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"What was that?"
"I don't know, but it ain't no duck."
He was right, Scully fumed, very nearly throwing her gun into the lake after the rather large trout that had jumped a bit out of the water, frightening her yet again.
"Damnit, Mulder," she almost whispered. "Where the hell's your white whale, huh? 'Cause, at this point, I'd love to see you without a leg."
"You're a doctor," he quipped pleasantly. "You could always sew it back on."
Her eyes were daggers. "Who's to say I'd want to?"
Scully sat quietly again, watching the lantern gutter once more before dying. Great! Stuck on a rock in the middle of a lake, no light, no boat... just Mulder. And, Goddamn him, he seemed to be almost enjoying this!
After twenty minutes in the darkness, Mulder had taken to picking at the seam of the lifejacket on which he sat. He looked up at his partner's turned back a couple of times, but she didn't seem to have much time for him tonight. Not that he could blame her. Still, this was a very small rock, and they had to sleep sometime. And it was damn cold.
"I'm going to try to sleep, Scully," he offered quietly, neither expecting, nor receiving, a response. He hunkered down a little, trying to make his six-foot-plus frame comfortable on the five-foot-square surface.
"What about Big Blue?" she asked mockingly, slurring the name into the worst of insults. "Aren't you afraid he'll come up here and eat your leg off?"
"Scully, look," he said coldly, getting more than a little sick of her attitude. "I said I was sorry for all of this. Okay? You want me to say it again? Fine. I'm sorry I dragged you out of bed on Saturday. I'm sorry I hauled you down here to look for my little monster. I'm sorry the boat sank."
Scully remained absolutely silent for the longest time. When she spoke, her voice was colder than the night around them. "Oh, well that makes it alright, then."
"Look!" he snapped. "What do you want me to say?"
She turned on him in the dark, the moonlight making her face a ghost's, her hair flame. "I want you to say that this whole trip was one huge mistake, Mulder. I want you to say that your whole idea of finding some God-awful, prehistoric sea monster in a Georgia lake is crap!" She hung her head, her voice dropping almost tearfully. "I want you to say that you're sorry about Queequeg."
Mulder's own anger dropped a notch. "I am sorry, Scully."
"You're not," she declared petulantly, turning away from him again. "None of the rest of it matters to you, Mulder," she whispered. "That's the problem. A dog, a fisherman, a camera freak. None of them matter, as long as you get the truth."
"Is that what you think?" he asked in a small voice. "Really?"
She turned on him again, more exhausted and... haunted... than mad. "Mulder, you've shown it, time and again. Nothing matters to you more than the Truth--whatever the hell that Truth might turn out to be. You'll risk anything."
"Not you, Scully," he assured her quietly.
"I don't believe you, sometimes, Mulder," she said after a moment.
"What do you mean?"
"You just... you just go blithely along saying things like that, honestly believing them. But... but when push comes to shove, you'll give up everything..."
Mulder couldn't believe she'd say that. He couldn't believe, after all they'd been through in the last few years, that she'd actually think he'd sacrifice her...
Like Ahab, she'd said. A brutal search for that damned white whale, to the exclusion of all else...
"Scully..." He wasn't sure how he could convince her of it, but she had to know he needed her. He wouldn't have a quest without her. "Did you ever read Don Quixote?"
She had a weary smile in her voice. "If I'm Poncho in this scenario, Mulder... You're dead--monster or no monster."
"Isn't it Sancho?" Mulder asked, more for something to cut the tension than because he felt she needed correcting.
"I'll discuss my sister's book reports another time," she replied, the smile in her voice growing. "Okay, so, if you're Don Quixote--and you obviously are... What does that make me?"
"Dulcinea," he said quietly.
She turned to him, that ghost's face with flame for hair. "Excuse me?"
"Don Quixote needed Dulcinea, Scully," Mulder explained carefully. "Without her, he had no quest. He had no meaning."
Scully sat quietly in the darkness, thinking. Dulcinea... He was pretty good at this. He was Quixote--so obviously Quixote that it hurt to watch him hit that windmill, every time...
And yet, she was always there to watch, to pick up the pieces, to mourn yet another failure. Which made her more Panza than anything--well, anything but crazy, that was.
She smiled in the darkness, moving closer to her partner, sliding the spent lantern out of the way so that she was sitting next to him on the rock's unyielding surface. Her smile turned soft.
Dulcinea...
"Scully?" Mulder asked, surprised as she scooted up close to him.
"We have to conserve heat, Mulder," she explained with a wry grin in her voice. "This particular windmill of yours doesn't make very good firewood."
Mulder had to smile. She was so funny sometimes--so fiery, and vulnerable at the same time. But again, she'd forgiven him. She'd seen yet more of him, and stayed with him despite it.
He ran a soothing hand over her shivering arm, and sighed.
Dulcinea...
FANDOM: X-Files
RATING: G
ORIENTATION: Gen