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The first time Mulder finds Scully smoking, huddled under the narrow covering outside her motel room somewhere in Iowa, cigarette smoke curling from her lips and disappearing into the cold rain, his jaw nearly drops.
“You smoke? Are you serious?”
She starts at the sudden intrusion to her ritual and the cigarette falls from her delicate fingers into a slushy puddle. “Not anymore.” she replies, annoyed. Scully tilts her head to the side, considering lighting another to make up for the half she’d just lost, but decides against it. “Did you need something, Mulder?”
He raises his eyebrows, unsure if he knows her well enough yet to really get into it with her about this. But then, restraint isn’t usually his forte.
“I don’t understand. You’re a medical doctor and you’ve probably taken dozens of smoker’s lungs out of cadavers. What gives?”
She looks like she wants to say something before giving a slight shake of her head. Whether it’s to herself or Mulder, he can’t tell.
“Goodnight, Mulder.”
“Goodnight, Scully.”
He watches her disappear back into her room and close the door before his eyes travel down to the soggy cigarette floating in the puddle, Scully’s pinkish-red lipstick coating the butt.
–
She tries to quit smoking like she has something to prove- which, Mulder supposes, she does, at least to herself. The first step seems to be sheer willpower, which doesn’t last very long. She holds out for a few days before they head out of DC for another case, which is when the stress finally cracks her.
He misses the exact reason, something about a guy at the county coroner’s office with three years less experience than her calls her out for a mistake in front of everyone and ends up being the one in the wrong. Still, he can tell the embarrassment still stings later that night from the red tips of her ears. The next morning, the scent of smoke lingers and sticks in her hair. Mulder can smell it as they settle into their seats for the long flight home.
–
The toe of her sleek kitten heel taps against the cold office floor, driving a spike into Mulder’s brain a little more by the second. Scully pauses, attempts to blow a bubble in her nicotine gum, fails, and then continues the irritated tapping.
“Scully,” Mulder groans, raking a hand through his hair. “Just go take a smoke break already.”
“No,” she shoots back, spitting out her old piece of gum and replacing it with a new one. “I’m making good progress. It’s been three days.”
“Feels longer.” He murmurs, loosening his tie and forcing his eyes to focus on the glow of his computer.
Scully huffs and snaps her gum.
–
She stops cold turkey during chemo. Logically, she knows that the smoking can’t possibly be the cause of her brain tumor, but she also knows that it hasn’t been helping, can’t help her especially now. She doesn’t crave cigarettes anymore, anyways. The pain and fatigue have consumed the part of her that craves anything but sleep.
But when it looks like the end is nearing, she asks Mulder for a favor.
Of course there’s no smoking allowed in the hospital. She wants to walk, so Mulder takes her by the elbow of her fluffy robe, brought from home by her mother when her stay was becoming extended. Slowly, they walk to the exit. It’s a rainy night, cool and damp, so they stand under the fluorescent lights of the hospital overhang. Mulder fumbles with the pack of cigarettes, her brand of choice that he’d picked up on the way over. His hands shake as he rips the plastic off and peels the foil back. She delicately selects a cigarette and flips it over before returning to the pack and selecting a different one.
“That’s the last one,” she explains. “You make a wish on it when you open the pack and then when you smoke it…” she trails off, a lump of sadness settling in her throat. She doubts that she’ll see the end of this pack. Maybe Mulder will finish it for her, that will be her wish. A self-fulfilling prophecy.
–
Life is a new gift, fresh and crisp and in a whole new set of colors. Scully never does smoke that last cigarette, but she’s alive and she could if she wanted to, and that’s even better. Her strength comes back. She doesn’t really think about her old habit and is only reminded of it by the sight of a half-finished pack of nicotine gum in her purse, which she throws out.
She only starts craving an occasional smoke when she definitely cannot have one, not if she wants the IVF to work. But she’d do anything for it to work, give up any vice, resist any temptation. The craving for motherhood is stronger and it makes her do odd things. A magazine in the waiting room of her fertility specialist touts the powers of bee pollen, and suddenly she’s adding it to her yogurt. Mulder thinks she’s crazy, and maybe she is, but she hasn’t wanted anything this badly since she wanted to live, and maybe this urge is just the extension of that primal urge. Now she can focus less on protecting her own life and move on to greater endeavors.
Scully knows that it’s more complicated than this, that she’s not some bacteria whose only goal in life is to spread her genes and die. But when she injects hormones into her abdomen, sometimes she feels like nothing more than a cog in a broader biological machine, her needs and desires as ancient as life itself.
It’ll all pay off.
–
She knows her wish- the one she made on the last cigarette years ago -won’t come true. It can’t come true, because she’d wished that Mulder would be the one to smoke it, and Mulder is dead. She certainly won’t smoke it for him, wouldn’t even if she could. It’s a great cosmic joke that she’s pregnant and he’s dead. Scully waits and waits for the punchline. The tobacco has long gone stale, but it doesn’t matter. As Scully drops a handful of dirt onto Mulder’s grave, she slips a hand into the pocket of his jacket (for her own are too snug around the middle these days) and pulls out a few sunflower seeds and that last cigarette. They fall heavy as lead and mingle with the moist soil that covers him.
–
The low-lying wind kicks up sand. It sticks to Scully’s ankles and gets between her toes. The chunky sandals are not at all her style, but that just works in their favor. They’ve been driving for five hours and the midday sun bakes the roof of their old beater. Mulder stands at the gas pump, listening to the glug glug glug of fuel going into the tank.
“Sunflower seeds?” she asks, turning back to him on her way into the little shop attached to the gas station.
He grins. “You know me so well.”
She nods and walks into the air conditioning, eyeing the selection of iced teas and sodas in the fridge. She snags a bag of seeds, two peach iced teas, and a granola bar, before heading to the counter. Her sunglasses sit firmly on the bridge of her nose, just in case.
When the cashier asks if that will be all, Scully hesitates.
She returns to the car, a cigarette hanging from her lips, a shiny blue lighter in her pocket. Mulder raises an eyebrow.
Scully holds the pack out to him. He shakes his head but notices one cigarette that has been flipped over.
“What’d you wish for?” he asks, turning on the car. The vents spit out a shaky stream of cool air.
Scully smirks, self-satisfied and mysterious. “I’ll let you know once it comes true.”