AN: I had to write this after I watched "One Breath" (and several other episodes), for the first time, last night. I blame chakochic (whom I adore) for cheering on my ongoing making of a list of little fics I want to write for Mulder and Scully.

I own nothing from The X-Files, if that needs to be said.

If you decide to read, I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!

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Fox Mulder felt like he was being pulled down into a darkness that was unlike anything he'd experienced in a long time—if he'd ever experienced this kind of darkness, exactly.

When they'd lost Samantha, Mulder had felt a certain darkness closing in around him. He'd used that feeling to drive him forward in a search for truth. That search had led him to see and experience things that most people would never experience, and few would ever even believe. Losing Samantha had been difficult, and it had always felt like weight a hanging around Mulder's neck. When nights were a little long, and the world was impossible to understand, he could sometimes feel the weight of Samantha's loss—and the fact that she'd never been recovered—dragging him down toward a certain darkness.

That darkness, Mulder knew, was something inside him. Maybe it was something inside everyone. It was a place where, he was sure, he would lose himself forever if he ever sank down into it.

The weight that was pulling him down toward the darkness, now, was a different weight entirely. It was heavier, even, than the weight of Samantha—and it had clawed at him, dragging him down, in an entirely unexpected way.

Mulder knew that he cared for Dana Scully, but he was only just now beginning to understand that he truly loved her. And now, it seemed, he was destined to lose her just as he realized the truth about his feelings.

Mulder didn't know who, exactly, had taken Scully, though he had some weakly confirmed suspicions. He didn't know what they'd done to her, either. He really didn't even know why—except for the fact that it was probably owing to their desire to stop him from finding out the truth.

He wasn't even sure, at the moment, that he was capable of even imagining what the truth might be. He wasn't even sure, in his current condition, that he cared.

All he cared about was the fact that he was losing Scully—and he'd only just gotten her back.

Whoever had taken her, and wherever they'd taken her, they'd returned her just when everyone had lost hope that she'd ever been seen again—everyone except Mulder. He was foolish, perhaps, but he had hope. Even Scully would have teased him, in her way, for holding out hope for so long, but that's who he was. He hated to give up on something. It was easier to believe, after all, that everything would come to light, than it was to believe that it would be forever shrouded in darkness.

From the darkness where he was sinking now, Mulder was beginning to sense the light fading, and he was beginning to doubt its return.

He'd seen the cold marble of her tombstone. He'd heard her mother—Margaret Scully—declare that it was time. They had to let her go. They had to accept that she was gone. Mulder couldn't accept that, though, even if Margaret could. He'd looked at the cold marble headstone that declared Scully gone—truly gone—and he'd rejected it deep in his heart. He'd held onto hope. And his hope, it seemed, had been honored in some way. Scully had been returned. She was in very poor condition, but she was alive. She would have a long road of recovery ahead of her, perhaps, but there was light at the end of the tunnel.

Except, now, it felt like that the small flame of hope that had shone that light on things had been doused.

Mulder had never felt so hopeless. He'd never felt the weight pulling down quite so hard. He'd never felt so surrounded by the darkness. It was only suiting that he sat, in his apartment, with all the lights off, and thought about what Melissa Scully—Scully's sister—had said.

Mulder rubbed his thumb over the cross that he worked between his fingers. He wasn't religious. The cross wasn't his. It was Scully's cross, and he'd been carrying it around since the day he'd found it after her kidnapping. In touching the cross, he thought he found some of the comfort that believers often found in such symbols of their faith, but it was for an entirely different reason than that of the believers. For Mulder, touching the cross was the only way to feel that Scully was near him.

He'd been outnumbered. Ironically, even Scully, herself, had been against him—though she hadn't been aware of such a thing.

Her living will declared she didn't want to live like a vegetable. Margaret and Melissa had decided that there was no reason not to honor that will. They had to let her go, they said. It was time, they said. She wouldn't want to live as she was.

