TITLE:        Crossroads in Time (1/3)
AUTHOR:        Avalon (avalon@fuse.net)
RATING:        PG-13 for profanity and a hint of sex
SPOILERS:    Set mid-FTF, then veers off into its own
        little AU.  References to things through
        season eight, but AU-ish.  Oh, it'll make
        more sense when you read it, I swear.
CATEGORY:    Hints of Mulder/Diana, Scully/Other, but 
        leads to MSR.  Angst.  Character death 
        implied, but no one you wouldn't expect 
        from the show itself.  Alternate Universe.
DISCLAIMER:    I dearly love them, but no, they're not
        mine.  Great thanks to CC for creating them.
FEEDBACK:    I respond to every piece.  I really do.  It's
        more divine than chocolate chip cookie dough, 
        and that's truly saying a lot.
ARCHIVE:    Spooky's, Gossamer, Ephemeral, all the usual 
        suspects.  If you want it, you can have it, 
        but please let me know so I can visit.
SUMMARY:    How many different lives would we be leading
        if we made different choices?
WEBSITE:    http://home.fuse.net/ktvanden/index.html
AUTHOR'S
NOTES:        At the end, please.

Crossroads in Time (1/3) by Avalon

She left him on a Friday.

It had been simple, easy.  She left him standing in his 
apartment, his hands on his hips, his hazel eyes flashing 
wildly as she turned to go.  She had been so tired she 
wasn't even sure she would make it back down the hallway 
to the elevator.  Part of her had hoped that he would come 
after her, would convince her to stay, to fight with him, to 
keep going...but he didn't follow her.  The elevator had 
pinged its arrival, she had stepped into it as she had 
thousands of times before, and she had sighed in a mixture 
of frustration and relief as its doors slid shut.

She told herself she would give it the weekend.  She 
wouldn't call him until Monday, or maybe Sunday night.  
Somehow, she convinced herself it was just another 
weekend, like all the other ones before.  In her mind, she 
had said goodbye to him as she did every Friday, and she 
would see him again soon, even though she knew she 
wouldn't be walking into his basement office on Monday.  
She couldn't.  She had resigned.

She half-expected there to be a phone message waiting 
when she opened the door to her apartment.  There wasn't.  
She lay awake that night until well after midnight, 
anticipating one of his habitual late calls.  None ever came.  
She wondered if he had gone back to Texas to dig some 
more, or if he had perhaps enlisted the help of the Lone 
Gunmen to chase down another half-baked lead.  She never 
really found out what happened to the case they had been 
investigating...their last case together.

She slept late on Saturday morning and then cleaned her 
bathroom.  She made tea for herself and updated her 
resume.  She called her mother and asked her to brunch 
after church the next day, and she watched an old black and 
white movie before falling asleep on the couch for the 
night.

Her mother seemed surprised when she told her the news, 
but she certainly didn't protest the decision.  She passed her 
daughter the bulging Sunday newspaper from where it 
nestled in her tote bag and sipped her coffee.  "I suppose 
you will need to find another job."  She smiled tentatively 
over the rim of her cup.

When she returned to her apartment, her answering 
machine flashed a message at her.  She punched the button, 
ready to hear his voice.  A higher female one greeted her.  
"Dana!  It's Ellen.  I wanted to invite you..." She thumbed 
the volume disc down so that she didn't have to listen to the 
rest of it.

No call from him.  Nothing but silence.  

The weekend passed.

*****

She phoned him every day for the next week.  She kept her 
voice from sounding edgy or needy, simply asking how he 
was, requesting a return call to assure her that he was all 
right.  She licked envelopes and stamps with the cordless 
within reach, sending out her resume for positions she 
found listed on the Internet.

On Saturday, the worry overwhelmed her, and she dialed 
Skinner's home number.  He answered in his usual gruff 
manner, but his tone softened when he recognized her.  She 
asked about Mulder, and Skinner sighed softly in her ear.

"He's taken a leave of absence."

"For how long?"

She could see Skinner in her mind's eye, removing his 
glasses and rubbing the bridge of his nose, his familiar 
gesture of frustration.  "It's an indefinite leave.  He didn't 
tell me where he was going.  I have no idea when, or if, 
he'll be back."

"He wouldn't just leave. He wants the X-Files back."

"I don't know about that, Dana.  He--"  His voice became 
even gentler.  "I don't know if he'll go on without you."

She squeezed her eyes shut.  How could she have been so 
stupid, so thoughtless, to just leave him like that?  Mulder 
could be damned exasperating, infuriating even...but he 
would never desert her, not when she needed him most.  
And that was exactly what she had done.  

She would remedy this, somehow.  She would find him, 
and make him understand.  

