DISCLAIMER: Chris Carter is the god of the X-Files; I am worshipping him by messing with his characters.
SPOILERS: Well, "Requiem." Duh!
Feedback: Yes please!
RATING: PG, sure.
Everything you never said
I hope you don't mind, Mulder, but I've stopped crying. I'm not sure when it happened, exactly, but I shed so many tears, that I think I eventually ran out. Please don't misunderstand, I did cry. For a long time. I practically flooded the hospital room; it was a mixture of pure joy and absolute terror. And once I was home, and I realized what had happened, I cried out of loneliness.
Then I went to the doctor for the first time, and I heard the tiny heartbeat from inside me. I wish you had been there, but I didn't cry for you or for me, or for the baby we had created. The tears weren't going to bring you back, and they certainly wouldn't help the child.
And when I told my mother, she asked me all sorts of questions about our relationship and I realized that I didn't have any answers to give her. "When did this begin?" "Do you love him?" "Does he love you?"
When did it begin? Sometime so long ago that no one knows if it ever didn't exist. I didn't just wake up one morning and decide my life would be completely empty without you. It built up slowly; my life involved fewer people who didn't challenge me the way you did. They just weren't interesting to be around.
Do I love you? An interesting question to pose to a pregnant woman. Yes, I suppose I love you. Even if you never tell me where we're going, or why, or when you abandon me in the middle of nowhere and I'm without my cell phone. But I know, somewhere inside yourself, you respect me for what I make you. And I know that I am important to you.
Do you love me? That is a question I cannot answer, for the same reasons it should be impossible that you love me. And a million more reasons. Like Diana Fowley. When you trusted her over me, I felt like five years of hard work at trying to make you know I was working with you, not against you, came crashing down around me. And then she saved you for me, and I couldn't help but wonder if she wasn't such a bad person after all.
But that still doesn't answer the question of if you love me or not. Maybe I'll never know the answer. Or maybe that's the first thing I'll ask you when I finally find you. I try to dismiss everything we've been to each other and say that no, we were just friends, best friends, but nothing more. And then I think back to the night this child was conceived and I know that only the men who have truly loved me have made love to me that way.
So, yes, Mulder, I will keep searching for you, because you have someone who wants a father in her life very badly. And even if I never have you the way my mother had my father, I will know that you and I created something so beautiful, I know everything you never told me.