Trip, Stumble, Fall (1 / 1) Anna Chait paperheart@webtv.net Rating: PG Category: Angst Spoilers: through The Red and the Black Summary: In light of the events of the Red and the Black, Mulder worries about the "chip". A talk with himself, Mulder style. PLEASE POST TO GOSSAMER, AND ANY OTHER ARCHIVE OR MAILING LIST. Disclaimer: Mulder and Scully are not my creations. They belong to Chris Carter, 1013, and Fox. No copyright infringement is intended. You must, you simply must tell me what you think of my story. Feedback is like chocolate, you can never get enough. paperheart@webtv.net Trip, Stumble, Fall By Anna Chait "The doors to heaven and hell are adjacent and identical." Nikas Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ "God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please; you can never have both." Ralph Waldo Emerson I remember when I was a kid reading the story, "Something Wicked this Way Comes." I immediately identified with such feelings of impending doom. Evil had already made it's presence know in my life by taking my sister. And I feel it again. Something wicked this way comes. It consumes me, this feeling. My quest is gone, it's over. What has been the driving force in my life, my purpose, ended in a dingy downtown diner when a woman claiming to be my beloved sister told me she didn't want me in her life. It hurt like hell to hear her say it, to see the fear and confusion in her eyes. Worse yet to see her get into the car with that nameless smoking bastard. Someday I may need to pursue a different ending for that situation, but for now I must watch; waiting for evil to find me again. The truths that I seek now concern a woman I can see and touch. In her crystal-blue eyes I see respect and trust. These truths matter more to me now than those from my childhood. I can no longer bring myself to trust the things I uncovered about that time in my life. Nothing is as it was, nothing appears to be the way I remember it. I can't trust my own memories. It seems they too could have been contrived to mesh with some dark plan. What keeps us going? Why do we get up day after day, going to some job that no longer means anything to us? How do other people do it? That's ridiculous, I know how it's done. I've been doing it for more than a year now. The thing that keeps me returning to my job is the fear that if I don't stay close she'll disappear. Someone, somewhere, will issue a command to some satellite that will transfer a message to that chip in her neck and she'll vanish forever. I've imagined having to call her mother again, telling her that Dana is gone and I don't know to where, or this time even who took her. I can't do it again. And the next time I lay eyes on brother Bill, I might get physical with him. Not because anything he might say to me would be out of line, but because I know that a good portion of it is truth. And if he tries to hit me, I would let him. Perhaps it would take away some of the guilt I feel if I let him take out his frustrations on me. He's lost a sister and I know how that feels. I haven't expressed these fears to her, but I know she knows that I watch her. I hope I've been clever enough to keep it from her. I sit outside her apartment on the street in my car, or in the bushes, watching. If she finds out, I'm a dead man. I hope she hasn't caught on, but she's good. Too damn good, and she has a sixth sense about me. But I have some perceptions of my own. This thing we're involved in has gone way beyond someone just trying to control me. That's what we thought, that she was the pawn. But she's part of the plan now. I think she know's it too. The plan. What is it? What are they doing? God, I need a vacation. When was the last time I went anywhere? I wonder if there was a point at which I could have stopped it all. If I had not pursued some of the cases I did maybe things would be different. When did it all start? When did it all get beyond my ability to stop? Maybe if I had quit the FBI when I found out about the alien retro-virus. Perhaps if I had backed away from the cancerman. He's certainly been involved in all this, calling the shots along the way. If I had stepped away and distanced myself from the conspiracy that I see in everything. If I had become the buttoned-down, garden variety FBI agent that they want, would things have been different? Perhaps, but would I have been able to stand myself? I wonder if she blames me? I wonder if somewhere in her deepest thoughts she does what I do and construct a life in the future without Fox Mulder. Does she dream what her life would have been if she'd chosen not to accept the assignment with me? I wonder, so must she. What would my life have been like without Dr. Dana Scully? Chances are I would never have lived this long. Without her voice of reason, her scientific point of view and her influence to balance my impetuousness I can only assume I'd have stepped in front of a bullet