Disclaimers: the usual..gotta love CC and 1013...I'm not making any money! - please just let me write!!!

Summary: Post-Req. Scully POV. "Isn't all that we seek or seem, but a dream within a dream?" -Poe

Classification: umm..MSR..the usual stuff :)

Rating: PG-13

Author's Note: I love feedback! Anything will do! (jenna_searcher@yahoo.com)

Spoilers: Requiem

written on July 27, 2000

Nights are Harder

by jenna

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I'm having a terrible nightmare, but I can't realize that it's a nightmare - not yet. He was taken...Mulder is gone. He's being hurt. God...he's being hurt! Stop it! STOP!

"Scully!"

I start awake, gasping for breath and shaking, losing the dream to the darkness around me and the warm body beside me, concerned. He was calling my name, willing me to break from the nightmare and its hold on me. He's scared for me, but he doesn't realize that I'm scared for him.

"Shhh...'sokay...was a dream," he murmurs into my hair, stroking my cheek with his thumb.

I force myself to open my eyes, letting out a breath of relief as I see his face hovering above mine. He's here. He's okay. He's here.

"You okay?" he asks, blinking the sleep from his eyes and sitting up a little in the bed.

I take a shaky breath and force a smile. He knows that I'm not okay. He knows that I still have nightmares about him. About what they did to him. What they did to me. He knows that we'll never be the same. I wonder if it haunts him, too.

"Mulder," I whisper, reaching for him. "When are you coming back?"

He frowns. He hates this conversation as much as I. He moves to the edge of the bed and speaks softly, pleading.

"Please, Scully...don't ask me. Not tonight. I don't want you to be alone..."

But I have to ask, already knowing the answer. Dreading it. It's not the answer I want. The one that I need.

"Mulder!"

My eyes open for the first time. Empty - the room is empty except for me, lying in my bed, the covers having been thrown off onto the floor. I start to cry.

"Shhh..Scully..wake up," he commands gently, brushing an errant lock of red hair from my face.

I look up at him and wonder why I'm crying. He wonders the same, his beautiful eyes questioning.

"What's wrong?" A question.

"I don't know...nothing." Almost an answer.

I hear a noise from down the hall. Something is crying. He looks to me and smiles, something wonderful in his eyes that I cannot place.

"Baby's up. I'll get him."

I can hear his feet padding down the hall towards the source of the noise. It stops and I can just hear a deep voice humming - and I can picture him standing there holding our baby, shifting his weight between his feet like he's dancing in the pale moonlight that bathes them through the window. I want to go and see them, to smile and save the memory in my heart forever, but I can't move. Something is wrong. Terribly wrong. I can't move...

My eyes open - but I know that this time I've actually woken. I can tell by the familiar dull ache in my heart and the way the glaring red digits on the alarm clock tell me that another fitful night has passed without finding Mulder and counters to say that it's too early to start beating yourself up again. I start to ask it when it was that I had stopped before I realize that I must be falling asleep again. I feel Mulder return and put his arms around my waist, laying his hands on my swollen belly, whispering things that I'll never remember in my ear. I know he's not really here. I know that I shouldn't sleep again, that it will only hurt more in the morning. In the daylight I can pretend that I have hope, that I'm strong. Nights are harder because I can't hide from my desperation, from my fear.

I wonder what Mulder is thinking right now. I wonder if he can think. I miss him.

I'm here, Scully.

His arms tighten around me, and I let him pull me into the shadows, into dreams, and I welcome sleep because it is the only place that I have found him.

End