I CARRY YOUR HEART
by: Jennifer Maurer

"i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;
which grows higher
than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's
keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)"
 --e.e. cummings
 

Bastard.

I'm going to kill him when he wakes up.

He's pulled some stupid stunts in his time but this has got to top everything.

I've never been more frightened for him.  Or of him, for that matter.  Modell I could overcome.  I had only to look at Mulder, and he kept struggling.  This time, he looked me straight in the eye.  He saw me standing there.  He fired anyway.

After Mulder came home from Russia I foolishly let myself believe that his days of ditching me were over.  I went to jail for him.  Perhaps I hoped that would inspire a little loyalty in him.

If not that, then perhaps the cancer would have kept him close by.  Oh, I would never ask.  Not me.  I would never use my condition to manipulate him that way.  Still, a secret part of my heart harbored the wish.  Maybe now, I thought, he will stay.

That's not really fair.  Mulder *is* very loyal to me.  He has stood by me during my battle against this disease.  He is my hope.  I have not forgotten that he was the only person who believed I would wake from my coma.  I could never forget.  Even my mother had bought me a tombstone.  But Mulder wanted me back, and by God he got me.

If he only knew how he has me.

I can't stay angry at him.  I never can.  For all his toughness Mulder is actually very fragile.  He hovers over me, guiding me through doorways and keeping a vigilant watch against further abductions.  It should be the other way around.  His hospital admission record tops mine, easy.  I've sat by his bedside more times than I care to count.

I wonder exactly how many hours I have spent sitting in uncomfortable hospital chairs like this one, inwardly seething with rage at my erstwhile partner.  Raging at myself for not being fast enough, smart enough, to catch him before he hurt himself again.  The helplessness---I hate it.  I have even hated him for leaving me, ignoring my advice.  Don't get on that train, I begged him.  They know who you are.  When the line cut off I saw red.  He'd dropped his phone, he told me much later.  I was standing there with his secret informant, for God's sake, and still he blew me off and jumped.

Arrogant bastard.  If he ever listens to me I'll probably die of shock.

I think the one that hurt the most was when he ran off with Jeremiah Smith.  Okay, granted, he thought that other...thing was dead, but still.  I watched the boat roar away, futilely screaming his name.  I sat in that car all night, alternating between blinking back tears and shaking with rage.  Again, I had come in second to the truth.  I was left behind to clean up the mess, not worthy to join the quest.  A lowly page to his knight in shining armor.

It started so early on.  The first few times didn't bother me as much.  Mulder still didn't trust me completely, and maybe I was a little more uptight than I am now.  "The Last Detail, starring Dana Scully," he'd teased as we walked into his trashed hotel room.  The surprise of the upheaval cut me off from making a rude remark that time.  Other times I had something chastising to say.  Usually an arch of the eyebrow would do it.   Never stopped him from going the next time, mind you.  He feels bad when he gets back, though.  Poor Scully, I'm so sorry.  But I had to go...

Sometimes I see him working at his desk and my mind suddenly jumps back to the time he left me that note on his computer.  Because he *knew* I would come running over to his apartment like a good partner, trying to track him down.  He couldn't *allow* me to risk my life and career for him.  Didn't he know that by that point I'd already done it a thousand times over, with little complaint?  Did he think I was kidding when I told him on the stakeout that he's the only one I'd put myself on the line for?

No, he drew the line.  I crossed it anyway.  I always do.

For someone with a photographic memory, Mulder's recall of such things is alarmingly shaky at times.  Perhaps because he chooses to be.  He just...doesn't...get it.  He is so brilliant and yet so blind.

I think he wonders why I stay.  Why I keep following him despite the discouragement.  Why I fight so hard to find him when he leaves.  I think he *wants* me to chase him, save him, although he'd rather die than admit it.

And how many times *has* he almost died?

I jump every time he twitches, wondering if he's going to have another seizure.  He has had a few since I dragged him in here.  Kicking and screaming all the way, typical Mulder.  I let him fall once, didn't try very hard to catch him, as we walked into the emergency room.  Let him hit the tile floor with a thud and let the nurses pick him up.  I was so angry.  I wanted to wash my hands of him.  I cannot, of course, but it was a relief to have someone else take care of him for awhile.

Once again, I am the one who sits here, keeping the vigil.  Keeping the faith.  He has no family to comfort him anymore, not after the final break with his mother.  Someone has to be here.  I am the logical choice.

For a number of reasons.  Some of which hurt too much to think about right now.

Not that I blame Mulder for pulling a gun on me.  Just like the other times, he was out of his mind.  Not himself.  Under the influence of someone's mind games.  Out of control.  Oddly, the most comforting thought I can muster is that at least I can still count the occasions on one hand.  I would be more hurt were it not for the memory of my own temporary insanity.  The naked pain on Mulder's face when I pointed *my* gun at *him*.