"If you see him, sir, please tell him I need to speak with 
him."  The silence on the line pricked at her throat, and she 
spoke around the catch there.  "Please, sir?"

"I'll tell him, if I see him.  But Dana?"

"Yes?"

Skinner sighed again, and Scully felt her resolve melt with 
that exhalation.  "Don't hold your breath."

The week was over, and she still heard nothing.

*****

She decided to practice again.  Several hospitals in the area 
were looking for E.R. doctors, so she applied and was 
called in for interviews at every one.  She smiled at the 
human resource directors when they asked about her work 
for the F.B.I., explaining that she had seen enough death to 
last ten lifetimes.  They nodded knowingly, and each called 
later to offer her a position on staff.  She accepted the one 
closest to the Bureau, thinking that perhaps some night, he 
would come through the emergency doors, nursing a head 
injury or a sprained wrist.  

Another fantasy.  He never came.

She sent him emails at his Bureau address, but no replies 
appeared in her mailbox.  She stopped by his building one 
evening after a particularly hairy day at the hospital, 
wishing for nothing more than a trip to the pub with him for 
a beer.  Disappointment pooled in her stomach as she stood 
in his hallway for way too long, hoping he would answer 
her knock.  She took a pen from her purse and scribbled a 
note on her prescription pad, her vision blurring as she 
wrote:

I miss you, Mulder.  Please get in touch.

        Scully

She shoved it under his door before she lost her nerve and 
hurried home to her empty apartment.

Ellen kept calling, pestering her to go out as they had in 
college.  She finally relented, hoping to take her mind off 
Mulder.  She met Brian O'Meara at an upscale bar that 
Ellen frequented.  He was a nice distraction, a burly, six-
foot blond with laughing blue eyes and an easy smile.  At 
forty-five, he easily looked ten years younger, and he kept 
in shape chasing his high school football charges around 
the gridiron.  Divorced after only two years of marriage, his 
children already attended college, and she found herself in 
his company more and more often after work or on the 
weekends.

She was shocked to glance at the wall calendar in her 
kitchen one morning to find that three months had passed, 
and no word had come.

*****

Her wedding day was very nearly a disaster.

It rained.  Her mother's dress was almost ruined when the 
caterer bumped into her while delivering the cake. 
Charlie's youngest daughter screamed that she didn't want 
to walk down the aisle scattering rose petals.  Bill didn't 
make it from the airport in time, so she marched to the altar 
unaccompanied.  Brian's son patted his pockets, a panicked 
look on his face, when asked to produce the ring during the 
Mass. 

If Mulder had been there, he probably would have smiled 
and whispered something to her about bad omens.

She had written out an invitation for him and then decided 
to drop it by his apartment personally.  Her knock was 
promptly answered by a young man wearing a Tommy 
Hilfiger pullover and leather pants.  He grinned at her 
inquiry and told her that he had moved into the building 
nearly two months before.  He thought the man who had 
vacated the apartment had moved into a house with his 
girlfriend, but he could be wrong.  She should check with 
the building superintendent downstairs.  Mr. Mitchell might 
also have his forwarding address.

The smile felt stiff and frozen on her lips as she took the 
piece of paper the superintendent gave to her.  An address 
in Falls Church, Virginia, and two names stared back at 
her.

Fox Mulder.  Diana Fowley.

She took the invitation home and readdressed it, dropping it 
into the mailbox on the corner.  Two weeks later, the reply 
card was returned, filled out in a woman's elegant 
handwriting, announcing that they would be unable to 
attend.  

When she and Brian returned from their two-week 
honeymoon in Bermuda, she was surprised to find a gift 
awaiting them.  Brian unwrapped it and nodded in approval 
at the heavy cut-glass vase, handing her the card with a 
smile.  She read the typed words with a sour taste in the 
back of her throat:

Best wishes, Diana and Fox

When Brian went upstairs to begin unpacking, she put the 
vase back in its box and shoved it into a corner of the 
downstairs closet.  She told herself that it didn't match the 
décor in their new home, but not before two silent tears 
slipped down her cheeks.

Her watch displayed the date, six months since that Friday 
when her world had morphed into something strange, not 
unlike the Alien Bounty Hunter she had convinced herself 
didn't really exist.  She took it off, laid it on her dressing 
table, and went to find her new husband in their bedroom.

*****

He traced his tongue up her spine, fanning the hair at the 
base of her neck with his warm breath.  She shivered and 
smiled into her pillow, sinking further into the mattress as 
he pressed his weight against her.  She felt the light scrape 
of his fingertips along the chain of her necklace, and his 
lips glazed her ear with kisses.  

