Title:  A Fading Shimmer of Gold
Author: Sarah Kingman
email: sarahkingman@yahoo.com

Keywords: This is not a happy story.  No character death,
but this is not a happy story.  I guess you could say it's
post-Requiem...Scully's pregnant and Mulder's back.

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: Not mine, never were, never will be

Archive: Yes

Summary: Mulder's packing up his things in the X-Files
office...

_____

A Fading Shimmer of Gold
by Sarah Kingman


Mulder reached into the desk drawer to grab another handful
of what had once been his personal papers, and stopped
suddenly.  There, gleaming in the corner of the drawer,
upside down and unreadable, lay his nameplate.  He touched
it slowly, unwilling to believe she'd really hidden it away
like this, but the smooth brass stand was familiar, and
there was no mistaking the smudge of liquid paper that had
stained the corner of it one busy day, eons ago.

His face registered nothing, his long dark hair shielding
his eyes from scrutiny, but the way his shoulders went rigid
spoke volumes.  Only for a moment did he stiffen, and then
relaxed once more, but it was a forced relaxation, and the
deep, slow breathing that accompanied it screamed "therapy."

He lifted the nameplate carefully, placing it inside the box
in which he'd been collecting his things, and a shiver of
pure anger ran through him.

It was too crowded in here, with that second desk, the one
that held his replacement's belongings.  At least she hadn't
given the intruder *his* desk--she'd taken that for herself,
and there was now barely any trace that he'd once used it.
All the years of struggle and torment, the cases solved and
those unresolved, the agony when she was gone and the
frustration of being cut off from his life's work--all of it
flashed before his eyes in a single second, flashed like the
golden of his unused nameplate.

He blinked back moisture; he must have kicked up a dust in 
the room.

The door swung open and he turned away, checking one last
time to make certain all his posters and clippings were
gone from the wall.  He was surprised she'd left them
up--were the memories too much for her, or were they
insignificant, easily ignored except when she was here
alone, after everyone else had gone, alone with his name to
remind her of what they'd once shared?

"You're really going?"

He nodded.  He could have spoken, and his voice would have
been steady, but in that instant he felt she did not deserve
a genuine response.  He wanted to shove her into a drawer
and allow her to linger there, in limbo, in torment, for
months.

"Did you ever even search for me?"  His voice was rusty
still, after months of screaming with the pain of the
testing, and he wondered in the back of his mind if the rasp
would ever disappear.

Her face was shocked, as if such a thought could never have
occurred to the real Mulder, the old Mulder, but this new
specimen must be treated as fine porcelain, so the angry
words she wanted to retort were bitten back.

"Of course I did."  Her voice was gentle, and he wanted to
slap her, suddenly, to bring a hint of life to that
moderate, even timbre.

"Where?"

She crossed to the desk, and he moved away, not too quickly,
but she could not mistake his intent; he didn't wish for her
to touch him.

"Everywhere," she replied, and suddenly her voice, so calm
only seconds before, was trembling.  "I looked everywhere.
I never stopped."

He pointed mutely at the stack of case files--cases they'd
worked while he was away, she and the interloper in his
domain.

She shook her head slowly.  "We had to work, Mulder.  We
couldn't simply search for you night and day..."

"When you were gone," he interrupted tonelessly, "I worked,
too.  Eight hours a day I gave to the Bureau--it was what
they paid me for.  The rest of the time, I searched for you.
There was no "we" while you were gone.  Can you say the
same?"

Now the anger hinted, in the flash of her eyes.  "I had no
choice.  They assigned him."

"There's always a choice."

"What makes you so certain--?"

"I've read your files.  I've talked to people.  I know just
how much you missed me."  He held up the nameplate, its
golden surface glittering accusingly in the stark office
light.  "When did you put me in a drawer and forget me,
Scully?"

Her eyes welled with unshed tears.  "That isn't fair,
Mulder."

He turned away, dropping the useless piece of metal back
into the box, with the other remnants of his former life.
Everything was gone--his home, his work, his love...all
reduced to boxes like this one.

"It doesn't matter now."

"Where are you going?" she asked hurriedly as he picked up
the carton, grimacing a bit at its weight but shouldering it
without complaint.

He shrugged his unladen shoulder with forced casualness.  "I
don't know."

"Will you--will you contact me?"

He made no sound, but his eyes gave her an answer that was
as cold as the fields of Antarctica.

"But what about...?"  Her hand crept subconsciously to her
swollen abdomen.

"It's what you wanted," he told her, his jaw clenching, his
teeth grinding with the effort to keep back the flood of
emotion in his heart.

"I thought you wanted her, too," she whispered.

"I did."

"Our child, Mulder..."

"Your child, Scully."

"She needs her father."

"She doesn't need a father like me."

He crossed the corridor and entered the elevator, turning
for one last look, a look he knew he should resist but could
not deny himself.

"Mulder, *I* need you."

The door began to close, and he suddenly jabbed at the
control panel, halting it halfway.  He dropped the box to
the floor, and from the scatter of papers and pencils and
photographs pulled the nameplate, handing it to her across
the endless gulf that now separated them.

"Take this," he told her.  "To remember me by."  The door
began to close once more.

"Mulder--"

"Or to forget," he finished, and his voice was without any
trace of humor.


END