Title:  I'm Not Going to Risk...
Author: Callicott
E-mail: jcallicottw@yahoo.com
Classification: MSR
Keyword: Mulder angst
Spoilers: Through Season Seven
Rating: PG
Archive: Just let me know please.
Disclaimer: These wonderful characters don't belong 
to me but I know who to thank for them, so thank you 
CC, GA and DD.

Summary:  Mulder realizes what he has lost...and
gained...by not daring to take a risk.

Author's Notes:  Even with the revelations of Requiem,
and the developments of M&S's relationship, there 
are still so many good stories to tell for Mulder
and Scully, myth, love, just great sci-fi. 
Nothing is resolved, CC, so if we can do it with
our little tales so can you! 

I thank everyone that has written me 
and said, "Give us some more!" 

----------------------------------------------------


Mulder lay in complete darkness.  It was neither cold 
nor hot.  It was nothing.  

There was no sound, no sense of movement. He breathed 
in deeply and smelled...nothing.  

Total sensory deprivation, Mulder analyzed his 
situation critically, as trained to do, but then a 
simpler question struck him, almost as an aside.  
"Where am I?"

He stretched his muscles, rolled his head, touched 
his face and realized he had no wounds, no pain.  
Nothing.  And he realized further that he had no idea 
how long it had been like this.

The only thing he remembered was his own thoughts, 
succumbing to blackness, and then coming back to his 
own thoughts.

As he sat up, his skull echoed with reverberations of 
thoughts that always started with the same 
refrain..."I'm not going to risk...."  and then he 
drew a blank.  

From his current life, and the immediate past he 
could not draw a single thread. But this awakening 
held something different.

As always, he went through the perfunctory check of 
his body's condition, a cursory revision of the black 
space surrounding him. He finally resigned himself to 
the nothingness without and began to embrace what he 
could find within. 

This time his mind picked and picked at the soft 
black wool surrounding him until he found a 
thread...a thread that seemed to glow in his mind as 
a filament of light.

Scully

Yes, Scully, he said mentally and then, almost as a 
dare to this black hole of senses, he said out loud.

"Scully?"

Of course there was no answer, but he realized he had 
heard his own voice and felt the tremor in his 
throat, and then one in his heart as he uttered that 
name.  It felt good.  Better than anything had felt 
for a long time.

"Scully."

And with the utterance of her name, and he knew it 
was a woman's name, memories began to flood his mind.

"I'm not going to risk?"  It all came playing back to 
him.

She was so young and afraid when she came to his room 
that night.  She was afraid of those marks on her 
back.  And in complete trust, she had thrown back her 
robe.  The candle light danced upon the sleek curves 
of her body and she had demanded that he touch her.  
It was only after he realized there was nothing to 
worry about, that these were only mosquito bites, 
that his fingers began to tremble. But there she was 
in his room, his eyes and lips so close that his 
breath moved the gentle down of her back.

"I'm not going to risk...taking advantage of this." 
he had thought then, and had to reaffirm the thought 
several times as she pressed her body to his with 
barely constrained sobs of relief.  And it's only 
relief, he intellectualized as he first smelled her 
hair, that entirely feminine odor and breathed in all 
that she could be. "She's just scared...don't be a 
jerk, Mulder."

"I'm not going to risk making more of this than it 
is...."

So once she had composed herself, there she lay on 
his bed and he felt he could at least risk telling 
her about his own fears...about his sister.
 
The sense of relief, to finally share this burden 
with someone else, some one so much like what he 
could only dream a true partner would be, had been 
like salve to his soul.  He wouldn't risk losing that 
partner, no matter how much his personal side felt 
drawn to her.

The blackness closed in again around Mulder, and this 
time when he awoke, he had the brief sensation of a 
cool floor beneath his cheek.  As soon as he sat up 
and touched his hand to his face, the feeling was 
gone and he was left alone again in the void. He 
pondered this awhile as he once again began his 
ritual for any sign on an opening in this chamber or 
any clue of where he was.  But there was none.  

He settled himself on the floor again and the name 
came to him again. 

"Scully," he whispered.  It felt like heaven to say 
the name and feel the thin glowing thread being 
offered to him again.

They had tried to take her from him.  Even in the 
beginning, when they had first shut down the X Files, 
after Deep Throat had been shot.