"You're so beautiful, Dana."  He sat back, and she could 
sense his eyes drinking in the sight of her, a thought that 
brought a hot rush of desire to her belly.  She turned her 
head to look over her shoulder.  Brian stared at her, his chin 
at a strange angle, his eyes narrowed as if to see something 
better.

"What is it?"

"You have a tiny scar on the back of your neck.  I never 
noticed it before."  His thumb slid over it, and the sensation 
caused the hot hunger in her abdomen to roil into a 
sickening coldness.  "What happened?"

She flinched away without thinking, realizing even as she 
did that it would make him even more determined to hear 
an answer.  "It's...it's nothing, really."

"Does it hurt?"

"No."

"Then how did it happen?  Were you with the F.B.I?"

"Yes."  She remembered the doctor pulling the original 
from beneath her skin, kidding that she had probably been 
wounded in the line of duty.  

He hadn't known the absolute truth of that statement, even 
when they discovered it was a computer chip. 

Brian leaned over her and pressed a kiss to the spot.  "My 
poor Dana."

She rolled onto her back and laced her arms around his 
neck, pulling him closer.  She murmured against his lips, 
"Make it better, Brian."  He smiled and kissed her deeply, 
and the memory melted away.

But sleep eluded her that night.  She lay next to her sated 
husband, watching the violet sky outside their window over 
his bare shoulder, thinking of government conspiracies, 
black oil, and little green men.  

And of her ex-partner, the one who had opened her mind to 
it all, the one who had brought cancer to her doorstep and 
then somehow stopped it with a miraculous cure that hid 
just below her skin.  She could almost feel the soft caress of 
his hand as he held hers on her deathbed, his eyes rimmed 
in red from shedding tears he would never let her see.  He 
had been dead, too, and had resurrected, finding salvation 
for her as well.

What happened to drive them apart?  The question twisted 
in her heart, making her chest ache with longing.

Orion winked at her from his position in the heavens, and 
she figured the time in her head.  One year, and a few 
months. 

She had never dreamed that she could live in a Mulderless 
world.

*****

The Oregon where they bought a house was different than 
the Oregon she recalled.  On her first X-File, it had rained 
almost every day, a cold, steady shower that had turned her 
hair into an unmanageable tangle of red curls and made her 
sniffle like a schoolchild.  Mulder had constantly asked her 
if she was getting a cold, honest concern and just a hint of 
amusement apparent on his face.  So young, so cocky, so 
brilliant and flawed then...it was one of the ways she best 
liked to remember him.

Busy with his new responsibilities as a University football 
coach, she spent most of her days away from Brian.  She 
enjoyed her new position at St. Peter's Hospital, where she 
supervised the incoming interns.  Saturdays were spent at 
football games, and on Sundays, the O'Mearas went sailing 
or hiking or dined with Brian's colleagues from the college.

It was a nice life, a life full of everyday things that she had 
longed for, and dreamed of, when she was an F.B.I. agent 
eight years before.  But deep in the night, when she would 
sometimes creep down the stairs of her sprawling suburban 
house for a glass of warm milk to ease her insomnia, she 
would wonder how different her life could have been if she 
had not walked away.

*****

Brian's heart attack came on the morning of his fifty-
seventh birthday.  She administered CPR until the life 
squad arrived, but she knew she had lost him before he was 
pronounced.  One EMT recognized her from the hospital 
and touched her briefly, murmuring his regrets.  She turned 
away and lifted the telephone receiver with shaking hands, 
dialing Brian's son's number in Florida from memory.

The empty house was nothing compared to the yawning 
gap in her heart.  She considered moving into a smaller 
space, but she couldn't muster the energy to even begin 
looking.  Everyone treated her as if she were made of 
china, handling her with care, afraid she might shatter into 
a million pieces.  

In the lonely recesses of her heart, she wondered if perhaps 
she was indeed breaking apart.  She found herself dwelling 
more and more on her losses in life. She thought of her 
father for the first time in years, and Melissa came close on 
his heels.  Emily's shiny round face haunted her, and 
Brian's memory loomed as large as the bulk of his 
muscular body.  There was no escaping them, and they 
circled around her, whispering to her as she sat up late into 
the night.

The only memory that didn't torment her was Mulder's.

It comforted her to think of him.  She hoped for his 
happiness, even if he had found it with a woman she had 
never trusted.  She wondered if he had ever solved the 
mystery of his sister's disappearance, and if he still worked 
for the government.  It never occurred to her to try to 
contact him again; she had given up hope of that years 
before.

Still, she enjoyed those times, when her restless and cruel 
mind would allow her to call up his face, his voice, those 
mannerisms that were so distinctly Mulder.  And when she 
peered in the mirror, noting the deepening creases around 
her eyes and the tendrils of silver in her fiery hair, she 
mused over what he must look like after almost eleven 
years.


***End Part One***