He could feel motion. Was he moving or was everything around him moving? There was nothing underneath him, as if he were floating - whether on air or water, he couldn't tell. Then he realized he couldn't feel his body at all, had no sense of its position or orientation. There was no up or down.

There was no air but he didn't seem to need it. No sensation of breathing, no panicked urge to even try.

Something was missing, something that he couldn't quite place. His thoughts were disconnected and fuzzy, floating further away the more he tried to grasp them. A growing sense of -- what? Loss? Ending? The feeling was becoming unbearable, closing in on him relentlessly.

Ending. It was the end of everything. His life was over. He didn't know how he knew this but there was such a sense of certainty about it that he simply accepted the truth.

"So why am I still aware? Isn't death supposed to bring peace? Nothingness? Is this the way it's going to be?" The feelings were resolving themselves into a single, fierce emotion that he couldn't readily identify. The only thing he could say for certain was that it hurt. An incredible, nearly-physical pain filled a body he could no longer owned.

Loss. He had lost something. And if he didn't find it now, there would never be another chance.

***

Detroit Receiving Hospital
April 13, 2000 Room 318

Scully sat quietly by her partner's bedside, watching him sleep. For the last few minutes, he had seemed about to wake and she was becoming more anxious with each passing second. It was not a good feeling.

The relief she had felt an hour ago when she spoke to him on the phone from her hotel room had gradually been replaced by an uneasiness that she was at a loss to explain. The longer she sat here, the more she began to second guess herself. It was an old habit.

Mulder stirred restlessly and muttered something she didn't catch. She was just rising from her chair to touch his face when his eyes snapped open. His body jerked as if he were going to leap from the bed and he sucked in a huge breath as if to scream. The look on his face was one of blind panic.

"Mulder! It's all right. I'm here." She stroked his face with one hand and held his shoulder down gently with the other. "You're all right. Shhhh. Just relax." She continued stroking his face as his eyes slowly lost their wildness and finally focused on her.

"Scully?"

"Yes, Mulder. Are you okay? Are you in pain?"

The sensations were fading gradually. A dream. It had been a dream. "I'm okay, now. Just give me a minute." His voice still held the breathless panic but it slowly ebbing.

She watched the heart monitor for a few moments, gratified to see the rate dropping back to normal. Whatever he had been dreaming had frightened him badly. She regarded him with clinical concern for a moment. Flushed, sweaty and trembling. A nightmare.

"Mulder, do you want to talk about it?"

For an instant, he thought she was referring to their phone conversation. Then he realized she was asking about the dream. He was hurting from the violent awakening as well as the gasping breath that had accompanied it. It must have showed on his face.

She reached for the call button and told the nurse who answered that her patient needed his pain meds.

"Mulder?"

The nurse arrived with the syringe and injected the contents into the IV port. She checked him over, asked if he needed anything, then patted his hand softly and left.

"I'm okay, really. It was nothing."

"It didn't look like 'nothing', Mulder. Have you been having nightmares?"

He didn't want to tell her about this. Not after what she'd been through over the past few days. She didn't need to hear that he was dreaming about his own death. Or any of the rest of it. He made a conscious effort to relax his expression and smile.

"No, I'm not having nightmares. That was the first in a long time. It's nothing to worry about. Really."

She looked at him carefully for a long moment. The pain meds did have the potential for causing vivid and often frightening dreams. He seemed to be fine now.

Her smile was tentative. "I thought maybe what we talked about might have generated some anxiety and brought this on." She felt pathetic about her need for reassurance but it was undeniable. She was afraid.

"I think it might have, in a way." He knew it wasn't what she wanted to hear but there would be no more deceit between them. "But not in the way you think."

She was sitting on the edge of his bed and had to force herself to remain rather than follow the instinct that screamed at her to move away from him. 'Keep it light, get a grip.' she told herself firmly.

"So, loving me is giving you nightmares?"

He managed a real grin. "Not exactly. You've inspired dreams for a long time, not nightmares." His face turned serious. "I guess I was dreaming about the shooting. It's pretty much a blur when I'm awake."

Her voice was tight. "I wish it was a blur to me."

"I'm sorry, Scully. We don't have to talk about this." He paused for a moment, regarding her carefully. "I guess we have something else that *does* need to be discussed, though. If you're ready." He tried to look interested, but the shot was making him very drowsy. He attempted unsuccessfully to stifle a yawn.

"You need to rest for awhile, Mulder. There's no rush." She brushed her fingers through his hair, her eyes soft with the flush of motion. "I'll be here when you wake up." Mingled with the love that washed through her was an odd sense of relief that their talk would be delayed. She was still afraid of what he would say.

"All I've done for two days is sleep. I don't want to sleep my life away." That was too uncomfortably close to what he was really afraid of. "If you go to the cafeteria and get some coffee, I'll grab a few winks if you promise to wake me when you come back."

"It's a deal." She took his hand and squeezed gently. "I'll see you in a little while."

***

The sounds were resolving themselves into words. He couldn't string them together into anything meaningful, but he could pick up snatches of sentences. "...full arrest...hemorrhage into the chest... Mulder, don't..."

Then, from a long way off, "...it can't be too late... I won't let it be too late..."

Too late for what? He had already decided that death was inevitable. He was lost, or he had lost something that had to be found. It was all a jumble.

"Clear!" Then a painful jolt and he was falling... falling from an incredible height, dropping endlessly through the darkness.

***

Detroit Receiving Hospital
April 13, 2000 1:15 pm
Room 318

She had barely walked in the door when she noticed the monitors fluctuating once again, though not enough to set off the alarms. She hastily set her coffee on his nightstand and grabbed his shoulders.

"Mulder! Wake up!"

His awakening was as violent as the one she had witnessed less than half an hour previously but he seemed to calm more quickly this time. She waited until he focused on her before she spoke again.

"All right, Mulder. No more hiding. Whatever you're trying to keep from me can't be more frightening than what I'm imagining, so you might as well tell me."

He took some slow breaths, as deep as he could manage. Then he locked his eyes with hers. "I guess you're right. It's time to talk."

***