Eyes Open 
by Leyla Harrison

Disclaimer: Don't own Mulder and Scully.  Wish I did.  All Hail to Chris
Carter, the Creator of All Good Things.

Spoilers: Mind's Eye, Redux II, Memento Mori, Emily

Classification: VA, slight MSR, but also NoRomo friendly in an
interesting way.

Rating: R

Summary: Scully, feeling left out and a little bitter, wishes that she
could take back what she's seen.

****

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping.  I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave 
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent 
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun and three moons
towards the cave where you must decend,
towards your worst fear.

I would like to give you the silver 
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you 
from the grief at the center 
of your dream, from the grief
at the center.  I would like to follow
you up the long stairway 
again and become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in your two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and you enter 
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air 
that inhabits you for a moment
only.  I would like to be that unnoticed 
and that necessary.

--Margaret Atwood, 1981

****

I saw him.

I saw him at her cell, holding her hands, playing with her fingers. 
Tenderly, almost.

Damn him.

Damn him for getting personally involved.  He's given me looks before
that say, "Don't get attached, Scully, don't get personally involved,"
and the one who gets the most personally involved is himself, Fox
Mulder, man with a mission, man with a heart the size of Texas.

I'm not saying I'm cold-hearted.  I'm not.  I've gotten personally
involved more times than I care to admit.  

But not like he has.

So here we have on display, Marty, legally blind, and Mulder, blind in
his own way, who's going to be her savior whether she wants him to be or
not.

And I guess in the end, she wanted him to be.

The sight of them, holding hands like that at her cell, through the
bars, upset me.  And rightfully so, I might add.

He said to her, I like you, Marty.  I admire you, Marty.

I wonder sometimes if he admires me at all.  

He trusts me, that much I know.  He trusts me more than anyone. He
respects me.  He even -- yes, I believe that he does love me. But
admiration -- that's another story.

He's never once said, "Scully, I admire you."

I wish I had never seen him at her cell.

He didn't know I was there, in the shadows, waiting, watching.

I wasn't spying -- I've never spied on him.

I care about him.  I care too much, I think.  I care so much that
sometimes my heart aches from it, my whole body, my very being, aches
from it.  I feel it like a weight, a ball and chain around my neck. 
Like a cancer -- an apt metaphor, I suppose -- that spreads throughout
my body, making me feel very acutely the pain and sorrow that comes from
caring about Fox Mulder.

I used to think that he was unreachable.

I used to think that he hid behind things -- behind his jokes, behind
his work, behind his search for the truth, even.  I think sometimes that
his search makes him blind to everything.  He goes outside not realizing
that it's raining -- holding my umbrella over my head for me but ducking
under it occasionally because he has forgotten his because he has
forgotten that it's raining.  He wears a warm coat even into the spring
months because he works so hard and searches so deep that he doesn't
realize that the season has changed.

My mother -- bless her heart -- thinks, I'm sure, that he's perfect for
me.

Which, in some ways, I know, is true.  No one else would be able to put
up with his relentless quest, no one else would follow him down into the
depths of hell.  No one else understands him but me.  He's made that
perfectly clear to me -- that I'm the only one who understands him.

But he's not really perfect for me.  I don't know why my mother doesn't
see that he's the worst thing for me sometimes.  Yes, I've gone with him
on his journey of my own free will.  I know that.  But at the same time
I can't help but wonder sometimes how even though I follow him on my
own, how I end up losing everything that once mattered to me.

My family -- Melissa, for God's sakes.

My free time.

My social life.

I used to have all of that before I became Fox Mulder's alter ego.

He blames himself for this.  I know that -- and there's nothing I could
ever do or say to take that burden of guilt from his shoulders. 
Nothing.  He must carry that alone, just as I must carry my own regret
alone.

Sometimes I wish I could block it all out.  I wish I could go to sleep
and wake up and have turned back time somehow, to have made it all not
happen.  My sister would still be alive.  I never would have been
abducted.  I would have time to do things that had nothing to do with
work.

The pathetic part is that given the time now, I don't think I would know
what to do with it.

Friends?  I don't know if I even remember any, or worse yet, if they
remember me.  I haven't called them in so long that I'm sure when they
got new address books, they left my name in the old one and didn't copy
it into the new one.

Family?  I never see Charlie and his family anymore, and Bill -- well, I
don't know if I can bear to see Bill.  He's all the way out on San
Diego, and although he and Tara were kind to me after Emily died, I
don't know if I could stand to go back there and see their child.  Not
yet.  Not while the wound is still so raw.

My mother -- God, if there's one thing I regret, it's my mother.

All I see of her is when things have exploded into disaster.  She is
there with me at funerals.  She comes to visit me in hospitals.  I show
up at her house in the middle of  paranoid wanderings.  I wish sometimes
that I could just drop by and we could do something normal, like go out
to lunch or have dinner or go shopping.  The problem is that I can't
imagine myself -- or my mother, for that matter -- doing those things. 
I've gotten so accustomed to seeing her every time something has gone
wrong that I don't know if I remember her as a normal mother.  

I don't even know what's going on in her life anymore.  Who her friends
are.  How she's dealt with my father's death.  What she does everyday. 
I don't even know if she has a job.  I'm the only daughter she has left,
and I know less about her than her neighbors do.

Damn you, Mulder.  Damn you for existing.

