The flexible concept of tomorrow (2/2)
Back to Part I ||
VI - Cupboard space
The first time Mulder meets Donna Noble he is 32 years old, it’s fall and the days are endless, stretched gray.
A cold, wet Tuesday evening, end of October; a badly lit, near empty hotel bar at almost ten o’clock. It has been eleven weeks, three days and - he checked his watch an hour ago - four hours since Scully was last seen bloody but alive on the grainy surveillance footage from a state trooper’s camera. The case isn’t closed, but that’s about the best you can say of it. There’s no one else to interview, no more footage to scour, no square yard of the crime scene left unexamined. Sometimes you can honestly say there’s nothing more you can do. Believing it is another matter.
On nights like this he thinks about putting his gun in his mouth and just making it all stop. His fantasies on the subject are detailed, disturbing, recurring. They include the way the taste of the metal makes his tongue curl as though he were licking a battery and the letter he would write absolving his parents before he untethered himself from this life. Then, blessed nothingness.
But he can’t give up. He’s never been able to just let go.
He’s in Pittsburgh; another warm body to throw at one of the biggest manhunts in the city’s history. A girl of fifteen is the third young woman to be abducted in three months and they’re pretty sure they’ve linked the cases to unsolved homicides in Cleveland and Akron. The killer murders within three days of taking a victim; Angie O’Riley has been gone four. They’re working fifteen hour days and it’s not enough. It never is.
The guys on the taskforce - and particularly his boss, Dutton - are kind to him; they’ve all heard the story about how Fox Mulder got the son of a bitch who killed his partner, he just didn’t get the location of the body. Somehow they missed the memo from Patterson that Mulder was an untrustworthy flake. He has their wary respect.
He is trying his best to be useful in return but he has spent weeks subsisting on dribs and drabs of sleep. His brain won’t switch off. Sport news won’t do it and even porn - usually his favorite vicarious thrill - has failed him. He runs for miles, but that only buys him a couple of exhausted hours. If he closes his eyes, he sees her gravestone, newly carved, or worse, imagines her in pain. He is running on caffeine and willpower, and he isn’t too sure about the willpower.
Something catches his eye and he wonders if there’s ever going to be a moment when his heart doesn’t seize in his chest at a glimpse of a woman with red hair in a crowd. As though she senses him looking, she turns around. It’s a tallish woman, maybe five eight, looks to be a decade or so older than him but wearing it well. Long curly hair; nice rack under a simple, low-cut, dark blue dress; long, elegant legs. Strange coat though, it’s thick grey wool and too big for her, like an army-issue greatcoat - something you’d wear to invade Russia, not to pick up guys in bars. She catches his eye and he ducks his head but she comes over anyway.
"I’m not really looking for company," he tells her as kindly as he can.
She slings that coat over the back of the stool next to his. "I know," she says, putting one cold hand over his and giving it a brief squeeze. He opens his mouth to object and then realizes that aside from one disastrous Californian interlude in late summer, it’s been months since anyone touched him with care or thought.
She orders two whiskies and water - which is his drink when he *does* drink. "Get that down you."
"Why are you buying me drinks?"
"Drink, singular," she says. "You look like you need one. God knows I do."
"Have we met before?"
"Not yet, Mulder."
"You know my name?"
She grins. "Hard to forget it. I’m a fan of your work."
"You’re a fan of wiretapping? That’s an obscure interest."
"No, smartarse. Your work on extraterrestrial intelligence; I read your articles for Omni."
"They were pseudonymous."
"M.F. Luder isn’t exactly the Enigma code," she says. "I was sorry to hear about your partner."
He takes a long pull of whiskey. "Yeah, well…" he says.
"I met her once," she says. "You’d been gone for a bit."
"But we were only partnered for a year," he replies, frowning.
She pulls a face, as though she’s made a faux pas. "Right. Of course. Should’ve remembered that. Bit new at this lark."
‘New at what, picking up guys in bars?’ he thinks, but lets the remark pass. "So how come you knew I was here?"
"I’m consulting." She brings out a wallet like his own ID and flashes it at him. It says she’s working for Interpol.
Two things unsettle him: the first is that he could swear the paper *wriggled* before the ID photo appeared; the second is that he can’t remember her name a minute after seeing it.
* * *
She’s easy to talk to. They chat about London - he spent most of one summer in the British Library as he started the third year of his PhD - and his belief in extraterrestrials, which she questions with one corner of her mouth turned up, as though she’s thought of ten smart aleck things to say but has decided to keep her own counsel. She states that she used to be a skeptic about alien life and now she’s a believer, but doesn’t explain the change. She makes him laugh.
Before he knows it the bartender is sweeping up around them and there are chairs on the tables. "Come on," the woman says, sliding off the barstool and slinging her long coat on in a flowing, practiced movement. "These lovely people have homes to go to."
Mulder knows that the instant he crosses the lobby to his room, the cold air from outside is going to wake him up like a shot of double espresso and then it’ll be another night of ceiling gazing. He’s not sure he can stand six more hours of being left with his own thoughts and she seems to be interested in him. "You want to come to my room, abuse the minibar?" he blurts out. "Courtesy of the US government?"
Her gaze is assessing, but she smiles. "All right then."
The walk makes him realise he is kind of drunk for the first time in years. He almost stumbles over the edge of a carpet until she catches his arm and keeps him upright. Very suave. His room is featureless and a depressing shade of oatmeal but at least he’s kept it neat. He opens the fridge door and stares for a moment or two until his tired eyes focus. "We have vodka, white rum, whisky and two kinds of beer that probably taste like horse piss," he says. "A bunch of mixers. You got any preference?"
He turns around and sees her sitting on the unused spare bed in his room, his case notes in front of her. She’s flipping past the pages too fast for her to be reading them, wincing at the photographs of previous victims. He strides over to her. "Hey, don’t; even if you are consulting, I need some kind of authorization." He plucks the thick file from her hands and puts it in the one drawer that locks, throws the key into his briefcase and slams that shut so the lock engages.
"Bit of overkill, there, mate," she says, amused rather than offended. She puts both hands behind her and leans back, toeing off her high-heeled shoes. "Whiskey and water. Easy on the water."
"What’s with the coat?" he asks.
"Pockets," she replies. "You always need decent pockets if you’re going to travel."
"You could take it off, if you’re staying." She raises an eyebrow but takes it off and slings it over the back of a chair.
He mixes their drinks, at war with himself. On the one hand he’s not sure he wants some kind of meaningless fuck. On the other hand, he would welcome the temporary oblivion. She’s got a few years on him but he’s always liked older women. They are surer, more assertive. He’s not the one in control here, for all that she’s in his room, and that’s a relief. He’ll go wherever she takes him; he doesn’t have the energy for anything else.
He sits next to her on the bed. As she talks, he wonders again what her name is; it’s embarrassing to admit he’s forgotten.
"And so I joined West Ham and we won the FA Cup final three-nil - me, Liberace and Henry the Eighth scored."
"What?"
"What are you like?" she asks, knocking back the last of her drink. "You were miles away."
He gives a sheepish grin. "Sorry. You want another?"
"Best not," she says, apparently as sober as she was when they first met. There’s a silence, as though she’s waiting for something. Her head tips to one side as she examines his face.
"What?"
One hand goes to his left cheek, the pads of her fingers awakening every nerve ending in the shell of his ear. She swipes a thumb across the dark semi-circle under his eye and he blinks a couple of times in surprise. "You’re so tired," she murmurs. "You poor sod."
"Not too tired for this," he says but it’s more a valiant effort than a convincing argument. Lust is only just winning its war with lethargy.
