From: "Poppy Butterfly" <poppy@chickmail.com>
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1998 06:31:06 -0700
Subject: FanFic submission

Hi! This is my first FanFic submission. I've tried to follow the
instructions to a T, but please let me know if anything needs to be
altered/redone. Thanks!!!! Poppy

TITLE: Beyond the Veil
AUTHOR: Poppy Butterfly
E-MAIL: poppy@chickmail.com
CLASSIFICATION: VA
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None
KEYWORD: Character dies
SUMMARY: A sudden death leaves Scully in deep 
despair, mourning chances lost and opportunities 
never taken.

A man's dying is more the survivors' affair than his own. Thomas Mann

Six years of knowing him, and now six years of 
mourning him.
Six years. Today. Again and again and again. Time 
was ephemeral,
slipping away and she powerless to stop it. It 
seemed fitting, somehow,
that she had no control. She, who prided herself on 
controlling so
much of her life. She dreaded every anniversary, but 
this one broke
her. Anniversary. Even the word speared her clean 
through the heart.
Anniversary meant love and flowers, intimate dinners 
and joy. Joy?
Words seemed absurd to her now. She tried not to 
think in words. But,
feelings overwhelmed her. So she tried to formulate 
a perpetual state
of nothingness. Limbo. Void. It was the hardest work 
she knew, this
feeling nothing.
Six years of knowing him, and now six years of 
mourning him.
A perfect egg-shaped time of mourning, smooth and 
unbroken in her
hand. Her thoughts were jumbled as they usually were 
when she first
awoke early in the morning. Her sleep patterns had 
never been the
same after. After. Before and After. She couldn't, 
even after six
years, form the words fully on her lips. In her mind 
the event was
huge, black and menacing. To make the transition to 
her mouth, to
give those thoughts a voice would have killed her. 
Not that that
particular thought hadn't crossed her mind more than 
once during her
darkest times.
Sometimes the sun was right above her, straining to 
break through the
clouds, and she strove for it. She wanted to be 
happy, despite what
her family and friends thought. She wanted, she 
craved, the warmth she
once felt, so long ago. He had been her warmth. He 
was the sun
that provided the sweet rays of light. And with his 
vanishing, her
life was now shadows.
So she smiled. She worked and chatted and laughed 
and met people and
dated and moved from place to place. She took up her 
allotted space.
But she did not live. Living, as she knew it, was 
Before.
She had been right here, in her bed, six years ago 
on that night. Reading
and eating grapes from a glass bowl by the buttery 
glow of lamplight.
She felt good. Contented. It was raining out, but 
she was inside and
it was cozy. The phone rang and she was annoyed at 
its intrusion. She
knew who was calling, this late at night, but still. 
She was smiling
despite herself when she answered.
"Agent Scully." It was not a question, but a 
statement, flat, devoid
of feeling. There was emotion there, though, 
underneath. Tremulous.
Contained. That voice. She knew that voice. Frohike? 
Why was he
calling her here? She closed her eyes, as if not 
seeing would stop
what she knew was coming. Her hand convulsed around 
the smooth plastic
of the receiver, which slipped slightly in her 
sweaty palm. She didn't
want to hear this. Didn't want to hear. Didn't want 
-
"Yes?" Her voice sounded far away in her ears. Her 
heart, strangely
enough, was louder than her voice, knocking 
painfully against the walls
of her chest. She was aware of her breathing, 
ragged, draining. Her
hand felt detached from her body. She didn't want to 
hear this. She
didn't want to hear what she knew was coming.
"Mulder's dead." Was Frohike . . . crying? She 
wanted to laugh at
the absurdity of it. But there was no sound. No 
sound but that
relentless voice in her ear. "I found him about an 
hour ago in his
apartment. He was . . . he was shot in the head. I 
thought you
should know."
Words. From then on she hated words. Their meanings. 
Dead. An hour.
He had been dead for at least and hour and she 
hadn't known. She
hadn't known. How could she not have known? She had 
eaten dinner and
had a bath and done mundane, stupid things while he 
lay bleeding and
dying in his apartment. She could not remember how 
to speak.
So this is how it ends, she thought. Then there was 
pain. She
remembered doubling over, clutching at her stomach, 
her chest, her
legs. There were tears on her face, falling on her. 
Falling. She
could not stop them. She couldn't do anything but 
cry and feel pain.
That voice on the receiver was disembodied, faraway, 
asking her if she
was okay. Are you okay? Again, she wanted to laugh. 
She would never be
okay. What did that mean? Okay.
Six years of knowing him, and now six years of 
mourning him.
Today. She remembered, so long ago, his telling her 
to go be a doctor.
Before it's too late, he said. Too late. As she 
dressed for work she
couldn't help but smile. All her life she had been 
trying to please
people. Trying to make them happy and failing. Her 
father. Herself.
But she had done this for Mulder. She was a doctor 
again and a good
one. She helped people, children every day. She was 
doing good things
for good people. She was trying to live her life in 
this vacuum he had
left.
Try as she might, she couldn't really remember the 
funeral. Couldn't
remember what was said. Someone read a poem. She 
thought it was a
poem. She had been asked to speak, but couldn't. 
Words meant nothing
and everything. Not many people attended. The Lone 
Gunmen. His mother.