It seemed that Mulder was the only who believed that she couldn't have been returned to them for her to simply slip away like this. He wanted to hold on. He wanted to continue to hope—maybe even beyond hope—that she would be returned to them, whole again. He wanted her to be returned to him. Since the respirator had been undone, the weight around his neck had gotten heavier and he'd slipped deeper down into the darkness. The doctors gave them no real hope. Her family seemed to have lost all of their hope. With each breath that she drew on her own, she weakened and slipped further away—and Mulder slipped further down into the darkness.

He was waiting to take revenge on those that had done this to her. He was waiting to kill them. It wouldn't bring her back, and it wouldn't pull him up from the darkness, but at least there would be some hint of justice in the world.

No amount of murder, really, could make a world without Scully seem like a just place, though. And it frightened Mulder to even admit, to himself, that he felt that way.

Melissa had come to tell him that Scully was weakening. She was tired. She was slipping away. She'd come to tell Mulder that Scully would want him there, and that she believed that Mulder would want to be there. Melissa had come to tell him it was time to say goodbye—and he'd regret it if he let Scully slip away without ever saying, to her, everything he had to say.

Mulder wondered if Melissa's so-called psychic abilities allowed her to see the depths of his feelings for Scully. He wondered, if she truly had the abilities she claimed to have, if she could see things that he had only just discovered for himself. He wondered if Melissa knew how desperately he loved her sister.

Part of him wanted to remain in the dark apartment to kill those responsible for what had happened to Scully—to kill those who had taken her away from him. That same part of him, perhaps, was afraid to hold her hand while she left the world—it was afraid of the moment when the world was without her entirely, and the darkness swallowed Mulder completely. The other part of him, though, knew that he had to say goodbye. He had to say everything he'd been thinking of saying since he'd first heard that terrible phone message that had been the beginning of the end.

Mulder knew what he needed to do. He pocketed the delicate cross and, stepping out into the darkness of the night, he headed for the hospital.

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Her hand, in his, was soft and her muscles were relaxed. If he tried hard enough, he could simply believe that she was sleeping. If he ignored the beeping machines and the readouts that told him she was slowly slipping away, he could believe that shaking her, or speaking too loudly near her ear, would rouse her from this slumber and bring her back.

Margaret was gone. Melissa had left. They'd said what they needed to say, for now, and they were giving him space and time to say what he needed to say.

They had accepted that Scully was gone. All that remained of her, in their minds, was a shell that would soon give up any semblance of life.

Mulder couldn't accept it. He'd determined that he would wait there, as long as he could. He didn't know, though, if he could even accept the loss of Scully when he heard the machines go silent and heard the final declaration that she was gone—at least in corporeal form.

He rubbed her hand in his.

"I don't know if—me being here is going to change anything Scully," Mulder said. "I don't know if you can even hear me. Melissa—she thought you might want me here. She thought you might want me to come and say goodbye. I think—she wanted me to tell you the same thing that she's been saying. The same thing your mother probably told you. I think they want me to tell you that—it's OK to let go now. It's OK to leave and go wherever it is that we go, Scully." He squeezed her hand in his and he actively willed himself not to listen to or look at the machines that marked the weakening of her body and the slow slipping away of her spirit. "I don't believe you want that. I don't believe that—you held on, as long as you did and through everything you probably lived through just to come back here and die like this. I don't believe it. If you have to go or—you want to go? I can't stop you, Scully, but I don't want you to go. I want you to stay. I want you to come back." Mulder moved closer to the bed. He was as close he could get without arousing any kind of concern from the hospital staff. He leaned close to her. He felt her hand in his. He regretted that he'd never held her hand—really held her hand—just to hold it, before all of this. "I don't know if you can hear me, but I want to believe you can." He laughed to himself. She would understand. "I need to believe you can. Whatever you need, Scully. Whatever you want? We'll make it happen. I'll make it happen. I'll give you—whatever it is that you need to live for. I promise. But I need you to come back. For me or for whatever it is that'll motivate you to come back. I didn't tell you. Maybe I didn't—I don't think I knew. Not until you were gone, Scully…but, I love you. So—I need you to come back. I need you to stay."

