Title: I'm Here Author: ML Email: 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. ===== 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 =====