Title: Fati Accompli Author: Vickie Moseley Summary: After Scully walked away from Mulder standing in his doorway, what was she thinking? Post Amor Fati. Archive: yes Rating: PG Category: SA MT MSR Disclaimer: No infringement intended (nor any to the French language I butchered for the title). Author's note: Yes, I know it's spelled 'fait accompli' and not 'fati' accompli, but that wouldn't have worked as a play on the title. So, hopefully my junior and senior year French teachers won't read this story and revoke my high school diploma. Comments (except those about my foreign language skills) to vickiemoseley1978@yahoo.com Beta? I'm working without a net, here, folks. All mistakes are mine and mine alone. Fati Accompli by Vickie Moseley I got all the way to the car before I got the courage to face my reaction. Mulder had told me I was his constant, his touchstone. I told him he was mine. I kissed him, on the forehead, as we always seemed to do. And then, I walked away from him. I swore the last time that I was going to stop this aberrant behavior! I had to stop with the 'Oh brothers', the running away from my emotions, and his, for that matter. I couldn't keep doing that to us. I sat in the car for a good ten minutes contemplating my next move. I thought about taking the coward's way, accepting that I'd already walked away today and would do better tomorrow. I never was one to take the coward's way, though. I briefly touched on trying to make up some excuse for my return, such as I forgot to tell him something important, or I needed to get something from his apartment. He'd see through that in a heartbeat. I was just about ready to drive over to the corner convenience store and buy him something he undoubtedly didn't have in his cupboard when my phone rang. "Scully? Are you far?" His voice sounded strained and warning bells flashed in my mind. "No, I'm, uh, I'm just around the corner. What is it, Mulder? Do you need something?" "I'm . . . I fell. I'm really dizzy -- " I was out of the car and running up the stairs before I realized he'd stopped talking. "Mulder, are you still there?" Silence greeted me. "Mulder, answer me!" I demanded. I had made it to his floor and was slightly winded as I rummaged through my pocket to find my keys. "I'm coming in," I warned him. I had to search a bit to find him. He was in the kitchen, huddled against the cabinets. A tumbler was lying a few feet away from him, water all over the floor. His eyes were closed, but he was biting his lip. His face was pale and shone with sweat. His phone was resting in his limp right hand. "Mulder," I called out softly. He didn't open his eyes, but he raised his face toward the sound of my voice. "The room . . . is spinning. I - I - I can't stand -- " he said, panting. I knelt next to him, checking the bandage. No blood stains, thank God. "Did you hit your head when you fell?" I asked, keeping the panic from my voice as best as I could. "N-n-no . . . I don' think so." He bit into his lip harder and his skin color went from pale to pale green in the blink of an eye. "I'm gonna -- " It was all the warning he gave, but it was all I needed. I grabbed his trashcan and positioned it directly in front of him. I watched helplessly as he heaved into it. It seemed to go on forever. I reached for a towel hanging on the oven door, inspected it quickly and deemed it usable. I dampened it in the sink and then pressed it against the back of his neck. Finally, he waved his hand to signal his need to sit back up. I moved the trashcan out of his way. "I think I need to lay down," he whispered. "Just sit still a minute, I want to check you out," I told him. That got a ghost of a smile from him. "Not tonight, Scully. I have a headache," he said with just the corners of his mouth upturned. "Open your eyes for me," I dutifully ignored his innuendo, as he expected me to. I knew he was scared and was trying to cover that with a bad joke. Slowly, he lifted his eyelids and tried to focus on me. From what I could see, both pupils were equal and reactive to light. He only let me look a minute before he slammed his eyes closed again. "Light hurts," he complained. "Are you still dizzy?" I asked, assessing how to get him off the kitchen floor. He nodded once. "OK, I'm going to have to help you." I stood and grabbed his arm just past the elbow, bracing my feet to give me better leverage. He helped as much as he could and soon we had him standing. "Do you need to go to the hospital?" I asked and he gave me a sour look, even with his eyes closed. "No. I just need to lie down," he murmured breathlessly. It was decision time. His couch was closer, but I wanted him to rest and that meant his bedroom. I didn't bother to give him a choice, I didn't think either of us was up to the argument. I just steered him into the short