Mulder's chest ached, as did his stomach, he watched the machines. He didn't know what he hoped for, exactly. A miracle of some sort?

There was no change. The machines continued to register the same weak readings that they had for the past while. Mulder's gut churned with the feeling of hopelessness, and his chest tightened with the feeling of impending doom. He felt himself slipping further down—deeper into the darkness. For now, she was there, but how long would she stay?

He couldn't imagine being there to witness as Scully left the world and all the light was sucked out of it, but he couldn't imagine leaving her, either, until he knew for sure that she was gone. The only way he would believe it—the only way he could believe it—was if he were there to witness such a devastating loss.

Time crawled on. Maybe it raced. Mulder lost all track of time. The only thing that told him time was passing was that his eyes started to grow blurry and gritty like he'd had sand blown into them. The nursing staff started to change. He jumped when the nurse appeared and raked back the curtain from what little bit of privacy had been offered to him and Scully.

"Visiting hours are over, Mr. Mulder," she said. "Someone should have asked you to leave hours ago."

"Please," Mulder said. It was all that he could say. He couldn't find any more words to beg for his right to be there. Really, he had no right to be there. He had no right to hold vigil by Scully's bed as she let go of life. He wasn't family, and he'd only just now declared his love for her. Maybe Scully, herself, didn't even know he loved her. He had no right to be there, but he knew he couldn't leave. "Please," he said again, finding that it was the only word he had for anyone.

Please let him stay. Please let the machines stop marking an ever-weakening register of vital signs. Please let her come back. Please don't make him leave her—and don't let her leave him.

Maybe the nurse heard everything he didn't say. She looked at Scully. She remembered why she was there, what the outlook for her condition was, and what they were waiting on. She knew that Melissa and Margaret had said goodbye. She knew that Mulder wasn't disturbing Scully's rest. The night nurse nodded.

"Would you like some coffee?" She asked.

"Please," Mulder said, almost laughing to himself. She walked away and returned, soon, with a Styrofoam cup of coffee. As he sipped it, Mulder thought about how Scully could, sometimes, be a bit of a coffee critic. She would have hated this coffee. She would have said that it tasted like it was made with dirty water and like the grounds had been used at least a dozen times. It was hot, and it offered some false promise of energy and the ability to go on.

Mulder had the ability to go on, even if Scully didn't, but he wasn't sure he had the desire. Not even the coffee—black as it was from the heavy hand of whoever had shoveled out the coffee grounds—had anything on the darkness that seemed to be boiling inside of Mulder, threatening to swallow him up the moment that the machines let out their final howl before they fell forever silent.

Mulder sucked down the Styrofoam cup of coffee at a speed that burned the inside of his mouth. It was a speed more appropriate to hard liquor than coffee. Tossing the cup aside, in a small trash can, and continuing to work Scully's hand in his, Mulder took out the cross and held it in his free hand. He rubbed it, musing that he would have worn the gold off, by now, if it were plated instead of solid.

"Please," he mused to himself, this time meaning it for anyone or anything that was listening. He meant it for anyone or anything that could grant his greatest request.

When he closed his stinging eyes, blocking out the light around him, he only meant to rest them for a moment, but he accidentally slipped into a much more profound darkness.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Mulder, you're going to have to move."

Mulder didn't so much move out of the way as he found himself being moved. His chair was relocated—practically sliding across the room. His body reacted to the rude awakening by upping the rate of his heart and respiration. He was suddenly blinded by a bright light, and there were noises all around him. He expected the howls of machines declaring that Scully was leaving, but that wasn't what he heard. Mulder got to his feet as soon as his eyes adjusted to the light that had been turned on to give doctors and nurses more ability to see what they were doing.

From the outside, he looked on helplessly—the way he'd felt through this whole ordeal—and watched, in mild panic, to see what might happen.

