By ML
msnsc21@aol.com
 

Feedback:  gratefully received, always!
Distribution: Xemplary and Gossamer, yes; if you've
archived before, yes; if you haven't, please drop me
a line so I know where it's going, and keep my name
and email attached. Thanks.
Spoilers: This is Not Happening
Rating: PG
Classification: Angst (big time!), Mulder POV
Keywords: Mulder/Scully Romance

Summary:  What happens now?

Disclaimer:  I don't own these characters but I'd sure
treat them well if I did!  No, they belong to Chris
Carter, Ten Thirteen, FOX, et. al.  I mean no infringement,
and I am making no profit from this.

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I'm Here
by ML

I'm here.

Can you feel me, Scully?

I'm right here, with you.

I'm beside you, around you, within you.

I've been with you right along.  I've been a silent
witness to your grief, your pain, your fear.

I've seen the struggles you've had, how you've tried
to do the work the way you thought I would, against
odds I've never had to face alone.

I felt your anguish when you saw my body, that poor,
pale husk that had finally been abused beyond its
endurance.

You haven't slept since you found me.  I have been
watching you as you dragged through the night and
into the next day.  You haven't wanted to leave my
body.  You would have stayed in the morgue if Skinner
hadn't posted a watch.  I don't know where he thinks
my body might go, or if he thinks it might be taken
away, or taken back.  I guess some of the stuff he's
read in our reports over the years has rubbed off on him.

But not enough has rubbed off on him, apparently.
You went nuts when he suggested an autopsy.  Not that
he suggested you do it, but that one be performed by
someone.  He wisely let it drop when he saw your reaction.
I can't believe he even brought it up.

I know you will watch over my body, and that you will
accompany it back to Washington like a grieving widow.
Which, in a way, you are.

I swear, Scully, I didn't know it would come to this.
Do you think I would have gone if I thought so?  Maybe
you do, now that you know about the state of my health
before I was taken.

You didn't know this, Scully, because I hid it from you,
and from everyone else, but my body was failing me before
I was taken.  I might not have lasted even as long as
this.  But you have to believe that I was fighting it,
looking for answers.  I thought maybe the aliens, having
caused this in the first place, would also have the cure.
I remembered Jeremiah Smith, you see.  I knew they could
cure me if they chose to.  I was afraid when they took me,
but I had no idea what they would do to me--what they
would do to all of us.

They did everything they could, short of actually killing
us, and then they let us go.  I don't know why, but I'm
getting an idea about it.  I think we were bait.  Bait
for the healer.

Jeremiah Smith was trying to help me.  I think I was the
last released.  The timing of the FBI raid couldn't have
been worse, but I know you had no control over that, and
I will never allow you to feel that from me.

I don't know if the state I exist in now is a result of
what they did to me or some other cause, but I know I am
not truly dead.  I can remember before, when I was in the
hospital last year.  I remember what was said over my
comatose body:  that I was more alive than I'd ever been.
The alien artifact, or the disease, wore out my body,
Scully, but not me.  Not who I am.

I am still learning about this new existence. Am I
energy?  Am I starlight?  Is what I am, what I am feeling,
my soul?  Can I take a more corporeal form?

I tried to appear to you, Scully, and for a moment I'm
sure you saw me.  I could see it in your eyes.  The tie
between us is invisible but strong.

xxxxx

We've come home now.  To my home, my former home.  I
feel that I'm seeing it through your eyes.  It looks
desolate, long-abandoned.  You drift through the rooms,
putting a few things to rights, running your finger
along the dusty desktop.

You've become a ghost, too, if that's what I am.  Always
pale, you've grown paler still.  Your eyes are unfocused
and cloudy, looking more inward than out.

You enter my bedroom, moving slowly and quietly as
though you might wake someone there.  I see my unmade
bed, a rumpled shirt on the pillow, the indentation
there still visible.  In a moment, I understand why.
You clutch the shirt to your face, then to your heart,
and sink down into the bed, curling up into yourself.

I hear you sob my name, once, twice, then over and over,
muffled into the pillow as your fists clutch at my
discarded shirt.  It breaks me down to see you this way,
sobbing without cease, without any hope.

I try to touch you but I know I cannot on the same plane.
So instead, I reach out to your mind.  I hold you in my
mind the way a parent would hold a grieving child, and
the way a lover would hold his beloved.  In some odd but
fitting way, you are both child and lover to me now.

We are connected still, Scully.  I see you begin to calm
as I send out my love to you.  I don't know how aware you
are that it's me, calming you, holding you with my mind.
Your sobs lessen as you finally sink into an exhausted
sleep.  I wrap my mind around you, giving you all the
comfort I can convey.

I watch over you as you sleep.  I long to truly touch
you, to give you that comfort and take some for myself.

I let a picture form in my mind.  I'm on a bridge.
I cannot see either end of it, but I know you are there.

Remember, Scully?  We met on this bridge once before.
We are not done yet.

Listen, Scully.  Listen to me.

I need you to do something for me, Scully.  I need you
to keep looking.  I need you to keep believing.
Keep the faith that you have.

You are the believer in miracles, Scully.  Believe in
one more miracle for me.  Believe I will find a way back
to you, that we will do more than touch minds again.

You once told me that you had the strength of my beliefs.
I need you to be strong now.  I need you to believe in me.

Hold on, Scully.

Hold on for me.

Don't give up.

end.

There is a land of the living and a land of the dead;
the bridge is love.
-Thornton Wilder
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