She laughs softly. With the lightest pressure from her fingers she guides him forward and kisses him. The press of her lips is colder than he imagined, and gentle as the swipe of a feather. He closes his eyes and opens his mouth slightly and she leans into the kiss. She tastes of the mellow smoky burn of the liquor. He puts the broad span of one hand on the side of her ribcage, moves it up towards her breasts.
"You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to plant one on you," she says, but moves out of his reach.
"Did I disappoint?" he asks, trying to cover his confusion.
"Nah, not at all," she says, dark blue eyes merry and a sweetly dirty smile on her face. "No complaints. But that’ll do, I reckon."
She shuffles closer again, undoing his loosened tie and putting it onto the bedside table, then starts in on the buttons of his shirt. He reaches across to her blouse but her hand stills his. "No. Let me do this," she says, but it’s not seductive, it’s more like the tone you would use to coax a sleepy, unwilling child to behave - and it’s pretty effective at making him compliant, banking his arousal to mere embers. He has no idea where this is going.
She drapes his shirt over a chair and turns to face him again. Her hands lift up towards his face but she halts them a few inches away from his cheeks. He looks in alcohol-fuzzed bewilderment. "May I?" He agrees and she takes his face in her hands. His eyes slide shut, without him ever deciding to do it.
"I think I know a way I can get you some sleep. Will you trust me?" He finds himself nodding within the cage of her spread fingers. Strangely he does. There’s a sixth sense that usually saves him when he pays attention to it. It’s quiet now. All he can feel is how cool her hands are against the alcohol flush of his cheeks, how gentle.
There’s the lightest pressure, like the popping of his ears when a plane descends, but inside his skull. Unbidden, he sees Scully in the trunk of the car, bloody and scared, then just as swiftly the memory is replaced by one of her smiling at one of his jokes. Then his sister, unconscious, suspended in an unearthly light and his muscles are locked, the lack of movement agonizing as his brain screams -
"What the hell are you doing?" He opens his eyes and scrambles back away from her on the bed.
She sighs, looking disappointed. "Trying to help."
"Who are you?"
"A friend. I promise." He doesn’t sense any kind of threat from her but there’s something golden behind her eyes that’s faraway and strange, and it scares him.
"Tell me what you were doing." He has his hands up in front of him, as though trying to ward her off, without even noticing he’s doing it.
She stands up and walks over to the greatcoat, draped over the chair. From one pocket she pulls out a penknife, and his heartbeat accelerates. He calculates just how long it will take him to scramble across to his gun and pull it from the holster.
But she opens out the knife and runs the blade across the base of her thumb, then closes it and throws it into one of the pockets of her coat. She lifts her hand. A crimson line stands proud of the skin. "See? Red blood," she says. "Earth-born."
"How would you know I was expecting anything else?" he asks, trying to swallow down his alarm.
"I told you. I’m an admirer of your work. I know who you fear." His skepticism must show in his face. She sighs. "Look, let me tell you the absolute truth. This is an unstable node. The fate of this segment of time depends on you not doing something careless and idiotic in the next 24 hours. I am here to stop you from doing that."
"Like… time travel?" He blinks a couple of times and presses the heel of one hand into his eyes in turn. When the flares clear, she’s still there. Nodding.
"Bullshit. I don’t believe you." His voice is hollow and cracks, because he’s lying.
She chuffs out an unhappy laugh. "Finally. Something you don’t believe."
"Tell me what you were doing."
She pulls a face. "Skinny britches is much better at explanations than me but I’ll give it a go. Imagine your memories are like a vast cupboard. Everything stored away where you can find it. Just now, you’re keeping all the memories that can hurt you most right at the front of the cupboard, where they disturb you. Stop you sleeping.
"You need to keep them in the back of the cupboard with the gravy salt and the glace cherries and the bloody awful brandy that’s only fit for sauce at Christmas. Not take them away - God, I would never do that - just, well, give you a little bit of distance. That way you can get some sleep and deal with them later, when you’re on more of an even keel."
She’s studying his expression, and evidently she doesn’t like what she sees. "That didn’t make any sense at all, did it?"
He shakes his head.
"Home economics analogies - Jesus wept," she says. "No wonder the Doctor sounds like a nutter. This stuff is impossible to explain and I'm still a bit new at all this."
She sucks the blood off her palm and presses on the cut, which now looks more like a scratch.
"You’re saying that if I sleep, I alter the course of history?" he says, tentatively.
"Yes!" she says, brightening and pointing at him with both hands in triumph. "You’ve got it."
"That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard."
She throws back her head and laughs. "Innit, though?" After a moment she sobers. "The causal nexus is a bugger like that sometimes."
He’s fuddled with drink still, but he knows one thing. No one in their right mind would ever come up with a lie like that. "You can see my memories, yes?"
"Yes. But only with your permission. If there’s something you don’t want me to see, imagine moving it out of my reach. If it makes you feel better, we can trade." A wicked smile creeps across her face. "You show me yours and I’ll show you mine."
"All right," he says, half-expecting to wake up any moment from some temporary drink-addled half-sleep. He has nothing to lose, after all.
He blinks once or twice to make sure that he is awake, then closes his eyes. The pads of her fingers caress his face again. He thinks of his sister, unconscious, but after a moment he can only picture her giggling at Spy vs Spy in the Mad magazines his father had brought home.
Then he sees a vast desert of blue tinged sands under a pale silver sky with three dark moons, what look like multi-sailed land yachts scudding towards him. His eyes snap open; hers are still shut. There’s a look of utter concentration on her face. "One of yours?" he asks in wonder. "Is that what it’s like out there?"
She smiles. "That’s not even the half of it."
He can feel her pick up and examine the terrible dreams he has had since Scully disappeared; the moment he had to face Mrs. Scully in a blood-stained apartment; the horror of that answering machine message - it’s like cracking open something in his chest and letting the grief pour out again.
"Shhh," she says, pulling him into a hug. His eyes burn with tears he’s trying to suppress. Her left hand goes to the back of his head, her index finger scritching up and down, a gentle soothing gesture.
Into his mind come images of Scully standing shoulder to shoulder with him in the Arctic; that wondrous first moment he thought he might have an ally, not a spy; of those times when she’d stood up for him no matter what the cost to her reputation; of trading arguments with her for the sheer joy of trying to guess what she’d say next. He saw her laughing in a graveyard, bedraggled and weary, but as exhilarated as he was.
And then, just as soon as it began, the tumble of memories is over, and he comes back to himself, like a swimmer beached after a long struggle to reach the shore. He is a little embarrassed to realise that he’s huddled against her, her arms warm around his back, his cheek pressed against her breastbone, the scent of vanilla body lotion in his nostrils. He can feel his brain slowing, quieting, as though the alcohol were actually working the way it is supposed to. Maybe he is kind of drunk: her heartbeat sounds doubled.
"I was hoping I would end up with my face here," he mutters into her cleavage, "though maybe not like this."
She gives a light slap to the back of his skull. "Oi. Don’t be lairy."
He sits up and gives her a slow smile. He’s so tired.
"Why don’t you lie down, sweetheart?" she says, unwrapping her arms from his back.
He does as she says. She pulls the covers aside and drapes them over him, and kneels beside the bed. "Maybe I’m hallucinating," he mumbles, pushing his face into the cool pillow. "Mysterious women don’t just happen along to help me."
"Oh, I’d get used to it if I was you, sunshine," she whispers.
His mouth opens to ask her why but her fingers swipe across his temples, his eyes shut and it doesn't seem so important any more. "When you wake up, all this will be in the back of the cupboard, where it can’t hurt you."
He wants to ask her what she means but he’s fallen too far down the rabbithole towards sleep.
There’s a quiet voice by his ear. "And let me tell you something else: don’t give up. You find your friend. And it’s going to be bloody awful a lot of the time, but the two of you? In the end? You win. You have a fantastic life."