hallway and through the door, avoiding a pair of shoes and a stack of magazines on the floor to finally lower him to the edge of the bed. He fell back on the pillows gracelessly and I lifted his legs and tucked him in. "I was feeling better," he said frowning. "What happened?" "You were doing too much too soon," I chided, regretting my tone as the words left my mouth. "You just need to rest. Where are you pain meds?" "I took one before you came," he answered, wiggling to get comfortable. He got a funny look on his face, something between concentration and exasperation. "Scully, can you, uh, help me with -- " He was struggling with something under the covers. I quickly surmised that he was trying to get out of his dress pants and was having trouble with the belt. "I'll help you, Mulder, but only if you'll respect me in the morning," I told him. I was pleased with the grin I got for my effort. Together, we made short work of the belt and pants and I helped him out of the dress shirt. He seemed comfortable enough in his boxers and tee shirt, so I left those alone. He toed off his own socks, having slipped off his shoes when I got him to the bed. He kicked his feet a few times and the socks fell from the end of the bed onto the floor, meeting other socks, which had shared a similar fate. After seeing him settled, I got him a glass of water. "Just rinse," I directed as I pressed the glass into his hand. He winced and cracked one eye open, sipped the water and spit it back in the glass. He closed his eye and sighed tiredly. "I really hate this," he said sadly. I patted his shoulder and went to the bathroom to dump the water, rinse the glass and fill it again. I brought the water back to the bedroom and set it on the nightstand. "Scully, I'm sorry I made you come back," he said, turning his head away from me. I heard the crack in his voice as he kept talking. "You don't have to stay. I know you were headed back to the office. I'll be fine now." He was offering me an escape. Typical Mulder, one step forward, but always willing to let me take two steps back. "No, I don't think so," I said crossing my arms even though he wasn't looking. "I want to keep an eye on you this afternoon. You get some rest, I'll go call Skinner and explain where I am." Kim was instantly concerned, but I was just as quick to point out that it was nothing serious. Of course not! Wasn't it every day that an agent called in sick because of illicit and undetermined brain surgery? But I appreciated her concern and told her that I'd call if circumstances warranted. She promised to relay the message. I knew Mulder needed sleep more than anything, so I decided to tidy up in the living room. He was never much of a housekeeper when healthy; when he was under the weather the place took on the characteristics of an environmental hazard. I picked up a pizza box half hidden under the couch, three glasses of some unknown but now congealed substance on the bookshelf just below the fish tank and took them all into the kitchen. I tossed a few flakes of Tetra meal D in the tank and it looked like a piranha attack as the starving masses fought each other for the food. I tossed in a little more food in sympathy. Socks, two undershirts and a pair of yellow pajama bottoms were recovered from the cushions of the couch. I was taking them into the bathroom to put them in his dirty clothes hamper when I spotted it lying on the floor near his bedroom door. It was black and in the darkness of the unlit hallway, I immediately mistook it for tie. As I picked it up, I almost dropped it in revulsion. It was a bra. Sick fascination welled up in me and I checked the label before balling it into my fist. It was a 38 D cup, underwire. It had to be Diana's. Now I felt bile rise in my throat. On autopilot I dropped his clothes in the hamper. I'm not exactly sure what overtook me at that moment, but without hesitation I threw the offending lingerie into the toilet, slammed the lid and flushed it to oblivion. For a fleeting moment, I thought I might have overloaded the system. The last thing I wanted to explain to Mulder was how a bra managed to clog up his commode. But God was smiling on me, laughing more than likely, and everything washed out to sea. As soon as the water stopped running, I started to cry. I hurried into the living room and dropped down on the couch. Pulling the blanket off the back cushion, I wrapped it around me and let the tears fall. She'd been in his apartment. She'd taken off her clothes. How long had that bra been there? She was dead, my rational mind kept reminding me. So what, my heart demanded. She had been sent to spy on him, sent to derail him, sent to -- As the similarities between her and me became more apparent, I cried all the harder. We'd both had the same mission. Maybe, in some ways, we'd