From: Alaina Stone Date: 11 Apr 1998 18:45:33 GMT Subject: NEW: "Musings of an X-Wife" by Sally Bradstreet Title: Musings of an X-Wife Author: Sally Bradstreet Rating: PG Classification: VA Spoilers: "Traveler" Keywords: Mulder/other Summary: A quiet dinner leaves room for someone from Mulder's past to reflect. Well, here it is, my contribution to the growing number of "ring" stories. As I don't much care for Mulder at the moment, and as I am desperately hoping that CC keeps his promise that Mulder and Scully will *never* get together, I put a different spin on the "Oh, my soul! Mulder used to be married!" thing. DISCLAIMER: Mulder, Scully, Edward Skur, and Arthur Dale belong to CC, 1013, and Fox. The Cryptkeeper belongs to the folks over at HBO. Thanks to Anne Vermillion and Heather for their beta reading and to Bonnie who made the title work. Send all comments to me at sally.bradstreet@worldnet.att.net Musing of an X-Wife by Sally Bradstreet He still pulls on his bottom lip while he thinks. That's what he was doing when I first saw him ten years ago. Of course, then he was sitting on a bench on the Mall, not on a chintz covered chair in a cozy restaurant in Georgetown, but with the stare and the lip it's all very much the same. What a cliche we were. I recognized it even then--two attractive young people meeting as if fated in the warm May sunshine. But in spite of the cliche, in spite of my urge to look around me and see if a gypsy violin player was lurking somewhere in the lunchtime crowd, I approached him. Smiled. Asked if the seat beside him were taken. He seemed surprised by my request but asked me to sit, gathering up whatever file he had been reading and moving it to his lap. Our conversation was stilted, inane, and after 10 minutes or so I wished I had never spoken to him. But then I made a pun, one of my criminally bad puns that make my friends and family groan, and he laughed. It was a shy, quiet laugh, but it made his eyes crinkle and his shoulders shake, and I knew I was hooked. Besides, anyone who didn't ask me to apologize for a crack that would make the Cryptkeeper shudder couldn't be all bad. Our courtship was haphazard, mostly because of his work. Some weeks he was in the field, gathering the fragmented clues that his brain jiggled into impossibly complete pictures. Some weeks he was so singularly fixed on the jiggling that he forgot my number, forgot my name, forgot my very existence. But then he would show up at my door with a sheepish smile and I would forgive his inattention, for during those weeks I became the center of his concentration and his world. Being the focus of his intellect and passion was a heady experience, intense and addictive. I almost welcomed those times when a case was foremost in his mind, for I knew that when he had finished with the investigation, when the demon he was chasing was finally run to ground, he would come to me, and I would be lucky to see the light of day for the potency of his loving. Sometimes, though, the demons would do the chasing and I would go to him, barging into his darkness and chasing the monsters away. It had taken several weeks of patient pestering on my part, but at last he opened up to me, explaining why an English accent made him cringe and why little girls with long brown hair made him cry. He told me about his mother's depression and his father's distance, and I held him while he wept. But after he finally told me the nightmares came less frequently and he smiled more. His proposal, like so many other things about him, was erratic. One minute we were sitting on the couch he had inherited from his fraternity watching a bad sci-fi movie, the next he was on his knees, offering me a simple gold ring and a chance to spend my life with him. I looked into his darkening hazel eyes, felt the trembling in his hands, and knew I had to accept, for when I was offered the world, how could I not? Our wedding was a small affair, performed by a justice of the peace on a sunny May afternoon much like the one when we had first met. My family was there, of course, mom, dad, brother, sisters. His mother attended but not his father, not that this surprised either of us. After the ceremony we drank champagne and laughed and left for a quick honeymoon on the Vineyard before his next case. I am momentarily drawn from my reverie by movement at his table. A petite woman with red hair and a great suit has joined him and is spreading a collection of what appear to be photographs on the clean white tablecloth. It must be his partner, oh, what was her name? I know about her from the friends I have kept at the Bureau. I have heard about their fierce devotion to each other, how she has saved his life on more than one occasion, how she even went to jail for him once. Scully, that's it. I wonder if she knows she's standing on the event horizon of a black hole. I wonder what will happen to her when she is finally drawn completely in. Because we had both been single for so many years, we went through several creative compromises on our way to marital bliss. If he would eat the real food I cooked him, I would agree to the take-out of his choice once a week. If I would not play Gilbert and Sullivan at odd hours of the day, he would not make me watch reruns of _Logan's Run_. If I would stop lecturing him about squeezing the toothpaste tube in the