Title: BANDAGED HEARTS(1/1)

Author: Suzanne (This is my first posting. Please read it.) Heurtinrober@cua.edu

Distribution:wherever

Spoilers:Paper Hearts

Disclaimer: I don't own these characters. They're the property of Chris Carter and 1013 productions I suppose. No copywrite infringement is intended.

Rating: PG-13, nudity, sort of sexual situations, not graphic

Content Warning: Mulder and Scully love, romance isn't the point here

Classification:VRA

Summary: Paper hearts/Post-episode. Mulder's at the end of his rope. Scully reels him back in.

This is my first. If you absolutely can't bear the idea of our agents romantically involved, don't read this. There is misery, some suffering (the pre-modernist word for angst all you twenty-somethings), love, and, I hope, only minimal mush. Seriously, I was taken by the raw feeling in this episode and wanted to play with it a bit. Mostly, I wanted to create an emotional atmosphere. We'll see if it worked.

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She had left him in the office downstairs around three that afternoon. God, he was a wreck. He had hardly had any sleep the last several days, running off on the cruel leads Roche had given him.

He had put his arms around her and held her close. She knew he must have been in pain for him to do that, knowing full well that the surveillance camera was on. He was scrupulously careful not to reveal any emotion, to give up any information regarding the truth about their partnership when he knew they might be watched.

She had stroked his hair and held him for a few moments, but couldn't afford any more displays. So she left. Not knowing what to do, she simply left.

In the end, it wasn't Samantha. She was certain of that. Roche had been yanking his chains, but in doing so had almost pulled him down completely. She didn't know how he stayed sane. Maybe he wasn't. "Maybe I'm not either and I'm just too far gone to realize it," she thought.

When had the world stopped making sense?

Soon after she had walked into the same basement office years ago and begun their work together? Maybe before. When she'd met with them. Those men in suits she had come to think of as Nameless Adversaries. Ironic that she was holding together that which she'd been sent to destroy.

It had really felt that way this week. Dana Scully, human band-aid, holding together both Mulder and the X files. In all her time with him, through everything, she had never seen him so raw. He was shaken to the core of his existence, his soul.

She knew that and it agonized her to see it. Roche had tortured him, toyed with him like a cat with a mouse just before pouncing for the kill. Mercifully, the mouse had roared and killed the cat instead. If he hadn't, Roche would still be playing his games, and Mulder would be helpless by now.

It was almost ten. She had called him at four and he said he was going home. She hadn't believed him, but surely he was home by now. She had to write up a forensics report on the last body exhumed, make sure all the work from the pathlab was included and summed, write the orders for the body to be released and the family contacted, plus see to it that the body was properly prepared for transport.

The body. The body! Jesus H. Christ, it was a little girl. Somebody's little girl, just like the little blonde Mulder had rescued. Just like she and Missy had been. Just like Samantha when she had disappeared.

That rescue had cost him a lot. He traded knowledge of Samantha for that little girl's safety. He thought he had failed. . . had failed Samantha, and his mother.

She snapped the cover shut on the report. It was ready for Skinner's signature.
Wearily, she rolled her head back on her neck, then side to side. Pushing her chair back, she rose and went out into the empty halls. Her heels tapped, echoing through the silent halls that were normally filled with noisy, harried agents bustling to who the hell knew where.

The lights were dimmed for night in the stair well she took down to the basement, too impatient to wait for an elevator. She needed to replace the documents she'd borrowed from the X-files office. As she moved to put her key in the lock, she noticed that the door was opened by a crack, a faint ray of light escaping. Warily, she pushed it open.

There he was, head on his desk, asleep.

"Mulder, what are you doing here?" She walked up and gently jostled his shoulder.
He sucked in a quick breath and sat up. Disoriented, he blinked around the room and stared up at her in confusion.

"Mulder, I thought you were going home. You've been here almost twenty four hours now."

"Mm, just trying to finish up." He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands and stifled back a yawn. "Besides, I know there's something more here, Scully. There's just something I'm missing, some pattern I'm not putting together. I have to figure out this last girl."

"Mulder you're not going to put anything together tonight, you need to go home and sleep."

"I caught a nap, you saw, I'm OK."

"Yeah, you're OK and the Pope's Jewish."

"No really..."

"Mulder, you look like shit. Your eyes are hollow; your clothes are a mess; you haven't shaved and frankly, you need a bath.

"Scully,"

"G-man, you need to go home."

"But. . ."
"Mulder, where does it say you have to destroy yourself to find Samantha? To do anything? If you fall apart, there's no one left to do the work. Destroying yourself doesn't help anyone, least of all me. Come on, let's go." She pulled on his arm. "Look, you can barely stand up.

He looked at her sorrowfully; resigned. He would go.

She drove him to her place in her car. She couldn't allow him to drive.

She led him to her bed and lay him down. She pulled off his shoes and clothes. He stared ahead at nothing. No obscene remarks, no passes made, just blank exhaustion in his face.

A sponge and a basin of warm water. She sponged his face, his neck, chest, arms and legs. No response. He really was worn out.

After returning the sponge and bath water to the bathroom, she removed her clothing and crawled in next to him. She turned off the bedside lamp, but the moonlight from the window illuminated him with an icy blue glow.

He was frowning at the ceiling. "Mulder," she stroked his forehead and hair, "close your eyes and sleep."

She heard his breath catch in his throat.

"Scully, I can't"

"Close your eyes and try."

"No. I can't. . . Really." He sat up, staring ahead into the darkness.

He drew in a deep breath.

"I'm afraid to sleep." He hung his head and kept it down. His voice was little more than a whisper.

"I'm afraid, I don't know what, what I'll dream, what might. . . I don't know.
Scully, I'm afraid."

"Mulder, come here."

She pulled him down and held him closely. He buried his head in her neck.

She rocked him. She began to sing. It was a song that her mother had sung to her when she was very young. She hadn't thought of it in years.

Tell me why the stars do shine,

Tell me why the ivy twines,
Tell me why the sky's so blue,
And I will tell you just why I love you . . .

As she sang, he tensed. He trembled.

He was quietly weeping.

She finished the song.

"Mulder. . ."

"Scully, I can't remember anybody ever singing to me. . . ever, no one."

"Mulder. . ." She shook her head. She gathered him closer.

His tears flowed freely, and with them all the horrors of the last several days.

She cried, too.

They clung tightly to each other, kissed again and again. Hot, wet, salty kisses. Her hair was soaked with his tears and her own.

They cried. For his sister and hers, for mistakes made, and childhoods lost. They cried in fear and in sorrow, they cried for themselves and each other.

They cried because to weep is to feel, which is to live.

Finally they fell asleep, still embracing, clinging. They were all that they had.

The two agents slept, bathed in the moonlight.

That night, neither of them dreamed.

Fin

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