Title: Picture Perfect Author: Vickie Moseley Summary: One picture says a thousand words, but do they all have to be depressing? Category: vignette, MSR, flik Rating: e for everyone Disclaimer: Crap, Chris. This is worse than the friggin' cliffhanger summers when everyone wrote nothing but Character Dies stories. Now I'm ticked off at you all over again! You better make this a good movie or I'm coming out to kick your butt! Oh, and no copyright infringement intended. Archives: yes Authors notes: something that has a touch of angst, but not a huge dollop. Can we start a campaign to have some HAPPY endings please? The angst is getting a bit deep. Picture Perfect by Vickie Moseley "What happened to getting out of the car?" He looked over at her and smiled. Her hair was longer, he liked it longer. Her eyes were the same blue they'd been when she'd walked into his office lo those many years ago. Was it possible for a woman to reverse time? She had. She didn't look a day over 35 and he knew for a fact that she was 9 years past that. How did she do that? "Mulder, you haven't answered me," she said, crossing her arms. "One time, Scully. Aren't you the least bit curious?" he countered. It was an old ploy, but once upon their life together it had been unerringly successful. "No," she answered, and just to make her point she flipped her hair over her shoulder as if she weren't even 35 but really 17. God, he would have given his right arm to have known her at 17. "No? How can you say that? Scully, look at the evidence!" "There isn't any evidence, Mulder. That's precisely why I don't want to go near this. And furthermore, I don't want you to go near it, either. Last winter was bad enough." She had to bring up last winter. One case of bacterial pneumonia and suddenly he was an invalid. Well, he was sick of the invalid crap and she knew it. "Scully, I can't walk away from this. How can you?" One look at her face and he knew he'd stepped in this time. A big old pile of poop -- right in the middle of the jaws of a bear trap. "I've walked away from far more, Mulder. This is a piece of cake compared to what I've walked away from," she said evenly, without a hint of a sneer. That took restraint, he had to admit. "OK, but I can't," he replied. He turned and started walking. She caught up with him after only a few steps. When her hand grasped his arm he spun around and faced her. He expected anger. He could have handled pouting. He would have laughed if she tried to use her feminine wiles, as she'd grown very accustomed to using when she really wanted to get her way. But he saw none of those emotions. What stopped him in his tracks was the fear. That was one thing he couldn't argue her out of, one thing he had no defense against. "Please Mulder. For me. For us. For all that we've lost and what little we've gained. Please. Don't do this to me." Her voice was steady, but he could feel the tremor in her hand where it clasped around his bicep. He searched her expression for any hint that she was simply adding another weapon to her arsenal. But he found none. 'Don't do this to me.' The words ran circles around his head and almost made him dizzy. 'For all we've lost' -- their home, her family, their son, their friends. 'For what little we've gained' -- those moments at the end of the day when it was just the two of them and no one else in the universe mattered. How could he deny her the only thing he could manage to give her freely -- himself? He knew the minute she realized that she'd given him pause. He thought maybe she would let that glimmer shine in her eyes -- that 'I won, he lost but we'll celebrate anyway' look he'd so fallen in love with. But it wasn't there. This time, all he saw was relief and one single tear, tracing down her left cheek bone to skitter and fall into her auburn locks. He leaned in to her and held her gaze. I promise, he told her silently and moving toward her, sealed it with a kiss. the end There. Angst AND a happy ending. Get the idea?