From: "Jessica Thompson" <mrsmulder_86@hotmail.com>
Date: Sat, 01 Mar 2003 10:06:29 +0000
Subject: Alongside him
Source: direct

Title: Alongside him

Author: JayJay

Email: MrsMulder_86@hotmail.com

Feedback: I thrive off it!!!

Classification: VRA

Keywords: MSR and a whole lot of Angst.

Spoilers: This is not happening, Dead alive, Per Manum, tiny one for
Triangle (prize if you can spot it!)

Disclaimer: Hey Mr C, you're not exactly using them anymore are you.
Wish you were though, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, hint, hint MOVIE 2!!!
I'm just borrowing them and I promise to send them home to your
capable hands before bedtime, Ok?

Summery: Standing by his grave that day, I remember wishing they were
burying me with him. Maybe in some small way they were. My heart
belonged with him; he had it in his disappearance and ultimately in
his death.

* * * * * * *
ALONGSIDE HIM
* * * * * * *

Standing by his grave that day, I remember wishing they were burying
me with him. Maybe in some small way they were. My heart belonged with
him; he had it in his disappearance and ultimately in his death. The
best part of me died alongside him in that field. It tore itself from
my chest the moment I saw him, still and lifeless on that cold dark
earth. I could see my own heart slowly cease to beat, as he held it in
his motionless hand.

My soul gave up on him long before I myself did. I was on autopilot as
I ran through those woods, desperately trying to reach the one man who
had given even the smallest part of me hope. The one person I believed
could save him, save us. But deep down, in the innermost chasms of
barely beating heart, I knew that Jeremiah Smith would be gone by the
time I reached him.

I had to allow that tiny part of me to believe. Believe that I could
change all this. Believe that I could bring my Mulder back, as I
always had. But I knew that this time was not going to be as simple as
the other times. I knew that I couldn't save him in that way. I knew
my willpower and my love would not be enough to pull him aboard from
the raging depths he now found himself in, because this time was
different.

As I reached that cabin, the blinding light assaulting my eyes, I felt
something that I had felt more in those past few months than I had in
my entire life. Fear, the all encompassing fear that maybe this time I
really had lost him. When the light ended, I ran into that room,
ignoring everything that was going on around me.  Ignoring the screams
from the terrified cult members, and the bewildered shouts for back up
from the law enforcement officers. I could do nothing but live in that
moment.  For those few minutes there were only three people in
existence as far as I was concerned; Mulder, Jeremiah Smith and
myself.

When I found that room empty, I knew that the other two people in my
world had been stolen from me.

I have never felt so alone.

Hours later they took me to him. On shaking legs I approached the man
I loved. He lay deathly still in that clearing. They had moved him; he
was laying on his back his arms by his side, his beautiful form
covered by a heavy grey blanket.

I was barely aware that Dogget and Skinner had cleared all the other
agents out of hearing distance. It was an action that should have
touched me, which I should have thanked them for. But my mind was
elsewhere as I knelt beside him, caressing his ashen cheek tenderly.
My head was flooding with memories and I was pleading with him to open
his eyes, to tell me that everything would be all right. To tell me
that he loved me. I knew that this time I could think of a better
response than that first time. A better response than 'O Brother'.

But despite my longings, he didn't wake up. And as the vibrant pinks
and reds of the sunrise banished the deep blues of the night sky, and
the sun lazily peeked its head above the trees I allowed myself to let
go. Of both of us. I took his hand in my mine, and as the tears
streamed down my cheeks I told him how much I loved him. I reached
over and brushed a strand of his dishevelled hair away from his eyes,
kissed his forehead tenderly and said goodbye. I remember looking down
at him, at the peaceful expression he wore, despite the hideous scars
that adorned his once perfect face.

And after that I turned and walked away, feeling nothing. I was hollow
because he was gone. It was then that I knew that I died alongside
him. In a funny way I felt comforted to know that wherever Mulder was,
he wasn't alone. Because in some small way we were together.

I lived the next few months barely existing. I lived only for our
child, because it was all I had left to live for. I was numb, to
almost all emotions. I tried all I could to feel close to him. I would
go over to his apartment, and just sit on his couch surrounded by his
things and his smell. At first it would work. I could close my eyes
and imagine that he was sitting beside me, holding my hand.

