All that Matters 1/1
Date: 97-02-20

MAJOR SPOILER: Have you seen Momento Mori? If you
answer 'yes' proceed. No--turn back now.

Summary: Mulder and Scully come to a realization together.
Sounds relationshippy, right? Depends on how you look at it.

MSR maybe but not implicit. V Rated PG

Disclaimer: don't own them and recently wouldn't really want
to--too many headaches. But I love playing with them. No
infringement intended.

I love mail. Send me some.

All That Matters
by Vickie Moseley
vickiemoseley1978@yahoo.com

"I really need to paint this room," he said to himself and the ceiling
of his apartment. He had been lying on the couch now for over an
hour and sleep was still eluding him. There would be no sleep
tonight, he was certain of that. In this world, there were few things
that Fox Mulder could be certain of, but insomnia was one of them.

Not that he expected to sleep anyway. In many ways, he doubted if
he would ever really want to sleep again. Sleep meant
unconsciousness, sleep meant that he wouldn't be aware. He
wouldn't have the little chances to see her face or hear her voice, to
memorize every second of his time with her. Nope, if sleep meant
staying away from Dana Scully, it had no place in his life any more.
He'd lived the better part of his life without sleep, he saw no reason
to change.

But he couldn't be obvious about it. It would all have to be done
on the sly, unnoticed by the object of his attention. He remembered
with a wince the angry look she had given him when he had cast a
long glance at her, in concern, worry, as her nose had started
bleeding. It had frightened him. He didn't mean to stare, but he
felt he should do something. It was not normal for his partner to
have any sign of weakness, physical, mental, emotional. Strong as
nails, that was his Scully. And her anger at him only underscored
her own terror at the discovery that the nails might not have been
tempered--that they might have a bending point after all.

The ride home from Allentown had been unnaturally quiet. She had
suggested that she could take the shuttle, but stopped at the hurt
look he had given her. He knew she needed some time to be alone,
to digest all that was happening, but he needed to be near her, at
least for a little while. He was still calming the riot in his stomach
that had erupted when he got to her hospital room and found the
bed empty and her 'last letter' to him on the night stand. He had
read most of it, not really wanting to intrude, but needing to quench
the awful thirst for her that was closing his throat and forcing the
air out of his lungs. It was almost an after thought to go looking
for the nurse, to see if there was any possible reason for her not to
be in her bed except the obvious--the dreadful, the one hurtle he
never wanted to cross. She knew he was still very fragile, and so
she had agreed to ride home with him, even though it meant an
additional hour in the car and her own stomach was still reeling
from the effects of the chemo and radiation treatment.

He drove to her apartment on autopilot. He pulled up to the curb
and jumped out of the car and opened her door. She flashed him a
raised eyebrow and for a minute, he was almost embarrassed by his
actions. He shrugged and she smiled and he went to the trunk to
pull out her overnight bag. He made a great show of placing it
firmly on her shoulder and she smiled again and shook her head at
him. Neither one said a word and she turned and walked to the
door. With her back turned, she couldn't see him as he watched
every move of her muscles, every turn of her ankle, every step as
she made her way up the few steps, took out her keys and entered
the lobby. Only when she had shut the door behind her did he
finally get back in the car and drive away.

Upon arriving at his own apartment, he had stripped off the 'night
detail' clothes that he had been living in for what seemed like
forever. He stepped in the shower and turned the water all the way
hot--scalding his skin, but savoring the heat that was seeping into
his bones, allowing him to shake off the chill that had invaded his
body. He stood there until the water ran cold, and only then,
rubbed himself dry and pulled on some sweats to lie down on his
couch. He turned on the television more for the light than for the
program it showed. Darkness was not his friend. He was getting
down to where he had very few friends left.

That had been an hour ago. He punched the pillow viciously at that
thought and rolled over onto his side. The movie was vaguely
familiar, an old black and white. In horror he realized it was
_DOA_ and grabbed for the remote, clicking it off with a quick turn
of the wrist until he finally let it stand at the golf channel. That was
relatively safe.

In a minute, the tears started. Ever since he had stood in the X Ray
room at Holy Cross, with the negative films of her skull acting as a
freakish sort of wallpaper, he had felt the tears just under the
surface of his eyes. He hated to cry. It was something of his
childhood that he had thought long abandoned. 'Boys don't
cry--men never cry'. It had been drilled in him like all the rest of
the lessons he had learned at his father's knee. Right up there with
'it's all your fault' and 'you never try hard enough' and 'you could
have done more to protect her'. That last one echoed in his head
now like no other time. You could have done more. . .

Another turn and he was on his stomach, his head buried in the
pillow. He could smell the dust and the sweat and other older tears
as they filled his nose and only made him cry the harder. He
hugged the pillow as he wished he could hug her, hoping that it
would make it all hurt just a little bit less.