both accomplished it. He was flat on his back, weak, unable to even leave his bed. She'd put him in a psych ward and I'd left him and run off to Africa. Who was the bigger deserter? Just because I thought my actions were pure didn't forgive me the bigger sin -- leaving him alone while they experimented on his mind and body. I thought I was helping him. I thought if I could unravel the puzzle, figure out the answers to the questions we hadn't the nerve to ask, I would magically find the cure. But it wasn't the answers that cured him. It was a drill, a 'crown' of thorns and a doctor who ignored his Hippocratic oath that saved Mulder's life, even as he was carelessly left for dead in that operating room. All I did was pick up the pieces after the battle had been won. I don't know how long I sat there, but the sunlight was fading when I heard him call my name. Wiping the remaining tears from my eyes, I prayed that he would still be unable to keep his eyes open long enough to get a good look at my face. I didn't need to burden him with my own self-doubts and guilt. I plastered on a smile and went into the bedroom. His eyes were open to slits in deference to the remaining sunlight. "Do you want me to close the blinds?" I asked. "No, it's a little better," he replied. "I . . . I uh, . . . I need to go to the bathroom." "Let me help you. I don't want you to fall again." I helped him to his feet and once again braced myself against his weight. He was trying to stand upright, but it was just not going to happen. "It's OK, Mulder. I have you," I told him. He just smiled at me, a weird, sort of sad smile. "You always do, Scully," he replied and we got him into the bathroom. By the time we got there, I was more confident of his abilities and really didn't want to embarrass him more than we already had, so I stepped out of the room and closed the door. I had a brief moment of panic when I heard him flush the toilet, hoping the damn thing would go down, but soon he opened the door and all was right with the world again. "Let's get you back in bed," I told him when I saw that he was fading fast. "I felt better this morning. I even ate at the table," he muttered. I had seen his breakfast -- a bowl of pink milk with a couple of stranded apple jacks floating in it and a half glass of iced tea on the counter in the kitchen. "You haven't eaten since this morning, then and you didn't keep that down. Are you hungry?" "Yeah, I am, kinda. I was just gonna call in an order -- " "Mulder, all the sodium and fat in carry out food is not what you need right now. Let me see what I can find." He obviously hadn't looked in his freezer or he would have commented on the neatly ordered foil-wrapped packages I'd stocked in there the day he came home from the hospital. I had a surprise for him. We got him back in bed, I handed him the remote for his 19 inch TV in the bedroom and soon he was happily channel surfing. Meanwhile I went in the kitchen and found exactly what I wanted in his freezer. I set about heating it all up and went in to check on the patient. "I can't do this another week, Scully," he complained the minute I got to his door. I sat down on the edge of the bed facing him and crossed my arms. "I laid around all this week. I should be fine." I nodded. Let him fume then I'd hit him with the facts. "I can sit at a desk. I mean, how hard is that? I'm sitting here, now." He waved toward his supine position on the bed. "And the office is fairly dark." I had to snort at that--I always considered our office to be a cave. "I think it was the sunlight that got me. It was so bright today. I need to wear sunglasses, I can do that." He was waiting for me to answer. I just sat there for a moment, giving him time to start up again. "Are you gonna say something?" he asked in exasperation. "Two words, Mulder: Brain Surgery. They peeled back your skin, drilled holes in your head, did something we can't even fathom in there and stapled the skin shut. Now, under normal circumstances, you would probably be in hospice care right now, a rehab facility where you would spend most of your day flat on your back. Initial convalescence varies and can take up to four weeks. Full recovery is not expected for at least eight weeks. But let's not forget that you were gravely ill _before_ the surgery! So take the convalescence out the full four weeks and I would dare say tack another week on for full recovery bringing the total up to nine weeks. Your brain was working so hard you taxed all your other systems to the breaking point. And now you want to bounce out of bed, come to the office, wheedle me into letting you go out on a simple case -- " "I don't 'wheedle', Scully" he interrupted with a hurt expression, but I was on a roll and plowed right on. "Mulder, what happened today is called a 'relapse'," I