Title: Waltzing Down the Fair Weather Highway (5 of ?) Author: phoenix99 --->Please send me feedback. I need it to live! NOTE: sorry to everyone, I forgot to lable the part before this one as (4 of ?) but at the moment it is on ephemeral and it just has the normal title, so if you missed it go there. You can also go to my crapy web page. (address below) **information is contained in the first part** ***read the message at the bottom! X<>X<>X<>X<>X<>X<>X<>X<>X<>X<>X<>X<>X<>X<>X<>X<>X<>X<>X It was raining. The hospital looked dark and sinister on the cloudy back drop. Which seemed rather odd since I saw them as places of healing. Of course 80% of people die in hospitals, so it could go either way. I parked my car in the visitor's parking lot, and walked into the ominous building. It was so dark outside that it looked almost like night time. All the lights were on inside the nearby buildings and offices. A fitting atmosphere. I wasn't as nervous as I thought I would be. A familiar calm had over taken me, and I approached Mulder's room with confidence. At least, that was the allusion. When I reached his room, I knocked gently on the white door. "Yeah" I pushed it open and smiled at seeing Mulder propped up in bed watching 'The Price is Right.' "Watching you're usual quality television shows, Mulder?" "Mmmhmm..." he stopped watching and looked over at me. "I think I've figured out something positive about me being shot in the gut." I tossed my trench coat onto 'my chair' and sat down. "Yeah? What's that?" "Now we'll both have matching scars." I rolled my eyes. He grinning, seemingly pleased at getting the response he was looking for. "So, where were you this morning, I was lonely." I shifted uncomfortably in the chair, and responded, "I had to give a statement on what happened." "What did you tell them." "Exactly what I told you yesterday, basically. I gave them the 'readers digest' version." "And...?" "And they said that they may not continue the investigation due to lack of evidence. They're still going to have the hearing though." Mulder turned off the tv, and focussed his entire attention on me. "I've been thinking a lot about this Scully, and I know something happened in that factory that you're not comfortable about... Don't look so surprised. I've known you for more than six years, and I have a degree in psychology; I can read you like a book...well, most of the time." He smiled, trying to relieve some of the tension that had suddenly laid think in the room. "I think if you just tell me right out, if we can get everything out in the open, then maybe I will be able to understand whatever it is that you're having trouble with." "Wow. Mulder in full psychiatrist mode." "Come on Scully, you left me hangin' yesterday. I've been dying to know what you're going to tell me ever since." I got up from my chair, and started pacing. I was sure it would piss Mulder off after a while, but it helped me concentrate. "Mulder, do you trust me?" "Of course. With my life." "Really? You would trust me with your life?" He looked confused for a moment, then I saw a slight hint of his 'panic face'. Just for a moment, then it was gone. "Scully, what is it that you're not telling me?" I stopped pacing and faced him from the foot of the bed. "Mulder, what I'm about to tell you... well, it's not something I'm totally sure about, and I just..." "No matter what you say, Scully, nothing will change how I see you." I found that strangely humourous, and as I realized the irony of his words, I couldn't help but laugh slightly, bitterly. I knew he was tying to show support, but it just seemed so... "I don't know about that Mulder. What I'm going to tell you... if it is true, it will change everything... maybe forever." He nodded absently, strangely mezmerized by my movements, totally focussed I what I was doing and saying. "I think you should sit down Scully." I silently agreed, and sat in my uncomfortable hospital chair beside his bed. Mulder took my hand in his, I took a deep breath, and started my novel. "During the case with Fellig. You heard about how I went up to talk to him, when I knew that Ritter on his way there to arrest him. Well, I never told anyone what we talked about." I paused, not looking at Mulder anymore, but at our clasped hands. "He told me how he became... how he couldn't die. He showed me the scars on his arms where he had slit his wrists numerous times. He said he had thrown himself off bridges, tried gas, but nothing worked. He told me about how it happened... he was dying of Yellow fever, and there was a nurse at his bedside, holding his hand. He saw death out of the corner of his eye, taking people's souls. When death turned to him, he looked away. But he didn't tell the nurse not to look away. When his fever broke, and he awoke, he saw them carrying her out in a yellow sheet. As he told me this story he was loading his camera. He kept saying things like 'you don't know how lucky you are'. He gave me the impression that I was about to die. I got... nervous, so I handcuffed him to a table. Then I heard someone enter the apartment, Fellig said 'he's here', that death had come. The black sheets around the entrance to the dark room lifted aside. The light from outside blinded me, and I couldn't see who it was. I heard the shot and I felt the bullet tear into my abdomen. Everything started to go fuzzy, and I remember sliding to the floor. The bullet had gone right through Fellig and had hit me. Ritter was there for a moment, then ran out to get help. I remember Fellig holding my hand, and he said..." I paused here, and looked up at Mulder's face. He was looking on with a look of questioning, and barely controlled fear. "He said 'do you see him?'