One Endless Night *PG13*

Deslea R. Judd
Copyright 1998

DISCLAIMER: This work is based on The X Files, a creation of Chris Carter owned by him, Twentieth Century Fox, and Ten-Thirteen Productions. Characters remain the intellectual property of those parties and are used without their consent and without commercial gain.
ARCHIVE: Scully/Skinner archives only.
RATING: PG13 for adult concepts.
SPOILERS: One Breath, Colony, Blessing Way, Paper Clip, Piper Maru, Avatar, Redux, Redux II, Emily.
CATEGORY/KEYWORDS: Romance (Sc/Sk), Angst, Story.
SUMMARY: Skinner/Scully romance. Skinner monologue, with occasional snippets from Scully, telling their story, from age to age. This story owes a lot to Xanthe's The Field Where We Died (in inspiration more than content) and Annie's Haunted for style.
MORE FIC: http://fiction.deslea.com
FEEDBACK: Love the stuff. deslea@deslea.com
AWARDS/ELIGIBILITY: Spooky 1998 Eligible.

One endless night.

We made love just one endless night.

Bruised and bloodied, I told her where she could find Mulder, and she had choked back a dismayed sob at my injuries. I told her they were nothing, and it was true; they were perhaps the most honourable wounds of my life. I had believed I'd done it for him, but her horrified, compassionate, husky gasp gave me to know that I had done it for her.

It was nothing, and it was everything.

She tended me gently, like a mother, like a lover. With an economy of words and tenderness of touch, she bathed my wounds and kept the light dim out of consideration for my aching head. She did not thank me, or make a fine speech; she conveyed the way in which I had touched her with her gentle hands. She had not expected this, and why would she? How could she know that I could refuse her nothing? That when she had lain helpless in hospital so little time before, I had not come to be with her, not even once; but that in my dreams I had been at her side, watching her adrift, some soft distant voice begging her to return. It had not been my own voice, but that of the old woman who had protected me so many times. My tortured dreams had known what I myself had not: that I had loved her, perhaps before time began.

I should have known.

When I met her, there was none of the silent, instant appraisal a man gives a beautiful woman. None at all. She was above that. A quiet ache, and a wistful look at her lips, a sudden fleeting memory of what it had been to touch her, though we had never met.

//I loved you then, Scully. Even then. A thousand names fly through my mind, all of them for you. Every woman I have loved throughout the ages has been you.//

But I didn't know, and I put it down to one drink too many at lunch. My half-remembered imaginings disappeared, and I forgot.

But then she was gone, perhaps dead, and I was bereft. And then she was back, and I sought her in my dreams, and called her back from her looming grave. And now, she touched me, dressed my wounds, not with the love of ages, but with the quietly moved part of her that somewhere recognised that I would give her the moon.

She was done.

Thoughtlessly, she touched her lips to my forehead. "Walter," she said softly, her hands over mine; and I was lost to her again as so many times before. With a cry of agonised longing, I drew her down to me, and I kissed her. With unsurprised ardour, she gave herself over to me with shocking hunger, allowed me to claim her, and she was mine. And then we made love, with desperate passion and endless need, reserve and caution and detachment gone, all manner of emotion between us. And then, with a gentle kiss and a single sound of desolation that it must be so, she left me to find Mulder, frozen and dying at the top of the world.

We made love one endless night.

So many times I have longed for you, Scully. When you feared me I bled inside. When you called me from the desert and put your life in my hands, I bled once more, this time for joy. When you were at my side when I was wounded, I wished I could tell you, just once, what I had once shown you.

One endless night.

When your sister died, I wept for you. When you were sick I gave my most loved possession - my integrity - for you. When you despised me for what you believed I had done, I forgave you. When you crumpled, dying, I clung to you, careless of who saw that I loved you.

One endless night.

So many nights, but this one, my will has shattered. I sit here outside your room, waiting for you. The burden of too many wounds borne alone has brought me here. The wounds alone I can bear. But to love without you knowing...no.

