops her up and whirls her around, right there in the hall in her sock feet, and she gasps out something about her reputation, even though it's long been ruined, and then she kisses him right there.

They make plans for a wedding—a small one, of course, neither of them can afford a big one even with her father—and plans for a life, a little apartment in DC and a real story for him and a real job for her and maybe children someday, everything they've ever wanted. She tells him that he's daydreaming, and he tells her anything can happen. What if there's another war? she whispers, because she still remembers the aftermath of the first one, her mother crying over her younger brother who was drafted and died somewhere in a trench overseas, she never got over it. What if that happens to them?

Neither of them want to say there won't be another war. They've been reading about every horrible thing happening overseas; they both lost people in the Great War. He lost his father. So he doesn't say that. Instead he says, I'd come back to you. Or you'd come with me.

Oh, baby, she whispers, I don't think it works like that.

It could. It could, you know. We'd find each other.

She wants to believe him. She wants to believe him badly. She kisses him instead and tried to picture the future. A good future.

---

In the end, Europe goes to war but America doesn't. And she goes to war before he does. Her boss comes out of his office and smiles too toothily and tells her that he has a little job for her, that he's seen her potential, that he knows she can do it. It's work for that new government agency, the OSS. He wants her to go on a ship to Europe, the Queen Anne; he wants her to pretend to be the wife of a scientist, an important scientist that they need in Europe, so that no one will suspect who he is. It'll be like she's protecting him.

She wants to tell her boss that she has a gun, that she could actually protect him, but she doesn't dare protest. This is the best opportunity she's had in ages, the only opportunity to do something important. America isn't in the war, but she's been reading about the Allies overseas, the fight they've been fighting, and she knows she wants a part in it. She doesn't see any choice to accept.

Later, that night, she goes to her fiance's apartment. She feels the need to apologize, apologize over and over again, but he tells her not to be ridiculous. Tells her that this is important, that this is the type of thing that she was meant to do and that he's proud of her. “Just be careful,” he tells her with a wayward grin, holding her hand. “If you're serving as somebody's bodyguard.”

She shakes her head with amusement and tells him that she's hardly a bodyguard, she's simply there as this man's cover story, and that's all. He shakes his head in response and kisses the top of her head. You'd sock someone's lights out if given the chance, sweetheart, I know you would.

She packs the nicest things she owns—which isn't much; she has to borrow things from her roommates, and even calls her mother out of desperation. She packs her revolver, too, sliding it out of sight under her clothes. If this person is important as her boss has hinted, then she's not going to just stand there passively as his cover; she's going to take action, if she needs to. He sits on the edge of her bed and teases her and tells her she's going to save the world. She rolls her eyes at him; she has no idea whether or not this will be important, but she doesn't feel important. She feels like a doll.

The night before she leaves, he comes to her apartment. Her roommates are out at work, working the late shifts in a factory, so it is just the two of them. She's already told him he can't come with her to the docks. He puts on the radio, on a slow song that makes her shiver, and the two of them sway together there in the tiny sitting room. “It's odd,” she tells him, “but I feel like I'm leaving for a lot longer. Like I'm not going to see you for a while.” It's ridiculous, that she feels this way, but she knows the danger. She's headed for war-torn Europe with a man who's essentially a weapon. She could be walking into danger.

He shakes his head, holding her closer as they move. She can hear his heartbeat under her ear. “It won't go like that, sweetheart,” he whispers. “It can't. You're going to be amazing, and then you're going to come back home, and we're going to be married. All right?”

“All right,” she whispers, his coat scratchy underneath her palms.

When he leaves, he pauses in the doorway, turns around and kisses her sweetly. “I'll see you in a few weeks,” he says.

She breathes out shakily and touches the side of his face, smiles up at him. “See you then,” she says.

When he's gone, she takes off her engagement ring, reluctantly, and slides it into a pocket on the side of her suitcase. She hates to do it, but she doesn't want people seeing it and asking too many questions. She swears she's going to out it back on the second she gets to England.