In his first dreams, he sees a mountainous land made of ice, and a wind-blown, joyous music so complex, crystalline and unearthly that he can barely process it. Something tells him it’s a song of hope. He feels the brush of lips against his forehead and the world winks out of existence.
* * *
A garbage truck is beeping outside his window. He blinks at the unexpected daylight and gazes muzzily at his watch, only to sit bolt upright when he realizes it’s almost midday. He swears a blue streak and calls his SAC, Dutton. To his surprise, the guy says he was only expecting Mulder to be in by 3pm. Apparently someone put him on a late detail with Johnson. Mulder feels about a million times better than he did yesterday, though he’s kind of worried that he left all the case notes strewn across the desk like that. He could swear he locked them away.
On his map there are lines drawn between the dump sites for the bodies, and the school where one suspect, James Joseph McNeill, has been working as a janitor. Johnson interviewed him last week. A post-it note with a big arrow and an exclamation point is plastered next to the street where McNeill lives. It doesn’t look much like his handwriting but whose else would it be?
He reads Johnson’s notes on McNeill again and something clicks in his head. He calls the ASAC again and by 1pm, a rumpled Mulder is with the rest of the team heading off to pick up McNeill from his house. Mulder is certain this is the guy. They might not save Angie O’Riley but they’ll save whoever would have been next.
When they get there, the guy has holed himself up in his basement. Mulder and Dutton are right outside and about to enter when Mulder hears the faintest scraping click and impelled by that sixth sense of his, shoves himself and his boss away from the door a second before the wood is shredded by a shotgun blast at chest height.
"Jesus H freaking Christ!" Dutton exclaims, knuckles white around his gun to stop the shakes as they both huddle back against brickwork. "Glad you were awake."
That rings faint bells in his brain. He breathes in deeply and shakes his head but nothing falls out of his memory.
They arrest McNeill, after a brief stand-off. Best of all, in a small room behind the furnaces they find Angie O’Riley, battered and bruised but clinging to life. He tells himself that that is enough - today he can almost believe it.
* * *
VII - Cheap tricks
The last time Fox Mulder meets Donna Noble is the day before he dies.
"When you say it’s time, what do you mean?" he asks.
It’s the first time he can remember that she has dodged eye contact as they speak. "I wondered if you wanted to take a little trip. My way of saying thank you for saving me that time."
"That was thirty years ago," he says, taking his glasses off and pinching the bridge of his nose against an oncoming headache.
"Don’t suppose you’ve got a kettle, have you?
"You could’ve come to see me before now."
"I could make us both a brew."
"Which means there’s some reason you’re here now."
She turns and fiddles with the lock on the door of the mysteriously appearing closet. "I’d murder for a coffee; I’ve got a mouth like a camel’s flip-flop here."
That’s when it dawns on him why she is here. "Donna," he says, and it’s a demand and a plea all at once. He waits until she turns around and gives him the truth.
* * *
"I’m sorry; I’m so sorry," she says after she tells him, one hand rubbing circles of comfort into his back. They are sitting on his bed, just as they had the first time he met her. "But it’s peaceful, in your sleep. That’s not nothing."
He takes as deep a breath as he can these days. "It’s kind of a relief, actually. To know, I mean. Will’s got his own family and everyone I really know is gone." He ponders for a while, then says haltingly: "Are you some kind of angel of death?"
She laughs. "Are you barmy?" Then just as abruptly she stops. "Sorry, bit insensitive there. No I’m not. I just -" she pulls a face, waves a hand. "It’s complicated. I know stuff, about time."
"So you’re not here to kill me?"
She’s properly horrified. "No! What do you take me for?"
"I’m not the one who just said you were going to die!"
She considers for a moment. "All right, then. No, I don’t kill you. The reason I know you’re about to die is that I will turn up here tomorrow too late to see you."
"Seems like I’ll be the late one."
"Puns that bad will send you to hell, sunshine."
"Been there, done that. But how do you know to come tomorrow?"
"Glad you reminded me," she says, picking up a red pen from his desk and scrawling a cellphone number in inch-high letters across the bottom of his timeline, with the words ‘Amelia, please call this number’.
"Amelia finds this in your room tomorrow," she says. "And because she’s a good soul, she calls me. She was crying, by the way. That girl adores you."
He shakes his head in confusion. "Isn’t this all some kind of paradox?"
"Nah, more what a mate of mine would call a cheap trick," she says, one side of her mouth curling up into a smile.
"But why?" he asks.
"Because you once saved my life - more than once, actually - and I want to repay the favour." She takes in a deep breath. "You remember that time we met in London and I gave you a right mouthful because I thought you were some bloody nutcase?"
He does. At the time he was confused and disappointed as hell.
"I’d forgotten everything but I had your photo in my phone," she says. "When I checked the memory card folders I had lots of photos in my phone that I didn’t remember taking. He’d been so careful about wiping the numbers from the phone but he forgot the four gig card, the daft sod." She gives a bittersweet smile. "They triggered my memory. I was ill but my Grandad called the Doctor and we worked out a different way to save me. It just changed me, that’s all."
"Changed you? Changed you how?"
"Bit of a biological alteration."
"You’re part alien?" he asks in wonder, expecting her to laugh at him again.
Instead she smiles. "Sort of. Bit creeped out by that, but yeah."
"And you don’t travel with your friend any more?"
She shakes her head. "We had a philosophical disagreement about how people who ignore other people when they say ‘no’ deserve a smack. And these days I think I cramp his style with the young ‘uns. But the big idiot is family - we meet up for tea and a good bicker and I occasionally have to slap some sense into him."
Her face softens with affection. "And he helped me grow my ship." She strokes the surface of the door as though she can’t help herself.
"That’s a timeship?" he says, incredulous.
"Time and space. Backwards, forwards and way out there." Her grin is infectious. "Fancy a spin?"
"Why me? Of all the people in the universe?"
"Cause you’d love it as much as I do," she says, getting up and opening the door, her eyes bright with excitement. "Anywhere you like. Promise."
He looks at the tall, ornate wardrobe, with its eccentric sprawl of runes. It feels as though he could put a hand out and feel the power from it, like sensing the coiled tension in an animal that’s about to flee. Imagine travelling through time, to any place you wanted. Imagine seeing history from the front row, not some history book.
"Sure, but it’s going to be a tight squeeze," he replies, feeling foolish as he steps past her and…
"Holy. Shit."
She laughs.
* * *
VII - Hello, Goodbye
The past obliges Mulder with the kind of beautiful sunny spring day he remembers from childhood. He steps out to see white clouds scudding across a bowl of blue, hear the flapping of flags against the flagpoles and the clinking of glasses as black and white clad waiters lay out champagne flutes on trestle tables ready for the celebrations to come. If they spot that there are now two vending machines outside the gym block, no one pays it much mind. Nor do they notice when two people step out from the shadows nearby.
"All of time and space, and you pick 1990," she grumbles, but his attention is elsewhere.
"Oh, man, Bugles. And only fifty cents," says Mulder, pulling his spectacles out of his pocket to examine the contents of the real vending machine.
"Forty-five years back in time and all he cares about are snacks," Donna says, stroking the side of her ship. "Didn’t you see how cleverly she disguised herself? Proper working chameleon circuit, that is."
Mulder jangles the change in his pocket and pushes two quarters into the machine. But before he can press a button, her hand slams down to cancel his purchase. She plucks the coins out of the machine, and jabs a finger at the dates on the coins. "2014. 2031. You are not causing a temporal paradox just because you fancy some E numbers."
She hands the coins back and, darting a quick look around, she points something small and blue-lit at the machine’s controls. It chunters and groans and then the spiralling arms release a packet, which she fishes out for him. He grins. "I don’t think this is the kind of place you want to get caught stealing."
"Don’t get caught then, dumbo," she says. He stuffs the Bugles into his jacket pocket.