by now. It's wasted energy to wish things hadn't happened the way they did. I never expected to feel as close to anyone as I do Scully. I never wanted to because-.you have to trust to get close. Trust has been in short supply in my life. When she walked into my office that rainy day everything changed. A fresh breeze blew through the office. A new point of view, someone to share my ideas with. I had been investigating all kinds of strange things, but without someone to help gather and decipher clues, I was only mildly effective as an investigator. Scully came along with her scientific mind, her clear, logical thinking, and set us on a course that didn't stop until that miserable night that I heard her voice on my answering machine. "Mulder, I need your help-" I heard those words in my nightmares for a long time. Her voice on the machine explaining about that chip, then her plea for help and the breaking glass, then the line went dead. That was when I first tripped over my feelings for her. I held my breath in dreadful anticipation of what awaited me at her apartment, and my worst fears were soon realized. Police swarming around everywhere, invading her privacy, touching her things. I wanted to scream at them to stop and leave. And then her mother arrived. She was the only thing keeping me sane at that point. I had to be calm for Mrs. Scully's sake. If I panicked she would. I did my best to reassure her but I don't think she was comforted by anything I had to say. It was a dark time for me, those three months when she was gone. Stumbling around in the darkness searching for clues and a reason to keep looking. When it seemed that there was no hope that she was alive, the phone rang again. I remember seeing her lying there attached to all that equipment and wanting to hurt someone. My eyes traveled in horror from her head to her toes. It was Scully, but it wasn't. Her eyes were taped shut and there was a tube in her nose and down her throat. Watching the artificial rise and fall of her chest, my own heart beat twice as fast. A crippling feeling of anger and helplessness grew in my chest and knotted itself around my vocal chords, rendering me incapable of speaking. At that moment if I could have traded places with her I would have done so gladly. Then it would have been me unconscious in the bed and I wouldn't have to feel the pain and guilt swelling in my chest. For days it was a physical pain that threatened to destroy me. I needed someone to blame and there was no one but me. I will always hold that image of her in the back of my mind. Lying there lifeless and helpless, so unlike the woman I know. Her brilliant mind locked in a coma, perhaps forever. I cursed whoever had done this to her and dedicated myself to finding who and what that was. And I knew then that our lives were inextricably joined, forever. So many things have happened since then. So many things that could have driven us apart or separated us forever. A gulag in Russian Georgia, the retro-virus, her cancer and unexplainable cure, the revelations of Michael Kritschgau. Most especially the cancer. Again, I found myself helpless beside a hospital bed. This time she was conscious, her blue eyes hollow and full of pain. It must be true that what doesn't kill us makes us strong. She's stronger now than ever, yet so vulnerable. I fell for my partner long ago. But more than just being in love, I love her. So much more than myself, more than I ever gave humans credit for being capable of feeling. And I feel as though we are standing on the brink of another catastrophe. That damned thing in her neck could be sending her messages. I am afraid that someday I'll turn around and she'll be gone, and never know how I feel. So I wait and watch, guarding what feels like the mouth of hell. I am pulled away from my thoughts by a light tapping on the glass. I lean forward to see her looking in the window of the car, then I unlock the door. She quickly slides in, bringing with her cold, crisp, winter air and the fragrance of her perfume. She pulls her coat tighter around her and rubs her hands together to warm them. "It's so cold this morning." Yes, it's morning. Another night has passed, and she's still here. Another day in which I'll know that she has not been taken away from me. I smile and breathe again. "Good morning, Scully. How are you today?" She tips her head and smiles at me. "I'm fine Mulder. And you?" she asks, a bit perplexed at my mood I suppose. "Fine." For now. For today. It has been said that the doors to heaven and hell are adjacent and identical. It is a painful truth. ************************ Author's comments: This new information about the "chip" giving Scully impulses to be places and not remember worries the heck out of me. How can they stand it? Can you? Maybe they'll explain in "Fight the Future." Nah! They never explain. That's why we write stories, huh? 13 April 1998 Talk to me at paperheart@webtv.net