Title: Quality of Life
Author: Vanessa (MldrNScly@aol.com)
Rating: PG
Category: Vignette, Character Death, Angst
Spoilers: Gethsemane, Redux, Redux II
Archive: I'd be honored, just let me know so I can visit on the weekends
Summary: What if Kritschgau hadn't called? What if Mulder hadn't seen the
light on the floor and had succeeded in completing his goal? 
Disclaimer: Mulder and Scully are not mine, and I apologize to Chris for
putting them through this, but some things just have to be done. We all have
our reasons. 

Author's Note: April 4, 1999 This was a story that just asked me to write it.
It's not often that it happens and this time I just couldn't refuse. 

This is my first POV story

~~~~

Sometimes I think the days go by more like years, and I feel you slipping
further and further from my grasp. There are days when I can feel you, only an
arms length away. There are days when you could be a part of me, in my skin,
and I'd never even know you were there.

When did it get like this?

When did I lose sight of where I ended and you began?

When did "I love you" become the three most painful words in the English
language?

When did "I need you" become a reason to put a name on my obsession?

You've always made me feel reckless. From the day I first met you, your cool
expression, your backwards, convoluted theories took me places I never dreamed
I'd ever go. I've always had this irrational need to save you. To pick you
up, dust you off, and put you back on your cloud, even if it means taking a
seat on the one that sits just to the left of yours. You sit there on Nine,
keeping the demons off Eight-and-a-Half, making damn sure we finish the journey
to the Heavens together. 

I've never felt more alive! Even when I've been at the right hand of death,
you've never given me a reason to take that hand. You've always kept your
head held high for the both of us. You risked everything to keep me with you
when you never even asked for me to begin with.

There are so many times when I've wanted to reach for you, to convince you
that your pain was real. I never meant to make you feel neglected. I never
meant to diminish Samantha's disappearance by comparing it to Melissa's
murder. But, can you understand that they did this to both of us? They took
from us that which we held most dear. They stole our faith in God only to
restore our faith in one another, and now I'm standing over you wondering if
I'll ever get the chance to explain myself to you ever again.

You've got to wake up, Mulder.

It's not time for you to sleep, not yet.

You've still got so much left to do.

And we're not done, the journey isn't over.

Please just open your eyes. Just look at me once. That's all I ask for. Let
your eyes tell me that you still love me. Let me tell you that I am sorry. Let
me tell you that you can't die because if you do you'll take the best part
of me with you. 

I just want to hold you once more. But I can't, I won't, I don't deserve
to.

Please just tell me that this is all going to go away.

I don't know if I want to do this alone. Isn't that what you told me?

If you quit they win!

Please do not allow them this victory. Please show them that you are stronger.
Your truth will prevail.

I sit here beside you watching the machines breathe for you. I watch them
living for you. This is not living. There is no quality of life here. There is
only the remnants of what you've done to yourself.

Was I so blind that I could not see your depression? Was I so caught up in the
depth of my love for you that I could not see you drowning in that same sea?
How can I not make this out to be about me, when I can't ask you for another
explanation? I don't know if I can live with the questions I've been afraid
to ask, while the answers hover over you as close as death as it enters this
room.	

And I don't know that when they turn off all of the machines that I won't
die with you.

A part of me secretly wishes I do.

END

Feedback secretly craved...MldrNScly@aol.com

XxXxXxX


"You'll never see Mulder and Scully romantically involved," Carter says."You'll
never see Scully and Skinner romantically involved.And you'll never see Mulder
and Skinner romantically invovled." TV Guide April 1996

Guess we proved him wrong?