Right now, his old office is just four hundred feet away, though the younger version of himself isn't there, he's in California consulting on a ritual homicide and realizing that he doesn't give a damn about having a career.
Unlike the graduating class who are beginning to emerge into the courtyard with their families. Donna positions them by the drinks table and he picks up a glass of champagne, more to blend in than anything. He recognises instructors who taught him, men and women he hasn’t seen in decades. He picks out Skinner at the back of the throng - in his default setting of stern-faced overlord - and a wave of affection threatens to wash him over to talk to his old friend. Imagine how much pain he could prevent with a few words of warning.
Donna’s hand keeps him anchored in place. "You can’t," she says. "I explained the rules, didn’t I?"
"Are you reading my mind again?" he asks in irritation.
She shakes her head. "I just know what you’re thinking. My dad died of a heart attack. He was 59. You think I didn’t want to go to 2005 and tell him to test his flipping blood pressure?"
"Your dad was just an ordinary guy, right? What harm could it do? If it gave your dad a few years more?"
She squeezes her eyes shut for a second. "He died, so I went looking for the Doctor. Carpe diem and all that. And because of that - not being big-headed because it’s the truth - the universe changed. You can’t alter the course of your life either; too much depends on the journey you took."
Then suddenly she’s looking past his shoulder at the relieved faces of the graduates. She smiles. "But you can wave her off, if you like."
Later, he remembers the crowd parting for a moment to give him clear sight of Scully - a small, neat figure in an ugly brown suit that probably cost more than anything else in her wardrobe - as though she had been picked out by a shaft of sunlight piercing through cloud cover. It’s an illusion of memory, of course, but no less subjectively true for all that.
She’s talking to her mother and, Captain Scully having declined to pull the pole out of his ass for the afternoon, a brown-haired, open-faced guy who’s probably the brother he never met. It is the first time he has seen Scully for seven years. It’s like being kissed and punched in the throat all at the same time.
He’s tapping on her shoulder before he can even work out how he walked over there. She turns to face him, her dear face unlined and lit by an uncomplicated happiness.
"Jesus, you’re so young," he blurts out. Her eyebrows climb beneath her bangs.
"But then you all look so young to me," he goes on.
"Nice save," Donna whispers in his ear as she joins them, then plasters a polite for-public-consumption smile on her face and sips her champagne. She doesn’t trust him; she thinks he’ll be tempted to change history. She’s a good judge of character.
Scully’s mother and brother retreat to the drinks table so the newly minted agent can mingle.
"Congratulations, Doctor Scully. *Agent* Scully." He puts out his hand and, after a moment’s surprised hesitation she takes it.
"Thank you, sir," she says. "I’m sorry; have we met?"
He wonders what she sees. Probably just a tall, thin old man, stooped, gray and a little gnarl-fingered, with the kind of nose that you would call interesting if you were being kind. He shakes his head. "No," he says, "but I am sure we will. I’ve heard good things about you. Seen you around."
Her look of pleasure warms him through, makes him beam like a fool in return. He still hasn’t let go of her hand. He remembers the feeling of that hand in his; its strength despite its size, the papery warmth of the skin. She’s starting to pull away but he can’t quite release his grip. There’s a slight, painful pressure on his arthritic big toe. It’s from Donna’s foot pressing on his in a way which promises that the step could easily turn into a stamp, shortly to be followed by a kick in the ass. Her expression is pleasant but her eyes threaten dire consequences if he messes this up. He puts his hands in his pockets. "I’m a former agent," he says. "Occasionally, I lecture."
"Really, sir? What’s your name?"
"Mmm…" he begins. Donna shifts her weight onto his toe again. "Marty. John Marty." The pain eases and he glares at Donna. She gives him an innocent look and drinks her champagne.
"Well, Mr Marty," she says. "I hope to see you around. I’ll be based here, working in forensics. Pathology."
"You should consider field work," he says.
She looks taken aback, that familiar small crease appearing in her forehead as she assesses him, tries to work out what his angle is. "Well, of course, I’d like to, but I was hired -"
"Press for it," he interrupts. "Make some noise. Rattle some chains. Ask them. Because you’re going to be great at it."
"Thank you, sir," she says, puzzled, wariness taking over at this stranger who appears to know all about her. He wants to put her mind at ease but he has no idea how. He’s said too much.
"Come on, Agent Marty," says Donna, threading her arm through his. "Time to go."
He plasters a smile on his face, holds out his hand again, and shakes hers for the last time. "Good luck, Agent Scully."
A thousand tiny tells he picked up from loving her for years let him know that she’s relaxing at the thought that this odd conversation is almost over, though to the outside eye she remains cheerful and polite. "Thank you. Good to meet you, sir," she says, and is turning back to find her mother and brother before he has even stepped away.
Donna gives him a tight smile and raises her eyebrows in the universal gesture of ‘are you okay?’ He nods. His chest starts to ache, as though something is swelling in there, threatening to crawl up into his throat and seal off the air supply. He’s almost at the door of the hidden timeship before he recognises that feeling for what it is: immense happiness at seeing her one last time, and suffocating grief for exactly the same reason.
* * *
VIII - A flexible concept
The control room of the timeship is disappointingly unlike the deck of the Enterprise. It’s more like a cosy sitting room, albeit one with a crystalline glass control column sprouting in the centre of it, surging up and down and splitting the light like some altar to the God of prisms.
The walls are stone, with circular indentations at regular intervals. High up, there are narrow stained glass windows which cast yet more jewelled light in kalaeidoscope patterns across the thick rugs on the floor. There’s an open fire in one corner - fake but it pours out warmth - two huge armchairs beside it, and on the other side of the control console, a vast kitchen table half-covered with what looks like the innards of the large hadron collider and way too many dirty coffee mugs.
He nurses a mug of coffee at the clean end of the table. Donna is casting that strange, knowing look at him, as she warms her hands on a mug of her own. He’s torn open the pack of Bugles and they’re crunching them off their fingertips like kids.
"I had to stop going to see grandad after a few decades. At some point I was going to end up meeting myself. Imagine if I was wearing the same dress as me - I’d have to slap myself. How embarrassing would that be?"
He gives a watery smile for the watery joke.
"It got too hard," Donna says, serious now. "Slicing up time into smaller and smaller slivers so I wouldn’t cause a paradox; making sure I left before I arrived again; working out how long he and mum had left; how much I could say, how much I couldn’t. Trying to stay linear. It got too hard."
He reaches over and squeezes her hand. She gives a grateful smile and taps the side of her head. "But they’ll be up here, always. And at least I got to show my grandad alien worlds."
"But what do you do with all that time you have? Don’t you get lonely?"
"There’s so much beauty out there. Places to see, things to do, wrongs to put right. I used to work in an office - dogsbodying for some suit. How can I be ungrateful that my best mate gave me time and the universe?" She sounds wistful nonetheless.
"So what now? Do you drop me back home so I can have that quiet death tomorrow?"
To his surprise, he’s at peace with the idea. He’s had hard times, impossible times really, but in the end she was right. He had a fantastic life.
She looks him in the eye and smiles. "You know, tomorrow is kind of a flexible concept when you’ve got a time machine. It can be years away.
"What do you reckon to seeing the stars?"
* * *
End
Notes:
• This came when I was reading the prompts on, of all things, an LJ X-Files ficathon. Someone wanted Donna Noble/Fox Mulder, redheads. And I thought "that's just stupid, it would never work". Only the more I thought about it, the more it did. If you're reading, anon prompter, I apologise, and thank you.
• This was finished and beta-read with help from SEP, Anjou, Cofax, Kirbyfest and Shaye. Thank you. All remaining errors are my own.
• Concrit is welcomed. Here is an email address if you don't like public comments: end of the world news at googlemail dot com. Make it all one word, put in the appropriate @, and that's me.
