Archive of Our Own ^beta

Dana.

He liked that name.

It thundered against his mind constantly, pruning memories drenched in sadness.

It fit her well. He’d searched it out in a book of baby names and their meanings while sitting in a waiting room during one of their first cases.

Wise. Generous. Brave. A pearl.

Maybe, years and years down the line, he’d give his daughter the same name.

He wouldn’t have the heart to tell this hypothetical girl’s mother where the name came from. That, while he was at the FBI, he had a partner he would kill and die for. Because of his inability to let sleeping dogs lie, she was attacked in her home, kidnapped, and never woke up from the coma she was found in.

He could lie and say it was a family name.

But that wasn’t a lie.

She was family.

No matter how desperately he hung onto her cross around his neck, praying to a God he didn’t believe in, she was still there—sleeping, so gently, despite the devices hooked on and through her.

He could barely look at her without wanting to sob, the guilt and rage rushing to him all at once.

If he’d only picked up his phone.

Now, every time it rings, he jumps. He doesn’t mean to, and it gets him more looks than before, but he can’t help it. He cranked the ringer after he missed her call. He wasn’t going to miss anyone’s call ever again.

When he first saw Mrs. Scully and Melissa perched over her for the first time, he could barely get his feet to move. He was shocked he was allowed back into the hospital after the scene he caused when he first came.

All of the bitter sleepless nights he spent thinking of her had come to a rolling boil, sputtering out of the pot as he tugged his shoes on. Sleep-deprived, unshaven, and clutching her cross on his neck, he shot up the highway at Mach speeds, only to get carried out by two security guards as he screamed obscenities and threats at the hospital staff.

Remaining cemented to the ground, he watched her family mourn. Mrs. Scully was holding Dana’s hand, resting her head against her gently rising chest as she muttered prayers under her breath. Melissa’s eyes were closed, and her hands hovered above her sister’s body, moving slowly. Her family, however different in their beliefs, had come to her side, praying in the way each of them knew how.

If either noticed he was wearing her necklace, they didn’t mention it. He’d tried giving it back to Mrs. Scully earlier, but she told him to keep it for when he could give it back.

When he thinks of those weeks he spent searching for her, finding Duane Barry on the mountain, and nearly killing him on the spot, all he can feel is an empty hole where his emotions should be.

If there was justice in the world, Duane would’ve served his sentence with a bullet to the skull the moment they met. If there was justice, he wouldn’t have had to hear that the ventilation she was on wouldn’t likely support her much longer.

He was invited to stay and discuss the matter at hand, but he knew his heart would collapse in on itself if he even thought about it.

He drove home slowly, cruising through different side streets he’d never taken. His apartment was always within reach, but he could barely bring himself to turn into his parking spot. The longer he drove, the longer he could delay the inevitable.

His resignation letter sat askew on his desk, matching the rest of his living space that had been ransacked by the Cancer Man’s men. Skinner refused the letter and told him it was no use giving up on the bureau now.

Mulder didn’t tell him there was no use in the bureau without his partner. Even when Skinner reopened the X-files, he couldn’t get himself to go through them as he had when she was at his side.

Slinging himself on his couch, he could smell the days without showering or sleeping radiating off him, but he could barely get his suit jacket off, let alone drag himself to the shower.

Crushing his body against the worn leather, staring blankly at the disconnected television, he could almost close his eyes and pretend he was in a motel with her again. He tuned the sound of his radiator running to become the soft snoring she would always insist didn’t happen, the wind batting against the windows as her tossing against the lumpy motel beds they frequented, and the pounding of his heart as hers.

Barely a year as partners, and yet he would break, bend, and bleed just to hear her say his name one last time.

She’d only called him by his first name once, while they were on an off-the-books stakeout. He told her to call him Mulder, and that he even forced his parents to call him by their last name.

Every time he heard it, he was suddenly twelve years old, watching his sister scream out his name as he stood still and couldn’t do a thing to protect her like he promised he always would.

