Mulder's Memoirs
by Robin Watters
rwatters@ix.netcom.com

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters
in this story. They are the property of
Chris Carter, 1013 productions and
the FOX network. No infringement is
intended.

Summary: Now in his 60s, Mulder reflects on
the last days of the X-Files. A companion piece
to Dana's Memoirs.
***

By Way of explanation:

When she told me she was writing her
memoirs for publication, I believed her but
only because she has never lied to me - except
once but I'll get to that in a minute.   It is still
difficult  to get my mind around the idea that
my Dana, the wife of my bosom, my private
Scully would decide to go public now, during
our Golden Years. I'm not complaining, mind
you. I'm just amazed by her ability to poleax
me after all this time.

Every few pages she comes out of her
study, curls up in my lap and we read
them together, cheek to cheek.

Then we argue about them.

She always wins but only because she
wears those faded jeans and her favorite
flannel shirt with her snowy hair pulled back
in a hair thingy . She is the hottest
sexagenarian I've ever seen! I can hardly wait
to see what kind of a septuagenarian she's
going to make.

"But," as my wife would say, "I digress . . . " As
I read Dana's memoirs the reason for them
becomes obvious to me. In the deep recesses of
her generous heart, she carries a tender ache
that began the day I came home and told her
I'd lost the X-Files. For nearly thirty years,
through the Invasion, through the constant
pestering of paparazzi and historians,
through troubled times in our marriage
(Oh yes, we had troubled times. I strayed
once because I am an idiot. She strayed
once because she had a deep need
to know that she really did exist separately
from me - but that was all a long time ago
and exists only as the memory of a bruise
on our deepest feelings for each other.

She's going to kill me when she reads this!)

What was I saying? Oh, yes. Through all of
that Dana has thirsted for justice for me.
A better man would have made a serious
effort to help her let go of that. The truth
is I sometimes need her to feel for me what
I cannot face alone.

But when you get down to the nitty gritty,
I'm going to write these memoirs because
she wrote those memoirs which gives me
carte blanche to kiss and tell . . .

First of all, I didn't like Scully much the first
time we met. They told me they were assigning
me a partner to "assist" in my investigations, so
I was expecting that knock on the door. The fact
that she was pretty only registered as an
obvious manipulation. An attempt to distract me.
Then she tipped up that defiant little chin
and told me how much she was looking forward
to working with me. She's a bad liar. And that
was the first and only time she ever lied to me.
It still makes her blush when I mention it so I
save it for those moments when she has
me cornered.

But even though I didn't like her much, I very
quickly developed a real hard on for her mind.
Her quick assessment of the chemical diagram
I projected, her refusal to be intimidated by
my bullying, the fact she did not scream when
our plane took that little plunge before landing
although she was clearly terrified, turned me on
Big Time. And then there were those
mosquito bites. I can't tell you the mosquito bite
story because Scully will kill me if I do.  But if I
outlive her . . .

I am repeatedly asked if I had romantic
feelings for Scully in the early years. I don't
know the answer to that question but this is what
I've come to believe. I think there was probably
a moment when my heart and mind, in synch for
once, understood that I could either have this
woman in my life as a lover or I could have a
friend, a partner, a devil's advocate, and a
Sancho Panza to my Quixote, all in one nice
smelling package.

But I couldn't have it both ways.

And, God, I desperately needed someone to
take some of the burden of finding Samantha
off my shoulders. I was very nearly ready to
give up when Dana walked into my office.
Having someone hear me out without the
eye rolling and smirking was instantly
addicting. I wanted it. I needed it. Do you have
any idea how many ways the word "spooky" can
be worked into a conversation? So I sublimated
romantic and carnal feelings in exchange for
having this wonderful woman walk beside me
to Hell's doorstep and back.

Once while we were driving through rural
Virginia I tried to apologize for all the pain
and loss I'd brought with me into her life.
With each word, my apology became more
and more muddled and confused. I might as
well have just spent the time alternately
inserting one foot and then the other into my
mouth. Finally she told me to pull the car over.
We sat a moment during which she looked,
not at me, but at the scenery around us.

"Mulder do you see that horse over there?"

I didn't answer immediately. I suspected a
trick question. After a moment I nodded.

"Do you think you could get me up on that
horse if I didn't want to be up on that horse?"

The very thought transformed my manhood
into boyhood. I told her I didn't think so.

"Do you think you could keep me off that
horse if I decided to ride it?"

I figured that I had a better chance at keeping
her off it than getting her on it but not by much.
Then I realized what she was getting at.

"Not everything is about me, right?"

She smiled. Then she grinned! Then she leaned
her head back on the headrest, closed her eyes
and told me to drive on.

Couldn't you just eat her up?

