Dreamcatcher 28
Ally

Dreamcatcher. May 16th, 1999. Time unknown.

"Wake up! Please wake up!"

Felicia dropped to her knees beside the still form of the woman who had only seconds earlier been standing before her. She had watched as Scully's eyes had become alarmingly blank, fixed ahead on a scene that Fliss had been unable to either recognize or understand.

At first she had felt a certain amount of smugness. Smugness in that Scully was finally seeing all that she, Fliss, did. But this had rapidly become replaced with a numbing horror as she watched the woman pitch forward onto the grass beneath.

Initially she hadn't wanted to approach her, so sure was she that Scully was dead. But slowly, against her will almost, Fliss had drifted toward her.

Tears of relief had sprung to her eyes when she realized that Scully was alive. It was difficult to see, the rise and fall of her chest was so slight that it barely seemed to be moving at all.

Tentatively, Fliss reached out a hand and rested it on Scully's face. "Please wake up," she whispered, more tears falling as her words went unheeded.

She barely noticed the figure who had followed her over. Barely acknowledged him as he stood beside her, a hand on her shoulder.

The figure stood there, silent. Not speaking as Felicia turned tortured eyes upon him.

"Please...please tell me how to help her."

The figure didn't speak aloud. He didn't need to. Words weren't necessary here. They never had been.

*********

St Mary's Hospital. Cleveland, Ohio. May 17th, 1999. 12:02p.m.

"How's she doing?"

Skinner inclined his head toward Scully's unconscious form, then shifted his gaze back to Margaret.

"The same." She kept her voice low. Not in deference to her daughter so much as for the man beside her.

Skinner nodded. "And him?"

Margaret shrugged, glancing where Mulder sat, half on one of the stiff, uncomfortable chairs and half on Scully's bed. Eyes closed, his head rested on one folded arm, the other still covered Scully's fingers loosely. She doubted he could manage to get any closer if he were to abandon the chair altogether and climb up there on the bed with her.

The image made her smile softly. "You know, he hasn't slept? Not once since I arrived here." Margaret's voice held a yearning, wistful quality that Skinner had never heard before. "He's cat napped, sure. But this is the first time he's slept."

She rose to her feet silently, careful not to let the chair scrape against the tiled floor, and crossed over to Skinner, grasping his arm gently. "We should leave him to rest. I don't know about you, but I could use a cup of coffee."

Skinner nodded. It didn't take a genius to figure out Mulder's reticence with regards to closing his eyes for even a short while. To have done that earlier in the day might have stolen precious moments away from his time with her. Moments where, no doubt, he would have been drinking in the image of his partner. Trying to find a way to store her memory within himself. A way to sustain him when he found himself alone.

But now, there was hope where before there had been none. A slim hope maybe, but hope nonetheless, and Mulder had deemed it safe to escape his vigil for just a short time.

He needed sleep. That much was obvious. To exist as he had for this long would have destroyed lesser men, and Skinner didn't need a medical degree to know what this last week had cost him. He could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times Mulder had left this room for more than ten minutes at a time.

Sleep wouldn't solve everything. But it would certainly go at least some of the way.

Nodding thoughtfully, his eyes still on Mulder, Skinner put an arm around Margaret's shoulders.

"Coffee sounds good."

**********

12:11p.m.

Someone was shaking his shoulder. At first he thought he was dreaming, but the action became more persistent. He tried to open his eyes, but the fatigue was just too much. Ignoring the hand that gripped him, he burrowed his head further into the softness of the blanket beneath his cheek.

But the shaking became more urgent, refusing to be ignored. And finally he came back to himself, threw off the bonds of sleep that still held him, and raised his head wearily.

Immediately he did so, though, his breath caught in his throat.

For next to him, bathed in a strange, almost ethereal glow, stood Felicia Slabbert.

A glance to his left confirmed that Scully was still with him. and for a second he watched in wonderment as the subdued lighting endowed his partner's pale skin with a kind of luminescence that he had never seen before.

"You have to come with me."

Mulder started visibly at the child's words. "What?"

"You have to come. You have to save her."

Mulder frowned, bringing a hand to his head as he did so. "Am I dreaming?"

He watched as Felicia smiled. And like Scully had done before him, he was suddenly struck by how *sad* this child appeared to be. It were as though she had seen everything, experienced everything that the world had to offer. Had experienced it and found it wanting. The face of a survivor. Of a *victim*.

But the smile was there nonetheless, accompanied by a tiny twinkle within her eye that spoke of how this child had once been. A child who held in her hands the secrets to that most elusive of worlds that existed between wake and sleep.

"You're not dreaming. But you're not awake either," she supplied hesitantly.

Mulder straightened up. Keeping his voice low as he delved deeper he asked, "What do you want from me?"

Felicia drifted over to where Scully lay, tracing a finger along the bed until she reached the pillow where Scully's head rested. "I never meant to hurt her," she whispered. "I just wanted her to help me."

She turned back to Mulder, and something inside of him cracked sharply as he watched those beautiful blue eyes fill with tears, which slowly escaped their confines to drip slowly down her pale cheeks. He hadn't realized that a child was capable of expressing this kind of misery.

It bled from her every pore. Her every gesture was one of defeat.

"I know now I was wrong. That no one can help me."

Mulder stared at her, hardly daring to breathe. "What do you want from me?"

Felicia bowed her head, hiding from him almost. So like Scully it took his breath away. "I want you to come with me. I want you to take her back. I want this to be over."

Mulder rose to his feet slowly. "How do you know I can?" he asked gently, surprised when the child's face broke into a tremulous smile that chased away the shadows for just a heartbeat.

"I know because you love her. You always have."

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