But when she said it, he was no longer trapped in his memories. He was just Fox.

If she said his name enough, maybe he wouldn’t hate it as much as he did.

His phone rang, sending his heart to flutter like a bird in a cage. He knew he should answer it, but his body was clinging to the couch harder than gravity was clinging to Earth.

“Mulder.” He answered flatly, stretching his body off the edge of his couch to hold the phone to his ear.

Electricity shot up his spine and down his legs, slinging up to his feet before Mrs. Scully could finish what she was saying. Life bubbled into him as he dropped the phone in its dock.

Mulder’s feet echoed in the sterile hospital hallway as he walked, his steps slow, almost mechanical, every inch of him unwilling to face what he knew was waiting for him behind that door. But he had no choice.

He didn’t want to see her like this again. He didn’t want to walk into that room where she was tethered to life by machines, her body so small and fragile, and the world outside buzzing with life while she remained suspended in an unnerving limbo. But she was there. And he had to be there too.

Her family had gathered around her. Her mother, her sister—the ones who had the right to be there first. But it was his presence that had been permitted, allowed to enter into that sacred space where the woman he had spent endless nights sleeping beside was now lying in a hospital bed.

He stepped through the door, and there she was.

Dana Scully. Her name felt so wrong, so small, in this sterile, whitewashed room. She looked almost ethereal in her hospital gown, pale, the skin of her face so sunken, and yet, there was something about her that still made his heart ache—still made him wonder how he ever got so lucky, or cursed, to be in her orbit. Her lips, usually full with that determined set, were now parted slightly as she lay motionless beneath the rhythmic beeping of the machines keeping her tethered to this world. The familiar weight of her presence was missing, but the quiet strength still lingered there, just out of reach.

“Hello Fox,” Mrs. Scully said, not moving as her hand laced with her daughter’s.

“Not Fox—Mulder.” Her cracked lips quirked as she quipped at her mother. She gently turned to face him, raising her eyes to his.

In the second she corrected her mother, hearing her say his name was enough to make his throat tighten. She looked over her shoulder at her family, and without a word, they silently left the room.

She was alive and awake in front of him, and as drained as he was, he wanted to scream thanks to her God. Her hand reached out to him, and for the first time in the matter of Dana Scully, he hesitated.

She was here because of him.

“Scully…” he trailed, fighting the urge to let her first name slip out. He took her hand in his, so cold comparatively, and brought her knuckles to his lips. She didn’t do anything to stop him, and he felt her stare drop to her necklace hanging on his neck.

“You kept it,” she whispered, bordering on a question, as she touched it to his chest. He felt his face flush as her delicate fingers played with the pendant, watching her twist and turn it.

“Yeah,” he croaked, looping his hands behind his head to unclasp it, “your mom—Mrs. Scully—told me to keep it ‘till I could give it back to you.” He gathered it in his hands, offering to put it on her, “Here, let me.”

It looked better fit on her, dainty and gilded against her throat, proclaiming her differing beliefs in the mysteries of the world and the myth of creation. It was as if her faith in God had taken him to the ends of his limits and then pushed him even further for the sake of her name.

He’d never called her by her first name. Dana. It had always felt too soft, too familiar, too fragile. She was always Scully. And it wasn’t just a title; it was a shield, a boundary they had created together, a wall that kept everything unspoken but understood. To call her Dana would have been to acknowledge a vulnerability neither of them could afford to expose.

For a long time, he thought about the meaning of her name. Dana. A pearl. A symbol of something precious, something rare, something born of pressure and pain, and yet, something more beautiful than anything else. She had always been that to him. Something he could never hold in his hands but could only try to protect from the world that wanted to break her.

But she had never needed to hear him say that. She had always known. She was a pearl, too beautiful for him to touch in the way that he longed to, too precious to be made vulnerable by his words, a testament to the definition of her name. And so he had kept it inside. The ‘Dana’ he had never called her. The pearl he had never acknowledged aloud.