said and I admit, my tone was one I would use when talking to a child, but I had to make him see the foolishness of his thought processes. "We were lucky, it could have been much worse. If you had fallen, say in the bathroom, and hit your head on any of the porcelain surfaces in there -- Mulder you could have bled to death before anyone found you!" "You're telling me you're not letting me in the office for nine weeks?" he wailed. "Just shoot me now, Scully, because you'll save me the trouble of eating my gun!" "Don't be so melodramatic," I warned. "You try it! You try lying in bed for weeks, having to watch daytime television because even HBO runs the same damned movies five times over a day. How many weeks could you stand to watch old Saturday Night Live reruns on Comedy Central, Scully? You would last a day!" "Need I remind you, Mulder, I already have!" That shut him up. The look of pure guilt that hit his eyes almost knocked the wind out of my sails. But I wasn't giving up; he wasn't going to 'out-guilt' me on this. "I want my life back, Scully," he pleaded. "Please." Oh yeah, he'd pulled out all the stops. I think he sensed that moment of weakness when I saw the guilt in his eyes. But I had to be firm. "We'll see." Little did he know that in the Scully household, a 'we'll see' is as good as a no. Besides, the nine weeks was my negotiation point. In all honesty, I didn't expect to keep him in his apartment more than two more weeks and figured I could safely keep him occupied in the office for about three weeks after that. I wasn't a fool; I knew his limits and mine. But if I'd told him that he would have tried to whittle that time frame down and he would have been in real trouble. He was stewing in his checked anger when his face lit up. "What's that smell?" I could feel the Cheshire cat grin on my face. "Oh, something I think you'll like." "No. It can't be. Scully, that's your mom's meatloaf I'm smelling or they messed around seriously with my olfactory receptors!" My grin turned into a full fledge smile. "I would deem your olfactory receptors in prime working condition. The menu tonight includes meatloaf, mashed potatoes with brown gravy and green beans, if you think you can handle all that. How's your stomach feeling?" "Famished," he replied happily. "Can we eat?" He started to get out of bed and I stopped him. He shot me an angry look. "Scully -- " "Humor me, Mulder. Stay in bed. I'll bring it to you, I promise." "Gonna chew it for me, too, I bet," he griped at my back as I left to get the food. One good thing about my mom, she has no sense of portion control. There was easily enough for two people in each of her little packets. And she has a tendency to baby Mulder almost as much as I do. The breakfast tray I found located above the refrigerator was an anniversary present from us kids to our parents 20 years ago. She brought it over when I got him back from Alaska and every time he tried to return it, it would find its way back again. He finally gave up and found a place for it in his kitchen. As I divided the food onto two plates I remembered that I hadn't had lunch either. I was going to grab a sandwich on the way back to the office. I carried the tray into the bedroom and found that Mulder had already propped himself up on pillows and was watching the door expectantly. I had to smile at him. He looked so happy. He saw the two plates and his smile grew brighter. He scooted over so that I could set the tray on his lap and still have room to sit next to him on the bed. "Scully, remind me -- " "She'll get mad, Mulder." "Yeah, but what woman doesn't love flowers? Besides, she never gets mad at me," he chuckled. It was a standing tradition. After she'd pampered him from afar with homemade meals when I got him back from Alaska, he sent her a dozen roses. She called me up and yelled at me! She didn't want him wasting his money on flowers 'for an old lady'. Well, once I told him that, it became a game. He switched from roses to exotic bouquets, then back to roses of different colors. She'd thank him and hit me with a ton of bricks. Like I could have stopped him if I tried! For several minutes, we ate in silence. I was pleased that his appetite seemed unaffected by the headaches and dizziness. His nausea from earlier had disappeared, fortunately. If it had continued it would have required taking him in, if just for hydration. He would have really hated that. He scraped up the last bit of mashed potatoes and gravy, looked longingly at the empty plate and then up at me. "What's for dessert?" I shook my head. "Peach cobbler. But you don't have ice cream so we have to let it cool a bit." "You microwave it to heat it up and then you make me wait for it to cool down? Where's the logic in that, Dr. Scully?" "Stop acting like a three year old, Agent