Bound by Faith
Fandom: X-Files
MSR, angst
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: None
Summary: What is the cost of memory?


Disclaimer: The characters and situations of the X-Files are
the property of Ten-Thirteen Productions and Fox Broadcasting.
No infringement is intended.

My deep thanks to Meredith and KL for their editing and
insight.




Tonight I feel you close again.

It is a visceral awareness, like hunger, or pain, or sorrow.

You are everywhere and nowhere. Where are you?

You are nowhere. You are lost out there in the storm that
shakes my windows. Lost in the storm of your own making.

You know how long you have been gone.

At first, I didn't understand how you could leave. I could feel
nothing but the empty, wretched void of your absence.

Finally I decided that it was a deliberate choice for you.
That you left because you chose the path, not because you were
forced to take it, or because random winds blew you off-
course. I cling to that hope. I have to believe that you
made the choice to go, because otherwise you are somewhere in
danger, or in pain, and I am doing nothing, and that would be
unforgivable.

I can only guess that you were offered something that looked
like your heart's desire and you willingly stepped over an
edge to claim it. I think you miscalculated how far a drop it
was to the bottom and how long it would take you to climb back
out.

But you made this choice to go, and I believe that you are
still alive. I can feel you. Will you believe me when I tell
you that I can feel you? Will you accept this belief from your
skeptic? Do you feel me, too?

And now I think you are journeying home. That you are out
there, struggling through another storm to reach me. Do you
imagine that I will be here waiting for you? Do you hope it?
Do you fear it?

I also know that you are alive, and in some way enduring,
because of Skinner. Skinner who came to me all those months
ago, and asked me if I wanted to write you a letter.

It is ironic that now words are our bridge -- our connection.
That after that almost wordless night...

But then, I do not hear back from you. Only, every once in a
while Skinner will call and suggest that it is time to write
again. What do you do with these letters, Mulder? I have to
think that you are asking for them somehow. But you never
contact me. Are you ever surprised that I do write to you? Do
you ever wonder why? I know I do. But still I write.

I will give this letter to him, as I have all the others.
Skinner, who has become our unlikely and unlooked-for
intermediary. You always trusted him, didn't you? On some
weird, intuitive level, you knew he was our ally. I could
never put all my weight down around him. Something about him
seemed unsettling -- I mistook it for untrustworthiness.

He still intimidates me, unbalances me in a way that I can't
explain -- in a way that is dangerous to examine too closely.
I think he represents a safety and security that could seduce
me. Could seduce me were I not already lost, already promised.

There is no small irony in the fact that in the final analysis
it is you who trusts, and it is me who believes. You have
placed your trust in Skinner and, I think, in my belief in
you. Do you ever question that decision? Do you ever wake --
shaken and shaking in the cold nights of wherever you are --
wondering if I do believe? In you? In us?

You must know that I do. Believe. Why else do I stay? Why
else do I write?

Skinner will accept this letter with that wordless, grave nod
of his, and watch me for a long minute with those haunted
eyes. I know that he knows more than he will ever say or tell
me. I think, sometimes, that he is trying to say something
important to me with those looks, but I am too tired to learn
a new language. I had only learned to read you.

Eventually I will tire of my tiredness and spark back to life
and fight Skinner for every scrap of information he possesses.
And then I will journey to the edges of the earth to find you.
To find you and decide what to do with you. But not now.

Not tonight. Not when the wind is blowing and the rain
falling. Not when I am sitting here, pen in hand, listening to
leaves rattling against my window. Watching the candle flame.
No, not tonight. Tonight is only for memory.

I find myself, in this moment, gripped by an unshakable
melancholy.

I miss you, Mulder.

Such a simple declaration for something that is anything but
simple.

The remembrances of our years together are a rich, jumbled
kaleidoscope of images -- shifting and refracting in the
ambiguous light of memory. There are so many moments to
choose from. So many individual instances I might try to
capture and hold up to the cold light of reason and analysis
to try to determine how I came to this place.

How we came to be here.

Do you do this, too? Do you sit in some lonely room, turning
memories over and over in your restless mind -- examining them
for nuances and hidden meaning that might explain our past;
might reveal our future?

I see you in my mind's eye doing this. I feel you in my
heart. You are with me. Always, beneath the surface of my
thoughts, I think of you, but tonight there is only one memory
that possesses me. Tonight I will travel pathways I have long
denied myself the journeying of.


I should have known.

You showed up at my apartment that night and even the elements
conspired with you to create exactly the right setting.

