Disclaimer: Don't own 'em!
A/N: Just a little something I had playing around my head and couldn't leave alone. Very short and hopefully sweet!
She remembers the first time she said she loved him. He had looked at her like she had horns.
But it had felt like the right moment and so she had stared him down, daring him to say anything joke-y or smart. He had acquiesced and just watched her, maybe partly realising that anything he said in that moment would take away the sentiment, her sentiment.
It wasn't the first time she had thought about saying it but each time she made the move, each time her mouth made to form the words, she had frozen, not quite willing to give that last bit of herself over to him. She had wanted to give him her heart, had almost parted with most of it, but there was that last thread that she was unwilling to give over.
And she knew why, understood her own hesitance. She was relatively sure that he didn't understand though; he was more than willing to say those three little otherwise inconsequential words. But he never asked why, choosing instead to look at her out of the corner of his eye when he said 'I love you', questioning but refusing to ask aloud.
Put simply, she was scared. Terrified, truly. Saying those three words meant giving up her last little bit of strength that she held on her own, that kept her standing when Mulder wasn't standing at her side. It meant giving up that last little streak of independence that had often led strangers to call her stubborn. And she didn't want to give that last bit of herself over until she was sure, definitely and infinitely sure, that he was never going to leave her side; that she was never going to wake up with a cold pillow lying beside her, the ghost of him leaving an indent in the mattress.
***
She remembers the first time she said she loved him. He had looked at her like she had horns. And then he had smiled, his head cocking to the side, looking deeper into her soul than anyone had ever been allowed, and she had realised that she should have said those three words earlier because she suddenly realised that it was no longer her own independence or strength that was keeping her standing tall but this man and his love for her. More than that, she realised that if he was ever to leave, if she was ever to be left alone without him, his love would remain, keeping her strong because it was interminable, beyond any worldly understanding.
It was the first time that she had said she loved him but she had realised that it was far from being the last.