... and ...Mulder, I saw him. I saw death..." I was going to lose it. I needed to regain control. I felt myself beginning to tremble. Mulder squeezed my hand gently, and I attempted to continue. "He told me to look away, to not look at death. So, I closed my eyes. I didn't look. I came-to shortly after. The paramedics were arriving and I heard them pronounce Fellig dead. After the incident, I brushed it off. I contributed my amazingly fast recovery to good health. Besides, I didn't believe in that kind of thing. Immortality in a scientific improbability... " I had been staring at our hands again, not having the courage to look Mulder in the face. But I needed to see his reaction to what I was about to say, so I lifted my eyes and we locked gazes. "At that factory, when you were dying, Mulder, there was so much blood, I couldn't stop it. All I could do was hold you, Diana was holding your hand. Then... I don't know why I said it, but I asked you if you saw him, if you saw death. I remember you letting out this terrible choking noise... and I told you not to look and you closed your eyes and looked away, and I closed my eyes and looked away, but I didn't tell Diana to look away. Then all of a sudden she just starts screaming, and I look up and she's in so much agony and I don't know why. I'm so afraid. All I can do is hold you. Then she is silent, and the paramedics arrive and they rush you away." Mulder is gaping at me, but I'm not finished so I continue. "When I found out Diana had been pronounced dead, it just didn't make sense. Skinner said that the autopsy had shown nothing out of the ordinary. She was in perfect health when she died. So, despite being told not to go near the evidence, I went to the morgue, switched bodies so no one would know who I was autopsying. I didn't find anything. Which is good in a sense, because they can't blame me for her death if they don't know the cause. But in another way... I just.. I don't know, Mulder." Mulder was silent for a moment. I realised my face was wet with tears. Mulder looked down at our hands then back up at my face. He was crying too. A single tear. It ran down his cheek and dripped off his chin, onto his blue hospital robe. "It wasn't her time Mulder.. even though I despised her and she was never truthful... I believe the reason you're alive is because she was taken instead..." He cleared his throut and spoke."I remember you saying some of those words to me Scully... but I thought your intentions were for me to not see Diana's death..." "Mulder...I" "Why didn't you tell me?" It was barely above a whisper when he said it. At first I wasn't sure he had said anything. My senses numb from the emotional strain I was under. "What?" "Scully, why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you tell me about what happened during the Fellig case? I don't understand why you would keep something like that from me..." "Mulder, I..." "No Scully. I don't blame you for what happened in the factory, I would have done the same thing. I don't know if that means that we're immortal now, and I don't feel like sliting my wrists to find out. What I can't understand is why you wouldn't talk to me about something like this..." "Because we don't talk Mulder! We never talk." I was practically yelling at him now. It was not the way I had wanted this conversation to go, but I felt that Mulder was being an ass. More than usual. "We've been working for more than six years together, and we have never really talked. Mulder, WE. DON'T. TALK. And Dammit, don't you tell me that I keep things from you, because you always keep things from me. I'm sure you've got a bunch of little secrets packed away that you're saving for a rainy day..." Mulder's face suddenly went white as a sheet, and I stopped in the middle of ranting because I was sure he would pass out. I was in a similiar state; shaking and upset, I needed out. I couldn't even ask him what his problem was.. I just needed to leave. "Mulder...I think we both need some time. I'll get your doctor." He didn't answer, so I left his room. It was still raining when I got outside. And I was crying. X<>X<>X<>X<>X<>X<>X<>X<>X<>X<>X<>X<>X<>X<>X<>X<>X<>X<>X to be continued... ***HEY! If you have any good ideas about how this story should end, or you want it to end a certain way, email me with your ideas, and I'll see if I can use them.