Skinner. Men and women in dark, sombre suits on a 
dark, sombre, windy
afternoon. Black earth. The colours of her world 
now. Clouds hung
heavy, pregnant with waiting. She wore black that 
day, black to signify
the widow she so essentially was.
It was the hole that frightened her. That gaping 
darkness that made
her knees buckle, her mouth go dry. Mulder down 
there, alone in the
blackness. She didn't cry at the funeral. Her eyes, 
dry, looked at
everything and nothing. There was nothing there. 
Just a hole and some
dirt and a shiny coffin. She laid a single red rose 
on its lid and
walked away. Rain came as she walked back to her 
car, providing tears
for her.
She cried only when she was alone. In her apartment 
she paced,
clutching herself against the racking sobs that 
seemed ceaseless in
those days after.
After. The hows and whys seemed pointless then, 
although Skinner told
her who it was, what had happened. The cold, 
clinical details. Their
latest case gone wrong. A madman stalking his 
stalker. Surprising
Mulder in his apartment late at night. He was found 
with the phone in
his outstretched hand, poised to call 911. Or to 
call her. Maybe he'd
been trying to call her. Maybe.
Oh, Mulder. Did you know how much I loved you?
This question plagued her. She talked to him, in the 
days and months
that followed. She couldn't work, couldn't go out. 
The world went on
and on and on and she couldn't be in it. She talked 
to him. Asked him
questions. Had he felt pain? Had he been thinking of 
her when he died?
Was he okay now? That word again. Okay. She smiled. 
Mulder hadn't been
okay when he was alive.
At night she lay curled on her side like a fetus in 
the darkness and
waited for blessed sleep. She imagined him coming 
into her room. She
squeezed her eyes shut and calmed her breathing and 
imagined him
undressing in the dark and sliding into bed behind 
her, wrapping his
arms around her, cupping her breasts. Breathing into 
her shoulder and
holding her. Murmuring nothing and everything.
That's how she fell asleep every night. Thinking of 
this.
"I know this is hard, Agent Scully. I miss him too." 
Skinner trying to
talk her out of quitting. Miss him? It's like 
missing my arm, part of
my body, my soul, she wanted to explain, but 
couldn't. I feel it, the
ghost-pain all the time. My very own ghost. Finally, 
an X-File I can
believe in. As a doctor, she knew people still felt 
their missing
limbs after they were removed. Mulder was gone, but 
he wasn't, which
was the cruel irony of the whole fucking mess. She 
could feel him,
sense him, but couldn't touch him, couldn't hear his 
voice, see his
face, feel his warmth. Miss him. She suppressed a 
smile. Skinner
watched her face and knew the answer.
"Good luck," he had said. "With whatever you decide 
to do with your
life."
Her life. Such as it was now. She left for awhile. A 
couple of months.
Travelled. Talked to him constantly, as she drove, 
before she slept.
Travelled and wrote the occasional letter to her 
mother. She slept and
drove and walked and looked, but didn't see. She 
cried. She dreamed.
The dreams were the worst and the best. He was there 
in her dreams,
as he had been in her life, smirking, cocky, tender, 
annoying, gentle.
Alive, alive. She called to him in her dreams, told 
him how much she
loved him and how she regretted not giving voice to 
the feeling in life.
Her voice strained with the desire to make this 
understood to the dream
Mulder. If he understood her, he gave no sign. So 
she awoke, weeping.
Her mother, of course, realized her fears. "He knew 
how much you
loved him, Dana. He couldn't not have known, after 
all you went through
together. He knew every time you looked at him."
"I don't know. I don't know," she said. "How can I 
be sure?"
Her mother gave her the name of a woman Melissa had 
known. A psychic.
Scully had laughed bitterly and tucked the card in a 
drawer for months
before taking it out one particularly dark day. A 
psychic. But it
seemed fitting, somehow. She had to know. She was 
dying with the not
knowing.
Six months after, she went to the woman, who looked 
surprisingly normal.
Nice and warm. Motherly. She looked at Scully with 
tears in her kind
brown eyes.
"You've been through so much pain," she said simply. 
She knew. And
Scully wept again, unable to speak. She held 
Scully's hand and talked
to her. Closed her eyes and spoke in her quiet, 
lovely voice about
Mulder. How Mulder was nearby, always, thinking of 
her, looking out for
her. Loving her. "You had something very special 
with this man. Something
neither of you had with anyone else. Even death 
can't change this, Dana.
Death is merely a separating of the physical from 
the spiritual. The best
parts of this man are still with you. The pain 
you're feeling is natural.
But, it will get better. You will heal."
She went away, crying, but the pain was lessened 
with the knowing. And
she did go on and she did get better. Slowly. So 
slowly. She lived her
life. She dreamed. She tried to love.
On the sixth anniversary she attended the gravesite, 
which she had not
visited since the day. She hadn't been able to, 
remembering the hole,
the black. She brought one red rose and placed it on 
the marker
bearing his name. She knelt and cried. She talked to 
him.
Six years of loving him, and now six years of 
mourning him.
"Mulder. I love you. I miss you. Always." She felt 
the breeze and the
sunshine on her bent shoulders like a caress, sweet 
and comforting. She felt the dead nearby.

The dead don't die. They look on and help.
D.H. Lawrence

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