Torn
By RocketMan

=====

Disclaimer: Mulder and Scully belong to Fox, 1013, and CC. No
infringement is intended. This was inspired by the song "Torn" by
Natalie somebody, and the episode "The Red and the Black."

SPOILER FOR "THE RED AND THE BLACK" and REDUX

=====

Dreams were all right, she thought. They weren't the worst thing in the
world. She could handle the dreams.

Dana just couldn't handle Mulder.

He seemed so lost. Just adrift in whatever was going on out there. And
she did not want to follow him to that kind of aimless wandering.

She had nothing better to do that night but sit there and pray that the
nightmares didn't come again and think about Mulder.

Thinking about Mulder was better than dwelling on the dreams.

Mulder was kind of like a little boy who's defended the good name of
Santa Claus his entire life and then was told that Santa didn't even
exist.

Kind of.

And then, he was also like a man in the throes of a mid-life crisis.
Which was to be expected since he was 38 and had nothing to show for his
life except some ratty unsolved files and a partner that would no longer
follow along.

Kind of.

Dana sighed and wished she could follow him, but she really just
couldn't anymore. He had no support and she would not become his
support, his foundation for a Holy War that had neither weapons nor the
Holy Grail.

And yet, she longed to have that kind of abandon, that kind of total
passionate freedom where she could forget that things had to make sense
scientifically and just go with gut feeling.

Of course, she didn't have these desires for long. But long enough.

And one other thing.

He was hurting her.

Sure, she had given such a plausible explanation for not standing beside
him, but it was not really the complete truth. The real matter was that
she reached out her hand to hold onto him and he wasn't there. 

That was more frightening than any nightmare.

She shivered and realized she had to get to bed if she wanted to even
make it the next morning.

She hesitated. Mulder hadn't called yet and he usually did, after things
like this.

The phone sat still and the clock ticked louder at her, admonishing her
for staying up, and she glanced once last time to the window, then
climbed into her bed.

Sleep wasn't far behind and it slid into bed with her and cuddled up
around her.

~~~~

Mulder paced outside the apartment, his mind whirling along at the top
speed it always whirled along at.

He was torn.

The night was so dark and she'd been having the nightmares lately, he
could definitely tell, and he wanted to go see her . . .

But he didn't know his place anymore.

It wasn't right for him to suddenly walk in and see her, it wasn't right
for him to assume that he had that still.

She had said she wouldn't follow him down. She'd been there with him and
back and there again, but this time, he had nothing to pull himself back
up with and so she would wait at the top.

Wait to heave him out of his pitiful depressions and conspiracies and
fear.

Things weren't working out. He had thought everything would come to some
glorious conclusion, after her cancer was gone, but nothing had fallen
into place.

In fact, all the puzzle pieces he thought he'd put together were not
even pieces of the real puzzle.

It was all quite confusing, and all quite crazy, and all quite *moronic*
he saw. Finally. He understood completely why she was staying out of it.
He wished he could stay out of it.

But it seemed forces had decided his fate long ago. He couldn't get out
of it even if he died.

A car's backfire made him jump, startled, backing away into the recess
of the apartment doorway.

It was left slightly open, as if Scully had known he would need her and
was allowing him to come in, at any time.

He slipped into her apartment building and dodged up the stairs, eyes on
the lookout for the security guard.

Silence was keeping watch in her hall and he crept along until he got to
her door.

He wasn't all that surprised to find it unlocked. He did have a key
anyway, but it seemed she knew he wouldn't have used it. This was a sort
of invitation.

He opened the door to darkness again and thought immediately of a
similiar time, hearing Scully come into her darkened apartment and the
sound of her shoes clicking along the floor.

It was odd how small things came back to him as he walked into her
bedroom, knowing exactly where every piece of furniture was from just
that one time he had been there.

The way the window looked out onto a faint light, the way the phone and
answering maching seemed to be old friends. The smell of the last dying
of the day, the aroma of her home mixing with dinner and shampoo and
detergent.

He liked watching her sleeping, the tiny rustle of breath that seemed to
barely keep her alive, and the shrouds of something deeper settling over
her.

In the dark, her face was young and once more the girl that had walked
confidently into his office with the long red brown hair and long bland
skirt.

He saw they had started again. The nightmares. Almost exact replicas of
what he'd heard in the regression therapy.

It made his skin crawl as if ants were taking up residence in his cells.

He sat down next to her bed and simply listend to her moans, her little
gasps of breath, the way she seemed to be whimpering and fighting it off
at the same time.

He was torn.

For her sake, he didn't want to believe they'd come again, that it had
happened. 

Yet for his own sanity, he wanted to believe.

And then came the moment.

Her hand, shooting out across the bed, flailing, grasping, reaching for
someone who usually wasn't there.

This time he was.

He snagged her hand and held tightly, this time not disgusted with the
whole thing, this time willing to beleive for one single second, that
she was going through hell and calling his name.

He held on, she held on, and together they rode out the waves of fear
and hurt and anger and confusion until all that was left was their
hands, locked and sweaty and trembling.

Her eyes opened.

He kind of gasped, kind of howled.

Ragged breathing made it hard to hear but he caught her words. "Mulder."

"I know. I know. I'm here."

It was nonsense words that meant nothing, but to her, they were
cataclysmic, revolutionary.

She curled around his hand and kissed it.

His heart was torn.

But he kissed her back, on the forehead.

Her eyes closed and suddenly, there were right there together, holding
to a promise of friendship and faith.

She was not afraid of nightmares.

She could handle the nightamres.


~~~~
end
adios
RM