Single Word Prompts (X-Files)

Dream

It was three in the morning when he heard it, plunged in obscurity, dreaming about something obscene, and yet, he heard it. The phone rang once, twice, three times before he fully woke up. Groaning, he reached his hand over to pick it up.

"Hello?"
"Mulder..."

The strangled sob that he heard come out on the other end of the line took him by surprise, and suddenly he was filled with worry.

"Scully what's wro-"
"Everything."

He could barley make out what she was saying over the sound of her weeping, but he didn't need to hear, he already knew.

"I'm coming over."

Scully nodded, even though he couldn't see her, and hung up the phone.

------------some time later-------------

Mulder knocked loudly on her door, and after a couple of seconds, he heard her unlocking it. Her fingers were trembling, but she eventually got the door open.

"Scully, are you alright?"

She looked better than she had sounded on the phone; but when she heard those words, the sadness that she had managed to suppress flowed out of her in the form of a whimper.

"No."

Unable to control herself any longer, she collapsed into Mulder's arms, sobbing even more violently than before. He gently stroked her hair, moving forward so that he could close the door behind them. He guided her to the couch, and they slumped down into its corner.

"Shh, Scully. It's okay. I'm here now."

He continued brushing through her hair with his fingers and whispering sweet nothings into her ear. They remained like that for a while, until Mulder asked the question that had been pressing at the back of his mind ever since Scully called him.

"Is it William?"
"I had a dream."
"Scully-"
"I just don't know if-"

Her sentence was cut short by another sob, so Mulder finished it for her.

"If we did the right thing."

She looked up into his eyes, biting her lip and nodding. She let out another whimper, putting her head against his broad shoulder.

"I dreamed that he was crying out to us. Screaming, 'Mommy, daddy, don't leave me.'"
"Stop, Scully. Don't blame yourself for what happened."

He pushed her away so that he could look into her eyes. She wiped away the last of her tears with the edge of her sleeve as Mulder pressed his lips to her forehead.

"It was just a dream."