"I'm not going to risk..."

Yes, he remembered the deep grief he had felt over 
losing the files, losing Deep Throat, but most of 
all, and this is what he couldn't risk feeling...most 
of all, losing his partner, Scully.

He had walked right past her in the halls of the FBI. 
He had felt her presence, her concerned look.  But he 
strode right past.  If they were going to remove her 
from his side, he'd just have to get used to it.  
He'd have to go back to the way it was before.  
Alone, alone in his quest, Spooky to all his 
colleagues.  He didn't dare remember how good it felt 
to finally be able to share his mind, his thoughts, 
and more than anything else, his hopes.

He felt his lips curl into a slow smile in the 
darkness.  How could he have doubted that somehow, 
she would find her way back to his side and offer him 
the strength he needed to carry on.  Even if she 
weren't physically there, his mind knew she cared. 
Hadn't he seen it in her eyes.  He dictated his 
notes, his findings in Puerto Rico...only because she 
was his muse.

But "I'm not going to risk...letting her know I need 
her to continue."  And he had not told her, even when 
she managed to find him hurt and bewildered in the 
hot steamy jungles there.

Somehow, good fortune smiled upon him, he remembered 
in the darkness.  They were reunited, partners again. 
Let all those other bastards eat their hearts out.  
Dana Scully was his partner and he once again had 
value, worth, and the heart to continue.  

"Scully, you were my heart...but I couldn't risk 
letting you know that..."

The blackness came at him again, stabbed him.  He did 
feel a pain, where, allover, a black gouging pain.

He drew in a sharp breath, and exhaled to release 
this intense sensation.  "Scully!"

She was abducted!

They took her.  Not just some where lost in a 
bureaucratic nightmare, but in a real nightmare, by 
Duane Barry and flashing lights, and right off the 
face of the planet. They took Scully.  

My fault, my fault, his mind screamed at him.  His 
need of her had pulled her into this awful trap, this 
trap that was meant for him.  Oh god, if she is 
dead...dead because of me.  Because I wasn't strong 
enough to go this alone.  Like I should, it's my 
battle, not hers.    I swear, if she is found, if she 
comes back alive, I promise, I won't let her be in 
harm's way again.  I'll take this on my own.  Just 
FBI partners, nothing more.  She can't be in my heart 
and life like this.  Just partners, just partners, 
but bring her back, God if you're there, bring her 
back or let me kill the bastards that took her...  
I'm not going to risk her again...or feeling this way 
again..."

Mulder didn't know why, and he felt he didn't deserve 
it, but she was found.  Was it because God had the 
good sense to know that the world, and maybe one 
sorry son of a bitch, named Fox Mulder couldn't do 
without someone like Dana Scully? 

And he truly tried, he hung his head now in the 
darkness, he truly tried to keep her from his heart.  
Strictly, FBI business.  He listened to every 
argument she offered to his bizarre theories, tried 
to put files to rest based on her scientific 
analysis...but she always gave him an out, said she'd 
look at it from his point of view too.  

Stumbling blocks became stepping stones that led them 
ever closer to a truth they were finding hard to 
deny.

Her arguments, her strict rationalizations became 
fuel for him, and he soon lapsed back into needing 
her again. 

 "I'm not going to risk." But, one look at her 
earnest eyes, her pursed lips as she pondered yet 
another wild story from him, and all his past 
promises of keeping her at arms length faded.

Until the day she told him she had cancer.  He was 
the only one she had called, and he knew, for her 
sake he couldn't risk letting her know that it was he 
that felt like dying.

He had only wanted to take her into his arms, 
tightly, wrapping and protecting her, scream to the 
heaven, take me, not my Scully.  But he couldn't risk 
it.

She had never given him any indication that she would 
want him to act that way.  Any little flirtatious, or 
overly solicitous behavior on his part and she backed 
away 10 paces, mentally, if not physically.

No matter what that difficult period was to Scully, 
it was dual torture to Mulder.  He was desperate to 
save her, and save that part of his soul that needed 
so badly to let her know what she meant to him.  That 
he had come to love her, as he had never known he 
could love...

"I'm not going to..."

The blackness around him began to color his thoughts.  
Had he made some horrible mistake by not telling her 
then?  He didn't know, he couldn't remember.

