Author's Note: Wow, I just can't believe the avalanche of feedback I have gotten for this little old story! I'm so glad I dug it out of the recesses of my computer and dusted off the cobwebs. Many thanks to everyone who has taken time to leave a review! I have written most of my fanfic for The Closer, and I'm lucky to hear from 5 people. But I think fanfic was born in the X-files/Buffy era, and it is so heartening to see the love for my favorite show is still going strong.

This is an extremely short chapter, but I wanted to break things up a little, because Chapter 5, the last chapter, is really, really long.

Disclaimer: I don't own Dana Scully, Fox Mulder, or the X-files. If I did, that basement office would be used for a lot more naughtier things than slideshows of dead cows, that's for sure! lol Bowstochriscarter.

April 9

3:03a.m.

Scully's apartment

Scully dreamed.

Here dream was thick, the consistency of a melted Popsicle on a summer sidewalk. Every time she tried to move, to speak, or to think, she felt like she was swimming through honey. She lay on her back with her eyes closed, glued shut. Yet somehow she could see, perhaps sense, the brightly colored swirls surrounding her, over her, through her. Like red demons they hissed in her ear, yet she wasn't afraid, she was calm, peaceful. That is, until she felt an ice cold hand on her cheek, like the blade of a knife. With great effort she pulled her eyes open and saw Mulder standing over her, touching her face, trying to tell her something, but Scully couldn't hear what he was saying. Slowly, a black tear slid down his cheek and off his face, and Scully opened her mouth to catch the falling tear. The tear tasted sweet, almost sickly sweet, but the taste was comforting somehow. Then she knew, in her dream-wisdom, what liquid Mulder's black tear was made of. Morphine.

Scully woke with a start and fell off the couch, nearly missing the coffee table. Her heart pounded as she tried to remember where she was and why she was on the floor. As reality came to her, she realized she had fallen asleep on the couch fully clothed. After she discovered that Mulder had left, she slumped on the couch and stared at the ceiling for hours, thinking. She thought of Missy, her mother, Mary, Eleanor Roosevelt. She thought of all the women she admired. She thought of Mulder, who took his convictions and battered them into a shield to ward off others who dared to come too close. I was close, she thought. But not anymore, not now. She remembered what she had said to Mulder after she woke up from the coma two years earlier. "I had the strength of your convictions," she had told him. But what convictions did she have to make her strong? Science? That there were nice neat safe answers for everything? That the world could be turned into a sterile place if only you found the right formulas? There is tremendous comfort in that philosophy, she believed. Science put the chaotic world into a context. But an incurable brain tumor doesn't fit into any context. And now I'm lost, so lost. It just feels so much easier to kill myself before the disease progresses and I am stuck fighting unseen and poorly understood enemies. I can't win, there isn't a solution, and I've been battling blind for a long time now, she thought angrily, feeling unwanted tears sting her eyes. No more.

It was to those thoughts that Scully had fallen into a dream-cluttered sleep. She slowly picked herself up off the floor and ran her hands through her still-damp hair, trying to ignore the aches in her body. She walked into the kitchen and got a glass of water in hopes that a drink might wake her up a bit. She stared as the water washed over the drained bags of morphine that she had been too furious earlier to remove from the sink; she didn't think she had ever felt so depressed and hopeless in her entire life. Scully put the empty glass down and headed back toward the couch to go back to sleep. She stopped when she realized what she was doing. Oh Jesus, you're turning into Mulder, ignoring a perfectly good bed to sleep on the couch. Maybe his double bed feels unbearably empty, she thought. Like mine does sometimes.

The thought of Mulder made her wince as she collapsed into the nearest chair. She innately knew that Mulder was awake in his apartment right now, brooding about their fight. She could call him right now and he would be up, answering on the first ring with his characteristic monotone "Mulder." She could apologize to him, or she could continue to yell. The way she was feeling, Scully was leaning toward yelling because she had more than enough justification to do so. Mulder got rid of the morphine, her only chance for a gentle passage. Bastard. While she was at it, could chew him a new one for being far too busy chasing after aliens to notice her and what was going on in her life. She could scream at him for the four years she loved him and he chose to ignore that love, even though she was almost sure he felt the same way. She could pound on his chest for all the times he put himself in danger without a second thought, as if his life was so much cheaper than those around him. Scully had her shoes on and was heading across the room for her coat before she realized it, an infusion of ire quickening her pulse and turning her face red. I need him to acknowledge this anger that is boiling over and spilling all over her life. His life too. Their lives. And poisoning us both.

Scully hadn't noticed the pouring rain until she was outside. She ran to her car as the puddles soaked through her Keds and splashed up the leg of her jeans. She got to her car and slammed the door, pulling back her hair off of her soaked face. She turned on the defroster and sat in the car for a few minutes until the fog on the windows dissipated. What the hell am I doing, she thought wearily. She felt a silver chain was attached to her, and she was being pulled against her will to Mulder's apartment. To Mulder.