---

The scientist she's traveling with is a lot kinder than she expected. He doesn't seem to think she's incapable of actually protecting him, although he smiles a little indulgently when she tells them about the revolver. He promises to keep a respectable distance from her, and he asks her questions about her wedding plans. They schmooze it up with the rich people every night, and she retires to her room afterwards, slips her ring on her finger and writes a letter to her fiance. It's not exactly idyllic, but it's okay. It's all perfectly okay, and she keeps telling herself that it can bring her new opportunities, a way to move up in the world and get herself a better job, when the Nazis show up. And right behind them, a man in ragged clothes who claims to know her, who calls her Scully. He claims he knows about the scientist, which is enough to terrify her, but then the Nazis start killing people in an attempt to extract the information. They almost kill her, more than once, push her to her knees beside this man who calls himself Mulder and put a gun to her head, and all she can think of is the bed in her fiance's apartment, the ring tucked into the side of her suitcase, his face when she said yes. How he told her that she'd come home. How badly she wants to see him again.

They almost kill her, and then they don't, and this Mulder guy pulls her away from the ballroom and through the ship, talking about time travel and Einstein and almost getting killed a couple more times. She'd hate him if he didn't, somehow, remind her of her fiance. A more arrogant version of her fiance. He insists that she has to turn the ship around or he won't exist, or history will go the wrong way, and then he grabs her and kisses her. Kisses her hard and passionately, but sweetly.

She forgets herself for just a moment and kisses him back, before she remembers herself and tears away. She socks him hard across the jaw, and winces at the instantaneous stinging of her knuckles. She's furious, fuming, and so distracted that when the Mulder guy turns around and jumps right off of the ship, she has no idea how to react. She throws the life preserver into the water, searches the black, churning waves for him because goddamnit, he does remind her of her fiance, and he may be an arrogant ass, but she doesn't want him to drown. But he never reappears. He's disappeared, with the answers to all her questions with him.

She shakes her head hard and turns away from the deck. She slips back inside and finds the captain and convinces him to turn the ship around. The passengers somehow subdue the Nazis as they re-enter the Bermuda Triangle. She finds the scientist and takes him back to her room, locking the door and loading her revolver. The scientist holes up at the desk, scribbling on sheets of paper and muttering under his breath. She sits on the bed, slides her ring back on and holds the revolver in her lap and wishes for home.

But she never gets home.

---

They’re adrift for days. Weeks, months. She loses track of time. The water is black, and the sky is always dark, and it’s so foggy that no one can see where they’re going. The climate is all wrong here, she thinks, they’re supposed to be in warm waters. The sailors comment that they should’ve reached land a dozen times by now. She stops keeping track of time.

She remembers what that man, Mulder, told her: that they were in a time warp, or something like that. She doesn’t believe in such ridiculous things, she tells herself a million times, but how, then, have they not gotten home yet?

She keeps writing letters to her fiance, even though she knows she cannot send them. She wears her ring all the time now; it doesn’t matter what people think. She sits at the foggy window and looks out into the nothing, her head against the cool glass. The scientist tries to console her, but she doesn’t listen. She draws absent shapes in the glass, shuts her eyes and wishes for somewhere else. She wishes for him.

She dreams, sometimes, when she can sleep. Dreams and wakes up clutching her ring so hard the stone has left an imprint in her palm. She dreams of him looking for her, hiring investigators who search and find nothing, who tell him she is dead and leave him screaming furiously in their faces. She dreams of him crying for her, refusing to go to a funeral her father arranges, refusing to give up even when multiple people tell him that there’s no hope. She dreams that America enters the war and he enlists, hoping that he will be able to find her somewhere overseas. He writes her letters that he will never send. She wishes, again and again, that she could tell him that she is alive, but she’s not entirely sure that she is. She cries herself, crumpling her handkerchief in her fist and wiping cold tears off of her cheeks. She halfway wishes she’d jumped off that ship after that Mulder man, so she could’ve swam home if nothing else.

She dreams, some time later, that he dies. He dies, bleeds out on a beach in France, and she wakes up screaming his name, and there is no one to hear her. The halls are empty, the ballroom is silent. He is dead, and she thinks she might be, too, and there is no way to find him or to go back home again.

She dreams, once, that he comes to the ship. That he walks into the full ballroom, looking lost, and she runs up to him and he picks her up and whirls her around, the way he did when she said yes, and he holds her so tight. He's kissing her again and again, kissing the tears where they fall, and he tells her, I told you, I told you we'd find each other. It's so vivid she almost thinks it is real.