Mulder, and I'll see if it's ready. I'm one step ahead of you." I rinsed the plates and put them in the dishwasher, put the dessert on the tray with a refill on Mulder's iced tea and brought it back to him. In minutes, he was through his portion and eyeing mine. With a mock sigh I pushed my plate over to him and let him finish it off. When he was done he leaned back into the pillows and moaned in satisfaction. "I love your mother, Scully." "I'll tell her," I teased. I took the remaining plates into the kitchen and cleaned up what little mess there was. As I started the dishwasher I realized I'd run out of excuses. It was already 7 o'clock and time to leave. Mulder was cruising the channels again, stopping for a second to catch a score and then zipping on. I stood in the doorway and watched him for a minute while he was intent on his mission to find something to watch. He looked much better than when I'd found him on the kitchen floor. If this had been a serious relapse, I would have been forced to take him back to the hospital. As it looked, it was just Mulder trying to do too much and his body telling him no. I could handle that. At least his body was on my side. "I should be going," I told him, still standing in the doorway. He turned his head and looked very sad for a moment, then almost seemed to look resigned. He started to say something and then stopped and shook his head. "What?" I asked. "Scully . . . nah, go ahead. I've taken your whole day. You have things to do." "Mulder, what is it? Do you need something else?" He bit his lip and looked down at his hands, still clutching the remote, but resting in his lap. "You." He said it so softly I almost didn't catch it. He looked up at me and I his eyes looked wet. "Stay. Please." My heart cracked a little and I wanted to throw my arms around him and make it better. Instead, I hesitated. Like a thousand times before. "I'm sorry, Scully. I know that was . . . Go. Go on home. Please thank your mom for me. I'll . . . I'll call you tomorrow. You don't have to come over. I know you're busy -- " "Shut up, Mulder," I said firmly. Not again. I wasn't going to do it to us again. I was not going to run. I walked over to the edge of the bed and toed off my shoes. I pushed at his side and he scooted over, wide-eyed staring at me, as if I'd just sprouted wings and a halo. When I was settled in the bed, I took the remote from his senseless hands, found the History Channel and placed the remote on the nightstand. "Look Mulder, it's Haunted Places!" That got him out of his stupor. He laughed and put his arm around me. It felt good, it felt so right. I snuggled into his shoulder to watch the show. "Scully, I'm really sorry about Albert." I looked up at him in total confusion. I had no idea where that had come from. "I'm sorry about . . . Diana," I blurted out. He nodded and ran his tongue over his teeth. "I think she saw it coming," he said evenly. "Scully, I don't want you to feel guilty about her death. You had no part in it. Neither did I. Please, don't waste your tears on that." I swallowed hard. He had seen me all puffy and tear-stained. I should have realized Mulder catches everything. "I wasn't crying about her death," I found myself saying. He shot me a perplexed look. "I was crying . . . about what you and she had," I explained brokenly. I didn't want to cry again, I didn't want to cry in front of him, but I couldn't help it. His perplexed look deepened. "What we had -- you mean eight years ago?" "You loved her, Mulder. I know that. And I was jealous of that. And when I found her bra -- " Oh shit. That just slipped out before I could stop it. I moved to leave the bed but he hugged me tighter, refused to let me get up. "You found her bra?" he asked, sounding totally confused. "Mulder, it was lying right by your bedroom door. I . . . I, um, flushed it down the toilet. I should have said something, I was just so angry and jealous and -- " "You assumed we had . . . ? Scully, the woman may have taken off her bra, but when she tried to seduce me and I rejected her advances, she hit me with a tazer!" My clicked on the fact that there were minor burns on his chest noted on his hospital admitting form. He cocked his eyebrow and looked at me. "You flushed it down the toilet?" I could only nod. He was fighting a grin as he considered my actions. "There's a clause in my lease about tampons and condoms, but I don't remember seeing anything about lingerie." "Mulder, it's not funny," I insisted. Then I thought about it. How I hadn't really thought about it before. I could see the humor, for a moment. "OK," I said and bit my bottom lip to keep from joining his laughter. "I guess it could be considered funny in some circumstances." "Scully! Are you kidding? In any circumstance I can think of. Remind me never to bring home a pair of panties in my briefcase after a long assignment. I think you'd plug something other than my plumbing!" When it struck him what he'd said, what he'd implied, he stopped laughing. