Subj:	story to archive
Date:	9/29/00 9:15:27 AM Eastern Daylight Time
From:	PennySyc
To:	NeverAgain4X13

TITLE:  Weeping for a Night (Part 1 of 1)
AUTHOR:  Leslie Sholly
E-MAIL:  PennySyc@aol.com
DISTRIBUTION:  Anywhere, with my name and address
attached.
SPOILER WARNING:  This takes place mid-Season Six, but no particular episodes are mentioned.
RATING:  R (for language)
CLASSIFICATION:  SRA
KEYWORDS:  MSR
SUMMARY:  What happens when you wait too long to
reveal your true feelings?

DISCLAIMER:  I do not own any of these characters.  Chris
Carter, Fox, 1013, and the actors themselves have that
honor.  Please forgive me for attempting to make them my
own.  

FEEDBACK:  Please, I beg you!  PennySyc@aol.com (Leslie)

AUTHOR'S NOTE:  This is a companion piece, by request,
to "But Then Comes the Morning," but it can certainly be
read independently.


Weeping for a Night
by Leslie Sholly

I have been to the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and I have
lived to tell the tale.

I have accompanied those I love to the Valley's brink, bade
them good-bye as they left to travel that road one can only
walk alone.

I have said my good-byes, and I have been strong, always
strong.

But there comes a time when even the strongest among us
must falter, when that which has upheld us is ripped away
and we are left to face the emptiness alone.

That time had come for me now, as I held a telephone
receiver in suddenly limp fingers and listened to A.D. Skinner
as he told me that my partner was dead.

************************************************

I had spent that day with my mother.  I often found myself
traveling on the weekends, chasing monsters with Mulder,
and I hadn't had much time to spend with Mom lately.  So
this was Girls' Day Out, like she and Melissa and I used to do
sometimes when we were teenagers.

We went to brunch at Houlihan's and shopped until early
evening at Georgetown Park, and we had returned to her
house to eat a light dinner and watch her favorite sappy
movie, "An Affair to Remember."

The answering machine was blinking frantically when we
returned to the house, and Mom went to check the messages
immediately.  There had been too many tragedies in our
family for her to be relaxed when it came to telephone calls.  

First came a message from Tara:  "Hi, Mom.  I got my
weekly letter from Bill today, and I was going to read it to
you.  I'll be home all night if you want to give me a call. 
Matt says, 'Hi, Grandma!'"  We both smiled at that one. 
Then Mulder's voice, "Hey, Mrs. Scully!  Sorry to bother
you, but I need to talk to Dana and I thought she might be
with you.  If you hear from her, could you have her call me? 
Thanks."  I shook my head and traded smiles with my
mother.  No doubt Mulder had some bizarre theory to
bounce off  me, something that could not wait until Monday. 
Yeah, right.  Of course, I would call him back.  I always did. 
But not until after the movie.  Next message was a friend of
my mom's, wanting to set up a bridge date.  I zoned out on
that one, wandered into the kitchen to start dinner.  

Then my mom called my name.  There was a note of anxiety
in her voice that frightened me and I ran back into the room. 
"Mom?  What's wrong?"

She hit the replay button on the machine and my boss's deep
voice filled the room.  "Mrs. Scully?  This is Walter Skinner. 
I apologize for disturbing you at home.  I am trying to reach
your daughter.  There has been an incident and it is urgent
that I speak to her as soon as possible.  Please give her my
message or call me if you know where she is."  He ended the
message with his cell phone number.

I took the phone from my mother's extended hand and
automatically dialed the number.  The wait for an answer
was interminable.  Life seemed to be moving in slow motion. 
I could hear every heartbeat, feel every breath.  "Skinner," he
answered at last.

"Sir?"  My voice sounded high pitched and strange, like
someone else, I thought distractedly.  "This is Scully.  I just
received the message you left for me here at my mother's."

"Scully."  His voice lacked animation, was heavy with some
emotion I could not, did not want to name.  "Is your mother
with you now?"

"Yes, sir."

"Agent Scully--Dana--I have some very bad news.  I am at
Georgetown Hospital.  Agent Mulder was brought in earlier
this afternoon.  I am so sorry, Scully.  He's dead."

In a daze, I handed the phone to my mother and sat limply
down on the couch.  I couldn't breathe, couldn't move,
certainly couldn't cry.  I could hear my mother's voice from a
distance but I neither knew nor cared what she was saying. 
Then she hung up the phone and turned to me.  There were
tears in her eyes but she was holding them back as she tried
to gauge the state I was in.

"I'm cold, Mom," I said.  It was true.  I was shaking.  She
pulled the afghan from the back of the couch, wrapped it and
her arms around me and cradled my head on her breast like a
child's.

"Oh, Dana.  Oh, honey.  I am so sorry."  She rocked me back
and forth, crooning softly in the way that mothers do when
their children are in need of comfort.  Somewhere deep
inside where all my feelings were hidden, wrapped up inside
the shell where I kept them, I was grateful.  But on the
outside, I just felt empty.  Hopeless.  Lifeless.   

When I had thought about the possibility of Mulder dying--
and in our line of work, who doesn't think about it--I had
always imagined myself dealing with it by being strong, by
doing all the things that had to be done, by holding my
feelings inside like I usually did.  There were arrangements to
handle, phone calls to make.  I was Mulder's next of kin and
I was responsible for taking care of these things.  But now
that the worst had really come to pass, I realized too late that
it had been Mulder's strength, the knowledge that he was
there for me, that had upheld me through my sister's death,
my daughter's death, my cancer.  What was I going to rely
on now?