So I know what your next question will be. You
want to know when I succumbed to my deeper
feelings for Scully. That's much easier for me
to pinpoint. It was that last year before
everything went public.  It became clear to me
that with the evidence we acquired, we were
closing in on the Consortium. Finally, we were
going to find the truth. I saw it long before
anyone else did. It gave me a lot to think about.

I was sitting alone in the old basement office
refurbished after the fire. It was late at night
and, in the deep quiet, I was savoring the future.
At first it felt good, knowing that I was going to
achieve the goal of my life's work. But then I
began to think about the consequences of that
success. How my life would change. Would I
stay with the FBI? Would I want to continue
investigating the X-Files?

Would Scully?

I turned to look at the her empty chair and
the realization that it might, one day soon, be
empty once and for all made my breath catch.
I thought of the thousands of times I must
have looked over to see her there, head bent
over her work, her expression thoughtful,
her posture, perfect. That sight was so deeply
embedded in my daily existence that to be
without it would be like losing one of my eyes.
I panicked.

I was up in a flash, grabbing my coat with
every intention of driving to her apartment
and wresting some reassurance from her that
she would not leave when the work was
done. But at the door I froze. Standing there,
with my hand on the knob, I knew two things
absolutely clearly. Dana needed a man in her
life, not a 12 year-old boy in a man's body,
running to her for solace from life's vagaries.
And I needed her to be with me for the rest of
my life. It was a humbling realization.

I must have stood there for a full fifteen
minutes, just letting thoughts wash around
in my head, knowing that if I let them run
their course, there would be an answer in
it for me. Some way to keep her from going.
And, sure enough it came.

I left the office and drove to a department
Store where I bought two sets of sheets and
pillow cases, a thermal blanket and a down
quilt.  Then I drove to a grocery store
where I bought whole wheat bread, orange
juice, assorted vegetables, a roast chicken,
a bag of salad, coffee and cleaning supplies.

Then I went home, rolled up my sleeves and
went to work. First I opened the refrigerator,
threw away all of its contents, best left
undescribed here, and cleaned it with warm
water and soda. Then I put the groceries away.
Next I moved all the boxes of files and piles
of laundry off the bed I'd never slept in.
I flipped the mattress and made it up with the
linens I'd bought. After that, I opened the
windows and began to clean the joint. It
took me all night and well into the next
morning.

I called the office to say I was taking
a personal day, took a long  shower, climbed
into my own bed for the first time in years
and slept the entire day away.

[She just looked over my shoulder and
read this. I didn't tell her this story until
years after we married. It can make her laugh
or cry, depending on the day. Apparently
today is a laughing day]

When I woke up that night I feltŠnew. And
a little vulnerable. When I went to the living
room my attention went first to my answering
machine which was winking at me to let me
know that she called, concerned, no doubt
about my unannounced day off. The next thing
that grabbed my attention was my video
collection. Yes, that video collection.
The thought of her coming into that room
with them there suddenly shamed me,
although she'd seen it a million times before.
I didn't want them there the next time. I picked
up the phone and called Frohike.

"I'm getting rid of my tapes. Come and get
them or they're going in the dumpster."

He was there in 15 minutes, dragging a
reluctant Langly with him; both of them had
their arms full of canvas tote bags.  Without
saying a thing, Frohike began stuffing the
tapes in the bags.  Langly and I shared a
look and a shrug, He made himself
comfortable on the couch and looked around.

"Hey Mulder, did you know someone broke
in here and cleaned your apartment?"

I made a ha-ha-very-funny face. Frohike
stopped in the midst of his packing and
looked around. Then he stared at me intently.
Like a cat in a new house, he began to prowl,
looking over the living room, poking around
in the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator and
stepped back in shock. He gave me another
intense look. And they call me Spooky! He
closed the fridge and cautiously poked his
head into my bedroom. When he returned,
his face was grim. He didn't say a word
just finished collecting the tapes. When he
had them all bagged, he looked at Langly
and jerked his head, indicating they
should go. Langly was mystified. I was
mortified.

At the door Frohike stopped and looked
back at me.

"You got it bad, kid," he said. Then he
left, shutting the door behind him.

So that's how I knew I was in love with
Dana.

Frohike told me.

[She just swatted the back of my head!]

The rest of it is pretty much how Dana
described it. I was trying to become the
kind of man I thought she deserved and
working at it hard because I wasn't sure
how much time I had to do the job.