Tears slid down his face.  Although he didn't feel 
them, he did taste their saltiness and he came out of 
his reverie to query wearily again just how much time 
had been past here in this blackness.

What if he never left here?  What if he never saw her 
again?  What if she never knew what he felt?

Even though he had never told her, didn't she know?  
She must know that he wanted to tell her, but each 
time when he could have he always felt it was the 
last thing she wanted to hear.

Yes, she was always there, always on his side, the 
only one to comfort him, to try to protect him. But 
he had never felt ...had he...that she wanted him in 
that way.

So he had made the decision after her cancer was in 
remission, that at least he could keep her secure as 
his partner.  Keep his feelings bottled up, if that's 
what it took to keep her at his side.

But it had backfired, and what he couldn't risk, she 
almost did, with that man, that Tattoo.  He could 
have lost her to something so ordinary as another 
man.  A man who dared treat her like a woman.

Mulder realized then that this blackness wasn't so 
bad.  It wasn't much different from the purgatory he 
had lived in, by his own hand and his own fear.  How 
could he feel so sure about solving vast universal 
mysteries and never dare to solve the riddle of 
Scully?

He had told her he loved her once, in a cowardly way, 
actually, under the influence on enough drugs, that 
certainly she could choose to take or leave those 
words.

And he had blown it again, when she gave him the 
chance to show how much he trusted her,  admit their 
partnership was built on more than just work.  She 
admitted she did it for him, for personal reasons, 
and he walked.  Truth was, it wasn't so much that he 
had trusted Diana Fowley, it was more that he didn't 
trust himself to let Scully know how much those words 
affected him.

He had tried so hard to make it up to her on that 
ridiculous stakeout in suburbia, but somehow he 
couldn't talk to her honestly, just resorted back to 
his habit of teasing banter.  But it wasn't honest.  

He remembered thinking, "I can't risk honesty, 
because if that's not what she wants, what out am I 
leaving her?  The X files are virtually solved, and 
she could just walk, thinking she's done her duty by 
me. I, alone, without my mission, is not what she 
wants."

The black closed in on Mulder again, with those sad 
thoughts all to blanket himself in, and he sighed one 
time more, "Oh Scully, have I lost you?"

He awoke hours, days, years, later.  Mulder couldn't 
tell except that he felt a sense of peace.  It was 
still dark, there was no sound, no warmth or cold, 
but he felt himself complete.

"And I am yours..."  Scully's voice echoed in his 
head.

He stood up rapidly and yelled, "Scully! I'm here!"

No reply, only a slight echo that indicated the 
mocking unseen walls around him.

He had known, he had felt that his need for Scully 
was reciprocated, was equal and strong. That she 
would give her life for him, challenge her beliefs to 
any extent to protect his life.

"You are my constant, my touchstone..." but he didn't 
risk saying more, and she had gently kissed him, 
turned and left.

It was more than she had ever given him, and 
shouldn't he then have risked it, pulled her close to 
him and let his lips and body tell her what his mind 
was so afraid of sharing?

But he didn't risk it.  Somehow, he realized he had 
been given a gift. In addition to getting back his 
life, he had seen that he was an inextricable part of 
Scully's life.

He had closed his eyes, and silently trusted that 
soon they would meet on the same path.

Mulder, even as he sat in the darkness, wondered if 
his patience wasn't somehow a curse.  He was a fool- 
rushing-in on so many occasions.  Why not just chance 
it with Scully?  Because...a no from her would be 
death.  No cheating that death, better not risk it.

And so he would wait.  Maybe a small risk taken on 
New Year's eve, when it felt so right to kiss her.  
His body then felt every fiber glow with the memory 
of his lips softly kissing hers, asking permission to 
deepen it, but then her pulling away.  Her eyes had 
first smiled at him, but then that sadness.  And why 
didn't he ask her, "Why Scully?"

But he didn't risk it.  Better not to know the 
answer. He'd wait.

And God, how he cursed himself.  He had waited too 
long, twice she was almost stolen from him again.  
Both times his fault, and the grief still crept into 
his bones in this black place.  

Phaster, and he had not been there in time to prevent 
Scully from having to save herself, while putting her 
soul in danger.

And then for her to disappear with CSM, not tell him, 
not trust him. He could see it no other way.

