From: Falconer Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2000 23:25:19 GMT Subject: NEW: "Saving Grace" by Falconer (MSR, CD) Title: Saving Grace Author: Falconer (etaonrish@home.com) Classification: G Spoilers: None Keywords: Character death Summary: Mulder's last thoughts are of Scully. Archive: Gossamer, yes; Spooky's yes. If anywhere else, please ask me first. Thanks! First posted: April 27, 2000 Disclaimer: I freely acknowledge the characters in _The X-Files_, Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, et al. are created by Chris Carter and are his copyrighted property, and the property of TEN THIRTEEN Productions, and the property of Fox Television, a unit of 20th Century Fox, Inc. I intend no infringement of these copyrights. Feedback: Please do. I'd really like to hear if you liked this story...or not. Send to my e-mail addy above. Thanks! ****************************************************************** I lie awake in my bed, waiting for the sedative to carry me off to blissful, dreamless sleep. You'd think at my age I'd be sleeping most of the time, but it's the dreams I have that ruin what little I can snatch between them. She's hardly ever out of my thoughts when I'm awake, and she's almost always in my dreams when I'm asleep. If only they were pleasant dreams. Oh, they're not really nightmares. They're simply focused on her, usually in a life that I missed having with her. The doctors think the reason I see her in my dreams so often is that I've been missing her so terribly, terribly much these past few years. Sometimes I wonder how the nurses think of me as they tend my monitors and assorted life-sustaining apparatuses. Do they know of the things I've seen and done? Would they sympathize with me then? Or do they simply see a pitiful old man, all alone in the world? No family or friends left to comfort him in his last days? I could take comfort in my memories of her, if only I didn't remember that she left over twenty years ago. My heart was torn out that day, and I had to use my work as a phantom heart to keep me going. She wouldn't have wanted me to give up. I had been driven before while we were together, chasing the truth, stopping conspiracies, and solving the mysteries of my own past. That was a stroll in the park compared to what I put myself through. And for what? Oh, I solved the mysteries I was presented with, but I got no real satisfaction from it. The paranormal had lost its hold on me since the normal was gone from my life. I ended up chaining myself to a treadmill in the delusion that this would help me continue living. I was running in place because I didn't want to move on with my life. And I simply wore myself out. Now I lie here with a weary excuse for a heart in a weary excuse for a man. I wish it would just quit. I'm ready to. I'm so tired, tired of being lonely, tired of trying to live without her. I never even got the chance to live with her. We had to be partners first, FBI Special Agents second, close friends third, and discreet lovers a distant fourth. What kind of a future was there in that? I actually seriously thought of suicide after she was gone, but I had looked evil in the face in many guises in my life, and I wasn't about to crumble then. Scully's faith would not countenance it either, and that helped stop me. Although I didn't share her beliefs, even though she was no longer with me, I resolved to maintain a link to her by not violating them. Maybe I also had this superstitious hope that it would eventually reunite us. As the years dragged by on the treadmill of the damned, I began to worry that would never happen, but I did nothing about it. I've never been a religious man. I've scoffed at the multitude of belief systems practically my whole life, preferring to invent my own. Or maybe I was just searching for something that held more mystery for me, but still a mystery which could be discovered in this world by physical effort. I guess it felt safer that way than believing in the intangible I had to accept *totally* on faith. Without Scully's personal faith to hold a mirror up to me, without her confirmation of my theories, I began to lose faith in myself. I retired from the FBI, and walked out onto a steeper downhill slope than I had been on. It was only when I felt myself sliding toward the abyss, the last great mystery of human existence. It frightened the hell out of me. This morning I asked for the hospital chaplain, and I was relieved to see he was a Catholic priest. I poured out my fears to him and confessed my sins. I had to give him the abridged version or he would have been listening to me all week. I even told him about Scully, and how I felt we'd been married in spirit if not in the eyes of the church. He smiled down at me and said that may have been my lifeline. I thought at first he was being patronizing, but now... That's all I have left to hold onto. I'm afraid my feeble faith won't be enough to save me, that I'll lose her forever, because she will remain and I won't. Oh God, the tears are streaming down my face again. My whole body is shuddering, and I hear rapid, squawking noises in the distance. If only she were here. She's the only doctor that can save me now. "Mulder, it's me." "I'm here, Mulder." "I've missed you so much. Where have you been?" "I've been watching you from afar, Mulder. Trust me. There's nothing to be afraid of anymore." Her warm hand takes hold of my bony wrist, and my eyes snap open. It is her. She looks radiant, dressed in white, so she must still be a practicing physician. Her presence alone is enough to ease my pain, whatever she prescribes. My heart settles down, and I feel at peace for the first time in I don't know how long. "I trust you, Scully. Please forgive me for not believing." "Mulder, you are forgiven. That's why I'm here. I've come to take you home. We're all waiting for you." "Scully! Oh my God." She embraces me and lifts me up like a baby. My heart and soul burst free of their prison as her gleaming white wings enfold me. We fly up together. Forever. ------- THE END