They are looking at me. They know, now, the secret weakness I have hidden for so many years. There was a time, before my miserable realisation that there was no justice, when I was on their side. But always, always there was a higher loyalty, to the soul who owned my own.

They don't understand.

They think I love her because she is brilliant, because she is brave. They think I love her because she is good. They don't understand she could be all I despise, and still I would follow her into the darkness of my own destruction, rather than live in the light alone. They don't understand that I worship her, that my soul is hers, for better or worse. She is all the things I value in this corrupt world of ours, and yet it is not these things I love.

I just love her.

I love her, and she will die.

The days pass blindly. I spend most of them staring out the office window, my soul elsewhere. My sweet Kimberley brings me tea and removes it untouched. She touches my shoulder and tells me I have to fight for my life, for my job, lest Scully die believing I betrayed her. I nod blindly, heedless of the woman I have long considered a daughter, and stare some more. Kim tells me what to do, what to say, to protect myself; and I do it with all the conscientious attention that I give everything, and yet it is careless attention; for when she dies, it will not matter.

One endless night.

One night I go to her, and sit by her side in the darkness of her sleep, the only time she can allow me. She wakes, and she gives a tearful plea. Leave me, Walter. As if I could.

Scully, if only you knew. I have done no wrong, but if it will give you peace I will beg your forgiveness on my knees. And that is what I do.

One endless night.

He came to me one endless night, one night after all my cares had been surrendered in the face of death. I am not a doctor, or a scientist, or an FBI agent, or even a woman. In the face of death, I am who I am, and what I have been has been given over, given away because they were never really mine.

With nothing more to lose, with only my own self and yours, which will be mine forever...now, Walter, now, I can forgive. What you have done belongs to this world, but what you are to me will be mine forever. Please stop, I beg; you are my love and my heart and my soul and my god; you do not belong on your knees at my side.

And then we make love, once more, one endless night.

She tells me never to return.

We are at peace, my love, she says; let me die with quiet hope. We are one, now and forever, and you will be with me always. And I will be waiting for you when your time comes and you cross to meet me, face to face.

She is right...and she is wrong.

Perfection and peace is how it should end...yet how can I let her die alone?

How can I let her go alone into the endless night?

A cure.

Mulder's face was alight with joy.

Scully - my Scully! She was dead, and now she is alive.

She'd love to see you, he said. And then I realised - she will not die, so I may look on her once more. There is hope...a life, this life, together always.

You look at me through the window, and your smile melts my aching, frozen heart.

You gave a small smile, and when you closed the door on your family to get on your knees before me and beg my forgiveness as had I the night before, I brought you up to me and told you you were everything to me. But still...still my love would not find its voice.

You came back to me one endless night.

Home.

I touch him, and this time, he surrenders himself to me.

I love you, he whispers. So much. As if I did not know. As if I could own him, and he me, and not know. Oh, Walter, long have I loved you.

And this time, the kiss is not desperate with need or with fear; it is sweet with love and with - yes, I dare say it - grace. It is the gift of the gods, that this strange carnal act can convey and give so much. His mouth is sweet, and his delicately exploring tongue is soft, and even the throbbing hardness he presses against me seems tender with love and adoration. His fingers are warm, and their brushing touch is intoxicating. His warmth envelops me, and my body cries out for him as though for some long-lost part. He worships me with his eyes and his body; he plunders me with a cherishing which is relentless, endless, which makes me mourn when it is over and he is no longer mine. In Eden it was like this; body and soul entwined in precious adoration, in abiding love. Drunk with him, I call his name just once, and then we lie still.

You were mine forever one endless night.

A miracle.

The child they said could never be.

She was overjoyed, but I merely smiled. I knew, you see. I knew that so much love could never remain between two people, that it must give birth, lest we both explode. Her name is Emily, for the Emily we lost, and she is our light, our child goddess, our love for her blasphemous in its obsession yet holy in its purity.

We made this child of light one endless night.

END