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean -- " They say it's always darkest before the dawn and I guess that's where I'd been all afternoon. Sitting in the darkness. For that matter, it's where I'd been for a long time. Since my cancer, since Antarctica, since our reinstatement to the X Files. It slowly seeped in on my consciousness, like the first rays of dawn on the horizon. "You didn't make love to her," I said stupidly. He bit his lip and sighed. I froze. Maybe I had it wrong. I needed to leave. He was holding me again and I fought this time. "I have to go." "No, Scully, I want this out. I have to talk it out before it destroys me, destroys us. First of all, you are correct: I didn't make love to her." I searched his face. He was telling the truth, but there was something he wasn't saying. That something scared the shit out of me and half of me wanted to bolt, the other half wanted to hear it all so I could tear his heart out and stomp on it a few times. "I told you I had a dream," he started. I was quiet. The heart ripping side of me had won out. I would stay and listen. "When they took me, well, I don't think things happened the way I remember them." "Mulder, you were unconscious when they took you. The nurse had gone in to check on your just fifteen minutes before your mother signed you out. It's all documented in your medical records." He sighed in relief at my words. "Thank god. OK, well, I don't know what they did, but I had a very vivid dream. Scully, I dreamed Spender, Cancerman, came into my room and injected something into my head, right here." He pointed to a spot right at his temple. "It burned like hell's fire and I thought it was a poison, but after a minute or two, I started to feel better -- better than I'd felt since this whole thing started." "Do you think it might have been Phenytoin?" I asked. "No, I felt like shit when they shot me up with that crap. I could speak, I felt lucid, but I seriously felt like I could curl up and die any minute." He said it so calmly that it thawed a bit of the ice around my heart. How could I forget how horrible this ordeal had been on him? "So, anyway, he was talking to me, ordering me to get up. And I did. The next thing I know, I'm in a car and he'd driving. It's raining and I feel like I just woke up. But I feel better, great, in fact. I feel like I'd never been sick in the first place. A hellava lot better than I felt today," he muttered before getting back to his story. "Anyway, it was a long dream, but basically, the old bastard took me to a house and Deep Throat was there. He told me he'd faked his death, a form of retirement I guess you could say. He told me I had to let go of all my guilt, that I couldn't save the world. He told me I'd done enough already." I smiled. How many times had I thought that, too? Mulder was on a fast track to an early death if he continued on the path he'd chosen. But it was his path and I was just there to help him as much as he'd let me. I realized he'd stopped talking and he was playing with his blankets again, nervous about the rest of the story. "Just tell me, Mulder. It was just a dream." When he looked up at me, there were tears in his eyes. "Old Smokey had told me that if I tried to contact you, I'd put you in danger. He didn't come right out and say it, but I understood that to mean that if I turned my back on my life, you would get a second chance, too, Scully. I couldn't risk hurting you." "OK," I said, encouraging him. He was getting very emotionally involved in the events of this dream. "I fell asleep. Did I mention that the Black Lunged son of a bitch had put me in handcuffs? Well, anyway, I was in this house, a really nice suburban house and I was trying to fall asleep and -- " He stopped and looked around for the glass of water still on his nightstand. "Could you hand me that?" he said, pointing. He drank half of it down and my apprehension was building. "Mulder, just tell me what happened. And remember, this was just a dream!" "OK, OK, already. Diana came in . . . and she was dressed, well, really she wasn't dressed, ah, hell, she looked like a harem girl, and she had the key to my handcuffs and she kissed me and god, I - I - I don't want to do this, Scully," he wailed. I reached my arm around him and hugged him closer to me. "Mulder, it was a dream. Unlike you, I don't think we dream things we want. I do think it's what you told me long ago -- that we are trying to work out our problems. So just tell me. I promise not to judge." "I slept with her!" he blurted out. "I mean, it wasn't that type of dream, hell, I have that kind of dream all the time. It