But gradually, as time passed his things lost that feeling of him.
They no longer felt as though they belonged to someone, and more
importantly they no longer felt like they belonged to him. Gradually
with the gentle passage of time, his apartment lost that smell; that
deliciously Mulder-like fragrance which had hung in this place for as
long as I could remember. Slowly the comforting smell was replaced by
the musty, unlived in stench that I have always associated with old
age and death.

Suddenly his home offered no comfort. It only served to remind me that
he was gone. Forever.

Or so I had thought.

I had dreamed countless dreams that we had made a terrible mistake and
that he would just walk through the door as though nothing had
happened. For those few moments between sleep and wake, I could even
believe that it was reality.  Until that is I would open my eyes to
find that he was not sleeping by my side. It was in those few moments,
when I awoke to a lonely bed that the pain was most excruciating.  It
was as though I lost him all over again, every single day.

I was the only time I could feel any sort of emotion. Until that is, I
got that call.

Until they told me he's alive.

Suddenly all the emotions I had been unable to experience over the
past three months hit me full force. The power of it knocking me from
my feet. I remember, not two days ago, the phone escaping my grasp and
falling noisily to the floor. I fell to my knees as realisation hit
me. I remember crying for the first time since his funeral, something
I had found myself unable to do. I cried tears of sheer relief and
joy, for no other reason except that we had been given a second
chance. It was the most wonderful feeling.

It felt as though all the things I thought I had lost in his death
were suddenly within my reach. That's why I fought for him, even when
everyone told me that he had a zero chance of survival. When the
doctors, and even my friends told me to let go. But I couldn't do it
for the second time. I couldn't lose the man I love, the father of my
child again. I couldn't lose myself again, because I wouldn't have
survived the second round.

So I fought, as hard as I ever have, and then I fought some more. And
now it appears to be paying off. He's alive, and the doctors concur
with my opinion that if he opens his eyes within these next few
crucial hours, he has every chance of making it. So here I sit,
patiently keeping vigil over him, offering up silent prayers to a God
I haven't been on speaking terms with since my partners' death. I've
never prayed so hard for anything in my life, except maybe for the
miracle that currently resides within the swollen depths of my
stomach.

I don't think I'm asking much. Just for one small movement, or one
fluttering of his eyelids, anything to tell me that we're going to be
all right. All three of us.

So until then I'll wait, with baited breath and a heightening sense of
dread with each moment that passes. Waiting as I silently watch his
chances of survival drop, as they inevitably do with each tick of
clocks quiet yet deafening measure of passing time.

I'm pleading with him to open his eyes. To fight this with the fervour
that I have these past few days. I've done my part to give him a
second chance at life. I've done all I can; now it's up to him.

I know he will because my Mulder's a fighter. I know that if he's been
at all aware of what the doctors have been saying, that there's no
chance; he'll do it just to prove them wrong. Just to get his own name
into the X-Files again, to be the next Lazarus. The first man in two
thousand years to rise from the dead.

But most of all I hope he wakes up for me, and our child that I have
yet to tell him about. That was one of my biggest regrets. That I
thought I'd never be able to tell him that we were granted that
miracle he told me never to give up on. That I was never give the
opportunity to tell him he was going to be a Daddy.

I've been given a second chance, and so has he.

I reach over to him, unable to keep myself at even the shortest
distance from him for a moment longer. I take his hand in mine
caressing his knuckles affectionately with my thumb, content to enjoy
the sensation on his skin against mine. A sensation I had allowed
myself to believe I would never experience again.

It is then I feel it, as though it is in some small way in response to
my touch. He moves, his hand, twitches in a way that I know is not an
involuntary reflex.

Relief and shock flood through me and tears well in my eyes. As once
again I am bowled over by the flood of emotions that wash over me as
he turns to me. It is then that I get my first look into those brown
and gold depth that I believed had become no more than a memory.

No more than a reminder of what could have been.

The love shines through his gaze, and I spot it immediately. Suddenly
I know that everything that has happened in the past six months
doesn't matter. No matter how hellish our own separate experiences
have been we will get over them, because we're still together. And
together we're strong. Together we can get through this.

We can make the most of our second chance. We can thank god for yet
another miracle, and then rebuild our lives. As though none of this
ever happened.

* * * *
End


Thanks for reading right to the end. You brave thing you. What did you
think? Good, bad or indifferent all feedback is welcome and will be
willingly replied to.

So go on make my day! You know you want to! :)

MrsMulder_86@hotmail.com