That is one of the debts I repay by sitting here with him.  The other, of course, is his own vigil by *my* bedside years ago.  Most people would say I have long since evened that score, even gone beyond it.  They don't know.  Not even Mulder knows, not completely.  I was dying, I was ready to leave this life and never come back.  Mulder was the anchor.  Mulder brought me back.  He said he didn't know if it would make a difference.  He had no idea, still doesn't.  I didn't wake up until after he'd left.  I almost told him, once.  On that ship in Norway.  I didn't want him to be afraid.  I could only reassure him, I could not explain it.  Not all of it.  Sometimes I still don't understand it myself.

People call me Mrs. Spooky.  Other FBI agents mock me behind my back for chasing ghosts with Mulder.  My mother has her suspicions, I think, but she has never come right out and asked, so I've never told.  It is not so much the truth I chase, although that is important to me.  Sometimes I despair of ever finding justice, but Mulder keeps me going.  I chase him, yes.  I'm his shadow and his partner and his best friend.  I am the one woman who has not left him.  Who will not leave.  Just as he is the one man who has never left me.  Despite fantastic odds we always return to each other.  Coming back from the dead, thwarting plots to divide and conquer.

Together we are a circle, like the tattoo on my back.  Head or tail, it makes no difference.  We mesh together, a perfect blend of science and magic. We speak volumes with a glance, a raised eyebrow, a tilt of the head.

We have given pieces of ourselves to each other over the years.  I started, by baring my body to him on our very first case.  He repaid by telling me about his sister, and it continues from there.  A different touch, a new secret, a bit of trivia from the other's life.  They build a bridge between our worlds.  Pieces of my life fit into the holes in his.  The reverse is also true.

We always manage to find each other.  We stay together no matter what.  It is not only Mulder that I chase.  It is not by luck that I manage to find him.  The pieces of me in his heart call to me, like a homing device, leading me back to myself.  Just as he gave up revenge to sit by my side, hearing his own truth call him from inside of me.

This is a burden I never asked for, but I cherish it nonetheless for that.  He may not be aware that I even carry it, just as he would be surprised to learn how much of me he carries around.  We have never admitted it, of course.  For all our intimacy there are some lines we still have not crossed.

Sometimes, when we work together, seamlessly, the burden is nothing at all.  Indeed, it lightens me, to have such a connection with him.  I never cease to be amazed by it.  I exult when we use it to solve a case.  We look, we know, we run.  With fluid motion, we move around the corners soundlessly, finding and catching.  We become a perfect machine, he and I.  The crushing weight of all the evil eases and I can breathe again with him.

There is, of course, a flip side to our strange union.  Although never as bad as after Melissa died, the rifts do still appear.  We have always disagreed, a simple debate no longer has the power to alienate us.  Now the root goes deeper.  Resentments never voiced, always felt.  I want my life back and balk at his authority.  He breaches my limits and then sulks when my silence is his only reward.  We jab in the most sensitive areas in order to voice our own views.

Not everything in Mulder's life goes back to his sister's abduction.  Not everything is my life leads me safely back to science.  An increasing number of things lead us right to each other.  My most familiar haven.  The safest and most dangerous place for me to be.

I wouldn't have it any other way, yet sometimes my heart aches when the pieces of him rattle around inside.  Sharp edges catch me unaware.  The pain is like a fist clenching.  I wonder how many more times I can do this.  To leave him is unthinkable.  My greatest fear is that one day I simply won't be able to catch him.  His never ending passion will outrun my waning strength.  The cancer belongs to both of us but I carry the majority of the weight.  That along with Mulder is a heavy combination.

Perhaps I know these things now because I am more aware of our bond than ever before.  My impending death makes me look at every small thing as if it's the center of the universe.  Ordinary, everyday things are indescribably precious to me now, Mulder most of all.

But he is heavy, so heavy.  Sometimes he slips in my grasp.  The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.  Someday, too soon for us both, all the determination in the world won't be able to help us.  I will crumble and his heart along with me, the pieces tumbling into my abyss.  All that will remain will be a broken man, clinging desperately to the shreds of my soul he has claimed for his own.  It is all that I can leave him.  I pray it will be enough to carry him through.

Until that time, I wait by him, as I always do.  I watch over him until he returns to me.  I have lost so much but I still hang on.  I clasp his hand, my fingertips pressing against the pulse in his wrist that matches my own.
 

End

Feed my ego, it's hungry. [jenbird72 at verizon dot net]

Go to the sequel Away Ever So Quietly