Mulder and Scully fell to the floor of the mineshaft, waiting for the rock to come crashing down on them. But the collapse stopped a few feet away from them, and they cautiously got to their feet. They started pulling rocks away from the pile, but more just fell into place.
Scully slumped against the wall. "It’s hopeless, Mulder. There’s no way we can get out of here."
Mulder sat down next to her. "We can’t give up hope, Scully. Usually that’s all we have." She looked at him and gave him a little smile. "Someone had to have heard the collapse. I bet help is on the way right now."
"If you say so, Mulder."
They were silent for a half-hour, each lost in their own thoughts. Then: "Scully?"
"Mulder?"
"Did you--have you ever--" He seemed rather embarrassed.
"What?" she said, looking at him.
"Did you ever regret being assigned to the X-Files?"
"Oh, yeah," she said, looking away. "All the time. Right now I could be doing an autopsy or teaching a class at Quantico. A nice, safe, reputable job." She looked back at him and laughed at the stunned expression on his face. "I’m kidding, Mulder."
"You are?--I mean, I knew that."
"I wasn’t really happy about the assignment, at first, but now I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. I’d be bored with a regular assignment." Her azure blue eyes sparkled and her red hair gleamed in the beams of the flashlights. Mulder thought that at that moment he’d never seen a more beautiful woman.
"Do you realize what we’ve been through in our years together?" he said. "I mean, you got abducted, our lives have been in danger, conspiracies, counter-conspiracies, aliens, serial killers, deadly mutants..." They both laughed.
"Experiencing more weird stuff in one year than I thought I would read about in a lifetime," Scully added.
"Liver-eating mutants, fat-sucking mutants, little green bugs--"
"Little green men."
"Gray, Scully. Aliens are gray," Mulder corrected her, grinning.
She smiled back at him. "Gray. Little gray men."
They looked away from one another and were quiet for a few moments.
"Mulder, have you ever regretted working on the X-Files?"
"No. Each truth, each conspiracy we uncover, I feel like it leads me closer to the truth about what happened to Samantha."
Scully sighed. "We’ve both lost so much...Samantha, your father, Melissa..."
"Pendrell?"
She looked up at Mulder, but there was nothing but curiosity in his face. Perversely, she was saddened and frustrated by it. "Pendrell was just a friend, Mulder." She sighed again. "Poor Pendrell, an innocent caught in the crossfire, literally and figuratively."
"C’mon, Scully, admit it. You thought he was cute."
She smiled. "All right, he was cute. But like puppy-dog cute. Sometimes I wanted to pat him on the head and say ‘Good boy’."
Mulder laughed.
There was more silence.
"Hey Scully?"
"Yeah?"
"Did you ever really want to say something to someone, but you were too scared to do it?"
"Well, in high school I had the usual crush on one boy or another..."
"But never when you were older?"
"Mulder, what are you getting at?"
He looked down. "I, um, I just wanted to say--um--"
"What?"
"Scully, I--I--I just--I--"
"Mulder, what?"
He looked back up at her. "Dana, you are the most beautiful, intelligent, interesting woman I’ve ever known."
Scully’s heart leaped at the intense expression in Mulder’s hazel eyes. She reached up and ran her fingers through his fluffy dark hair. "Fox," was all she could say.
Slowly they leaned toward each other, each staring into the other’s eyes. Their eyes closed. Closer, closer--and the sharp whine of a dog interrupted the silence. "Hey!" Mulder shouted. "We’re alive in here!"
"Help!" Scully said.
They could hear human voices, and in a short while, the rumble of some kind of machinery. Then the rock wall tumbled apart, and a beam of light came into the cave. "You folks able to walk?" the man behind the light asked.
"Yes," Scully said. "We’re okay."
In ten minutes, they were outside. Mulder took a deep breath. "See, I told ya, Scully," he said, smiling at her.
"Yes you did." She smiled back.
They sat in their rental car after being checked out by the paramedics. Scully noticed the oddest expression on Mulder’s face. "What’s wrong, Mulder?"
"I was just thinking."
"About what?"
"About what almost happened in there. I mean, I know that in situations where people’s lives are in danger, things happen, the body’s systems go into overdrove, so it must’ve been just that, nothing more."
Scully slid across the seat toward Mulder.
"I guess I’m glad that we didn’t do anything we would eventually regret--"
"Fox," Scully said, interrupting him, "shut up." She pulled his head down to hers, and the two of them were oblivious to the goings-on outside their little world.
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