Later, she lies on her bed, watching the ceiling, as drowsiness overtakes her. She is so tired. She's thinking of Mulder again, for reasons she can't quite explain; she can't stop thinking of how much he reminded her of her fiance. He was an ass but he acted as if he knew her, as if he cared about her… or someone who looked like her. He looked a little bit like her fiance, when they were kneeling beside each other on the ground or just before he jumped or right after he kissed her. He said, It's me, Mulder, and he called her Scully… he called her Scully…

“Scully,” he whispers. “Hey, Scully.”

On the other side of the bed, she grunts—her Mulder, please don't wake me up grunt. He curls a little closer to her in bed, stroking a hand over her forehead. “Scully, are you awake?”

“I am not,” she mutters irritably.

Mulder leans close and presses his lips to her forehead. She swats his shoulder lightly, but he can feel her irritation melting away. She opens one eye to stare at him. “What is it, Mulder?”

He lays his head on her shoulder, winds an arm around her waist. “Do you ever think about reincarnation?” he asks softly.

She opens both eyes now, runs a hand over his arm. “Not since that case in ‘96,” the says. “With… the cult.” She's dancing around a subject she knows is somewhat sensitive. “Besides,” she adds, rubbing that same hand over his shoulder, “I don't particularly believe in it.”

“Oh, really.” He rests his chin on her shoulder, turning on his stomach to look at her. “Not even a little?” he teases.

“Not even a bit,” she says seriously. She ruffles his hair, leans down to kiss him lazily.

He nuzzles his nose against hers. “What about the idea of soulmates?” he whispers.

She reaches out to touch his cheek, to cup the side of it. “Mulder,” she whispers back, “what are you thinking?”

He shrugs. “I've just been thinking about it,” he says. He runs his fingers through her hair, scratching her scalp in that way she likes. “What if… what if soulmates were real, or if reincarnation was real. What if we'd been reincarnated?”

“Well, according to that hypnotism session you participated in, you have been,” she points out. “Remember that?”

He shakes his head. “I don't buy it,” he tells her. “I think that if I've been reincarnated, I've been with you.”

“Well, that was what you said when you were regressing through past lives, Mulder,” she says. “I was your sergeant, remember?”

He shakes his head. “Not like that,” he says.

“Well, then, like what, Mulder?” she asks, persistent.

He shrugs. He lays his cheek on her breastbone. “You'll think I'm cheesy.”

“Mulder, I already know you're cheesy,” she teases. When he doesn't say anything, she nudges him. “Hey,” she says softly. “What is it?”

He sighs a little, his hand spread over her stomach. “I've just been thinking about it,” he says, teasing a little now. “What if we're soulmates? What if we have known each other in past lives, what if we were meant to find each other in this one?”

He can feel her smirking. “You're right, Mulder, that is pretty cheesy,” she says, and he chuckles, leaning up to kiss her underneath her jaw. “In all seriousness, Mulder,” she tells him, her voice solemn now, “I don't believe in these things. But I think we're as much soulmates as anybody else is, if you want to use that terminology.”

“You're such a romantic, Scully,” he teases.

She rolls her eyes. Leans over to kiss him gently. “If you don't mind me asking, Mulder… why is so important to you?” she murmurs. “Why do you want to believe we've been reincarnated so badly?”

He shrugs. “I don't know,” he whispers. “It wouldn't really change anything… but it's a nice idea. That we've known each other for so long. That I'll never really have to lose you, because I've found you before and I could find you again…” He slides up the mattress to kiss her hair gently. “It's just comforting, I guess.”

“Mmm.” Her voice is sleepy again; she snuggles into his side. “You're sweet, Mulder,” she murmurs.

“But you don't believe me,” he says good-naturedly.

“Oh, I don't know.” She yawns, her face half-buried in his neck. “I don't know, Mulder. If anyone could find each other again and again, through multiple lives… it's us.”

“That's true,” he mutters.

She kisses him, right there at his pulse point. “I love you,” she mumbles. “Now let's get some sleep.”

“I love you, too,” he says. He's loved her for as long as he can remember, and if it's at all possible, he'll love her until the end of time.

#i dunno what this is lol #xf fanfic #i wrote this

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