On that flight back from LA I
watched her when she wasn't looking.
She does this thing when she travels.
She starts with work, finishing up a
myriad of little tasks she lines up to
pass the time. But at some point, she
sets the work aside and slips into this
sort of meditative state. I watch her
covertly. Her professional armor drops
away. Her face relaxes and her eyes
soften and sometimes close, though
she does not sleep. Her lovely mouth
comes to rest in the slightest smile.
(If Da Vinci had seen it, the Mona
Lisa would have red hair - I guarantee
it.) It's as though she's listening to
something only she can hear. I love
to watch her in this dreamy state. I
get a sense of how she must have been
as a very young girl. Seeing her like that
gives me a very deep sense of peace.

I was still carrying that peaceful feeling
with me that night when she was cooking
and I asked if I could kiss her.  Without
that feeling, I don't think I could have
dared . . .

[OK - she left the room to make coffee
so I have to do this next part fast
before she comes back and catches me.]

I really want to tell you about Scully
and sex. Not out of some perverted
sense of bragging but because I have
lived with the sheer surprise of it for
all these years and never shared it
with anyone before. OK. The thing is,
She has an almost male attitude toward
sex. She doesn't favor a lot of window
dressing. She doesn't play games. She's
not real hot on appetizers but goes straight
for the meat and potatoes. Now you'd
never guess that seeing her in those
little designer suits, would you?

So, after we pulled back from that
first kiss and we shared this wonderful
smile - the kind when you both know
what you both know. Then her smile
got really big and her pupils dilated
so quickly I could suddenly see myself
reflected in them.  Next thing I know,
her arms were around my neck, her
legs around my waist, my arms are
around her back and under her ass
and we're  kissing like it's going to
save our lives!

With the sudden change in my (our)
center of gravity, I'm careening around
the room like I'm in a slow motion
pinball machine, smashing against the
table, the wall the couch. Then I  caught
the coffee table right behind the knees
and went over like a felled redwood.
Thank God she landed on top. And
her laugh! She has the most incredible
laugh when she lets it out to play!

The rest of the night, the conversation
went sort of like this:

Me: "Scully are you sure . . . ?"
Dana: "Shut up Mulder!"
Me: "Am I hurting . . . ?"
Dana "Shut up Mulder!"
Me: "Do you want me to . . . ?
Dana: "Shut up shut up shut up shut up . . . "

Eventually I relaxed and shut up. She
has ways of letting me know what works
and what doesn't.

[She's coming . . . ]

OK. She saw the last part and decided
that since her mother is dead and her
priest has heard worse, I can keep it in.
 

But she says that as long as I've
gone this far overboard, I should tell
you about Alex Krycek, who she refers
to as Our Dark Angel of Perpetual
Chaos.

This is going to be hard.

As you know from Dana's memoirs it
wasn't too long after that we became
pop culture icons because I got sloppy
and gave her that big smooch heard
round the world. Because the public is
what the public is, after we married
they expected, wanted, practically
demanded we have children.

Everywhere we went, Dana was inspected
for signs of pregnancy. Once, when she
went to the doctor for routine monitoring
of her cancer remission, rumors that she
was expecting flew like swarms of gnats.
Being a private person by nature, she
didn't want to disclose the truth and
simply chose not to respond to the press.
The press being what it is, somehow managed
to find out anyway and so another chunk
of our privates lives provided endless
hours of amusement for our fans.

We got sympathy cards. We got ads for
fertility treatments. We got letters from
woman offering to be surrogate mothers.
My wife doesn't cry often but this was
more than she could bear. And so she
cried on my shoulder every night for a week.

And what has this to do with Alex Krycek?

After the failure of the invasion, he became
a folk hero, to my chagrin. The stories that
circulated about his part in that event - some
of which he generated himself - were wildly
disparate and exaggerated beyond any sane
person's ability to believe them.

But we are talking about the American public.

He was a hero. He was an anti-hero.
He was a traitor. He was  patriot. They
even based a television series on him,
for Christ's sake! Some over-paid actor
with a five o'clock shadow and a leather
jacket! He became this sex symbol for
several generations of women with
overactive hormones and underactive
boyfriends.

[Excuse me a moment. I have to go
convince my wife that it's not polite
to laugh at me. I am not jealous of
that man!]

OK - where was I? Oh, yesŠthe thing
is, the distortion was so complete that
the real Alex Krycek could openly walk
down the street and not one of his adoring
fans would know it was him.  I know this
is true because he did it once to prove it
to me.  He even stopped some woman
in an I (heart) Krycek T-shirt to ask her
where she got it and she hit him with
her purse!  He grinned at me!

I don't want to give you the impression
that I hobnob with the guy. Even knowing
the truth behind all those things he did
I could never feel quite comfortable
around him. Besides, he continued to live
his old life. Covert work. Shady intrigues.
He'd disappear. We'd hear he'd been killed.
But he'd pop up again in some kind of
trouble, needing to cut some kind of deal.
Some people never change.