Damn you for making me love you so much.

And I do -- love him, that is.

Not like people would expect.  I know the rumors that fly around the
Bureau -- Mr. and Mrs. Spooky.  Right.  Like Mulder and I are going to
put on our best formalwear and head out to a party together, or worse
yet, a wedding.  A wedding where we are the guests.  Or even the guests
of honor.  

Married?  Mulder and I?  Never.  I can't picture it.  

He'd be a terrible husband.

Running out at all hours of the day and night, doing what I call the
patented MulderDitch.  Or waking up in the middle of the night to find
him gone, out running, trying to run far enough to keep the bad memories
or nightmares behind him.  He doesn't know how to cook, I'm sure, and
God knows, I'm not going to sit back and play housewife while he brings
home the bacon.

One thing I'm sure he would be good at -- 

God, it's embarrassing to even think about it.

I'm sure he's good in bed.

Don't ask me how I know this.  It's not like I have first hand
knowledge, and I likely never will.  Which is fine.  But I have a pretty
good hunch that I would never go unsatisfied.

Which is an interesting thing to ponder, considering that I haven't had
a real sex life to speak of in years.  

And I do ponder it sometimes.  There's nothing wrong with fantasies. 
People who have been married for years and years fantasize about other
people.  Fantasizing is normal.  It doesn't mean I want to take Mulder,
lead him into my bedroom and do the wild thing for days until we
collapse with exhaustion, sweat pouring from our skin, our bodies
trembling from the power of the lovemaking we've just shared.

It doesn't mean that I want to present myself to Mulder, naked, to give
my body to him, to let him make love to me, to make love to him, to
touch him in ways he's never been touched before, to let both of us
allow ourselves to give ourselves over to the magic of sheer,
unadulaterated sex, to explode into a fiery ball as we both fly over the
edge and into oblivion.

Not at all.  

It just means I like to think about it every once in a while, that's
all.

I don't want that from Mulder.  All I do want from him is some
intimacy.  God -- what I wouldn't give to have him look at me, to touch
me like he touched Marty's hands through the bars of her cell.

She couldn't see his face, his eyes.  

I don't think I could, either, not from the distance where I was
standing, and not considering how dark it was.  But I didn't need to see
Mulder's face to know what it looked like.  I know him better than
anyone.  I know exactly how he looked.

I wish he would look at me that way.

I wish he would take my hands in his.  I wish he would hold me.

I get lonely sometimes.

Revise that: I get lonely a lot.

I know Mulder does too.  What's the harm of two lonely people sharing an
embrace?

We've shared hugs before -- usually about once a year.

When I was in the hospital, when I was dying -- he touched me so
tenderly.  He kissed my cheek and I felt the warmth of his lips.  I felt
the life in his hands as he held mine.

I didn't fantasize about him then, not sexually, anyhow.

I wished for one thing.  

There was a moment when the priest came in to talk to me and Mulder was
leaving.  I couldn't let his hand go.  Didn't want to.  All I wanted was
for us to be left alone, for Mulder to crawl into that bed with me and
hold me.  To tell me that he was there, that he was with me, that he
loved me.

I wanted to spend one night with him, a night in which we breathed the
same air, dreamed about nothing, and woke up in each other's arms, calm
and peaceful, just for one night.  I have a feeling that it would have
helped him as much as it would have helped me, for us to be there for
each other like that.  To support each other like that, quietly, in the
night.

All of this in a platonic way, I assure you.

His presence alone gave me so much strength -- strength that I
desperately needed.  And his touch meant so much.  His arms around me
would have brought me back, I'm sure of it.

As it turned out, I came back on my own.

Or something like that.

A miraculous remission?  The unexplained mystery of the chip being
reimplanted in my body?  The doctors don't know for sure.

I know for sure.  I know what brought me back from the edge of death. 
It was love -- Mulder's love for me and mine for him.  The bond we share
turned into a large, intangible thing that crept in, unnoticed, and
somehow saved me.

Mulder was there at my bedside one night -- holding my hand, crying
silently.  I was awake.  He thought I was sleeping.  I could feel his
breath on my hand as his face contorted from his silent tears, from the
screams that he would not allow.  He didn't want me to know that he was
there.  But I did know.

He would do anything for me, and I for him.

Why can't we just share moments like that when we're both alive and
well, instead of when one of us is sick, injured or dying?

Mulder, I feel you close, though I know you are out pursuing your own
path.

I wrote those words to him at the hospital in Allentown, when I was
first diagnosed.

I want to feel him close again.

It hurts me to see him that close with someone else, a stranger, a
person that he has known only for a few days.  I feel like it should be
me that he is comforting, me that he is speaking to in hushed tones.

Am I acting childish and petty?

I don't think so.  I don't think so at all.  I think I deserve a little
of his time, a little of his focus, especially now when I feel so down,
so lonely, so utterly without a path of my own.

I can find my own way back onto my path.

All I want is some comfort from him.  A look in his eyes that says,
"Yes, Scully, I understand."  A touch of his hand that murmurs, "Yes,
Scully, I believe in you."  An embrace that says, "Yes, Scully, I care
about you."

I don't need this from him to survive -- I know that I can live without
it.

But it would be nice.

It would be appreciated.

It would mean so much to me, to be able to open my eyes, to see light
instead of darkness, and to have Mulder with me as I continue on along
the path of life.

END