A whole team of them were around Scully's body for what seemed like a lifetime. In reality, though, they were likely only there for a matter of moments. Slowly, they dispersed. They would tell him very little. He was welcomed there by the family, but he wasn't family. All information he got had to be filtered through Margaret and Melissa or, at the very least, shared in their presence.

He heard one doctor declaring that a nurse should phone the family immediately. The other nurse—the one who had given him coffee—was the last to linger at Scully's bedside. She was the first, too, to seek out Mulder with a smile.

"It's OK," she said. "You can talk to her. Sit with her. It might make her feel more secure. She should rest. Her family will be here soon."

And with nothing more, she rushed away, the same as the others had.

When he saw her blue eyes searching him out, Mulder felt nearly slammed backward as all the light rushed back inside of him, even as it dimmed overhead. He stepped forward quickly. He was suddenly aware that the dainty gold cross was still in his hand, and the chain was wrapped around his fingers. He slipped it in his pocket, determined to give it back to Scully as soon as they would allow her such things, and he stepped forward to catch her hand in his.

He stood over her, and he didn't try to hold back his smile in any way. In return, she gave him a weak smile.

"Mulder," she mused.

"Good to have you back, Scully," he offered. "I don't know—what happened, but…it's good to have you back."

"I don't remember much," she said, her voice remarkably strong, given what she'd been through, but still showing indications that she had a long road ahead of her.

"It doesn't matter," Mulder said. There was another hint of a smile at her lips.

"That doesn't sound like you," Scully offered.

"A lot's changed," Mulder offered. "It doesn't matter what happened, Scully. It only matters that you're here."

She licked her lips and Mulder wished he had water to offer her and the authorization to offer her water.

"I had a dream," Scully said. "About you."

Mulder let go of her only long enough to pull his chair over. He was determined not to leave her side, especially now. He didn't know if his presence had anything to do with her return to the land of the living, but he wasn't willing to take the chance of stepping away again.

"Yeah?" He asked, sitting next to her and taking her hand again. He saw her eyes trail to where he was holding her hand, but she didn't pull back. She didn't try to break the hold. In fact, she turned her hand to take his. "What about?"

She smiled faintly to herself. She swallowed it down, though, and erased it from her lips as she was so good at doing.

"I was—walking away," Scully said. "And I heard you. Behind me. You told me you wanted me to stay. Mulder, you told me you loved me."

Mulder's heart thundered wildly in his chest. His stomach rolled around the coffee and stomach acid that had made up his diet for the past—how long had it actually been since he'd eaten? It was a moment of truth. But the truth, Mulder recognized, needed to be told—in every form and fashion.

"It wasn't a dream, Scully," Mulder said. "At least—not all of it. I'm glad you decided to stay."

"You were very convincing," Scully said. Mulder smiled to himself. There was a hint of teasing there. He only hoped to spend the rest of his life hearing her tease him, especially now that he knew what it was like to imagine a life without it.

There would be plenty to talk about when she was stronger, and they had the time. Mulder only hoped that they had all the time in the world to revisit everything he'd said, whether or not Scully remembered every word of it. For the time being, it was enough to see that she was pleased by his confession, and not horrified by it.

"Dana?"

Scully turned, as did Mulder, as Margaret Scully paused by the curtain that offered Scully relatively little privacy. It was clear that she needed a moment to accept what she was seeing.

Mulder stood up to leave. He stood up to give Margaret space and time with her daughter—time alone. He knew that Melissa would be coming, soon, to see the miracle that had unfolded. Even as Margaret reached the bedside, though, and Mulder moved to leave and pull his hand away, Scully closed her fingers tightly around his. She showed a great deal more strength, in her hold, than he would have imagined she had in her body.

"Mulder," she said, "stay?"

His eyes flicked toward Margaret. She showed no great desire to argue with that request. Mulder knew, in that instant, that it wouldn't have mattered to him if she had disapproved or not. He squeezed Scully's hand in return as she held onto him.

"For as long as you like," he promised—meaning it to a far greater depth, perhaps, than even Scully could understand.