He didn't want to lose her, but he knew it was all too possible. He
knew it, all the way to his toes. When he had lost Sam, it had been
so fast. One minute there, the next minute gone. He hadn't been
given the time to dread it, the hours of wondering what his life
would be like without her. It was quick. Painful, like an
amputation, but quick. The horror of reliving the nightmare
somehow paled in comparison to envisioning a horror yet to be.

He knew that watching this cancer take her would kill him. It
would be slow torture. Wondering if a cough was another sign of
the progression of the disease or simply a cold. Worrying every
time she looked tired. Imagining that being on the job was too
much for her. Realizing that the time was coming soon when he
would walk into the office and not find her coffee cup, warm on her
desk, or her coat slung over the computer table chair. Each
thought, each little consideration was a knife in his soul and he
couldn't wipe them from his mind any more than he could stop the
tears falling from his eyes.

He didn't hear the gentle knock at the door. He was unaware of
the key in the lock because his own sobs drowned out the sound.

She stared in wonder as the ceramic saucer splintered as it hit the
wall. It was awesome, the power of her anger. She'd spent years
learning to control it in high school and college. Years and not just
a few pieces of crockery. And now, in one of her darkest hours, it
was all coming back with a vengence.

She remembered all too clearly the last time she'd thrown a plate.
It was after a fight with her parents, and it hadn't even been about
her. Missy was dating someone that Ahab didn't like--and the fight
had started at the dinner table, growing progressively louder and
more hurtful as the evening wore on. Finally, Missy had stalked out
of the house--with her father screaming at her not to come back.
That had done it. Dana had been washing the dishes, listening with
horror as her family tore itself apart. There was nothing she could
do to stop Ahab's words, nothing she could do to make Missy
come back. Nothing on earth that would overcome the hurt. Dana
went in the kitchen and broke all but three dinner plates before her
mother held her in her arms and let her cry it out. Breaking the
plates had done nothing--Missy hadn't set foot in the house for five
years after that night.

She knew why she was breaking dishes now. She was having that
same feeling--that there was something unknown, something
frightening ahead of her. At the time, it was the self-destruction of
her family. She loved her family, her brothers and her sister. She
loved her father and her mother. The thought that they might not
be together, always, had frightened her beyond belief. That was
why she'd gone on her rampage. Tonight, it was a different fear.
More than the terror of her discovery, more than the resolve to beat
the cancer. Tonight she was afraid of what the next few months
would bring.

After about three plates, she decided she'd had enough time alone.
There was only one person she really wanted to see and so she got
in her car and drove straight to his apartment. To find him sobbing
into his couch pillows, oblivious to the world.

"Mulder," she whispered, coming across the room to sit on the
edge of the coffee table. In a second, she was rubbing his back,
murmuring anything to get his attention.

It took him a minute, but Mulder got control of himself. Slowly, he
rolled over and looked at her. "Scully? I thought I left you at . . ."
He let the sentence hang in the air, an embarrassed silence closing
in on them.

She cleared her throat and pretended to be interested in his new
desk lamp. "I know. I just got . . ." The silence crept in again.

He nodded, getting slowly to his feet. "Gimme a minute," he said
in a husky voice. He took off for the bathroom, coming back after
a short while, his hair damp from where he had splashed water on
his face.

"Want a drink?" he asked. Their conversation was all too terribly
normal at that second and he was having a horrible time dealing
with it.

"No, I'm--" She stopped and took a breath, then laughed dryly. "I
was about to say . . ."

"That you're fine," he finished the sentence for her and sat down on
the couch, pulling her down to sit next to him. "But you aren't, are
you?"

He was using that voice of his, the one that demanded her complete
honesty. He could have just asked her medical opinion, he would
have used the same tone.

She waited a second to answer. "no," she said in a voice so small it
tore at his heart. He took a deep breath.

"Neither am I," he admitted. He reached out hesitantly to put his
arm around her shoulder and suddenly found her arms around his
neck, hanging on for dear life.

"I don't want to do this," she sobbed. "I hate this, Mulder. I hate
everything about it. I meant what I said today, this morning. I
want to work, I have so much to do. But I hate having this
between us. I hate seeing you this upset because of me."

He was struggling now to keep his own tears in check and failing
badly. "You hate seeing me upset? I think we have some priorities
crossed here," he sighed. "I hate seeing you hurt, sick--scared," he
said, finally mentioning the one thing that neither of them wanted to
admit.

"I am scared," she said, pulling back just enough to see his face.
"I'm very scared. But I hate that, too. Mulder, I've never been so
scared in all my life. After everything that has happened to us, I've
never been this scared before. I don't know what to do. I'm afraid
that anything I do will be wrong. I don't want to blow this. I don't
want to do this wrong."

