Title: These Dreams (1/1)
Author: RocketMan >lbontger@wmcstations.com<
Disclaimer: Mulder and Scully do not belong to me. They are owned by CC,
1013, and Fox. No infringement is intended.

These Dreams 

"These dreams go on when I close my eyes. Every second of the night, I
live another life."
--'These Dreams,' Heart

She hated listening to his torrent of self abuse, hated because she
could not stop it, and hated because nothing could stop it. Mulder was
destined to run with remorse, destined to drown in despair.
So she had gotten up in the middle of one of his 'woe is me' speeches
and walked out.
She just wanted some peace, a sense of justice and fairness again.
All alone in her apartment with music playing and fresh clean notebook
papes spread before her, she could achieve that.
She wrote her demons out in her journals, she exorcised her spirits in
fantasy and daily hurts and musings. She wasn't a terribly good writer,
but it gave her comfort, and that's all she needed.
She didn't have to talk to someone like Mulder did.
This night, though, she felt bad for having walked out on him, for
ignoring his need and his hurt and focusing on herself.
But she desperately needed a chance to find her center again.
Mulder's sorrow wasn't the place for it.
So she wrote and frowned and grew angry as she did and let tears of
frustration fall over him, fall over once clean pages, and then it was
done, and everything was all right again.
She thought.
~~~~~~~~
Mulder sat back in his couch, trying not to let the events of the day
catch up with him until it was lighter outside, until he had some time
to absorb everything.
It was becoming quite clear that she was fed up with him, that she had
finally realized what a deranged man he was.
Even *he* was tired of being the sorrowful, dark, macabre man that he
was.
He just wanted a bit of peace, for any length of time.
A point where he could sit down and not think of Samantha or
conspiracies or men who smoked. He wanted a rest.
He'd been running in this paranormal race his whole life and he was
ready for the finish line.
He was about ready to simply quit.
Find an island where no one knew him and hide out......disappear.
Disappear with Scully, maybe.
If she'd like......if she would even want to go anywhere with him.
Raise a family and have little natives running around, climbing cocconut
trees and laughing in sunshine.....
Yeah, and while he was dreaming, maybe he could have Scully's cancer
cured and his sister back, please.....
He had finally resolved to himself that they wouldn't be giving Sam
back, or even a cure for Scully.  Why should they? They were the masters
of the game and needed no one. He'd been trying to tell her that.
They just didn't care about the lives of innocents.
That's how it was with them.
When you ceased to be amusing, you ceased to be.
Scully had ceased to be amusing.....
The thought sickened him.
It made him feel trite, this vanity, this searching after illusions and
casting wishes on falling stars.
He had to leave. He wanted a different life and different ideas. He
wanted fresh grass under his feet and a clear stream running in his
backyard.  He wanted light and love and laughter -- he wanted an end to
this pereptual gloom.
He eventually fell alseep in his familiar position.
~~~~~~~~
Scully is standing in front of him, facing away, her white dress
reflecting the silver of the moon, and her hair dark in the night.
The waves crash around her, and even though she stands in the surf, she
is not wet and her feet leave no marks in the sand as she walks ahead.
He watches her slide across the shore, as silent and pale as a spector,
her shoes dangling from her fingertips.
He sprints forward and catches up with her, touching her shoulder as
waves crash around them.
She turns and as he leans forward to see her, to tell her it's not his
fault, she falls away into a million silver doves that stretch their
shining wings and fly up to the nightsky. 
As he watches them disappear, the sea swallows him up and he drowns in
its healing, salty embrace.
~~~~~~~~
Mulder is curled into fetal postion on a larger gold altar, his body is
dwarfed by the immensity of the grand cathedral.  She is halfway down
the aisle of the church, running to him, but his eyes are blank and he
does not see her.
She halts at the altar, climbing their steps in a slow, respectful
manner, before taking the ceremonial knife from its place.
Its dull metal lends no remorse.
She touches him with the flat of the blade and he uncurls, naked before
her.
As if he were a corpse on her cold steel table, she begins the
dissection; his eyes open and he watches her movements.
As his blood spills onto the gold, she trembles and her hands stops; she
cannot be doing this to him.
He takes her hand in his and guides her, even as he spasms in his death
throes.
The agony on his face matches the agony on hers, but neither can stop
their combined hands.
And then it is done.
She crawls up next to him, pressing her heat to his chill and digs the
knife into her heart.
But she will not bleed.
She cannot die.
Her anguish is eternal.
~~~~~~~~
Dana woke up, feeling sick, and ran to the bathroom.
She collapsed to the floor of the cold hard tile and shook for the
clutching coldness of her dream.
~~~~~~~~
Mulder woke in a panic-filled frenzy, his heart beating a war rhythm in
his ribs.
His eye caught on the moon through his window, regal in its beauty,
frightening in its frown.
~~~~~~~~
She opened the door and found him whole and couldn't help but slumping
against the doorframe in relief.
"Mulder." she said.
He sighed and looked to see if she hated his intrusion.
"This has got to stop Scully."
She blinked and backed away.
"I'm killing you."
They both whispered it and the truth struck out at them with fierceness
and hurt.
She thought he was talking about one thing and he was thinking of
another, but it was true, too, too true.
She stepped aside and let him in.
He remained standing and she looked in his eyes for the truth and the
fear and found neither.
"Mulder, I - We're not going well."
His breath was an explosion. "I know. And we need to somehow fix it. I
can't do this alone."
She knew he meant his life. Not fixing them.
He couldn't do *life* alone. 
"I can't either."
It was simple. It didn't require more than monosyllabic words and it
held no threats, no double entendres.
But it meant more than a mere three words.
And now they didn't know how to go, where their road was anymore.
"Maybe, Scully." He sighed heavily and shook his head. "Maybe we need to
be apart for awhile, clear some things up within ourselves."
She studied him. He had already decided on this course of action long
before she had let him in.
"I'm taking a few weeks off to kind of hunt around."
"Looking for what?"
His eyes blazed and he looked at her intensely.
"Myself."
He turned from her and opened the door softly, leaving no sounds behind
him as he left.
No sounds except for the startled sigh of Dana Scully.
And she let him go.

end
adios
RocketMan