VI - Cupboard space
The first time Mulder meets Donna Noble he is 32 years old, it’s fall and the days are endless, stretched gray.
A cold, wet Tuesday evening, end of October; a badly lit, near empty hotel bar at almost ten o’clock. It has been eleven weeks, three days and - he checked his watch an hour ago - four hours since Scully was last seen bloody but alive on the grainy surveillance footage from a state trooper’s camera. The case isn’t closed, but that’s about the best you can say of it. There’s no one else to interview, no more footage to scour, no square yard of the crime scene left unexamined. Sometimes you can honestly say there’s nothing more you can do. Believing it is another matter.
On nights like this he thinks about putting his gun in his mouth and just making it all stop. His fantasies on the subject are detailed, disturbing, recurring. They include the way the taste of the metal makes his tongue curl as though he were licking a battery and the letter he would write absolving his parents before he untethered himself from this life. Then, blessed nothingness.
But he can’t give up. He’s never been able to just let go.
He’s in Pittsburgh; another warm body to throw at one of the biggest manhunts in the city’s history. A girl of fifteen is the third young woman to be abducted in three months and they’re pretty sure they’ve linked the cases to unsolved homicides in Cleveland and Akron. The killer murders within three days of taking a victim; Angie O’Riley has been gone four. They’re working fifteen hour days and it’s not enough. It never is.
The guys on the taskforce - and particularly his boss, Dutton - are kind to him; they’ve all heard the story about how Fox Mulder got the son of a bitch who killed his partner, he just didn’t get the location of the body. Somehow they missed the memo from Patterson that Mulder was an untrustworthy flake. He has their wary respect.
He is trying his best to be useful in return but he has spent weeks subsisting on dribs and drabs of sleep. His brain won’t switch off. Sport news won’t do it and even porn - usually his favorite vicarious thrill - has failed him. He runs for miles, but that only buys him a couple of exhausted hours. If he closes his eyes, he sees her gravestone, newly carved, or worse, imagines her in pain. He is running on caffeine and willpower, and he isn’t too sure about the willpower.
Something catches his eye and he wonders if there’s ever going to be a moment when his heart doesn’t seize in his chest at a glimpse of a woman with red hair in a crowd. As though she senses him looking, she turns around. It’s a tallish woman, maybe five eight, looks to be a decade or so older than him but wearing it well. Long curly hair; nice rack under a simple, low-cut, dark blue dress; long, elegant legs. Strange coat though, it’s thick grey wool and too big for her, like an army-issue greatcoat - something you’d wear to invade Russia, not to pick up guys in bars. She catches his eye and he ducks his head but she comes over anyway.
"I’m not really looking for company," he tells her as kindly as he can.
She slings that coat over the back of the stool next to his. "I know," she says, putting one cold hand over his and giving it a brief squeeze. He opens his mouth to object and then realizes that aside from one disastrous Californian interlude in late summer, it’s been months since anyone touched him with care or thought.
She orders two whiskies and water - which is his drink when he *does* drink. "Get that down you."
"Why are you buying me drinks?"
"Drink, singular," she says. "You look like you need one. God knows I do."
"Have we met before?"
"Not yet, Mulder."
"You know my name?"
She grins. "Hard to forget it. I’m a fan of your work."
"You’re a fan of wiretapping? That’s an obscure interest."
"No, smartarse. Your work on extraterrestrial intelligence; I read your articles for Omni."
"They were pseudonymous."
"M.F. Luder isn’t exactly the Enigma code," she says. "I was sorry to hear about your partner."
He takes a long pull of whiskey. "Yeah, well…" he says.
"I met her once," she says. "You’d been gone for a bit."
"But we were only partnered for a year," he replies, frowning.
She pulls a face, as though she’s made a faux pas. "Right. Of course. Should’ve remembered that. Bit new at this lark."
‘New at what, picking up guys in bars?’ he thinks, but lets the remark pass. "So how come you knew I was here?"
"I’m consulting." She brings out a wallet like his own ID and flashes it at him. It says she’s working for Interpol.
Two things unsettle him: the first is that he could swear the paper *wriggled* before the ID photo appeared; the second is that he can’t remember her name a minute after seeing it.
* * *
She’s easy to talk to. They chat about London - he spent most of one summer in the British Library as he started the third year of his PhD - and his belief in extraterrestrials, which she questions with one corner of her mouth turned up, as though she’s thought of ten smart aleck things to say but has decided to keep her own counsel. She states that she used to be a skeptic about alien life and now she’s a believer, but doesn’t explain the change. She makes him laugh.
Before he knows it the bartender is sweeping up around them and there are chairs on the tables. "Come on," the woman says, sliding off the barstool and slinging her long coat on in a flowing, practiced movement. "These lovely people have homes to go to."
Mulder knows that the instant he crosses the lobby to his room, the cold air from outside is going to wake him up like a shot of double espresso and then it’ll be another night of ceiling gazing. He’s not sure he can stand six more hours of being left with his own thoughts and she seems to be interested in him. "You want to come to my room, abuse the minibar?" he blurts out. "Courtesy of the US government?"
Her gaze is assessing, but she smiles. "All right then."
The walk makes him realise he is kind of drunk for the first time in years. He almost stumbles over the edge of a carpet until she catches his arm and keeps him upright. Very suave. His room is featureless and a depressing shade of oatmeal but at least he’s kept it neat. He opens the fridge door and stares for a moment or two until his tired eyes focus. "We have vodka, white rum, whisky and two kinds of beer that probably taste like horse piss," he says. "A bunch of mixers. You got any preference?"
He turns around and sees her sitting on the unused spare bed in his room, his case notes in front of her. She’s flipping past the pages too fast for her to be reading them, wincing at the photographs of previous victims. He strides over to her. "Hey, don’t; even if you are consulting, I need some kind of authorization." He plucks the thick file from her hands and puts it in the one drawer that locks, throws the key into his briefcase and slams that shut so the lock engages.
"Bit of overkill, there, mate," she says, amused rather than offended. She puts both hands behind her and leans back, toeing off her high-heeled shoes. "Whiskey and water. Easy on the water."
"What’s with the coat?" he asks.
"Pockets," she replies. "You always need decent pockets if you’re going to travel."
"You could take it off, if you’re staying." She raises an eyebrow but takes it off and slings it over the back of a chair.
He mixes their drinks, at war with himself. On the one hand he’s not sure he wants some kind of meaningless fuck. On the other hand, he would welcome the temporary oblivion. She’s got a few years on him but he’s always liked older women. They are surer, more assertive. He’s not the one in control here, for all that she’s in his room, and that’s a relief. He’ll go wherever she takes him; he doesn’t have the energy for anything else.
He sits next to her on the bed. As she talks, he wonders again what her name is; it’s embarrassing to admit he’s forgotten.
"And so I joined West Ham and we won the FA Cup final three-nil - me, Liberace and Henry the Eighth scored."
"What?"
"What are you like?" she asks, knocking back the last of her drink. "You were miles away."
He gives a sheepish grin. "Sorry. You want another?"
"Best not," she says, apparently as sober as she was when they first met. There’s a silence, as though she’s waiting for something. Her head tips to one side as she examines his face.
"What?"
One hand goes to his left cheek, the pads of her fingers awakening every nerve ending in the shell of his ear. She swipes a thumb across the dark semi-circle under his eye and he blinks a couple of times in surprise. "You’re so tired," she murmurs. "You poor sod."
"Not too tired for this," he says but it’s more a valiant effort than a convincing argument. Lust is only just winning its war with lethargy.
She laughs softly. With the lightest pressure from her fingers she guides him forward and kisses him. The press of her lips is colder than he imagined, and gentle as the swipe of a feather. He closes his eyes and opens his mouth slightly and she leans into the kiss. She tastes of the mellow smoky burn of the liquor. He puts the broad span of one hand on the side of her ribcage, moves it up towards her breasts.