It was a summer Saturday night. I had been restless all day -
- bored, itchy, irritable -- pacing the confines of my air
conditioned apartment. Caught up for once on my housework and
my reading and my email, I found myself wandering from room to
room, picking up the small objects on the various shelves and
ledges of my apartment, staring at them as though they had
been placed there by a foreign and unseen hand. I was
examining them for meaning -- trying desperately to remember
who I was, and how I used to spend my free time.

A storm blew in suddenly, as they will in that season. First
the air, even indoors, grew ominous and heavy, and then the
rain began its insistent, inescapable tattoo on my windows,
and finally the lightning and thunder arrived.

I love the violent intensity of our summer storms. The sheer
drama of them. Always, secretly, I long to run out of my
apartment and stand in the rain, daring the lightning,
laughing at the powers of nature. I never do.

That night I was drawn to my window to watch the water
sheeting down and the play of the lightening, and I was
abruptly plunged into darkness as my building lost power. The
crack of thunder that shook the windowpane in front of me was
followed by an unfamiliar quiet as I realized that my air
conditioner and radio and refrigerator had all been silenced.

I waited to see if the power would return momentarily, as it
often does. It did not.

I lit a candle.

Finally, the apartment began to feel airless and oppressive,
so I opened the windows. As I did so, I saw a lone figure
struggling through the storm toward my building. A lunatic
out daring the world to do its worst.

It was you, of course.

You found me standing in my open doorway when you arrived.

You were sleek and silver from the water that soaked you and
coursed over your clothes and hair and skin. You were
scarcely real. And then I met your eyes and lost myself.

Green. The green of fields that provide life-sustaining wheat and corn.
Green. The green of oceans that we sail in adventure and war.
Green. The green of emeralds that are treasured beyond diamonds.

And then there were your eyes that night -- every color of
green, and I could see nothing but them, and my own trapped
and drowning reflection in their depths.

Your undertow caught me and tumbled me rough and breathless
and I was suddenly in your arms, and your lips and hands stole
all my breath and all my reason.

You were almost laughing as you broke our hungry, needy,
desperate kiss. You asked if you could come in. You did not
simply mean could you cross my threshold.

I said yes anyway.

I ache when I remember that one night. That endless night
that lasted but an instant. I knew, oh, I knew that I would
have only that one night and so I memorized every second of
it. Seared it into my brain, one motion and gesture at a
time. Each moment captured, so that the seamless whole would
be forever a part of my memory, looping endlessly through the
whorls and folds of my mind.

But I allow myself to remember only in lightning-lit flashes.
Small moments at a time.

The sandpaper silk of your jawline as my fingers traced it for
the first time.

The sound that broke from me as your fingers dragged the
material of my shirt away from my shoulder and your mouth
branded my collarbone.

The hiss of your indrawn breath when you finally saw my tattoo.

The heat of your hard length in my fingers, pulse thundering
beneath my touch.

The cries that tore from our throats....

Enough. You are the one with the eidetic memory. You know
each of these moments as well as I. Do you relive them as
well? I have yet to decide what my memories mean. Do you
know your heart?

What I remember most about that night is how few words there
were. We said so little, which now seems strange when I
realize both our worlds changed in those hours. Before that
night we could each have walked away from the other. The
parting would have been painful, and the recovery long-term,
but we could have parted.

No more. Now half of my soul is wandering the world without
me, and I am left holding half of yours. I know you will
return, but tonight -- now -- I do not know how much longer I
can wait. But I wait. Neither of us has a choice left to
make.

You will return because we are irrevocably bound now. We are
bound by faith. Each of us to the quest, and each to the
other. We are bound by faith and passion and something that
is too dark and difficult to name. We are not creatures of
light, Mulder. But our night holds promises that others will
never understand.

It was at night when we opened ourselves to each other and
shut out the rest of the world. I think it will be night when
you return to me.

We finally found our way to my bedroom, hours later. And
eventually, just before dawn, we slept.

You were thinking of leaving without waking me. I have always
been a light sleeper, and I was aware of you leaving my bed,
finding your clothes, getting dressed. But you wanted me not
to wake, and so I lay quietly, keeping my breathing deep and
regular while the acid of your betrayal burned through my gut.

And then you came back into my room. I felt the mattress dip
as you sat. Was surprised by the gentle touch of your hand on
my shoulder that didn't pull away, even as I rolled toward you
and opened my eyes.

Your face told me everything I needed to know.

You said only my name. "Scully." You didn't ask forgiveness
and you didn't say goodbye. But you woke me before you left.
And I heard the tone in your voice, and my eyes made their own
promises. That is why I will wait for you.

Do not make me wait long.

END