Love is Not Lost
by Leyla Harrison

Disclaimer: Don't own them.  Never have.  Never will.  A girl can dream,
though, right?

Rating: PG

Classification: VA, slight MSR

Spoilers:  Post-Gethsemane.  Anything before that is fair game.

Summary: Scully ponders her history with Mulder and tries to determine
what happened to him.

For Jenbird, who keeps reminding me through her wonderful friendship
that all is not lost.

*****

Each night I go to bed, wrapped in the safety of my blanket, praying for
a peaceful night.  A night without dreams of people I have loved and
lost.

Recently, it's worked.  My prayers have been answered.  Those people
only come to my mind during the day.

My father.  Melissa.  Even Queequeg.  Damn dog.  I can't even forget
about him, the little mutt.

At night, it's Mulder that I see.

My dreams are like movies, clips of scenes that I have been in, things I
remember.  Things we've done.  Situations we've been through together.

I remember them all.

In my waking hours, I try to forget the horrors of what Mulder and I
have seen.  The things we do.  The job we perform for the federal
government of the United States of America.  We get paid to do this
job.  We get paid to witness these things.

At night, they all come back to me.

Tonight I remember the first time I met him.  I had been told he was
crazy.  Not in so many words, of course, but I had heard rumors about
him at the Academy.  Blevins didn't say it, not outright.  How could
he?  What would he have said?  "Agent Mulder is a certifiable mental
case.  Have fun, Agent Scully."

But when I walked into that office for the first time, and saw him
wearing those glasses, hunched over a slide and looking at me calmly
even though he thought I was there to assassinate his character, I knew
that he wasn't crazy.  Misunderstood.  A little off base.  Brilliant.

Crazy?

No, I didn't think so.

Although I had to admit, he was the most possessed person I had ever
met.  He was possessed by this need to find the truth, to search for
justice, his sister, for little gray men.

And it challenged me.  From the very first day.

I didn't fall in love with him right away.  I'm a little more sensible
than that.  I had been hurt before.  Deeply.  I wasn't about to throw
myself into his arms, knowing nothing about him, knowing full well that
although fraternization between partners wasn't prohibited, it wasn't
exactly looked upon with high regard.

I was an agent for the FBI, and I was there to make a difference.  To
understand his work.  To assist him.  To take notes.  To file field
reports.  Not to jump into bed with him.

Mulder exasperated me from the beginning.  I will admit that.  He drove
me crazy.

Out in the rain in the cemetery in Bellefleur, Oregon, I thought he was
going to drive me insane.  I thought for brief moments that he really
might be crazy, that my judgment of him had been too kind.

But I was wrong.  He may have driven me crazy, but Fox Mulder was
anything but crazy.

Relentless.

That was what he was.  He pursued the truth into Ellens Air Force Base
and I couldn't stop him.  He and I hadn't yet formed that bond that
partners share where they can anticipate each other's moves.  So I
wasn't expecting him to ditch me.

I didn't take to being ditched very well.  Up until the very end, I
still didn't.

When did I know that I was in love with him?

I may have been in love with him before Phoebe Green came back into
town, but I didn't really realize it until then.  My sparks of jealousy
flared up instantly, and it took me a few days to realize that I must be
in love with him in order to be that insanely jealous of this woman who
was obviously part of his past.

What was I going to do about it?  Tell him?

Oh, no.  That never would have worked.  I mean, we were working
together.  So I kept it professional.  All those little sexual
innuendoes that he tossed my way -- I never once caved in and said, "You
know, Mulder, I think that maybe we should give it a try.  You and I.
In bed.  And then we can see what happens."

I did actually contemplate telling him.  Not that.  But I was going to
tell him that I loved him.  It's hard, though, to find the perfect time
to tell the man you're in love with that you're in love with him when
you're trying to get an alien hybrid to trade for that man's life.

Things happened.  Deep Throat was killed in front of me.  Mulder was
returned - dumped from the van - and the X-Files were shut down.  How
was I going to tell him then?

I decided to wait.  I decided to hold off.

My mistake.

Because then I was taken.

Months were erased from my life.