He let his face show his confusion. "Do what wrong?"

She looked at him and her face crumbled again as it had in the
hospital hallway. "Die. I don't want to die wrong," she explained.
"Penny had such a dignity to her, even last night, even through all
the pain. I'm afraid I won't do it like that, that I'm too weak and
I'll . . . I'll be too scared. I told you once that I don't fear death,
and that's the truth Mulder, I still believe that. But I fear the dying.
I'll only do it once and I want to do it right."

He sat there and looked at her, knowing that her vow to fight was
still in her, but was having a battle of it's own to wage against her
greatest fear--her own lack of control. It tore him to pieces to
watch her falter before his very eyes. She had nothing to put her
back against, nothing to help her fight her own demons. A thought
struck him and he nodded, putting the ideas into words. "OK.
Then we do this right. Right now."

A flash of confusion came to her eyes. "What . . . what are you
talking about?" she demanded.

"Scully, I won't live without you. I did it once when you were
gone and I won't do that again, I can't. And since you feel it's over
now, then I guess we do this together. How? I still have some
sleeping pills but I don't think I have enough for both of us. Guns
are messy and painful. I want to go quietly, in your arms."

Her eyes widened and she pushed him away, sure she wasn't
hearing him correctly. She stood up and took a couple of steps
back until she ran into the coffee table. "Mulder, are you crazy?
Do you know what you're saying?"

He regarded her coolly, as he always did when she was ripping
apart his theories. "Yes, I know exactly what I'm saying. I'm
saying that I will not live one hour past you, Scully. Plain and
simple fact. Where you go, I go. You've warned me not to ditch
you, well, I'm just following suit. Now, do you want to leave a
note?"

"You're insane! You've gone insane," she whispered and took
another step back which sat her rather promptly on the coffee table.

"No, I'm very sane right now, Dana. It's all very clear,
frighteningly so. If you are worried about dying right, then so am I.
Funny thing is, until you came in here tonight, I was worried about
something entirely different. You've shown me that I was wrong."
He sat back on the couch, pinning her with his hazel eyes. "See, I
was trying to figure out how to 'live' with this. Dying, I figured
that would take care of itself. But if that's what has you worried,
we can solve that right here."

"You're not very funny, you son of a bitch," she hissed.

"I'm not trying to be. Look, Scully. I'm having a hard time just
breathing right now. I'm so scared I can't think, I can't sleep. The
last time I was this scared--it was when you were gone." His voice
took on a wavering sound at the last. He swallowed before he
continued. "I won't live like that, Scully. I can't. So if you can't
live like that either, then we end it now. The way I've always
dreamed of dying. In your arms."

"You've always dreamed of that?" she asked.

"I don't dwell on it much. It comes to me mostly when the
morphine wears thin and the damned heart monitor won't let me
sleep," he explained calmly.

"I don't want to die, Mulder. Not now. And I don't want you to
die." She leaned forward with her elbows on her knees. "But to
die in your arms doesn't seem wrong. Not wrong at all. It's just
not right today." She couldn't stop the tear that slipped down her
cheek.

"Scully, I'm gonna die someday. So are you. I just want to
postpone it awhile, if you're so set against it now." He reached
forward and took her hands in his, rubbing his thumb across the
back of her hand. "We'll make a date. We'll die in each other's
arms. In some nursing home, when we're in our nineties." He
looked at her and watched a slow smile spread on her face.

"It's a date," she said and pulled him into her arms. He leaned
back, nestling them on the couch and held her tight, both of them
finding strength from each other. They sat for a very long time, not
letting go, crying some, but mostly just holding.

The last few days were catching up to them quickly. Scully yawned
first, and Mulder immediately followed suit. The thought that she
should be going crossed both of their minds at the same time. A
look was exchanged, silently a question was asked and answered.

"Scully, I know we're partners and I know that it's against all the
rules, but . . ."

"Are you asking me to sleep over, Agent Mulder?" she asked with a
wicked grin.

"Actually, I was going to ask you to make something up and call
me in sick tomorrow, but I guess you can stay over, too, if you
want," he shrugged, as casually as he could while his stomach
launched a thousand butterflies against his ribcage.

She looked at him, his hair falling down around his forehead, his
eyes now full of mischief and something else--hope. She could lose
herself in those eyes. Hell, she thought, I already have.

"Sure, Mulder," she replied, finally feeling like her old self. "What
could they possibly do to us that hasn't already been done?"

"As long as they do it to us together, that's all that matters," he said
and pulled her to her feet, leading her down the small hallway to his
bedroom.

the end.

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