"You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to plant one on you," she says, but moves out of his reach.
"Did I disappoint?" he asks, trying to cover his confusion.
"Nah, not at all," she says, dark blue eyes merry and a sweetly dirty smile on her face. "No complaints. But that’ll do, I reckon."
She shuffles closer again, undoing his loosened tie and putting it onto the bedside table, then starts in on the buttons of his shirt. He reaches across to her blouse but her hand stills his. "No. Let me do this," she says, but it’s not seductive, it’s more like the tone you would use to coax a sleepy, unwilling child to behave - and it’s pretty effective at making him compliant, banking his arousal to mere embers. He has no idea where this is going.
She drapes his shirt over a chair and turns to face him again. Her hands lift up towards his face but she halts them a few inches away from his cheeks. He looks in alcohol-fuzzed bewilderment. "May I?" He agrees and she takes his face in her hands. His eyes slide shut, without him ever deciding to do it.
"I think I know a way I can get you some sleep. Will you trust me?" He finds himself nodding within the cage of her spread fingers. Strangely he does. There’s a sixth sense that usually saves him when he pays attention to it. It’s quiet now. All he can feel is how cool her hands are against the alcohol flush of his cheeks, how gentle.
There’s the lightest pressure, like the popping of his ears when a plane descends, but inside his skull. Unbidden, he sees Scully in the trunk of the car, bloody and scared, then just as swiftly the memory is replaced by one of her smiling at one of his jokes. Then his sister, unconscious, suspended in an unearthly light and his muscles are locked, the lack of movement agonizing as his brain screams -
"What the hell are you doing?" He opens his eyes and scrambles back away from her on the bed.
She sighs, looking disappointed. "Trying to help."
"Who are you?"
"A friend. I promise." He doesn’t sense any kind of threat from her but there’s something golden behind her eyes that’s faraway and strange, and it scares him.
"Tell me what you were doing." He has his hands up in front of him, as though trying to ward her off, without even noticing he’s doing it.
She stands up and walks over to the greatcoat, draped over the chair. From one pocket she pulls out a penknife, and his heartbeat accelerates. He calculates just how long it will take him to scramble across to his gun and pull it from the holster.
But she opens out the knife and runs the blade across the base of her thumb, then closes it and throws it into one of the pockets of her coat. She lifts her hand. A crimson line stands proud of the skin. "See? Red blood," she says. "Earth-born."
"How would you know I was expecting anything else?" he asks, trying to swallow down his alarm.
"I told you. I’m an admirer of your work. I know who you fear." His skepticism must show in his face. She sighs. "Look, let me tell you the absolute truth. This is an unstable node. The fate of this segment of time depends on you not doing something careless and idiotic in the next 24 hours. I am here to stop you from doing that."
"Like… time travel?" He blinks a couple of times and presses the heel of one hand into his eyes in turn. When the flares clear, she’s still there. Nodding.
"Bullshit. I don’t believe you." His voice is hollow and cracks, because he’s lying.
She chuffs out an unhappy laugh. "Finally. Something you don’t believe."
"Tell me what you were doing."
She pulls a face. "Skinny britches is much better at explanations than me but I’ll give it a go. Imagine your memories are like a vast cupboard. Everything stored away where you can find it. Just now, you’re keeping all the memories that can hurt you most right at the front of the cupboard, where they disturb you. Stop you sleeping.
"You need to keep them in the back of the cupboard with the gravy salt and the glace cherries and the bloody awful brandy that’s only fit for sauce at Christmas. Not take them away - God, I would never do that - just, well, give you a little bit of distance. That way you can get some sleep and deal with them later, when you’re on more of an even keel."
She’s studying his expression, and evidently she doesn’t like what she sees. "That didn’t make any sense at all, did it?"
He shakes his head.
"Home economics analogies - Jesus wept," she says. "No wonder the Doctor sounds like a nutter. This stuff is impossible to explain and I'm still a bit new at all this."
She sucks the blood off her palm and presses on the cut, which now looks more like a scratch.
"You’re saying that if I sleep, I alter the course of history?" he says, tentatively.
"Yes!" she says, brightening and pointing at him with both hands in triumph. "You’ve got it."
"That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard."
She throws back her head and laughs. "Innit, though?" After a moment she sobers. "The causal nexus is a bugger like that sometimes."
He’s fuddled with drink still, but he knows one thing. No one in their right mind would ever come up with a lie like that. "You can see my memories, yes?"
"Yes. But only with your permission. If there’s something you don’t want me to see, imagine moving it out of my reach. If it makes you feel better, we can trade." A wicked smile creeps across her face. "You show me yours and I’ll show you mine."
"All right," he says, half-expecting to wake up any moment from some temporary drink-addled half-sleep. He has nothing to lose, after all.
He blinks once or twice to make sure that he is awake, then closes his eyes. The pads of her fingers caress his face again. He thinks of his sister, unconscious, but after a moment he can only picture her giggling at Spy vs Spy in the Mad magazines his father had brought home.
Then he sees a vast desert of blue tinged sands under a pale silver sky with three dark moons, what look like multi-sailed land yachts scudding towards him. His eyes snap open; hers are still shut. There’s a look of utter concentration on her face. "One of yours?" he asks in wonder. "Is that what it’s like out there?"
She smiles. "That’s not even the half of it."
He can feel her pick up and examine the terrible dreams he has had since Scully disappeared; the moment he had to face Mrs. Scully in a blood-stained apartment; the horror of that answering machine message - it’s like cracking open something in his chest and letting the grief pour out again.
"Shhh," she says, pulling him into a hug. His eyes burn with tears he’s trying to suppress. Her left hand goes to the back of his head, her index finger scritching up and down, a gentle soothing gesture.
Into his mind come images of Scully standing shoulder to shoulder with him in the Arctic; that wondrous first moment he thought he might have an ally, not a spy; of those times when she’d stood up for him no matter what the cost to her reputation; of trading arguments with her for the sheer joy of trying to guess what she’d say next. He saw her laughing in a graveyard, bedraggled and weary, but as exhilarated as he was.
And then, just as soon as it began, the tumble of memories is over, and he comes back to himself, like a swimmer beached after a long struggle to reach the shore. He is a little embarrassed to realise that he’s huddled against her, her arms warm around his back, his cheek pressed against her breastbone, the scent of vanilla body lotion in his nostrils. He can feel his brain slowing, quieting, as though the alcohol were actually working the way it is supposed to. Maybe he is kind of drunk: her heartbeat sounds doubled.
"I was hoping I would end up with my face here," he mutters into her cleavage, "though maybe not like this."
She gives a light slap to the back of his skull. "Oi. Don’t be lairy."
He sits up and gives her a slow smile. He’s so tired.
"Why don’t you lie down, sweetheart?" she says, unwrapping her arms from his back.
He does as she says. She pulls the covers aside and drapes them over him, and kneels beside the bed. "Maybe I’m hallucinating," he mumbles, pushing his face into the cool pillow. "Mysterious women don’t just happen along to help me."
"Oh, I’d get used to it if I was you, sunshine," she whispers.
His mouth opens to ask her why but her fingers swipe across his temples, his eyes shut and it doesn't seem so important any more. "When you wake up, all this will be in the back of the cupboard, where it can’t hurt you."
He wants to ask her what she means but he’s fallen too far down the rabbithole towards sleep.
There’s a quiet voice by his ear. "And let me tell you something else: don’t give up. You find your friend. And it’s going to be bloody awful a lot of the time, but the two of you? In the end? You win. You have a fantastic life."