When I got back, when I woke up, I never told Mulder that I had seen him
on the dock there with Nurse Owens, watching me.  I never told him that
I knew that he was waiting for me to come back.

When I woke up and he handed me back my necklace, that was when I knew
he was in love with me as well.  I could see it in his eyes.

And it was an amazing thing.

I looked at him and our hands touched for a moment, and I looked down at
the cross in the palm of my hand and I knew that Mulder and I finally
had that bond, that link.  That we would always be linked.

And we were.  We were linked.  Bound to each other.

Forever.

People like Bambi and Angela White pissed me off.  But they didn't break
the bond.

Mulder and I never spoke of it.

I never told him I loved him.

He never told me.

But I knew.  I knew that he did.

And he knew.

Somehow, we both knew.

I knew in the way that he held me after that bastard Pfaster tried to
kill me.  I knew from the way that Mulder held me in his arms.  Someone
told me afterwards that they cleared out the local cops from the
entryway to the house because they felt like they were intruding on
something so terribly personal.

I don't remember that.  I remember Mulder's arms around me.  Nothing
else.

The cancer.

From the beginning, I was afraid.  Afraid that it was going to kill me.

Afraid, desperately afraid, that it was going to kill us both.

I still am.

Oh, Mulder.

Where are you tonight?

The question forms, unbidden, in my head, as it has for weeks now.

Why?

How could you have left me alone like this? How could you have done this
and left me to fight alone?  I never would have done that to you.

You see, I'm still holding fast to the belief that he is not really
gone.

It's crazy, I know.  I saw the body.  I identified him, although the
bullet wound to his head made it difficult to even see his face.
Impossible, actually.

God.

The shot that killed him had done so much damage to his face that I
couldn't even see it.  But his body - I would know that body anywhere.
And later, I looked him over, his form naked and cold on the metal table
in the pathology department, and I went over his body, matching each
scar.

The bullet mark in his shoulder where I shot him.

That was what did it.

I fingered the mark on his skin and shuddered.  It really was him.  And
I never got to see his face.

I caressed his shoulder, gently, as a lover would, tears spilling over
my cheeks.

Oh, Mulder.

And yet, although I saw this, the proof that it was really him, there is
a part of me that cannot accept that he is dead.

If he was, I would feel dead inside.  A part of me would be gone.  And
it's not.  Not yet, anyhow.

I am shattered, though.  I cannot deny that.  The fact that this is even
a remote possibility broke me.  It broke my spirit.  Made me want to
give up my own battle, because it is the battle I know Mulder wanted to
help me fight and win.

This is the very reason why I cannot believe that he is dead.

Mulder wouldn't do this to me, unless...

Unless he knew of a way to win the battle, and this was the only way to
do it.

To stage his own death.  To make his enemies think that he was gone.
And then he could somehow find the cure for the cancer from which I
suffer.

The part of me that I thought would die with him is still alive.   And
it gives me hope.

I have no idea how he would have pulled it off.  No idea at all.  I've
wracked my brain.  Talked to the Gunmen.  Gone over a million theories.
And yet I can't find a way to prove that he could still be alive.  And
if he is, why hasn't he contacted me?  He would have contacted me.  I
know it would have been dangerous.  If he was trying to convince the
world that he was dead, contacting me would have been the easiest way
for someone to find out otherwise.

Mulder's a resourceful man.  That time that he flew off to Puerto Rico?
He booked his flight under the name Charles Hale.  Deliberately.
Deliberately because he knew that no one else would pick up on that
except for me.

Perhaps there is something that I'm missing.  A clue that he has left, a
clue that no one but I would understand.

I'm still looking for it.  I'm still looking for you, Mulder.

If Mulder did not do this to save me, then he is truly, contrary to what
I have believed, insane.

If he *did* do it to save me, I will surely kill him if I ever find him.

When I find him.

So I am here, in my bed, each night, wrapped in my blanket.  Safe.

I will not give up until I know without any doubt that he is truly
gone.  I will not.  I cannot.  There is so much to be said between us.
And I cannot rest without saying it.

END

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"An unexamined life is not worth living." --Socrates
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"...let me surround you...my sea to your shore...
 let me be the calm you seek..." --Sarah McLachlan