Then came that night so many years
ago . . . Dana and I had been married about
four years, I guess. We were still hiding
from the popular press and trying to live
some kind of normal life.  That night, we'd
actually gone out to dinner. I can't even
remember what we were celebrating.
She walked into the house before I did
and flipped on the lights. She froze in
mid-stride and I bumped into her.
Alex Krycek was standing in our living
room, looking like the undead.

We hadn't seen or heard from him in
over a year. We'd heard he'd been
murdered in Russia. But there he was
looking hunted . . . no, "haunted' is the
better word.  The clothes he wore were
aspiring to be rags. He was pale and very
thin. He had that look. The one where
that little line forms between his eyebrows
and his eyes look almostŠpuzzled.

[Dana is nodding as she reads this, so
I know I'm on the mark]

"I need your help."

He was talking to Dana not to me. I
stepped forward thinking I was going to
put an end to whatever scheme he had
in mind. I was angered by the cavalier
way he just let himself into our home.
I was angry at his presumption that he
had any right to ask us for favors. I
advanced on him with every intent of
grabbing him by his grimy collar and
giving him the bum's rush. He did not
back away but kept his eyes on my wife.

And then we heard it. That little noise
that came from somewhere near the
sofa. I froze. Dana gasped and moved
past both of us approaching the sofa
in wonder. I followed.

There she sat. A perfectly beautiful
little girl wrapped in a blanket and
blinking at the light. She was about
18 months with shiny dark hair and
blue eyes. She returned Dana's gaze
gravely but without any sign of fear.

"Her mother is dead and . . . her
father is missing," Krycek told us.

"I'm on the run. She needs a place.
Just for a few days until I can come
back for her. Until I can find her
family." I looked at him.

"You can't expect usŠ" I began.

"Her name is Tatiana."

"Krycek you can't . . . " I turned back
and my words turned to ash in my
mouth. Dana had picked the baby up
and stood holding her, eyes wide and
full of feeling and her mouth forming
the softest "oh." I felt my heart crack.

And if that wasn't bad enough, I turned
back to find that Krycek, now standing
in the open doorway, also looking at
the child, had the very same expression
on his face. I stood staring at him until he
became aware of me. His face shut down
then and assumed its habitual wary
expression.  He didn't say anything more.
he just nodded at me and stepped
out into the night.

[OK. Now she's crying. Give me a minute.]

Needless to say, he did not come back
for Tatiana,  in a few days or ever. She
became ours.  Dana was able to push the
paperwork through channels by threatening
to pack a bag and move with Tatiana into any
foster home or care facility that Child Protective
Services might put her in. Our notoriety didn't
hurt our case any either.

So, thanks to Alex Krycek, we became parents.
Oh, it was clear who her father was. Tatiana
has that same furrow between her brows when
she gets intense. And she does get intense. I
thought that my work in the X-Files had exposed
me to every kind of terror imaginable to man. I
did not anticipate pacing the floor at 1 a.m.
wondering where in the hell my 14 year-old
daughter was. Or that first date thing! Thank
God for Scully. She had a normal adolescence
and was emotionally prepared. I never did. I
thought for sure I'd be dead of stress before
Tatiana reached adulthood.

Was that the last time we saw Alex Krycek?
No. The week before Tatiana got married,
I came home to find him sitting in the kitchen
having tea with my wife. He looked healthier
but otherwise he'd changed very little. And
he still had that smug grin that I wanted to . . .

[Never mind. She's enjoying this too much.]

Anyway, he said "hello and goodbye" to me
and left. Dana told me he'd just shown up
and made himself at home. Although she was
terrified that he had come to see Tatiana,
she calmly made tea and small talk with him,
waiting to see where it would all lead. Once
he stood and walked to the wall where Dana
hangs the family pictures. He studied them
intently, once reaching up a finger to touch
Tatiana's graduation picture. But he never
brought her up. He never mentioned her at
all.

Later we found the envelope. It contained
her birth certificate, a marriage license and
a photograph. Her mother was as beautiful
as Tatiana has grown to be. And the look on his
face in that picture - well, it's the only time
I've ever seen him look openly happy. The grin
I had come to hate was softened to a smile.
The mocking eyes were tender.

Dana and I decided he left the things without
preamble so that we could decide whether
to give them to Tatiana or withhold them. He
trusted us to know the best thing for her then,
as before. And yes, we did give them to her.
We'd always told her the stories, not the worst
ones but something to give her a sense of
who she was and where she came from.  I guess
Alex figured that the least he could do for
his daughter on the event of her wedding was
give her what few artifacts existed of her
rightful heritage.

I don't know where he is now. I'm afraid that
by now the rumors have come true and he
is truly dead. But if you're out there, Alex.
Come by for tea sometime . . .

The end

Comments welcome
rwatters@ix.netcom.com