I had my faith, of course.  It was a precious gift and I was
glad I had reclaimed it over the past few years.  I firmly
believed that I would be with Mulder again.  But would it be
enough to see me through?  Would it give me the strength I
needed to get through this day and the next and the next?

My mother roused me from my lethargy.  "Dana, sweetheart,
do you want to know what happened?"

"No.  Doesn't matter."  Of course I would want the details at
some point.  But later.  For now, my abused mind had all it
could do to grasp the idea that Mulder was gone.

"Honey, I don't know what would be best for you right now,
but Fox is still at the hospital if you would like to see him."

The last time I thought Mulder was dead, there had been no
body.  I think, looking back, that one reason I didn't fall
apart was because some part of me, in outright defiance of
all surface evidence, held out hope that as long as there was
no body, he might not be dead.  I knew that seeing him now
was a crucial part of accepting what had happened, so I
agreed.  I let my mother walk me to the car.  She even had to
buckle my seatbelt.  My mind was a blank on the ride to
Georgetown, and she had to lead me into the hospital like
some kind of sleepwalker.  We found Skinner somehow and
he took us to the room where Mulder lay.

"Let me come in with you, Dana," my mother said, looking
at me with concern.  I had yet to shed a tear.

"No.  By myself," I said with difficulty.  And I walked in.

He looked peaceful, lying there.  There were a couple of
bruises on his face but nothing too bad.  For a moment, the
pathologist in me took over and I wondered what sort of
trauma had caused his death.  But only for a moment.

I have seen so many bodies.  I can be cavalier about death at
times.  But this was Mulder.  My partner.  My best friend. 
The man who loved me.  Sure, I knew that.  Hadn't he tried
to tell me, to show me?  But fucking ice princess, ice bitch
that I was, I would never let him in.  Pretending I thought he
was teasing when he asked me to marry him, that he was
drugged up when he said he loved me, that the kiss the
frigging bee stopped before it could begin meant nothing,
should be forgotten.  Oh, I knew Mulder loved me.  And I
knew I loved him.  And that I had waited, had sat on that
knowledge, had never told him--that was unforgivable.  And
now he was gone.

"I love you, Mulder," I said out loud.  But it was too little,
too late.  He couldn't hear me, and even if he could, our
chance was gone now.  I would never know the feeling of his
lips against mine, would never wake up in his arms as I so
often had in my dreams, would never see the look on his face
when I declared my love at last.

Why had I waited?  Why had I assumed time would stand
still for me, that I could bend it to my will, that we would
always have all the time in the world to work on our
relationship?  "I'm sorry, Mulder," I whispered.  And I
walked out of the room.

I walked past my mother and I walked past Skinner. My
mother followed me at a distance as I walked out of the
hospital and into the warm spring night.  I walked past
classroom buildings, past the graves of Jesuits, past massive
stone dormitories, until I reached the campus chapel.

There was no Mass going on.  The lights were dimmed and
my mother and I were alone.  I knelt in the back of the
church and tried to pray, not for Mulder but for myself, for
the strength to go on.  Mulder didn't need my prayers
anymore.  He was in a better place, I knew that.  His life on
Earth had been nothing but Purgatory and he deserved a
ticket straight to Heaven. 

If Mulder had been the one left alive, he would have reacted
to my death by putting a bullet in his brain.  I had no doubt
about that.  And I wished with all my heart that I could take
that path.  But I couldn't.  I couldn't do that to my mother,
for one thing.  And suicide was definitely against my moral
code, for another.  Somehow I would have to face every day
from now until my own death, waking up each morning
knowing that Mulder was gone, and remembering my guilt
and my regret that he had died without words of love from
me.

My mother knelt beside me and put her arms around my
shoulders and all at once I was crying at last, crying for
Mulder, for myself, for all that we had lost, for all we had
never had.  "I never told him, I never told him," I whispered
over and over, brokenly, through my tears.

The church bells began to ring, disturbing my grief.  On and
on they rang, until I opened my eyes, raised my head from
my wet pillow, and looked stupidly at the bright morning sun
shining on my alarm clock, which I had accidentally left set
for 6 a.m.

It was a dream.  It was only a dream.

Without a thought to the earliness of the hour, I grabbed the
phone by my bed and dialed Mulder's number.  As the phone
rang and rang, my heart filled with unreasoning dread.  What
if my dream had been a premonition?  What if Mulder really
were dead?  He's rubbing off on you, Dana, I said to myself. 
But when his voice finally came on the line, no sound had
ever been more beautiful to my ears.

"Mulder, I'm sorry if I woke you.  I know it's early and it's
Saturday.  It's just that--I know it sounds silly but I had a
really bad dream last night and I just needed to make sure
you were O.K."

"Scully, that doesn't sound silly at all, but what I'm getting
ready to say might.  Just hear me out, O.K.?  I am not drunk,
I am not on drugs, I am not delusional.  I know what I'm
saying and I'm being perfectly serious.  Scully, *I love you.*"

My heart stopped beating.  I searched my repertoire for a
snappy comeback.  Then I thought, this is second chance
time, Dana.  How many people ever get a second chance? 
Drawing  a deep breath, I said, "Mulder, I love you, too. 
Now get over here!  Please?"

An audible sigh of relief emanated from the other end of the
line.  The next thing I heard was a clatter as Mulder dropped
the phone.  Smiling, I closed my eyes and said a silent prayer,
thanking God for second chances.

"Weeping may endure for the night, but joy cometh in the
morning."

Psalm 30, verse 5

THE END

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