wasn't a 'wake-up-and-change-the- sheets kinda dream. I just know that we, um, we had sex, but I didn't dream any of the details. Next thing I know, I'm dressed and out on the lawn, picking up the morning paper. Diana comes out to me with a cup of coffee and she, uh, she tells me that I'll never know true commitment until I become a father." He waits for my reaction and I don't do a thing. I can't move, I can't speak. Even in the dreamworld, this bitch could find a way to hurt me. Finally, I realize he's waiting for me. "Go on," I said as calmly as I could muster. "The next part was all flashes, no talking, no time to even really comprehend what I was seeing. I saw myself in a tux and Diana in a wedding dress. Then Diana was standing in a doorway, very pregnant, telling me it was time. Then I was opening a door and two really cute little kids run in and hug Diana and me. Then I was looking in a mirror and my hair was grey and I turned and Diana was lying in a coffin, looking 'peaceful' and I knelt down beside the coffin and cried. And then it all slowed down and I was sitting in a chair and he came to me again. He was smoking and telling me that I could rest now. Finally, I was lying in bed, my death bed, but I didn't hurt, I was just so very tired. I wanted to let go, but I wanted to look outside one last time. He told me I didn't need to, that I should just let go. He told me -- he told me you were dead and I cried, Scully. It hurt so much. But then he told me you were waiting for me -- you and Sam and Deep Throat and I just wanted to go to you. But outside my window, what my dying body couldn't see, the world was being overrun by alien space ships. The world was ending." He sipped the water again, slowly. "Then you walked in. You were -- well, you were you! You were young and beautiful and I was so happy to see you. But you were really pissed off at me, Scully. You called me traitor, deserter, you were hurling all these names at me. I was dying and I told you that, but you told me it wasn't my place; that I wasn't supposed to die in a comfortable bed 'with the devil outside my door'. You said that. And then I was lying on a table and I was in such pain and this thing was on my head and I was screaming and I could hear your voice . . ." He looked exhausted and I rescued the glass before he could drop the little remaining liquid on the blankets. ". . . then I saw you looking down at me. I was just waking up. My throat hurt, my head was killing me, but everything else was numb -- I couldn't feel my arms, my legs. I felt so sick and you were trying to get me to sit up and you were crying, I could feel your tears hit my face. That's when I knew it was real, that I was awake and it was really you there." He took my hand and kissed it gently. "You told me the truth, Scully. You saved me. Diana might have given you the key, but you came and found me. She knew exactly where I was and she left me for dead." "Mulder, you mustn't -- " He interrupted me. "I've had some time to think about it" he said slowly, thoughtfully. When he turned to look at me, it was tired confidence in his eyes. "Diana could just as easily have been Cindy Crawford or Elizabeth Hurley in that dream. It was just a path, a comfortable life where I did what everyone else does -- 2 kids, a dog, a mortgage. But in the end, I'd let everyone down. I helped destroy the world by not stopping the destruction. Without you, it all went to hell." I was reeling by his revelation, but it had taken everything out of Mulder. He looked like a rag dog propped against the pillows. He needed rest, immediately. I could sort out everything he'd told me later, but for now, just the knowledge that we seemed to be in tune was enough for me. It wasn't hard to help him slide down so that he was lying flat. He sighed wearily when I got up, but it was only to turn off the lights in the hallway. In the dim light of the television screen, I could see his smile when I came back into the room and crawled back on the bed next to him. I thought he was asleep, but he turned his head toward me. "I can't do this without you. I was stupid to think I could. My life -- it's two- dimensional when you aren't in it. Please don't leave me, Scully. You don't have to love me, just please, please don't leave me." "But if I stay with you, is it OK if I _do_ love you?" I asked, hoping the tears on my cheeks would go unnoticed. He smiled tenderly and brought his hand up to wipe away the tears on my face. "I would like that very much," he said and then leaned down to kiss me. It wasn't on the forehead. It felt like home. When we broke the kiss, he closed his eyes. "I'm not really much good to anybody at the moment," he said with a heavy sigh. "That's all right. We have time," I told him. I held him until we both fell asleep. the end