Not only would he not risk telling her now, he would 
shut himself off to her.  This was too much.  He saw 
how she beseeched him with her eyes, but he couldn't 
forgive her or himself for being so important to him. 
Couldn't she see from the way he looked, listened to 
her each day that she was the center of his universe, 
the axle that he depended on to maintain his only 
sense of gravity and reality.

He held his anger at her like a shield.  When she 
said she wouldn't go to England for the crop circles, 
he was glad he could be justified at remaining angry 
at her.  That feeling lasted barely up to 29,000 feet 
cruising altitude.  He only felt vastly empty.

The blackness of this room couldn't compare to 
Scully's absence on that trip.  Every instinct told 
him to turn back, make a stand.  Find out one way of 
the other.  Trust her to make it right.

Just one look on her face that day as they meet 
serendipitously in the park, told him.  Trust Scully, 
trust your heart.  She's never lied to you.  It will 
be all right no matter which way it goes.

And then the most amazing thing happened. Before he 
could open his mouth to make his confession, Scully 
opened her heart to him first.  

Things he never knew, never expected were revealed, 
things that explained so much.  How her distance, 
wasn't directed towards him, but was there for other 
reasons. How she didn't regret the choices she had 
made, in fact felt that she would have missed so much 
if she hadn't made those choices...and stayed with 
him.

As the soft lights of the aquarium played upon the 
blue of her eyes, Mulder was just about to risk 
making the most vulnerable admission of his life to 
her.  

"That says a lot, a lot a lot, a lot more than we 
should probably be getting into at this late 
hour.....
but if I don't say this now, maybe another 7 years, 
weeks, or months may pass us by.  And Scully I can't 
wait another 7 seconds without your knowing ...what 
our time together has meant to me...how I need to 
know that you maybe feel the same way.   To know, to 
not be afraid to tell you that I plain and simply 
love you, Scully and to know that maybe you love me 
too..."

Sleep stole the moment. Although Mulder didn't feel 
quite cheated, how could he with Scully lying there 
so tranquilly next to him, he resolved not to let her 
leave without finally risking it all.

And when she did finally awake and welcomed him 
wordlessly without hesitation into her arms, he found 
that he had been risking nothing all along.

She had loved him, always had, but had been afraid of 
risking some part of herself as well.

They both cried that night at their fears, and then 
laughed too as they promised they'd "try" never to be 
so fearful again. Only of monsters, and aliens, 
('Either real or imagined, Mulder') but they would 
never be afraid of sharing their feelings again with 
other.  Because the sharing felt like heaven, 
Nirvana, the Truth to both of them...

He had never had to risk anything at all for her, and 
he still felt as if he had yet to merit, to pay for, 
the wonder of what it was to be loved back by Scully.


Mulder was pulled from his thoughts by what he sensed 
were footsteps.  Footsteps, soft, padding, but then 
harsh metal scrapping, something opening and what his 
unaccustomed eyes winced at...light under a door.

He could see no shapes, but soon felt a force pulling 
him upright and wrapping him in bonds.  They were 
leading him out of the blackness and into a startling 
blaze of white and stainless steel.

Oh, God,  It all started coming back to him.  The 
present.  This is the present, and Mulder felt all 
his body ache.  The present was not pretty.

The present was pain and probes and powerlessness.

The force pressed him towards the table and he 
struggled screaming "Scully! Scully!"

He kicked at the unseen forces, straining to free 
himself, to free Scully, until he remembered.  It's 
only me that's here...She's not here, she's not 
here...

As the force began seeping into his mind, his limbs 
feeling weaker, he sobbed once with victory, "You 
don't have her! She's free, she's safe!"

Voices seemed to chide him.  But Mulder relaxed and 
let the forces attach him to the table under the 
probing light.

"No, you bastards, you don't have her....because I 
wasn't going to risk....didn't risk ...losing her.
And she trusted me!  She trusted me when I told her 
'I'm not going to risk losing you.'"

As the whiteness faded slowly through endless shades 
of gray and then black, Mulder felt triumphant.  He 
had saved her at last, saved her...and, a small seed 
began to grow in his mind...saved her and something 
else?"

His mind succumbed to their probes but managed to 
hold on to that new glowing thread, tenaciously, with 
all his force to be contemplated when he awoke in the 
blackness again.

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I cherish all feedback. Thanks for reading.
jcallicottw@yahoo.com