middle, he would stop drying his socks in the microwave. In spite of these wrinkles, though, we were happy, the peaceful, substantial kind of happy that stems from a relationship between equals. During our first months together, many of our friends predicted an early end to our marriage. With his out-of-town investigations and time consuming work, they said, we would drift apart and go our separate ways, and I suppose that if we had been an average couple they would have been right. However, his absence served only to draw us together as we distilled all of our love and experience into the days and weeks we had. Our first Christmas was one of those times. He darted from tree twinkling with lights to advent calendar to holly wreath like a little boy, and after spending Christmas Eve with his mother I could understand his excitement. Dinner was delicious and impressive, served on the best china and with the family silver, but it was so utterly polite. Such a contrast to the joyous ruckus of Christmas Day at my grandparents' sprawling house in Delaware. As we lay in bed that night, shivering between the attic cold sheets, he relayed in detail the poker he'd played with my cousins, the stories he'd read to my nieces and nephews, how my grandmother had charmed him into washing the dinner dishes. "I never knew family could be like this," he whispered. I could only nod, knowing my voice would betray my tears if I spoke, and I swore then that I would cram his life as full of happy memories as I could. I succeeded in this quest for over a year. Then there came Edward Skur. At first I thought it was just his normal preoccupation, the way he always got lost in a new case. But then his insomnia came back, and he started smoking again, and I knew something was wrong. It took more than pestering to get him to talk to me this time. I begged and pleaded and bullied until he told me of the serial killer who had used his last breath to utter his father's name. He looked so sad, so lost as he told me that I made the only suggestion I could--investigate. He did. He showed me the statements from the current investigation, the old reports with McCarthyist censorship to make the Communists proud. He studied every photo, every snatch of information he could find to no avail, and finally we decided that perhaps he should search out the original investigating agent and hear what he had to say. When he came back after speaking to Arthur Dale, I didn't recognize him. Another cliche, I know, but no less true because of that. He was quiet, withdrawn, and the happy light I had come to see in his hazel eyes began to flicker. He started listening to those damn regression tapes again, started spending more time at the office, started bringing home files that other agents had buried and forgotten. When did our marriage begin to fall apart? X marks the spot. As he slipped deeper into his obsession, I tried to be supportive. I asked about the cases he was studying, didn't grumble when he came home at unholy hours, didn't complain when he spent the hours he was at home with his nose buried in dusty reports and grainy photographs. I tried to tell myself that it was just a phase, that he would soon turn his attention to me like he had when we were first married. But he never did. Perhaps a stronger woman would have stayed with him, would have remained at his side as he tilted at his paranormal windmills, but when he came home one evening and told me he had requested a transfer to this X-Files Division, I knew I couldn't do it. I couldn't stand by and watch as he destroyed himself in his blind search for the truth that he might never find and that would never satisfy him. I almost balked when it came time to sign the divorce papers. Though I knew the crisp white pages before me held a clinical explanation of our irreconcilable differences, to me they seemed an indictment of my failure to love him enough. But then I remembered the vague way he had looked at me over the last few weeks and my self-preservation instinct kicked in. I signed. My hand tightens convulsively at the memory of that signature, and the smooth edges of my fork dig into palm. I look at the empty plate in front of me and realize that I have reminisced my meal away. I sigh at my distraction, and another hand closes over mine, squeezing it warmly. I lift my gaze to the man who now sits across from me and read the sympathy in his blue eyes. He caresses the ring he gave me three years ago and asks softly, "Do you want to talk to him?" I twine my fingers with his. "No. I've made my peace." "All right." He lifts my hand to his lips and kisses it. "Let's go home." But as we pass their table on the way to the door, I can't resist the opportunity to bump into his chair. He instinctively scoots closer to table and turns to me, and I watch as the apology he was going to offer dies on his lips. His eyes widen in panic, and I know suddenly that he hasn't told her. His partner doesn't know about me or our marriage, and he silently implores with me to say nothing. After a moment I take pity on his poor tortured soul and flash a generic smile. "I'm sorry," I murmur, and then continue toward the door. The End ------------------------------------------------ Musings of an X-Wife Sally Bradstreet sally.bradstreet@worldnet.att.net ------------------------------------------------