Title: Bedlam Sidebar: Trust
By: Jessica Harris

Disclaimer: I'm playing with Chris Carter's toys.

Summary: This was originally a bit that I had edited out of the "Waking the 
Neighbors" section of Bulletins from Bedlam, but it refused to just go 
away. 

Oh, my house-mate was just reading over my shoulder and said 
"What the hell are 'meds'?" So for anyone else who is mystified by 
that, it's short for medications.

Notes: Thanks to Quercus for her thoughts and suggestions and chat on this 
one.

Feedback: As always, cravenly sought after. lumpj@hotmail.com

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Bedlam Sidebar: Trust
Jessica Harris
11/3/99
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"Try to trust me a little," he says, and christ, after everything else that 
shouldn't be too much to ask, should it?

It's just that - well, trust no one, right?

God knows we've been through enough together already. He tried it without 
the meds for a while. We honestly thought it would be all right -  he'd 
gotten so much better, and I knew he was frustrated by the way the drugs 
made him tired and slow sometimes, made him feel like his head was stuffed 
with cotton. And he did OK at first, he really did.

Then one night he woke me, his voice soft and tight and strained as he said 
"Alex. Alex. Alex. I think - I think we'd better go to the hospital."

The words took a moment to register and then I sat up in alarm. He was 
kneeling naked by the side of the bed, shaking, his face turned slightly 
away, and when I touched him he was cold and wet.

"Jesus, Mulder!" I said, as I grabbed a blanket and wrapped it around him, 
"Jesus *christ*!"

"The roof," he said, answering my unasked question, "I was up on the roof."

And everything in me twisted and pulled tight when he said that, and I think 
my heart literally stopped beating for a moment. Then he turned his face to 
me, and my heart lurched and started again with a furious leap, because the 
white of one of his eyes was stained bloody and red. He'd ruptured a blood 
vessel, it turned out, pressing on his own eyelids. Trying to shut out what 
his mind was showing him.

He was in the hospital for a couple of weeks that time. And somehow it 
changed things - I think he finally accepted that this was the way things 
had to be. He stopped talking about going off the meds. He stopped 
apologising for his bad days, for the times he lost his place in 
conversation or said things that made people stiffen and subtly inch away. 
Stopped trying to hide where he had been and what had happened to him.

We were in at the Bureau not long after that, doing a workshop on the aliens 
with a group of new agents, when a car alarm went off outside. In the blink 
of an eye Mulder grabbed me and the other man next to him and dragged us 
both under the table, where he pressed himself tight against the ground, 
eyes wide with terror. I had to crawl over and pull him up off the floor and 
shake him gently, saying "It's OK, it's OK, it was just a car alarm, 
everything's fine." Finally the terror left his eyes and he slumped against 
me, looking around at the wide-eyed stare of the unfortunate young agent who 
still crouched hesitantly at the feet of his chair, and the uncomfortably 
shuffling legs that surrounded us. "Oh fuck," he sighed.

"Do you want to go home?" I asked him.

"No," he said "I'll finish."

So we climbed nonchalantly out from under the table and back into our 
chairs, and he smoothed his hair down and calmly said "Well. Now that I've 
got your attention..."

And watching this made me feel actually *sick* with love, dizzy and shaky 
and sick, there was so much defiance and pride in him.

So I *should* trust him, right? I mean, he came down from the roof, didn't 
he? Came down from the roof, and woke me up, and seems to want to stick 
around.

But still ...

The truth is, I'm afraid. And that's pretty fucking priceless, isn't it? The 
war is over. We were right at the heart of it when it all blew up, and we 
were left standing when the smoke cleared, we *survived*. And *now* I'm 
afraid. Now I wake up shaking in the night and reach for him. And if he 
wasn't there...

Trust no one was *his* motto, after all. But he only needed it because 
underneath it all he *did* trust people, he believed that if they knew what 
was going on they would do the honourable thing, that everything could still 
be put right.

I never needed a motto to remind me - I've never been in any danger of 
trusting anyone. I knew better, knew what people would do given the chance. 
I've always taken care of things myself, I've always taken care *of* myself. 
I've never really known any other way to do things.

And if I didn't love him I think I'd hate him for this, for asking this of 
me, for showing me how much I need him. Scully tried to say something gooey 
and grateful to me one day, something about the *burden* I'd taken on in 
sticking with him, taking care of him. I left the room before she could 
finish. She has no fucking clue. He's no burden - he's the strong one here. 
Some days I think he feels things *for* me, feels all the things I can't let 
myself feel. Taking care of him is what keeps me together now - I can't 
stand the thought of being left alone with my memories.

So what can I do when he asks me to trust him, when he asks for something I 
don't think I'm capable of giving? What can I do but give him whatever I 
can? So I wrap my arms around him, warm and alive and stronger than anyone 
gives him credit for, and give it all up to him, cock and mouth and ass and 
sorry excuse for a heart until I almost believe it's enough.

End.