In his first dreams, he sees a mountainous land made of ice, and a wind-blown, joyous music so complex, crystalline and unearthly that he can barely process it. Something tells him it’s a song of hope. He feels the brush of lips against his forehead and the world winks out of existence.
* * *
A garbage truck is beeping outside his window. He blinks at the unexpected daylight and gazes muzzily at his watch, only to sit bolt upright when he realizes it’s almost midday. He swears a blue streak and calls his SAC, Dutton. To his surprise, the guy says he was only expecting Mulder to be in by 3pm. Apparently someone put him on a late detail with Johnson. Mulder feels about a million times better than he did yesterday, though he’s kind of worried that he left all the case notes strewn across the desk like that. He could swear he locked them away.
On his map there are lines drawn between the dump sites for the bodies, and the school where one suspect, James Joseph McNeill, has been working as a janitor. Johnson interviewed him last week. A post-it note with a big arrow and an exclamation point is plastered next to the street where McNeill lives. It doesn’t look much like his handwriting but whose else would it be?
He reads Johnson’s notes on McNeill again and something clicks in his head. He calls the ASAC again and by 1pm, a rumpled Mulder is with the rest of the team heading off to pick up McNeill from his house. Mulder is certain this is the guy. They might not save Angie O’Riley but they’ll save whoever would have been next.
When they get there, the guy has holed himself up in his basement. Mulder and Dutton are right outside and about to enter when Mulder hears the faintest scraping click and impelled by that sixth sense of his, shoves himself and his boss away from the door a second before the wood is shredded by a shotgun blast at chest height.
"Jesus H freaking Christ!" Dutton exclaims, knuckles white around his gun to stop the shakes as they both huddle back against brickwork. "Glad you were awake."
That rings faint bells in his brain. He breathes in deeply and shakes his head but nothing falls out of his memory.
They arrest McNeill, after a brief stand-off. Best of all, in a small room behind the furnaces they find Angie O’Riley, battered and bruised but clinging to life. He tells himself that that is enough - today he can almost believe it.
* * *
VII - Cheap tricks
The last time Fox Mulder meets Donna Noble is the day before he dies.
"When you say it’s time, what do you mean?" he asks.
It’s the first time he can remember that she has dodged eye contact as they speak. "I wondered if you wanted to take a little trip. My way of saying thank you for saving me that time."
"That was thirty years ago," he says, taking his glasses off and pinching the bridge of his nose against an oncoming headache.
"Don’t suppose you’ve got a kettle, have you?
"You could’ve come to see me before now."
"I could make us both a brew."
"Which means there’s some reason you’re here now."
She turns and fiddles with the lock on the door of the mysteriously appearing closet. "I’d murder for a coffee; I’ve got a mouth like a camel’s flip-flop here."
That’s when it dawns on him why she is here. "Donna," he says, and it’s a demand and a plea all at once. He waits until she turns around and gives him the truth.
* * *
"I’m sorry; I’m so sorry," she says after she tells him, one hand rubbing circles of comfort into his back. They are sitting on his bed, just as they had the first time he met her. "But it’s peaceful, in your sleep. That’s not nothing."
He takes as deep a breath as he can these days. "It’s kind of a relief, actually. To know, I mean. Will’s got his own family and everyone I really know is gone." He ponders for a while, then says haltingly: "Are you some kind of angel of death?"
She laughs. "Are you barmy?" Then just as abruptly she stops. "Sorry, bit insensitive there. No I’m not. I just -" she pulls a face, waves a hand. "It’s complicated. I know stuff, about time."
"So you’re not here to kill me?"
She’s properly horrified. "No! What do you take me for?"
"I’m not the one who just said you were going to die!"
She considers for a moment. "All right, then. No, I don’t kill you. The reason I know you’re about to die is that I will turn up here tomorrow too late to see you."
"Seems like I’ll be the late one."
"Puns that bad will send you to hell, sunshine."
"Been there, done that. But how do you know to come tomorrow?"
"Glad you reminded me," she says, picking up a red pen from his desk and scrawling a cellphone number in inch-high letters across the bottom of his timeline, with the words ‘Amelia, please call this number’.
"Amelia finds this in your room tomorrow," she says. "And because she’s a good soul, she calls me. She was crying, by the way. That girl adores you."
He shakes his head in confusion. "Isn’t this all some kind of paradox?"
"Nah, more what a mate of mine would call a cheap trick," she says, one side of her mouth curling up into a smile.
"But why?" he asks.
"Because you once saved my life - more than once, actually - and I want to repay the favour." She takes in a deep breath. "You remember that time we met in London and I gave you a right mouthful because I thought you were some bloody nutcase?"
He does. At the time he was confused and disappointed as hell.
"I’d forgotten everything but I had your photo in my phone," she says. "When I checked the memory card folders I had lots of photos in my phone that I didn’t remember taking. He’d been so careful about wiping the numbers from the phone but he forgot the four gig card, the daft sod." She gives a bittersweet smile. "They triggered my memory. I was ill but my Grandad called the Doctor and we worked out a different way to save me. It just changed me, that’s all."
"Changed you? Changed you how?"
"Bit of a biological alteration."
"You’re part alien?" he asks in wonder, expecting her to laugh at him again.
Instead she smiles. "Sort of. Bit creeped out by that, but yeah."
"And you don’t travel with your friend any more?"
She shakes her head. "We had a philosophical disagreement about how people who ignore other people when they say ‘no’ deserve a smack. And these days I think I cramp his style with the young ‘uns. But the big idiot is family - we meet up for tea and a good bicker and I occasionally have to slap some sense into him."
Her face softens with affection. "And he helped me grow my ship." She strokes the surface of the door as though she can’t help herself.
"That’s a timeship?" he says, incredulous.
"Time and space. Backwards, forwards and way out there." Her grin is infectious. "Fancy a spin?"
"Why me? Of all the people in the universe?"
"Cause you’d love it as much as I do," she says, getting up and opening the door, her eyes bright with excitement. "Anywhere you like. Promise."
He looks at the tall, ornate wardrobe, with its eccentric sprawl of runes. It feels as though he could put a hand out and feel the power from it, like sensing the coiled tension in an animal that’s about to flee. Imagine travelling through time, to any place you wanted. Imagine seeing history from the front row, not some history book.
"Sure, but it’s going to be a tight squeeze," he replies, feeling foolish as he steps past her and…
"Holy. Shit."
She laughs.
* * *
VII - Hello, Goodbye
The past obliges Mulder with the kind of beautiful sunny spring day he remembers from childhood. He steps out to see white clouds scudding across a bowl of blue, hear the flapping of flags against the flagpoles and the clinking of glasses as black and white clad waiters lay out champagne flutes on trestle tables ready for the celebrations to come. If they spot that there are now two vending machines outside the gym block, no one pays it much mind. Nor do they notice when two people step out from the shadows nearby.
"All of time and space, and you pick 1990," she grumbles, but his attention is elsewhere.
"Oh, man, Bugles. And only fifty cents," says Mulder, pulling his spectacles out of his pocket to examine the contents of the real vending machine.
"Forty-five years back in time and all he cares about are snacks," Donna says, stroking the side of her ship. "Didn’t you see how cleverly she disguised herself? Proper working chameleon circuit, that is."
Mulder jangles the change in his pocket and pushes two quarters into the machine. But before he can press a button, her hand slams down to cancel his purchase. She plucks the coins out of the machine, and jabs a finger at the dates on the coins. "2014. 2031. You are not causing a temporal paradox just because you fancy some E numbers."
She hands the coins back and, darting a quick look around, she points something small and blue-lit at the machine’s controls. It chunters and groans and then the spiralling arms release a packet, which she fishes out for him. He grins. "I don’t think this is the kind of place you want to get caught stealing."
"Don’t get caught then, dumbo," she says. He stuffs the Bugles into his jacket pocket.
Right now, his old office is just four hundred feet away, though the younger version of himself isn't there, he's in California consulting on a ritual homicide and realizing that he doesn't give a damn about having a career.
Unlike the graduating class who are beginning to emerge into the courtyard with their families. Donna positions them by the drinks table and he picks up a glass of champagne, more to blend in than anything. He recognises instructors who taught him, men and women he hasn’t seen in decades. He picks out Skinner at the back of the throng - in his default setting of stern-faced overlord - and a wave of affection threatens to wash him over to talk to his old friend. Imagine how much pain he could prevent with a few words of warning.
Donna’s hand keeps him anchored in place. "You can’t," she says. "I explained the rules, didn’t I?"
"Are you reading my mind again?" he asks in irritation.
She shakes her head. "I just know what you’re thinking. My dad died of a heart attack. He was 59. You think I didn’t want to go to 2005 and tell him to test his flipping blood pressure?"
"Your dad was just an ordinary guy, right? What harm could it do? If it gave your dad a few years more?"
She squeezes her eyes shut for a second. "He died, so I went looking for the Doctor. Carpe diem and all that. And because of that - not being big-headed because it’s the truth - the universe changed. You can’t alter the course of your life either; too much depends on the journey you took."
Then suddenly she’s looking past his shoulder at the relieved faces of the graduates. She smiles. "But you can wave her off, if you like."
Later, he remembers the crowd parting for a moment to give him clear sight of Scully - a small, neat figure in an ugly brown suit that probably cost more than anything else in her wardrobe - as though she had been picked out by a shaft of sunlight piercing through cloud cover. It’s an illusion of memory, of course, but no less subjectively true for all that.
She’s talking to her mother and, Captain Scully having declined to pull the pole out of his ass for the afternoon, a brown-haired, open-faced guy who’s probably the brother he never met. It is the first time he has seen Scully for seven years. It’s like being kissed and punched in the throat all at the same time.
He’s tapping on her shoulder before he can even work out how he walked over there. She turns to face him, her dear face unlined and lit by an uncomplicated happiness.
"Jesus, you’re so young," he blurts out. Her eyebrows climb beneath her bangs.
"But then you all look so young to me," he goes on.
"Nice save," Donna whispers in his ear as she joins them, then plasters a polite for-public-consumption smile on her face and sips her champagne. She doesn’t trust him; she thinks he’ll be tempted to change history. She’s a good judge of character.
Scully’s mother and brother retreat to the drinks table so the newly minted agent can mingle.
"Congratulations, Doctor Scully. *Agent* Scully." He puts out his hand and, after a moment’s surprised hesitation she takes it.
"Thank you, sir," she says. "I’m sorry; have we met?"
He wonders what she sees. Probably just a tall, thin old man, stooped, gray and a little gnarl-fingered, with the kind of nose that you would call interesting if you were being kind. He shakes his head. "No," he says, "but I am sure we will. I’ve heard good things about you. Seen you around."
Her look of pleasure warms him through, makes him beam like a fool in return. He still hasn’t let go of her hand. He remembers the feeling of that hand in his; its strength despite its size, the papery warmth of the skin. She’s starting to pull away but he can’t quite release his grip. There’s a slight, painful pressure on his arthritic big toe. It’s from Donna’s foot pressing on his in a way which promises that the step could easily turn into a stamp, shortly to be followed by a kick in the ass. Her expression is pleasant but her eyes threaten dire consequences if he messes this up. He puts his hands in his pockets. "I’m a former agent," he says. "Occasionally, I lecture."
"Really, sir? What’s your name?"
"Mmm…" he begins. Donna shifts her weight onto his toe again. "Marty. John Marty." The pain eases and he glares at Donna. She gives him an innocent look and drinks her champagne.
"Well, Mr Marty," she says. "I hope to see you around. I’ll be based here, working in forensics. Pathology."
"You should consider field work," he says.
She looks taken aback, that familiar small crease appearing in her forehead as she assesses him, tries to work out what his angle is. "Well, of course, I’d like to, but I was hired -"
"Press for it," he interrupts. "Make some noise. Rattle some chains. Ask them. Because you’re going to be great at it."
"Thank you, sir," she says, puzzled, wariness taking over at this stranger who appears to know all about her. He wants to put her mind at ease but he has no idea how. He’s said too much.
"Come on, Agent Marty," says Donna, threading her arm through his. "Time to go."
He plasters a smile on his face, holds out his hand again, and shakes hers for the last time. "Good luck, Agent Scully."
A thousand tiny tells he picked up from loving her for years let him know that she’s relaxing at the thought that this odd conversation is almost over, though to the outside eye she remains cheerful and polite. "Thank you. Good to meet you, sir," she says, and is turning back to find her mother and brother before he has even stepped away.
Donna gives him a tight smile and raises her eyebrows in the universal gesture of ‘are you okay?’ He nods. His chest starts to ache, as though something is swelling in there, threatening to crawl up into his throat and seal off the air supply. He’s almost at the door of the hidden timeship before he recognises that feeling for what it is: immense happiness at seeing her one last time, and suffocating grief for exactly the same reason.
* * *
VIII - A flexible concept
The control room of the timeship is disappointingly unlike the deck of the Enterprise. It’s more like a cosy sitting room, albeit one with a crystalline glass control column sprouting in the centre of it, surging up and down and splitting the light like some altar to the God of prisms.
The walls are stone, with circular indentations at regular intervals. High up, there are narrow stained glass windows which cast yet more jewelled light in kalaeidoscope patterns across the thick rugs on the floor. There’s an open fire in one corner - fake but it pours out warmth - two huge armchairs beside it, and on the other side of the control console, a vast kitchen table half-covered with what looks like the innards of the large hadron collider and way too many dirty coffee mugs.
He nurses a mug of coffee at the clean end of the table. Donna is casting that strange, knowing look at him, as she warms her hands on a mug of her own. He’s torn open the pack of Bugles and they’re crunching them off their fingertips like kids.
"I had to stop going to see grandad after a few decades. At some point I was going to end up meeting myself. Imagine if I was wearing the same dress as me - I’d have to slap myself. How embarrassing would that be?"
He gives a watery smile for the watery joke.
"It got too hard," Donna says, serious now. "Slicing up time into smaller and smaller slivers so I wouldn’t cause a paradox; making sure I left before I arrived again; working out how long he and mum had left; how much I could say, how much I couldn’t. Trying to stay linear. It got too hard."
He reaches over and squeezes her hand. She gives a grateful smile and taps the side of her head. "But they’ll be up here, always. And at least I got to show my grandad alien worlds."
"But what do you do with all that time you have? Don’t you get lonely?"
"There’s so much beauty out there. Places to see, things to do, wrongs to put right. I used to work in an office - dogsbodying for some suit. How can I be ungrateful that my best mate gave me time and the universe?" She sounds wistful nonetheless.
"So what now? Do you drop me back home so I can have that quiet death tomorrow?"
To his surprise, he’s at peace with the idea. He’s had hard times, impossible times really, but in the end she was right. He had a fantastic life.
She looks him in the eye and smiles. "You know, tomorrow is kind of a flexible concept when you’ve got a time machine. It can be years away.
"What do you reckon to seeing the stars?"
* * *
End
Notes:
• This came when I was reading the prompts on, of all things, an LJ X-Files ficathon. Someone wanted Donna Noble/Fox Mulder, redheads. And I thought "that's just stupid, it would never work". Only the more I thought about it, the more it did. If you're reading, anon prompter, I apologise, and thank you.
• This was finished and beta-read with help from SEP, Anjou, Cofax, Kirbyfest and Shaye. Thank you. All remaining errors are my own.
• Concrit is welcomed. Here is an email address if you don't like public comments: end of the world news at googlemail dot com. Make it all one word, put in the appropriate @, and that's me.